Have you ever noticed that as you get older, you speak of your age as beingyoung. When I turned 30 years of age I saw myself as becoming an old person. Now that I am approaching my 70’s I see myself as a young 60 –at least in mymind. When I reflect upon my life, the memories I hold seem like they happened just yesterday.

 You’ve heard the old stories of grandfathers telling their grandchildren about walking ten miles to school through snow up to their waist. The distance may be exaggerated, but the snow was not. Remember, gramps was just a small boy with short legs.

 A lot of things have changed since I was a little boy, most of them for the better. Life was a little simpler growing up in a small town back in the 1950’s. Do you remember the iceman?  He would arrive in the summer, usually by truck, and would carry great blocks of ice into your home to be placed in the icebox. Everyone didn’t yet have a refrigerator. Ice was cut from the local ponds during the winter and then placed in a shed and covered with sawdust to keep it from melting.  We always looked forward to the iceman coming to our street on a hot summer day. We would always ask him to chip us a piece of ice. That was a real treat since money for treats was always in short supply.

 Do you remember the coalman? We heated our houses by coal back then. Coal was usually delivered into town by railway and stored at the local coal yard. The coalman would deliver coal to your home and place it into a bin somewhere in the cellar or in an attached shed. Did you ever wonder where the idea of using coal for the eyes, mouth and buttons of your snowmen came from?

 Do you remember the breadman?  He too delivered bread daily to your doorstep by horse and wagon. As kids we always loved the breadman because he would always give us his day old cupcakes.

 Do you remember the milkman delivering milk to your doorstep each morning? On a cold winter morning the cream in the bottle would have frozen an expanded two inches above the bottle cap. That milk was also delivered by horse and wagon.

Speaking of bread and milk being delivered by wagons pulled by horses, you could always be assured of  an endless supply of hockey pucks for your game of road hockey.  Frozen horse poop was always available. When one puck broke apart there was always a new one waiting to be played.

 Playing hockey today is an expensive undertaking, with team fees costing hundreds and even thousands of dollars,  and the cost of outfitting a player approaching the thousand dollar level.  It seems to me that there are less and less young people today wanting to clear the ice and playing on outdoor surfaces.

Perhaps we have made it too easy for our children to enjoy the best of everything. In the old days we walked to the local farmer’s pond, shovelled off the ice and played until the sun went down. It was all we had, but it was fun

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