Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2026 i Good Old Days

As we were putting this issue together, the weatherman was predicting a wicked winter ahead. Hmm … it seems like it’s been forever since we’ve had any meaningful snowfall in my area. The huge snowstorms of the past just don’t seem to materialize as often as they did before. Will kids nowadays ever get to enjoy the thrill of tunneling through a huge snowdrift or creating a snowman ogre that towers over Dad’s car? And what about that thrill of hearing your school is closed because of a snow day? That was always an unexpected treat. Nowadays, if kids get a snow day, it’s usually spent doing online classwork. What fun is that? I hope we do get more snow in my neck of the woods this year. I live…

Have you ever wondered who the writers and photographers in Good Old Days magazine are? They’re people just like you who enjoy reading and sharing sweet memories of the past. You can be part of this magazine too! Send us your heartfelt, true stories from yesteryear, and be sure to include a photo. Although we may not be able to include all the stories, we enjoy reading every one of them. For the best chance at publication, your story should be interesting and well-written, fit the seasonal or editorial themes noted (see page 4 for upcoming themes), and highlight a specific event or experience that will strike a chord with readers growing up between 1940 and 1975. Main stories should be 500–1,000 words in length; shorter Bits & Pieces stories…

Famous Quote “To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake, it is necessary to stand out in the cold.” —Aristotle Do you remember … What U.S. president caught a cold during his inauguration and later died as a result of it? Find the answer on the opposite page. ANTIQUES CORNER Question: I love to collect enamelware similar to this fluted cast-iron cake pan. The interior is white, and the exterior is a bold blue with a few rusted areas. The mark is somewhat worn, with the only visible letters spelling “Sedlet.” Could it possibly be Sedletz, a city in the Czech Republic? Can you tell me the age of this pan? Answer: This enameled spouted cake mold is often called a Turk’s head mold. European enamelware was imported to the United…

Every girl needs a “coming of age” story to call her own. And if it wasn’t for a guy with a friendly nickname, I might not have such a memorable story. In 1957, my parents became friends with another couple who had a son three years older than me. When Daddy told me his name was Squirt, I was curious to find out why. His real name was Walter, like his father, but his parents weren’t crazy about calling him Junior. It just so happened there was a popular grapefruit soft drink called Squirt at the time. The Squirt mascot, “Little Squirt,” was the cutest li’l fella with yellow hair. So young Walter became Squirt. Squirt’s parents both worked at the Glass House in Tiffin, Ohio. This was where the…

By the age of 3, JoAnn’s daughter, Debbie, knew there was nothing better than getting to scrape the bowl clean or lick batter off the beaters while the cake was in the oven at their home in Reseda, Calif. Ed’s parents, Lena and Jerry Liberty, on the steps of a church in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1944, where they were on their way to pray for their two sons, Andy and Ed, who were serving in Europe during World War II. Their prayers were answered, and both boys returned home safely. Rebecca’s father, David, spent hours making a snow-block igloo for his daughters. “Our snow-block maker made so many wonderful creations,” says Rebecca. “We thought we were the most fortunate kids to have it!” Linda (far right) and her siblings, Janet, Eric…

One Christmas morning back in the late 1940s, Santa Claus left two strangely labeled gifts under our tree. One gift had my name on it; the other gift had my little sister Jennie’s name. The tags on both gifts bore the same warning, written in Santa’s squiggly handwriting: “Do not open until New Year’s Day.” Jennie and I opened all our other presents. Finally, only Santa’s mysterious gifts remained. “Mom, what should we do?” 9-year-old Jennie asked. Mom shrugged. “You read Santa’s warning.” Jennie turned to me, her 12-year-old big sister. “Are you going to obey Santa Claus?” “Probably,” I said. After breakfast we dressed in our good clothes and walked to our grandparents’ house, which was just down the street from us in Brooklyn, N.Y. More gifts awaited us…

In the early 1940s when I was about 3 years old, my father, mother, younger brother and I moved from our rental home to my grandparents’ farm. The custom was—or at least what my German family believed—that it was the older son’s responsibility to help his parents. And so it was that our life on the farm began. Since these were my dad’s parents, living on a farm was nothing new to him, and my mom had been raised in a rural setting also. So we moved into the big old farmhouse with my grandparents. Each family had their own section of the home with separate kitchens and bedrooms; however, the bathroom was shared. Being brought up in the same home as our grandparents had its ups and downs, mostly…

GOOD OLD DAYS® Look at all the fun comments people are sharing on the Good Old Days Facebook page! It may be winter now, but when we put this issue together it was still summertime, so we asked our fans what adventures were part of their summer bucket lists in the Good Old Days . “I loved camping out, whether it was in the backyard or a campground. We also camped out in my friend’s driveway in their pop-up camper! I still love camping!” —Wendy K. “I enjoyed going to the drive-in movie with my high school boyfriend and later with my husband and kids. I really miss the Good Old Days!” —Shirley S. “Baseball was my favorite summer activity. I enjoyed watching the minor league team in my hometown…

My favorite dance fad was the twist. I learned it from my friends and from TV. A friend of mine and I won a twist contest when we were teenagers. School dances were great. I don’t remember ever not dancing when I had the chance! Of course, I’m 75 years old now, and those memories are golden. Yvonne Rangel My first dance was the polka! My Slavic family on my mother’s side all danced. I learned cha-cha from my aunt, and the twist, mashed potato, stroll and bop all from watching American Bandstand in the 1950s after school. Cheryl Hadley My fondest memories of the 1950s are of my ability to dance any dance. Dancing came naturally to me and still does, even in my “seasoned” years of life. Of…

