Old letters brought back memories

Merry Christmas!

I want to thank you for printing the letters to Santa from the past. It brings some good memories to some of us. Life was so much simpler back in those days. Kids asked for so little by today's standards.

Some of these letters were from the early 1900s nearly 50 years before my time. And yet, I remember some of the names of the youngsters. Reno, who employed my late husband in his bowling alley, Dorrell Kilduff, Fred McBrian (I wonder if he was our dentist), and so many other names of the past come to mind.

The children asked for a few toys of the day (some of which I never heard of before) and fruit, nuts, shoes, stockings (for their feet, I am sure), donkey, (perhaps to help plow a field), mittens, balls to play with and the like. A lot of the requests were for their parents, siblings, grandparents and sick relatives.

The ones that struck me were Bertha and Percy. Both of them had a wish list from their teacher Miss Ruth. Bertha's list was for candy, nuts, oranges and bananas. Percy's list was for a nice gold watch, a bracelet and a long switch to crack the pupils around their legs. I wonder, Miss Ruth sounds like she was a very good teacher to me. My guess would be that Bertha was a good student but Percy may have been a little naughty. Miss Ruth may have felt that she deserved a nice gold watch and needed the stick to use as a threat for Percy to be a good boy. In any case it sounds as if both children cared enough about their teacher to ask Santa to bring her gifts.

I too remember asking Santa for fruit, clothes, shoes and a coat and I really wanted a doll. I do remember the Sears Christmas and Montgomery Ward catalogs. My children as well as most other kids marked their wishes all over it. I, as a child remember using the pages from those catalogs for when we went to the outside toilet.

Times sure have changed. There is Amazon, and the glorified computer. You don't even need money. (Today) Just click and in a couple of days you have exactly what you want unless the driver leaves it on some stranger's porch. Ah, but all you have to do is post the pic of the porch where the package is on Facebook and most of the time the porch owner responds with, "I have it." Instantly.

Life had to be so hard 100+ years ago, but are the days we are living today any easier? There seems to be so much stress on all of us and some days I wish we could go back to the "Good ole Days."

Merry Christmas,

Joyce Banovz