By Staff
A few things that come to old Cardinal's mind from time to time: Those old red-and-white poles that barbers had outside shops years ago that went around and around by electricity.
I remember in the summer how several businesses had out in front of their stores big racks of those 10- to 25-foot bamboo fishing poles.
I can recall when Dale Rose had one of these at his Western Auto store on the east side of Front Street.
I think maybe Nibs Black's Gambles store and Howard Goodsell did the the same, if I'm not mistaken
Are any of these old poles used anymore?
My mother used to send me to the grocery store to get a pound of "boiling" beef to be used for making those old homemade noodles I used to love.
How much I would like to be able to get one of those big yellow-and-black New Era cans of the best-tasting potato chips ever.
I've always liked cottage cheese, but how did they ever come to name it?
And why do people taking a long walk say they are taking their "constitutional?"
A "knock" in your old car engine was probably caused by that seven gallons for a dollar cheap gasoline we used to use.
Haven't heard a knock in our car for many years.
Some of those old cars we had; you had to give it a quart of oil every once in a while after checking the dip stick.
Now you drive your car 6,000 miles without checking the dip stick.
Seems like in the old days we were always checking the tire pressure, radiator water level, need for more oil and to see if the battery needed more distilled water. Oh, for the "good old days." Ha!
Also, another thing of the past that was popular in the not-too-long-ago days were cold or hot patches on car inner tubes.
Remember how you used to put a "boot" in a tire if you had a break in the sidewall?
Remember the sound the car tires made as you drove the car over the brick road we used to have on Main Street years ago?
One thing that makes an old pack-rat me sad is why, after collecting matchbook covers in my early years of growing up, I didn't keep them until now.
I once had two large drawers full of them. I'm sure there was a lot of local Dowagiac history in many of them.
It seems lots of businesses used them as advertisement. I'm talking of the period of 1935 to 1945. We kids used to ply North Front Street and the downtown curbs and gutters looking for thrown-away matchbooks.
We also latched on to empty cigarette and gum wrappers for tin foil for our tin foil balls we made.
Something I picked up at our local library was an article about the Lee Bank robbery in 1926.
The police department booth was on Commercial Street beside where Underwood Shoes is now.
I found it interesting that there were six shotgun pellets picked out of Chief of Police Oscar Burch, who was one of our neighbors in the 1930s, as was Neil Swisher, assistant cashier of the bank.
The robbers were followed out of town by Harry Whitely and George Owens, but they gave up the chase when they got to the Cass-Pokagon road.
Probably a good thing.
In a library article I found that nearly all of the wormwood grown in the United States was grown in Cass County and nearly all of it by two families.