The Good Old Days

CC ShareAlike. Family Farm, 1911, Wisconsin.

       "Although a man's life may be well ordered, there will come moments when the realities are too stern, the business of life too demanding, the daily battle for survival too frustrating. In these moments he looks beyond the horizons, or goes back in memory to a better day when man seemed more free, when the pursuit of food and shelter was uncomplicated and direct, and all had peace and security. 

       This he finds, in looking back, on the farm of his grandfathers, where indeed there was peace and security, and the good life. The way of the farmer satisfies an elemental yearning in all of us. The planting and the harvest, the lowing of a cow at evening milking time, the cock crow at dawn, are part of our immediate heritage. 

       Plagued by cold wars and hot wars, high velocity living and constant fears, we escape to this dream world when we can. And the more our sophistication, the more we yearn for the simple life as it was lived by our rural ancestors. 

       To our farmer forefathers nature was both an ally and an antagonist; and that's the way he wanted it, for he gloried in the battle with nature. As an ally, the soil and the sun and the rain brought his crops. Nature fed, clothed, and sheltered him. When nature became an antagonist, he met the issue with confidence. His tight barns were built of shaped red oak framing timbers, joined with second growth hickory pegs; his creek stone house had walls a foot thick; he stored his fruit cellars with food for the long winter and piled the firewood high; he fought frost and drought, flood and insect pests. When he won, the victory was sweet; when he lost he kept his dignity, for he had lost to a respected foe. He could always say that he fashioned his own security. He won and lost his own battles and this is why he considered himself an independent and free man.  

       The old-time farmer was self sufficient; he needed little from anybody or anything outside the limits of his own farmstead. He built his own A frame harrow, and he bred and fed his own horse power. He saved seed from the best of his grain and his livestock supplied the only fertilizer he used. His wife carded and spun the wool from his sheep, made the clothing for the family. 

       This way of life was good, we believe, but it was not to endure. The revolution in the industrial world set up pressures felt at last on the farm, and these too caused a revolution. The revolution in farming was the most explosive in all history. Almost overnight, as historical time goes, a way of life disappeared. The turn of the twentieth century saw the beginning of the end of farms and farming as they had been known for a thousand years. Twenty years later, when the world was picking up the pieces after World War I, the old-time farmer was in precipitous retreat. Mechanization and science rewrote his text books.  

       His old barter economy gave way before cash and credit and he lost that singular feeling of responsibility for his own security which had been bred into the poor subsistence farmer. The press and force of great numbers of people all about him, international markets for his crops and livestock, and government controls over his harvests made him aware of his obligations as a member of a world society. 

       This book describes life on the old-time farm, fading into memory and never to return. It is the history of ordinary people as they once lived in their self-sufficiency and the spurious freedom of isolation. It is well that we think of the good old days as an era of serenity and comfort. There was the warm kitchen, always perfumed with the aroma of newly baked bread; the fruit cellar with its bins of apples and turnips and potatoes; the fields and the barns; the animals and the simple tools of the farmers' trade; the days work with its triumphs and defeats. 

       Here is a way of life that we may never know again. In retrospect it seems a little bit of heaven; and that is how we should feel about the dead, be they people or just days and years." Edited and compiled by R. J. McGinnis in cooperation with the staff of The Farm Quarterly, 1960. For student use in the classroom or at home.

• The Village and Community - "The first settler, like the first man to eat an oyster, was a man of courage, and a gambler too; he took a chance."
• The Little Red Schoolhouse - "The little red schoolhouse, like the buffalo and the horse and buggy, is becoming a dim historical memory."
• The Warriors - "When I was a boy there were many Civil War veterans scattered around the community."
• The Medicine Man - "On a ledge behind the horse stalls, along with the currycomb and brush, Grandfather kept an assortment of bottled goods bought from peddlers."
• R. F. D. - stands for Rural Free Delivery - "the mail carrier is just another neighbor, willing and glad to help out with little favors."
• The Hay Ride  - "The hay ride was hot, dusty, and slow; the hayseed got down your neck, the wagon jolted the fillings out of your teeth, and you couldn't get very far out of town, for a yoke of oxen, at high speed, traveled less than five miles an hour."
• The Hucksters - "The huckster wagon, which at one time linked American farms to the crossroads store, has passed into limbo along with the buggy, the buffalo robe, and the bustle. In its heyday, during the century preceding the early 1900's, it was indispensable."
• Sweet Music  - "The old-fashioned brass band has done more, to my way of thinking, than any other one thing to make our country the great nation that it is."
• The Village Smithy  - "The blacksmith is another of a vanishing race." 
• The Last Buggy Factory  - "On the Ohio River edge of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, is a ramshackle factory which by all the rules of the business world should be dead."
• The Water Mill  - "One of the first business enterprises in a pioneer community was the flour mill."
• To the Lord's House on Sunday  - "On Sunday we put on our best clothes and went to church."
• Livery and Feed  - "I grew up right across the street from a livery stable and I remember it with nostalgia and affection."
• Groceries & Notions  - "Julius Caesar Taylor's general store in West Concord, Vermont, looked pretty much like any other of the eighties."
• The Church Supper  - or Potlucks - "The church mouse did not achieve his legendary reputation for leanness from mere accident."
• The Patchwork Quilt - "The patchwork quilt was the product of long winter nights on the farm in the days when bad roads bound the family to the confines of the homestead."
• The Spring House  - "The pioneer looked for a spring and built his cabin near it, for he had no time nor equipment to dig a well."
• The Root Cellar  - "Just before the first frost the men of the farm pulled the turnips and cabbage, dug the potatoes and other vegetables and carried them into the root cellar."
• Brook Fishing  - "If tired businessmen could turn back the clock the banks of all the little brooks of the world would be crowded with small boys and their dogs."

Dave Fenley sings "Grandpa Tell Me 'Bout The 

Good Old Days" also by Southern Raised here.