Why do some girls like bad boys? Yes, Ricky was a bad boy, and I fell hard the first time that I saw him. He was tall, dark and handsome. He seemed older and far more worldly-wise than I was. Ricky was a natural leader and was looked up to by others. It was the fall of 1955 when I met Ricky on our first day of kindergarten. I was a farm girl and hadn’t been around very many kids my own age. Ricky was a town boy and knew lots of kids in the small town of Kinsley, Kan. Our little school had six small classrooms, with one teacher for each grade level kindergarten through fourth grade; the principal taught fifth and sixth grades together. There was no preschool…

In second grade, back in 1966 in Addison, Ill., every holiday demanded a classroom party, and Valentine’s Day was no exception. This required the purchase of a box of valentine cards. It was important that there were enough for the entire class, and each set usually included one for the teacher. We pored over each card as we decided who would receive it. For me, this year would be different. I dutifully signed my cards and wrote out an envelope for each student, but I didn’t put too much thought into the process as my target was not included here. None of the cards in the store-bought set would be good enough for Judy. Judy was my first crush, and she miraculously liked me as well. I would hold doors…

A newspaper columnist once made an observation about Frank Sinatra’s 1940s radio performances and the reaction of his audiences: “In the studio, they cheer, they scream, they applaud, or they sigh audibly every time Sinatra is at the microphone.” Born in 1915, Frank Sinatra got his start on the radio at age 23 while he was a singing waiter in a roadhouse called The Rustic Cabin in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. His performances were aired on radio station WNEW in New York on a show called Dance Parade. He was picked up by the Harry James orchestra in 1939, but soon made the jump to be lead singer with the Tommy Dorsey band. Sinatra recorded 40 songs with Dorsey’s band and had his first Top 10 hit with Polka Dots and…

It was sad but true. Back in the early 1950s when we lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., Mom never had a cake on her real birthday. I was almost 9 the year I decided that Mom would not get cheated again. “It’s not fair,” I told my little sister. “Mom bakes cakes for you and for me and for Dad on our birthdays, but no one bakes a cake for Mom on her birthday.” “Grandma will have a cake for Mom when she invites the aunts and uncles and cousins to her house for Sunday dinner,” Jennie reminded me. “That’s not the same. Thursday is Mom’s real birthday. It’s up to you and me to give Mom a cake on Thursday.” “We’re not old enough to bake a cake all by…

I learned to cook standing alongside my mother, but I often complained about our cramped, cracker-box kitchen in our home in Garland, Texas. “I hate cooking in here! It’s hot, and there’s not enough room to do anything!” I’d open the kitchen window and rather dramatically fan myself. Mother would stop what she was doing, grab a damp dish towel, and snap it on my backside. “Don’t be so fussy! Now get back to work,” she’d say. Despite its tiny space, I loved being in Mother’s kitchen, cooking next to her. The first thing she taught me was how to read a recipe and measure ingredients to make her favorite recipe—chocolate chip cookies. The recipe was simple enough for an 8-year-old: two sticks of softened butter creamed with two eggs;…

It was August 1968, and I was 14 years old and about to enter my freshman year in public junior high school in Kansas City, Mo. A few months earlier, I had graduated from eighth grade at a Catholic school, so this was a major change for me. I felt both anticipation and trepidation for the upcoming school year. Compounding this situation was an unexpected root-canal problem that prevented me from starting the school year on time, delaying it by one week. After boarding the school bus, I asked a friend of mine to sit next to me, but he refused. This further increased my anxiety. About three stops later, two cute girls boarded the bus and sat behind me. One of them, Janie, kept asking me questions. I was…

In 1954, I was was hard at work at my desk in Mrs. Ellerman’s fifth-grade class in Pierre Laclede Elementary School in St. Louis when two boys slouched into our classroom. One was a David Bowie lookalike, wearing a sneer on his narrow face. His slicked-back pompadour and turned-up collar gave him the look of a “hood,” though I wasn’t aware of that term until I began sixth grade. The other boy, Jimmy, was tall, with sand-color curly hair cut short and a very winning smile on his freckled face. Both boys took their seats in the back of the class. There was some talk that they had been demoted from sixth grade, both for their unruly behavior and their failure to keep up with their required studies. Not long…

In the winter of 1953, tragedy threw our family of six into the street. We wound up in a dreadful apartment where Dad took on a crazy, ill-fated project. Mom took it all in stride. At the time, we were living with our grandparents while waiting for our new house to be finished in Hammond, Ind. It was one of those midcentury construction miracles, a $11,000 starter home, a prefab on a slab. Then, in the brutal cold of a Chicagoland winter, Grandma and Grandpa’s house caught fire, and by the time the firemen could thaw out the frozen fireplugs on Indianapolis Boulevard, we were all gaping up at half a house, smoldering and charred. Our belongings were saved, and thank God, no one was hurt. Mom prayed. Grandma and…

Sometimes we hold onto an object from our childhood and carry it with us into adulthood. For me that object is my Lightning Guider sled. I have carried this iconic sled with me for 65 years, despite moving 22 times. My Lightning Guider links me to fond memories and lessons that have withstood the test of time. Growing up on a hilly dairy farm in upstate New York in the 1950s, my older brother, Gary, and I became addicted to the thrill of sliding down snow-covered hills at eye-watering speeds. A few days each winter, weather conditions transformed our farm into a sliding paradise. Jan. 10, 1958, was such a day. I was 10 years old, and I was racing Gary up our long driveway. If we finished our chores…

Each issue on this page, we will feature a question that will be sure to prompt a flood of heartwarming memories. Send your short answer to the question in the box below to Editor@GoodOldDaysMagazine.com or to Good Old Days Q&A, 306 E. Parr Road, Berne, IN 46711, and your response could be featured in a future issue or on the Good Old Days magazine Facebook page! Photos to accompany your story are welcomed and encouraged! Please include a SASE if you want your photo returned. What was your favorite summertime food?…