Readers Who Write

A few weeks ago, I noticed someone discarded a fairly new looking hand-tool by tossing it nonchalantly in a garbage bin.

It had a broken handle and the owner obviously did not see the need to have it repaired. He most likely would soon purchase a new similar tool at the nearby hardware store.

This set me to thinking — how times have changed. We now live in a “throw-away” society and have no qualms about it. I remember the days of the “fix-it society.” It probably was never called that but it certainly took place many years, including during the Depression years.

My mother grew up during those years. Her father, my grandfather, was the owner of a bakery. He would do the baking during early morning hours and in the early part of the afternoon would go with his carrier bike loaded with bread from door to door trying to sell his fresh baked products.

He would ask the lady of the house if she would like to buy a good smelling loaf. Most of the time, she would refuse simply because she did not have the money. She would be standing at her front-door with a string of young children hanging on to the fabric of her skirt. Grandpa would notice the children, all with their deep sunken eyes and their hollow cheeks. The sight of these small ones touched his heartstrings and he soon would take a loaf and hand it to the woman, saying, “go feed your kids.”

And so he went from door to door. When he had finished his rounds, his basket would be empty — and also his money purse. It did not take long before a “CLOSED” sign appeared at the door of the bakery.

My mother had worked her teenage years at the place to clean and prepare the bakery for the next session of baking on Monday mornings. All of this now had come to a sudden stop when grandpa no longer had the means to purchase more ingredients for additional loafs of bread. He, however, did still hang onto the motto of “Live and let live.”

When our mother married our dad, she instead of cleaning bakery utensils, started cleaning farm equipment. She had married our dad when he, at the age of 24, had started a dairy farm. It was a very small operation with only a few cows, a horse and some pieces of farm implements.

Our mother now had become the designated cleaner of the milking equipment. The life on the farm was not easy and they continued to struggle, but dad never did discard any of the broken tools but always managed to repair it. When the handle of a long-handled pitchfork broke into several sections, he would find a long strong tree branch, peel its skin, sand and oil it and it would last for years. Such were the times.

He most likely would be heartbroken seeing what is now so easily being discarded and what could easily be repaired. I am glad that he no longer is around to witness the neglect that now seems so common in our society.

Times do change and surely have.

Prosperity in it own right can also be an enemy of wellness and plenty. I am separated from my childhood not only by decades and times that now rush to fill what history has emptied.

We can also ask why should I write about a lost world. Nostalgia is the word by which people dismiss recollections or praises of times gone by. The semi-small response to dumb nostalgia is to dismiss all recollections as equally contemptible. But useful nostalgia acknowledges the pastness of the past. And the past criticizes the present.

For me, there was this small universe intact and whole with smells and comforts. However, each year as I grow older, deeper memories from a vanished world rise from their slumber and continue to tramp across my horizon.

So you say you want to write?

Go for it.

Send us 500 or so words of scintillating copy. Make it funny. Make it poignant. Make it count. Make it any way you want.

Just don’t cuss. Don’t be boring. And have a point.

If we like it, we’ll run it.

Email submissions to community@rv-times.com. Put “Readers Who Write” in the subject line, and tell us the city where you live.