By Staff
It has been a long, long time since I've seen a young whipper snapper wearing a pair of those corduroy knickers like we wore in the 1930s.
In 1935, I had scarlet fever and Dr. Meyers, who was the health officer here in Dowagiac at the time, came and tacked up a red cardboard quarantine sign on our house close to the front door.
For six weeks, no outsiders could come into our house.
I'm not really sure about this, but I think after the sixth week of my convalescing, the house had to be fumigated, also.
You don't hear about kids getting scarlet fever anymore, do you?
I'm sure there are still around those who remember the tiny little gym we had in the basement at our old Oak Street school.
You couldn't take a long shot at the basket or you would hit the low ceiling.
I remember our gym teacher was Orra Morningstar and I think he had a finger missing.
Also, Frances Clark was the girls gym teacher if I'm not mistaken.
When we had teams, one team was called shirts, the other skins (no shirts).
Is Dutch cheese the same as cottage cheese?
In my old school days, I used to always get up real early in the morning to do my yesterday's homework on our dining room table.
I'm no longer doing homework, but still get up early and write my weekly column and – guess what? – it's still written on the dining room table.
The big difference is I now have a morning partner and a cup of coffee joining me.
Here is something I read about the old days.
People used to dry down some of their butchered pork and pack it in large stone jars and the meat would keep for a long time, even in warm weather.
Boy, did I used to get upset when my mother made me wear my rubbers or boots to school (boots were four- or five-buckle galoshes).
I would always try to get out of wearing them by saying none of the other kids were wearing theirs.
I never won, of course, because mothers know best.
When kids used to come into the house with soaking wet gloves and mittens and even wet pants after a few hours of playing in the snow, you would see a familiar thing.
These wet clothes lying on the floor registers, hanging on the steam radiators or, in my case, draped over one of the wooden dining room chairs next to our old heating stove, waiting to get dry for another few hours out in the wet snow again.
Places in Charlie's memory: Don Williams' Root Beer Barrel on Spruce, A&W drive-in on N. Front, Rex Turner's drive-in on M-40 South, Twin Oaks on E. Division, John Callahan's drive-in on N. Front, Peterson's Restaurant on M-40 South and the Car Top Cafe just as you left Dowagiac on M-40 South.
Remember the old car on top of the building?
In the 1958 city directory, Dowagiac had 31 factories and industries listed.
How many does Dowagiac have in 2007?