The Olden Days

I kind of wish we still lived in the pioneer days.

Not for the long hours, high chance of death, and lack of spices for cooking. Call me crazy, but I can do without those.

Although Little House on the Prairie does make the experience sound rather ideal. It's kind of how reading The Boxcar Children always made me want to be an orphan living with my brothers and sisters in the woods.

For some reason, reading books causes me to throw all caution to the wind. Or all sense of reality. Most likely both.

When I think about, The Oregon Trail computer game was probably much more accurate, what with the broken legs, dehydration, and fjording flooded bodies of water.

Not that it wasn't fun to kill off your people in the game, but I don't think that would work in real life. At least not in terms of survival.

I was actually thinking, in terms of the pioneer days, that it would be really nice to have store accounts.

I could run down the street for my slab of beef and pat of butter, and pay for it later.

The store clerks were always so benevolent (in the books, at least). I wouldn't even have to pay right away. I could wait to fatten up my calf for market or get the harvest in from the fields.

We kind of have "accounts" now, but instead they are "credit cards" or "lines of credit" and the overseers of said accounts are anything but benevolent.

Trust me, I've tried the whole "fattening the calf" line. It doesn't work.

Wouldn't it be nice if it did. Even if I don't have a calf, I do have a medium-size black and white dog that could work in a pinch.