Our teenage grandson is visiting us for a couple of weeks this summer and it makes me realize how different the world we inhabited as children in the 1950s and 1960s is from the fast-paced, highly connected world of 2025.
Of course, this is not a stunning insight!
I have the gift of my grandfather's writing to tell me of his childhood.
From 1958, when I was seven years old ...
I'm saving my nickels in my second childhood for celebrating the Fourth of July as I used to save pennies in my first. But there's a difference –
Over at Whitesville in childhood No. 1, I used to go to Landlord Jones' ice house, and dig and dig until I could find a piece of ice buried deep in sawdust. Then I dickered if the ice was a five- or 10- or 15-cent piece.
Mother had prepared the milk, eggs, flavoring – and what it takes. Then came the breaking the ice and packing it around the freezer can in the wooden tub, and turn and turn and turn!
The resulting ice cream - at last was satisfying of course – wonderful!
In childhood No. 2 –
Step in almost any store and buy the stuff, but it takes nickels rather than pennies and – 'taint half as good.
Advertising of Fourth of July celebrations – One could count on a mammoth spread eagle and sure to be found were such expressions as 100 Guns at Sunrise, Music by Martial Band and Cornet Band, Grand Parade, Fantastic Parade, Patriotic Speech, Square Dance, Excursion Rates on All Railroads, Ox Roast, Spectacular Fireworks Display - or it might be called Pyrotechnical Extravaganza.
Times change –
No longer do we drive Old Dobbin to town and tie her in the church sheds.
There ain't no Old Dobbin and there ain't no church sheds. There ain't no pink lemonade –
There ain't even no peanut roaster with a little tin whistle so shrill it could be heard a long way off.
There ain't no fantastic parade. There ain't no greased pole to climb with a big two dollar on top!
Fourth of July – bah! If you should look for me that day, I can be found at Folly in the Nine Mile, seated in the shade by that dinky lake, maybe listening to the birds, or half asleep, dreaming of Fourth of July celebrations that were celebrations in childhood No. 1, or maybe listening to a ball game over the little portable radio.
If I get burns on my fingers, they will not come from firecrackers but may come from broiling a steak over a charcoal fire. Wistful thinking - look at the price of steaks! More likely I'll bust a bun and insert a wiener.
Here on Crandall Hill we shot off a few fireworks after sunset to celebrate the 249th birthday of our country.
I would have to bet that this custom (shared in my grandfather's column in 1968) wasn't part of anyone's Pyrotechnical Extravaganza in 2025!
"Shooting anvils" was a Fourth of July feature at celebrations when I was a small boy. We wonder if any reader of this column can remember such noise makers!
Just for your information we'll tell you how the trick was done. An anvil was placed on the ground well away from homes. On top of it was placed a piece of metal with a hole in it that would hold perhaps a quarter of a pound of gunpowder. On this was carefully balanced a second anvil.
Nearby was a wood fire that kept the end of a small steel rod red hot. The shooter touched a trail of gunpowder on the lower anvil, igniting the explosive. The top anvil may have gone 20 feet in the air. The explosion rocked the hills.
Loading the anvil and keeping fire to heat the rod was quite a task so the blasts did not come very close together.
That was how the trick was done some 80 years ago.