One Bath Per Week, Eating mud pies, Using Kerosene For Medicine Built Immunity In Us Old Timers

Common Sense Commentary: In the 1930s in my boyhood town of dusty old Sweetwater, Texas, we kids took one bath per week in a washtub after Mother's bath, then the youngest sibling, then the next up to the oldest and after that Dad got the benefit of a lot of dirt, sand and soap. We lived in a house our dad built with cracks in the floor and around every door and window with lots of fresh air, cold and heat blowing through it. We all had runny noses in winter and the children used their coat sleeves as a handkerchief. We had very small meals. Oatmeal for breakfast, a Vienna sausage wrapped in biscuit dough fried for lunch and beans for dinner. Most children never saw a doctor unless it was to have tonsils or appendix removed. That was because of infected tonsils and trash in the appendix. I never hear of those problems anymore. Freezing homes in winter, sweltering in summer, little food, Iodine, salt and kerosene for medicine, lots of dirt, sand and mud, flies and mosquitoes looking for nourishment, hard lumpy beds, 0ne pair of shoes for winter only and lots of mice and roaches running free through our childhoods must be the key to adult immunity in my generation.

Here is another old geezer's observation of the good ole days of the dust bowl, the great depression and World War 2. No matter what our kids and the newer generations think about us, we must be pretty awesome and very resilient. The fact we are still alive and functioning proves it quite well. We were hard to kill and didn't break easily.  I am in my 85th year ... with lots of scars.  I don't walk, I stagger. I don't look, I squint. I don't hear, I say "what" a lot... but I'm thankful for what I got. RB
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