Good Old Days Magazine

Launched in 1964, Good Old Days is the original nostalgia magazine, featuring reader-provided stories and recollections from days gone by. Good Old Days is targeted to home and family interests, including crafts, nostalgia and home décor

Good Old Days Magazine1 min read
Good Old Days
Editor Kathy Lynch Art Director Brad Snow Associate Editor Melissa Moeller Senior Graphic Designer Nick Pierce Senior Copy Editor Kristan Seitz Copy Editors Mary O’Donnell, Läna Schurb Publishing Services Manager Michelle Harger Senior Production Art
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Editor’s Note
Another summer has flown by. While growing up, that meant it was time to settle into fall and the new school year. Time to get reacquainted with school chums, make new friends, prepare for lessons and look ahead to Halloween. The adventures we had du
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FROM the MAILBOX
I’ve subscribed and read Good Old Days magazine for over 40 years (where did the time go?), and I realized that in all those years, I’ve never written a letter to the editor. I’ve enjoyed all the letters and articles people sent in. I thought I’d sha
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
A Sparkling Jewell
As a child I spent hundreds of joyful hours cuddled in my mother’s lap, learning my ABCs, nursery rhymes, poems, and math concepts. “Hidden jewels,” said my mother (she knew I most certainly was one), “need to be found early and polished often or the
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
What? No Training Wheels?
Happy birthday tooo yooou! In the summer of 1965, I was the oldest of four boys living in rural southern Ohio. On Aug. 8, I turned 6 years old. Happy birthday tooo yooou! We lived on Main St. in Stoutsville, a tiny village 30 miles south of Columbus.
Good Old Days Magazine3 min readRegional & Ethnic
Lutefisk!
One of the things I remember most about my dad is that he was a Norwegian through and through. There was a lot of Scandinavian blood where I grew up in central North Dakota in the 1950s. My dad was the first generation of his family born in the Unite
Good Old Days Magazine5 min read
The Shoe War
In 1949, I was starting the first grade. In Kansas, most of the kids went barefoot all summer, and we had one pair of shoes for school. Some kids had Sunday shoes they wore to church and birthday parties, but my family was poor, so I only had one pai
Good Old Days Magazine3 min read
Flowerpot Justice
It is 1958. I am 10 years old in fourth grade at West Winfield Central School in upstate New York. My teacher, Miss Goldsmith, is standing at the front of the classroom with her hand on the shoulder of a new student. Little do I know but this student
Good Old Days Magazine2 min read
Coming Of Age By Crossing The Bar
A head lay adventure and certain danger. I was thrilled but nervous. (OK, let me be honest: I was scared to death!) But there was no turning back. I was 7 years old. I would no longer be considered a little kid. I must go on. Death, I decided, would
Good Old Days Magazine3 min read
Rewind
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”—Thomas A. Edison • Creature From the Black Lagoon • Godzilla • Tarantula • The Blob • The Fly • Revenge of the Creature Which subject did
Good Old Days Magazine3 min read
Grandma’s Secret Recipe
Spending the weekend with my grandparents in 1950 was not a treat. They didn’t even own a television, and their farm was in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. All you could see for miles was corn or wheat. Grandpa hardly ever spoke at all, and although
Good Old Days Magazine4 min readDiet & Nutrition
A Bride’s First Cooking Lesson
The rap on our trailer house door startled me. My new husband, Bob, had just left for work and I was washing the breakfast dishes. Peering out the window, I saw my mother-in-law. Quickly, I opened the door and she stepped up into our minuscule living
Good Old Days Magazine1 min read
Share Your Stories and Photos With Good Old Days Readers!
Have you ever wondered who the writers and photographers in Good Old Days magazine are? They’re people just like you who enjoy reading and sharing sweet memories of the past. You can be part of this magazine too! Send us your heartfelt true stories a
Good Old Days Magazine2 min read
Mischief on Maple Avenue
When you grow up in a family of six siblings and you are the only male and the baby of the family, you tend to find mischief with your friends rather than your five sisters. Such was the case one summer day in the early 1970s in our Chicago suburb of
Good Old Days Magazine2 min read
How Do You Dance a Square?
