My child bride wife back on Labor Day said to me, what’s the big deal?

She said she had two big labor days, one in 1963 and one in 1965.

I guess you know what she meant.

Not too long ago, Peg came down from our upstairs storage room with tears in her eyes (she cries easily). I said, what now?

She was holding a pair of tiny little black cowboy boots that were neatly trimmed.

She said they were our youngest son’s (now 45 years old). She said he was only 2 or 2 1/2 years old when he had these. He would not let his mother take them off when she put him down for his afternoon nap.

She said after he had fallen asleep, she was then able to remove them.

She told me she never had any trouble taking them off at night when he went to bed.

By the way, Barry can’t even remember his cowboy boots.

For many, many years, this old man has had great faith in our postal system.

Way back when it only cost me three cents to mail a letter, or just a penny to send a postcard.

Yes, way back in those good old days we even had the delivery of our mail twice a day, morning and afternoon. Pretty hard to believe, huh?

Well, this old man is now losing the faith he once had.

I had a special piece of mail sent to me on Nov. 23 from Lansing. I was told I should have received it on the 24th, the next day. Well, here it is Nov. 30 and it is not here yet.

I’m really hoping to get this important piece of mail sometime in the future.

Also, I usually send my weekly column to Mr. Eby, my editor, and normally I get it in the post office before 4 p.m. and it goes to Kalamazoo and is back to Dowagiac and is delivered the next day to the Daily News.

Well, several weeks ago I sent my article to the paper and guess what, it either got lost between Dowagiac and Kalamazoo or between Kalamazoo back to Dowagiac.

I’m still hoping that maybe sometime it may end up where it was supposed to, on John Eby’s desk.

The sad thing is I don’t make copies of my articles and with my aged old mine, I can’t remember what the article was about.

Okay, well it probably wasn’t one of my better ones anyway.

Actually, I’m postage-stamp poor, as I’m one of the few old longhand letter writers.

“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City. E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.