Ken and Janice Tate

Dear Friends of the Good Old Days,

Dear Friends of the Good Old Days,

A pound of ground beef. A half-gallon of milk. A loaf of bread. These were the items scrawled on the shopping list I held in my 5-year-old hand as I skipped across Water Street and into the alley behind the feed mill of my small town. I was a "big girl" now, helping my mom, who had just had another baby and was trying to manage a household with five spunky children.

I was headed to the corner grocery store uptown, a mere two blocks away, but it felt like I was going somewhere exciting and far-off like the moon (no one had ever been to the actual moon, although I had heard there was a plan in the works). I was not allowed to cross the highway in town yet, but I was now permitted to navigate the quiet, unnamed graveled path to the south side of the store and back all by myself.

Being a dawdler, I stopped often along the way. A trip that should have taken me five minutes took me 15. I picked up a stone (a moon rock, perhaps?) to study it. I tried to coax a kitten out of hiding behind a grain bin. I created an impromptu game of hopscotch using a discarded corncob.

Eventually, I recalled my mission and made a beeline to the store. I dawdled in the store too, ogling the candy jars on the shelves and sniffing the fresh fruit in the bushel baskets. Sometime later, I returned home victorious, with a white butcher-paper package of hamburger, fresh bread and cold milk packed in a brown paper bag by the kind, bespectacled man at the cash register.

Unfortunately, the little corner store closed within a year and moved into a larger, more modern building four blocks away. I wasn't allowed to walk there, because it was now located on the other side of the "forbidden" highway. My solo grocery-shopping days were over almost as soon as they had begun.

But I can assure you, today I'm still a dawdler when I shop.

'Til next time,

Mary Beth Weisenburger signature
Mary Beth Weisenburger, editor


Mary Beth Weisenburger has been with Annie's since April 2011. She has 25 years of experience in the marketing, advertising and publishing fields. In addition to her job as editor of Good Old Days, she has been writing a family humor column for over a decade. She and her husband, two college-age kids, two dogs and various other critters live on five acres in the country, where she enjoys reading on the back porch, refinishing furniture, feeding the birds and digging in the dirt of her perennial gardens.

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Good Old Days magazine is the magazine that remembers the best of times. Feature stories and photos of the good old days of 1930 through 1960 are all contributed by readers. This easy-to-read collection of memories will fascinate the young and the old alike.

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