Back in my day…

Bear with me as I wax nostalgic for a bit.

Is it just me, or did life seem to be much simpler 20 years ago.  I remember when I was a kid, growing up in Iowa, life seemed to be easy and relaxed. 

We had a little corner market not too far from my house called Balbort’s.  They had a few groceries (my mom said they were overpriced, so you only bought those if you were out of something and didn’t want to run all the way to the store) but what I remember most was the candy section.  I could have stood there all day perusing the selection of goodies to try and decide what I wanted.  They also had candy that actually cost a penny.  They were little individually wrapped red hard candies.  Since they were red, you would assume that they were cinnamon, but actually they were strawberry flavored.  I loved to get those because I could get a lot with whatever change I might have had.

There was also a 7-11 not too far away.  We would cut through the neighbor’s yard and walk down the back alley to the store and get Big Gulps.  Back in those days, that was a treat.  We also thought they were huge at 34 oz.  The 100 oz. Maverik mug nowadays would put those to shame!

One of my favorite memories was when my brother and I would go on  bike rides around the cemetery.  You might think that sounds creepy, but we had one of the most beautiful cemeteries, and it was pretty big, so we could ride around for what seemed like hours.  There were so many hills and twists and turns that it made it seem like we were on a treasure hunt the whole time.

I hope that when my kids are my age, they can look back on their time growing up and think that they had the best childhood too.