"A YOUNG MAN'S" fancy turns to spring in the olden days; born to raise hay. When I was a kid:

I never picked cotton, but we picked thistle heads when they were going to seed in the oat fields.

We didn't have heat advisories; we called it summer and kept working.

We cultivated corn two rows at a time (first time through you had to go very slow).

We didn't know the word "bored" or the term "sleeping in."

I drove a tractor at age 5, a truck at 6, and learned how to ride a bicycle when I was seven.

We had 32 Ford truck and a 36 Plymouth.

Our house had a crank phone, an ice box, and a kitchen stove that burned wood.

Our central heat was a wood burning stove in the middle of the dining room.

We took a bath once a week next to the stove.

The artesian well down the hill was our running water.

It was 50 yards to the outhouse, summer or winter.

We had 100 maple trees and made a lot of syrup.

In summer, we swam in a mill pond every night.

I went to a one-room schoolhouse and learned how to read in less than 6 weeks of kindergarten.

We had history classes, not social studies, and overheard the other 7 grades doing their lessons.

The American Bible Society came and gave every kid a pocket New Testament.

We said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.

Prayer in school was not illegal, and we weren't taught to hate America.

Our county didn't have a single murder during the 1950s (our county had more cows than people).

When we graduated from 8th grade, most of the rural kids were one or two years ahead in grade equivalency.

At 8th grade commencement, there was an invocation and a benediction by a clergyman.

Most of the 500 kids in high school were from intact church-going families; there was no bullying.

We never heard of a single mass shooting in a school.

We had a citizenship class and a Problems of Democracy class (no social activism.

Every small town had a youth baseball team, before Little League existed, and teens had pickup games in cow pastures.

The smallest city in major league baseball broke the attendance record (2 million).

Henry Aaron came to Milwaukee, and the smallest MLB city beat the New York Yankees in the World Series.

Baseball was becoming increasingly integrated, and I saw Jackie Robinson play.

At the age of 15 years, 11 months, I bought a 1953 Studebaker hardtop.

THOSE WERE THE DAYS, MY FRIEND. WHAT HAPPENED?

P.S. Hillary Clinton once said, "What was so good about the 1950s?" If she has to ask, she probably wouldn't understand.

PPS: Pray that America can survive the 2020s.