Posted on 11/26/2002 1:40:09 PM PST by Fiddlstix
Then I'm sure some left-wing organization will find some fault in it that MIGHT cause the death of 1 person out of a million and have it banned.
Just like DDT!
One of the first home remedies I learned to make in quantity was an anti-dehydration mix of boiled water (20 minute full rolling boil) sugar, lime juice and salt. Basically, Pedialite without the nice flavors. A nice big bowl of green banana and carrot soup and few gallons of that would keep you alive until your body healed itself.
Whether you wanted to live after a couple of days was another matter.
a.cricket
Probably very few. Most of them went to public schools and got a pretty good education.
I remember those days! I'll never forget the first time that situation happened to me. I was 16 years old and working some crappy restaurant job (dishwasher) for something like $2.65 an hour on my summer vacation. The first few weeks I put in about 35 hours a week but about a month into it, I pulled an extra shift and worked something like 42 or 43 hours. All that week, I looked forward to getting that "big check" and was already mentally spending the extra money. Well to my utter horror, I discovered that my take home pay for those extra hours was about the same as when I was working 35 hours. Bracket creep! Thank you Jimmy Carter.
My grandmother (who is still alive but in a nursing home with Alzheimers) was born in 1909. She used to tell me stories about growing up in Alabama where seeing an automobile was a big deal. There were no paved roads within 50 miles of the family farm all the way up to the 1930s. She never even saw an airplane until the 1920s. One time during that decades, some "barnstormers" came into the area and the whole town shut down for the day, it was that big of a deal.
Some of my earliest childhood memories were of that farm in Alabama. I remember seeing my grandmother pulling water from the well to "pour a bath" (there was no indoor plumbing until 1969) and seeing her grab a chicken from the yard for dinner. She just cracked the neck with her bare hands and dressed it on the spot. She always slept with a loaded rifle under her bed too. She was a tough woman and took no crap from anybody! Kind of like the "granny" from the Beverly Hillbillies.
Indeed, the good old days had a lot to look back on with wistful thoughts of what was, but we are living in a pretty blessed society today if we think about it.
To be fair, if you are going to compare cost of living between then and now, you also have to factor in the percentage of our current incomes which disappear in the form of income taxes, sales taxes, tolls, fees, etc., all going to feed the insatiable appetite of a welfare/warfare state which did not exist 100 years ago.
So maybe 100 years ago the working man could buy less with his income, but at least he had complete, 100% control over how he spent it.
It's rather silly to make blanket statements saying either that things are much better now, or much worse. It is possible to advance and degrade in seperate areas simultaneously.
Maybe 100 years from now we will routinely live to be 120, food, clothing, and shelter will be free, 100% of our income will be taxed, and we will all "happily" live in a communal work farm and all learn to love Big Brother. Living longer and healthier is not enough if certain other needs are not met.
In other words, man does not live by bread alone.
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