Things I Miss

11/9/2025

Bookstores

Barbershops. Now they are all unisex beauty parlors, often staffed by immigrant Africans.

White picket fences

Comic books that were actually intended to be funny

When boys could play football in the street without fear or helmets

When a boy could explore the woods alone with a rifle (probably an old .22)

Old Fashioned service stations with 35 cent per gallon gas and air pumps that were free and actually worked

The Southern Methodist Church

I don’t miss it but it was certainly a better time when all young men went into the service instead of just poor men (and women).

A country too honourable to put women in harm’s way

Smokehouses and tobacco curing barns

Huge pots of Brunswick stew cooked and served outdoors

Old-time windup Southern orators in white suits. (My favourite was Senator Clyde R. Hoey of North Carolina.)

When abortions were done rarely and quietly and only for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

When county courthouses and state buildings were not armed fortresses excluding citizens

Note: Next week we will resume the series A Short History of the South with an article about Reconstruction.

10 Comments

H. V . Traywick, Jr. link

11/9/2025 05:56:45 pm

My father told me that a young man from a nearby town had "gotten a girl in trouble." When he came to see my grandfather, a well respected physician, about it, my grandfather knocked him down.

John Bernhard Thuersam link

11/10/2025 05:59:12 am

Yessir, those euphemisms properly cloaked things better not discussed in public. I recall that if someone asked about a girl no longer in class, she was "out of town helping an elderly aunt" or something like that. This rather than bring shame on the family by parading around pregnant and without a husband. And if an uncle or other older family member did not have a wife, "he had just not yet met the woman he wanted to marry."

David T LeBeau

11/9/2025 07:05:32 pm

I am looking forward to an article about Reconstruction.

Wes Shofner

11/10/2025 09:48:59 am

.$.35 gas? I remember when my father {then a Colonel in the Marines) would drive my mom, my four brothers and me in his new '57 Chevy (sans air conditioning and radio) from Camp LeJeune, NC to his ancestral home in TN, and he would never stop at a gas station while on the trip unless it had gas for $.29 a gallon or less.

Paul Yarbrough

11/10/2025 01:43:33 pm

I would say yes to most (probably all) of those. One that struck me especially was the one about courthouses having spent a lot of time in many of them in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana in my work in the oil industry. The old ones in Texas (probably the others too) had architectural designs along old cathedral designs (in hopes of honesty and justice) and each had an open door on four sides for public entry (without metal detectors) as a nod that one could come from north, south, east or west to seek justice.
Today, I was rather eat my dinner in the public bathroom of a bus station than enter many courthouses.

William Smith

11/11/2025 07:02:17 am

Growing up in California because of my dad's work, we'd make the annual pilgrimage back to the small rural county my parents were born and grew up in. I'm old enough to remember traveling on Route 66, prior to I-40 going in. The average price per gallon - almost always at a Texaco station - was $0.25 per gallon, and along with the service at the pump, they gave out Blue Chip stamps!

The cheapest gas I ever saw was Whiting Brothers, in the Mojave and western Arizona. But to be fair, when Dad filled up the car with it, our '68 Galaxy 500 had trouble making it up the grade to Flagstaff. He said it must've been part water; needless to say, we never purchased that again!

Once the interstate went through, we were introduced to Stuckey's, featuring clean restrooms, burgers, and their pecan divinity candy. I confess my preference for them than the vulgarity of Buc-ee's!

Robert M. Peters

11/12/2025 06:12:51 am

Things I miss !!!

Brother Mercer, our pastor, singing tenor as we worship each Sunday morning, with Hog Gray and Doc Kitterlin singing base.

Swimming in creeks.

Fish with catalpa "worms" for bream.

Foraging for pecans to go in Christmas candy which Mama would make.

Helping Daddy drive dogs on a dear hunt.

Going to Baton Rouge to LSU for the Literary Rally. It was a real treat for us North Louisiana kids.

Eating supper with Mama and Daddy: Good food and good conversation.
Sinking beer cans in the creek with rocks, as my friend Monroe and I sang "Sink the Bismarck."

Clyde N Wilson

11/12/2025 09:10:06 am

Robert,, I love the film "Sink the Bismarck." Such grave courage.

You remind me how I miss my Granma's biscuits. Have not had. any as good in 60 years.

Joyce Bennett link

11/17/2025 08:51:39 am

"A country too honourable to put women in harm’s way." Would that America were still honourable. At least, today women, I believe, are as yet not required to register for the draft which is inconsistent with the general and insane notion that there is no real difference between women and men. Nothing is logical anymore.

Robert M. Peters

11/18/2025 08:07:01 am

The only reason for an army, men, to exist is to fight to protect those who nurture, women,; those who are nurtured, children; and the land which gives them sustenance from an encroaching enemy. Woman in the military and women at war are contrary to all civilized norms !!!

Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

Things I Miss

Leave a Reply.

Author

Archives