By Staff
Boy, it got hot and heavy recently with me and my child bride wife when we got into an argument over a picture of an old antique commode in a magazine.
I said it was and she said it wasn't.
Can you imagine an old "coot" like me and my pretty wife doing research on such a thing as a commode?
Well, we did, and guess who won? It sure wasn't me.
Years ago when you went into a store like a Woolworth five- and 10-cent store, it seemed like there were clerks at every counter asking, "May I help you?"
Boy, have things changed.
Nowadays there are very few counters or clerks in large stores like a Wal-Mart Superstore.
You now have to fend for yourself.
In my case, I'm a lost soul when I enter the store.
I always end up trying to catch a worker "by the tail" to ask which way to go to find what I'm after.
I guess I'm just too old for this "modern" world.
I wonder, do kids today still pick up "stink bugs" and then smell their hands?
I wonder, do people who hunt for mushrooms in the spring ever find a box turtle like I used to do in my mushrooming days?
This is about the time of the year when the little six- or eight-inch brown with orange streaks have come out of the ground from their winter hibernation.
I found out the females have dark red eyes and the males have bright red or orange eyes.
Remember how we used to make a thwack-thwack sound with a playing card on the spokes of your bicycle wheel?
I wonder if any of my readers ever got to see Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man.
He was 8 feet, 8 inches tall and his father was six feet.
I think Robert died years ago.
Something you don't see anymore is a bucket of stove or furnace ashes in the trunk of your car to help you get unstuck in the winter.
Also, no more "studs" in your tires.
One time I had a couple of pliable webbed pieces of metal that you could put under your tires to get your car unstuck.
I used to have a car with an oversized steering wheel and on it I put a spinner knob.
These used to be called "neckin' knobs" because you could drive with one arm and hug your girl with the other.
When I was a kid many years ago, Dowagiac stores kept open until 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. on weekdays and until 11 or midnight on Saturday night.
Back years ago the business men hired a man named Hill to make a balloon ascension and a parachute drop at 5 p.m. every Saturday.
This was to keep the farmers in town longer.
Once Will Heddon made one of the ascensions and a parachute drop and he fell onto a rooftop and broke his leg.
Anybody besides me remember when John Crawford had a miniature golf course at 208 Orchard St.?
It was there in 1938 at the southeast corner of Spruce and Orchard.
Ever hear someone say, "You two are like two hee hee's eggs in a ha ha's nest?"
In 1948, the year I left old DHS, I read in a magazine where Bing Crosby, who made $325,000 per year, was listed as one of the top wage earners in the United States.