By Staff
Something that came to my mind not too long ago was how important the vacant lot was in back of Eugene Biek's house.
This vacant lot was a Godsend to us kids in the neighborhood back in the 1930s.
At the north end of the old softball field, where we played work-up games of baseball, was a telephone pole put in the ground by one of the older neighborhood boys.
I'm not sure, but I think it was the work of "Flip" Springsteen.
Attached to the pole was a basketball hoop, but no net.
The ground was pretty well pounded down by us and you could, with a little bit of effort, halfway dribble the ball and we played a lot of two on two or three on three. But it was more fun to play H-o-r-s-e.
Boy, when I go to the drugstore these days, what a change from years ago.
As I hand my prescription behind the counter, it seems like it takes forever to get it filled.
All they had to do was throw some pills in a bottle and put a typed label onto the bottle and that was all.
I remember in the old days where there may have been only one pharmacist on the other side of the counter.
Three I remember were Grover Myrkle, Bill Beyers and Charlie Hatfield.
They knew just about every customer by name.
Also, it didn't take very long to get your Rx filled and you may have had a little conversation with the pharmacist as he filled your order.
I don't recall having chairs to sit in while waiting, either, like now.
Also years ago, these fellows used to make up bottles of cough syrup, salves and ointments themselves – not like these days, which are already made in a tube.
I can't ever remember a female pharmacist.
Now, lots of folks get their pills in the mail.
Just another change from the old days that I remember.
For a toothache I can remember getting a little bottle of clove oil and it worked.
How many can remember the troop trains going through Dowagiac during World War II?
I remember when Wayne Clark was the truant officer years ago. Do Dowagiac schools even have one?
An old friend of my mother was a Dowagiac lady, Myrta Rupp. She was with my mother when I was born 78 years ago.
After her husband Bill died and my folks had passed, Peg and I looked after her for years as she had no way to pay bills or grocery shop.
After her kids who lived in California died and she was in her late 90s, her only survivor was a granddaughter who lived far from Dowagiac.
She finally had to be put in the Cass County hospital.
She had a little yellow canary called Petee she really loved and, of course, we inherited it to look after it for Myrta.
Every time we went to Cass to visit her, she would say how is my Petee and we would always say Petee's just a chirping' like she always did, even though the bird died a year or so after she was put in the Cass hospital.
Did we do right or wrong telling her this? I wonder.
Oh, by the way, I still have Petee's bird cage up overhead in my garage.
E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.