The good old days — they were

Charles McVey was scratching around in his garden when thoughts of his childhood came to mind.
McVey, 84, was born a couple of miles east of LaHarpe just as the Great Depression was sinking its fangs into the nation in 1931. To him its effect was felt most at playtime, though it didn’t make a huge impression.
Being the youngest in his family — his nearest sibling, a sister, was 10 years older — McVey usually found himself playing alone. Then, if neighbors didn’t live practically next door, getting together with other children was limited by transportation, both the mode and cost of fuel when a working man might not earn more than a dollar a day.
As he hoed away in his garden, McVey recalled toys he had, brought on, he said, from reading in last Saturday’s Register descriptions of rubber band guns kids made in the 1950s. He never shot a rubber band, but he did learn to make arrows and chased iron wheels over the countryside.
The arrows were made from wooden shingles, split and fashioned with a pocket knife, and then put to flying with a string fastened to a stick knotted at the other end. The shingle-made arrow had a notch and when put against the knot, McVey jerked the stick forward in an arch to fire the arrow on its way.
With an iron wheel and length of lath, McVey got a wheel rolling and chased after, using the lath to propel and direct its journey. He also made small boats from scrap wood.
Some kids had store-bought toys, but other than a tricycle McVey never did.
“It was the Depression,” he declared.
Eventually, companionship came through Pleasant Prairie School, albeit a little earlier than his parents expected. “I ran off to school to be with other kids,” McVey said. The teacher told his parents that since the five-year-old showed up so often, he might as well sit in on classes.
Married at 18 to Phyllis, his wife today of 66 years, McVey farmed for 16 years before adverse weather persuaded him to take a job in the parts department of brother Kenneth’s John Deere dealership in California. Later, McVey returned to Kansas, and to a farm about a mile from where he was born and raised. A few years at Alco Implement, Iola, again working in parts, were interrupted by a heart attack. Two open-heart surgeries ended his work-a-day life, but left him time for gardening.
The older he gets, McVey allowed, the more he thinks of the good old days, which, from conversations I have with contemporaries, afflicts many of us.