I too have memories of a one room school. I moved from a city school to a village one room school when I was in 2nd grade and stayed there through fourth. When I moved back to a city school I was way ahead of my classmates. Our village teacher allowed us little ones to listen in and participate in whatever the older kids were doing, provided we were finshed with our assignments. Since that was much more interesting than reading the German equivalent of Dick and Jane, I always hurried to get done. We had running water and no privy, sorry to say, but I think I did not miss much, did I?

What's "FWB" - "Free Wheeling Broads" "/Boys"? I also find it distressing to hear a stream of what we considered foul language coming out of the mouths of many young people ... as part of their routine ... and I must confess that it troubles me more when it comes out of the females' mouths. I learned at home (from Dad - Mom was sick from when I was about 6, and Grandma was old and "sexless" ... and Dad talked around the subject, mainly) and I accepted ... that, as someone here said, "It takes two to tango", that pregnancies don't happen all by themselves (at least, they didn't in those days) ... and even now, teens don't get pregnant all alone (not being interested in the "in vitro" game). I learned that, while guys were inclined to try to get all that they could ... that if one was responsible for pregnancy, that he bore equal responsibility with the girl. Probably/usually more. That there was the risk of some rather nasty diseases, as well. We used to say that a pregnancy, if the girl chose to keep the child, which was unusual in earlier generations, it would pretty well ruin whatever hopes she might have had for a career ... but such wasn't so for the guys ... who seldom felt a responsibility to provide for the child. I remember Dad saying that, in discussion with a female friend when he was young, she'd said that the girls had to not only deny the persistent guy ... they had to deny their own feelings,as well. Not very fair, that. Shouldn't responsibility be shared? Possibly, after the child was born, when it was a week old, she should have taken it to the guy's house, saying that it was his turn to look after it for a week. I remember my wife telling how disappointed? disgusted? her Mom, who'd initiated divorce and was nearing retirement was that a substantial number of the men that she'd dated aimed at going to bed, if not on a first date, often shortly afterward. Maybe it's related to the length of time that movies show a scene on the screen ... if more than a few seconds for each, many modern folks feel that it's too slow ... and boring. When they get old ... and life slows down some ... do you think that modern people'll find life so unutterably boring ... ... that suicide may seem an interesting alternative? Good wishes for keeping your life in focus ... and perspective ... treating yourself and others with respect .. and encouraging the kids to follow similar patterns ... when you have the opportunity. ole joyful P.S. Many seem to feel that people, like machines, exist to serve them, if they can make it happen, and that while they are doing such explotation and after, they owe little more duty of fair treatment to the person than to the machine. Which we've pretty well seen exemplified in the way in which corporations treat their staff ... and suppliers ... and, often, clients - though if they treat them too badly, they may lose their opportunity to serve that client in future. o j

People taking responsibility for their actions. Saturday prize drawings at the Kroger Store. Ice cream cones at 5 cents per dip. 20 cent comic books. Saturday matinee at the movies. A drug store with a soda counter. Small towns with a viable business district. (These have all died. or are dying in the farm country.) An auto repair shop where the head mechanic did everything from engine rebuild to rewiring headlamps, and head gaskets cost $5 each. Band concerts in the park in the summer. (This is how the music teacher kept his students in practice during the summer months, and was the encourgement for several students to try their hand at forming their own bands.) Gasoline at 22 cents per gallon including taxes. Kerosene was 15 cents/gal. Group swims in the pool of a neighboring town. Drive-in movies. Taking the scenic route home. A new bicycle at $45. Automobiles cost approximately $1 per pound. Home made birthday cakes with ice-cream and fruit. Corn bread and beans. Cobblers of all kinds. Eating an apple or peach a moment after picking it fron the tree. Stopping at a Dairy Queen on a hot afternoon. When "drugs" were something you bought at the drug store. Watching apple cider being made at the local orchard. City ice plants. Coca Cola in glass bottles with the name of the town cast into the bottom of the bottle were the bottle was first used. Making a game of seeing how many different town names you could find. Pulling bottles at random from a case and making a bet on who got the bottle with the most distant town. When "hayseed" referred to timothy, red-top, or sudan grass seed and not a hick. When people knew what a "single tree" and "double tree" was. When kids mowed lawns for 50 cents - with a push mower. Common wall coverings in homes was wall paper. Pitcher pump at the kitchen sink that was connected to a cistern. Monday clothes wash day. A clothes dryer was a line out back. Gingham and polka-dot dresses. Pleated, full skirts. Bobby socks and sneakers. Highschool wool letter sweaters. Autograph books. Fountain pen. Oil bath air cleaners on cars. Road draft tubes (on car engines). Pressure switch for brake lights. 6 volt automotive systems. Generators (not alternators). Home light plants. (Fairbanks - Morse was a common brand.) Windmills to pump water. Zenith Wind Charger (for the radio). Vacuum tube radios. Philco parlor radio as large as a juke box. Juke boxes. Battery powered radios. 78 rpm records. Windup Victrola. Needles for record players. Greyhound buses running through every town on a US highway. No interstate highways. Route 66 was the biggie. Steam locomotives (and steam whistles). Threshing machines and crews. Hay binder. Model-A Fords. Nash, 6 cylinder with dual ignition (2 spark plugs per cylinder). Fordson Tractors - start on gasoline, then switch to kerosene. Kerosene lamps. Aladain lamps with mantles (pressurized naptha AKA coleman fuel). Naptha fueled clothes irons. Blow torches. Fire starter (corn cobs soaked in kerosene). Outdated Sears & Roebuck catalogs (toilet paper). Party line phones with battery boxs and hand cranked ringer. Glass insulators for telephone lines. Summer drinks were kool-aid and real lemonaide.

