He farmed before work and after work and weekends (except for church on Sunday and a big family meal.) He could beat my first husband easily shoveling manure from our cows.

I collected eggs our hens laid.

He and my mother loved farming. They never took a vacation, saw only two movies I remember: As a child they took me to a rerun of Gone with the Wind and went alone to see The Bridge on the River Kwai.

(I cried during the burning of Atlanta, and said "I hate the Yankees! My mother said, "you are a Yankee!" So I learned early that what I was a part of did not always do good things to people but bad, and war was horrible.)

The small town near our farm still has good people, but my nephew now says there are drug dealers there, the factories were either sold, transferred offshore or closed, so it is now a bedroom community. No jobs.

The local bank would not cash a check for my first husband until he said he was Don Hinkle's son-in-law. Then they cashed it, as they knew that if it bounced my father would make it good.

My dad's word was his bond, and everyone knew that. I was taught to be th same.,

The farm we moved to had no indoor plumbing. Dad had a college degree when many didn't finish high school. After Grandfather put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, because he was so ashamed the bank he was chairman of failed and lost the money of those who had trusted him (He was related to everyone in the tiny town also,) they lost the dairy farm business. Eventually dad got a job driving a milk truck, and was glad to get it. He lost one job because he refused to lie. He said it all worked out for the best, and the company failed, he would have no pension, but he got a job with Soil Conservation, and his government pension went up with inflation.

My mother had a two-year college degree all that was needed to teach. She bought one of the first Model T Fords, for $ I think it was. A year's salary. She taught in a one-room schoolhouse and was proud one of her students became an M.D.

My family saved, put in plumbing, saved and refinished, etc. I was told never to go into debt except for a house. Cars were bought with cash. They saved bread wrappers, smoothed out and re-used tinfoil. When we put in a furnace, it only heated the downstairs, we had a coal burning stove downstairs, the heat didn't rise much through the registers in the floor upstairs, so I hated to get out of bed in the winter, when I did I rushed downstairs to stand in front of the coal stove.

We had a big garden and my mother canned and froze. After dad killed a cow, hung it to age, they turned off all heat so the house was cold and dad cut up the beef and mother and I wrapped it in freezer paper and sealed it with freezer tape.

The lights would go out, so we have kerosene lanterns, as I do now.

Once there was a drought, so there was no water in the system and the springs were dry. We had to buy water. We did not flush the toilet until necessary. When the toilet wouldn't flush, dad took a bucket and filled it with water from somewhere (I store extra in a huge, rolling garbage bin.), swirled it and tossed it in the toilet and it would flush.

My neighbors grew yellow tomatoes, we didn't, so we traded. People would trade cuttings of flowers. I never had to buy plants, it hurt me when I had no takers when I divided my plants, so I planted them across the street, after pulling all the weeds, and made a garden across the street, until the bridge builders destroyed it.)

Mother put empty milk cartons filled with water in the freezer for when the power went out.

People watched out for others, if I did something even slightly wrong, my mother would be told.

There was one Jewish family, one Greek family, one Japanese family, and a handful of Catholics, until Beta Shoe came to town, no blacks. I often say I am not bigoted because my town was so bigoted, there was no one there to call names. I never hear the work "kike" until I went to college.

I prerred, and still prefer a less homogenous population, and I love the ethnic diversity in Cleveland, but:

Country people are the salt of the earth!