Will the Good Old Days Ever Come Back?

About a year ago, I brought an item out of storage and refinished it for a spot by my front door, to remind me of the old rock house on the Augustine Farm in where I was born and grew up.

It is an old caboose stove from the Nickel Plate RR (Rail Road), still proudly bearing the name and emblem on its sides. In the farm house, already a museum piece when I was born in 1925, it was used to heat the bedroom at the south end of the second floor, a room given to the hired men for their home.

In the 1930s, it housed Al Richardson and Herman Pollman, whose pay at that time was about $15 to $20 per month and room and board. Herman saved most of his pay, but Al was known for walking to Eureka and having a beer or other beverages once in a while. Maybe it was my experience with them that led me to have a credit rating of 821, the last time I bothered to look.

Probably as they grew old, very old, that is, they might have had dementia or other common afflictions better well known today and they used to argue a bit as they retired to bed.

Al Richardson died first, and of course he had no insurance or savings, so a community collection was held for his burial. As I remember, it was $35.  All of that went for a casket and I do recall being present as my brother, Bud, and Herman dug his grave in the cemetery on the Pevely Farm at Crescent. I helped a little, and found the ground was deep and easy to dig, but as they went 6 feet deep, they did most of the work.

Bud and I were talking about the event recently and had to recall a statement made by Herman during the digging, which was a carry over from the roommate arguments of their recent past.

I remember Herman when he paused near the end of the digging, saying, "God bless him, God damn him." But at least he said it reverently as he did the final chore for his old companion.

This should be an example for readers as they try to find answers on survival in the coming years. Small individual farmers have disappeared as most crops are now handled by huge expensive machinery, high priced chemicals and fertilizer rather than low cost man power and thousands of those little farms are no more. Livestock and chickens are raised in huge CFAs and few farms now hold livestock.

My parents kept their old faithful workers on until they died and when I began to farm fell heir to the Murphy Brothers, Joe and John who grew up in the Catawissa area and were close to Mrs. Bertha Gifford, the notorious mercy killer of long ago who had a different practice as she sat up with what became terminal ill neighbors as she poisoned them. I had found and obtained a modest tourist court cottage at old Rock City, hauled it to the back area of the Rock House and for years that became John Murphy's final home.

After working all his life in agriculture, Joe went into construction work for several years and when we got his birth record and found he was more than 65 years old, retired from that and moved his little trailer in along with a cow he had bought and one morning he didn't come in at the usual time and when I went to the barn, there he was with his overall top down as he held his chest during a fatal heart attack.

Those good old days are gone forever, or at least until things get so bad, some changes will be made.

Perhaps I have the old stove shown here to remind me of how things were back in the good old days and as I watch the Republican Iowa Presidential debate among the very well off contenders who have millions to spend on their campaign, wonder if their friends will have the same type of send off in their final days as did poor old Al.

These contenders all seem to want the public effort for needy to go back to the days of the Murphys, but those facilities or people to give the care are not there any more. 

President Obama was elected because he offered HOPE in the campaign.  I was with him several times, and especially when about 30,000 people showed up in the football dome and I sat with them as they showed their feelings.  But things don't seem to be able to get back in the near future.

My old stove says to me that they won't.