Posted by debodun:"I had two Eastlake caned seat chairs out last year with a $35 each price tag. A couple of young bucks stopped and offer me $5 for BOTH. I told them where to put their $5. Sometimes a person will ask if I can do better on the price, so I say "Certainly!" and make it a higher one." That seems a little extreme, and combative. I don't expect young bucks to know about antiques. But even more so, I don't expect most sellers to understand that the antiques market has taken a serious down-turn. When I have had sales, I was never insulted by the amount that someone offered, but how they make the offer. Saying "I'll give you..." is an insult, Asking "Can you do better?" is not. I don't know the persons circumstances, perhaps $5 is what their budget should allow? Or perhaps they are poor negotiators, and have watched too much of that Pawn Stars fake reality show, and have picked up poor haggling habits -thinking they have to start low to get the best price. When I had a sale it was stuff I wanted to unload -that was the objective. So, I priced it to sell. I was a picker and sold to dealers and I had a shop for a while, and did the flea market route -so I had an idea of what dealers would pay. If I had 20 pairs of Salt & Pepper shakers and marked them $2 a set, I would have an idea of what I would do for the lot, so if a dealer picked out the 8 best pairs and asked what I could do on them, I'd have a figure in mine mind, I might even tell them before they asked "If you're getting that many, you can have all 20 for $1.50 a pair, that'd be 30 bucks". My main rule with sales was that I would try to leave a little wiggle room for serious buyers. I could waste my time and take the stuff to several different antique dealers, or wait for them to come to me and save gas and time. I also price things 'each' and in multiples, so with a stack of identical plates I'd hang a sign. The price difference may even seem a little ridiculous. "Plates $2ea or 10 for $5". People thought they were getting a great deal and didn't feel a need to haggle, I already did it for them. But inevitably, someone was going to ask to pay $4 for 10. I wouldn't get mad, no. Some folks feel it doesn't hurt to ask, so they do. I would pretend that their math skills weren't too good and I'd say "I'm sorry, you can buy 2 for $4, or the best I can do is 10 for $5", if their math was really poor, and they had to ask again, I would repeat the same thing, "No, 2 for $4, 10 for $5" The crip-crap that I really didn't want to box up again at the end of the sale, I always priced like that. If you are only going to buy a couple of plates, your wasting my time, if you are going to buy a stack, I'll give you my best price up front. If people feel like they are getting a deal and had a good time they tell their friends. And if I had an item that no one was paying much attention to, but I really didn't want to pack up again, I would come down on it the first day, or the first time some weird young buck picked it up, looked at it and said "cool" "It's marked $10, but you can have that for $5." But my main rule was I came down on multiples and big purchases. If someone collected $40 worth of junk and didn't even ask to haggle, I might give them a discount at the till anyway -again, because they will tell their friends. "Oh, I had that marked $10? You're buying so much stuff, you can have it for $5." See why people wanted to be on my mailing list? For the most part, on the high end and antique items I didn't come down until later on in the first day or on the second day. But if I had a couple of hot items at a very good price, like beautiful Eastlake caned seat chairs for $35, I expected folks to want to haggle before they bought them. It makes them feel better. So, I might price them at $40 ea, and if some young bucks said "Will you take $5" I wouldn't be insulted, I would give them my come down price "tell you what, $70 for the pair" If they made a counter offer and it was the beginning of the day, I would tell them "I haven't had them out very long, and I was planning on going half price (or what ever) tomorrow, if you come back tomorrow and they haven't sold, you can have the both of them for $40." The next day I might change my mind and not even put them out, or if the young bucks come back, tell them "someone offered $50 for the pair yesterday before I closed and said they would be back with the money this morning. I told them the first person to pay me $50 today will get them, those folks haven't come back yet, so if you want to snatch them up, you can have the pair for $50 right now." But I usually kept my word, If I quoted a 'tomorrow' price, I sold it for that the next day. And if it was for an item I just wasn't sure what kind of interest there might be for it, I would say, come back tomorrow, I am going to mark everything down tomorrow, we can wheel and deal then. If it was an item that every early-bird dealer and collector picked up and asked what I could do on it, I knew it would sell eventually and I might even re-tag it higher after the first few hours, so I could come down half off the next day or later in the day. If it's marked $12, and every dealer offers $6 after I say I'll come down to $10, then I would mark it up to $20, so the next dealer to ask, I tell them "the best I can do is half price." Sometimes it sold to a collector for the $20 or $15.