Hip-hip-hooray! You’re going the wrong way! Hip-hip-hooray! Go back the other way! And when you get back home again, everybody swing, As we go marching through Georgia. That is a square dance call I remember from many decades’ past. I must have been
Good Old Days Magazine5 min read
The Three Sisters
As stories and memories are handed down from generation to generation, recipes not only serve to nourish us, but they also season our traditions and tell our stories. Foods are as characteristic to country and continent as the people who have inhabit
Good Old Days Magazine3 min read
The GREEN PEA Fiasco
Ina was my favorite aunt, my dad’s maiden sister. She was one of four children born to Maria and Gust, two adventurous people who left Finland to settle in a small community in the northeast corner of Ohio—Ashtabula. As did many of Finnish descent, A
Good Old Days Magazine1 min read
September
The golden-rod is yellow;The corn is turning brown;The trees in the apple orchardsWith fruit are bending down.The gentian’s bluest fringesAre curling in the sun;In dusty pods the milkweedIts hidden silk has spun.The sedges flaunt their harvest,In eve
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
The Great Tricycle Pileup
In 1951, we lived in San Francisco, on Golden Gate Avenue. The street was just a block long, and it was on a small hill. I was 5 years old at the time, and to me, this hill looked enormous. The upper half was steeper than the lower half. For Christma
Good Old Days Magazine3 min read
We Found a Boat!
It was February 1961 or 1962, when I was 11 or 12. I was outside playing with George. He also lived in Ellport, Pa. It was cold with about a foot of fresh snow. We went “over the hill” and down to the creek, which is where I spent most of my time. We
Good Old Days Magazine2 min read
From Bikes to Buses
As kids these days head back to school, it sure is a lot different than it was back in the 1930s, when I went to school. I went to a two-room district school with a total of 35 students. Grades one through six were on the right side of the building i
Good Old Days Magazine1 min readCrime
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective genius, Sherlock Holmes, came to NBC radio in 1930 and starred Richard Gordon. By 1939, Basil Rathbone was heard on radio as Holmes with Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson. The duo were simultaneously starring in a popula
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
Just One More Adventure
When I look through the window of my life, the summer of 1945 regrettably comes to mind. A mixture of varied and somewhat unwise decisions were put in play that summer. If I remember correctly, there were four of us, all elementary school-age boys. W
Good Old Days Magazine1 min read
Popular 1995 songs
1. Mr. Sandman ________________________________ 2. Sincerely ________________________________ 3. The Ballad of Davy Crockett ________________________________ 4. Rock Around the Clock ________________________________ 5. Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
BITS & PIECES
Going back to school after a relaxing summer vacation meant no more sleeping in, no more lazy days spent outside, and no more running around doing whatever I wanted. But it was also an exciting time. I’d get to see my friends again, meet my teachers,
Good Old Days Magazine2 min read
Ten Candles On The Cake
Paper was in short supply at James Rhodes School in 1944. The World War II shortages caused each one of us to receive just one lined sheet of paper a week, but our teacher showed us how to make the most of it. On Monday we folded the paper in half an
Good Old Days Magazine2 min read
Picture THIS
Submitted by Terry Huntingdon Tydings of Carmel, Calif. Just before Terry’s parents married, they both worked for Metropolitan Life Insurance in San Francisco. When this photo was taken in 1935, they were part of an acting group formed with other emp
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
Biscuit, Mayonnaise and Onion
I glanced at the large school clock above the blackboard. The big hand pointed to four and the little hand was just past three. Twenty past three—another 10 minutes and I would be on my way home. Could I wait that long before I ate something? My stom
Good Old Days Magazine1 min read
In This Issue
Words are forward and backward, horizontal, vertical and diagonal. adventure apron bell bike bus classes cooking dance danger desk food football friend kitchen lesson mischief recipe school sewing sisters sugar taste teacher wheels
Good Old Days Magazine6 min read
Building Bonds
You could not get a better education than the one-room country school. It’s a model for a superior education. That’s my claim and I’m sticking to it! From 1948 to 1956, I attended Oak Grove School, 2 miles northwest of the town of Seneca, in the hear
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
The Imagination Dimension
You know that voice. It’s that voice on the television informing us, the audience, that we are about to travel to another dimension that is “not only of sight and sound, but of the mind”…“your next stop—the Twilight Zone.” The presence at the beginni
Good Old Days Magazine3 min readRegional & Ethnic
Willing Taste Tester
What better way to learn how to cook than by intently watching your mother as she prepares various foods? I could not have learned nearly as much from any recipe book. I grew up in the 1950s and ‘60s on a small farm in northeastern Colorado. I rememb
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
Time for Home Ec
In a long-ago land where cell phones, the internet, social media, fast-food restaurants and takeout didn’t exist, high school girls of my generation took home economics class. Unlike today’s diverse high school curriculum, home ec was one of the few
Good Old Days Magazine2 min read
The Cap Gun Battle
I didn’t know a single kid from the 1950s who didn’t have a cap gun. Some looked like the guns the Saturday-afternoon-movie cowboys used, and some were made to look like the guns used in gangster movies. Most of the caps they shot came in rolls, 50 s
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
Behind the Wheel
Our family lived on the South Plains of West Texas near the small town of Brownfield. My grandfather, J.R. Davis (I called him Pampa), owned a section of farmland that was mostly planted in cotton. Maize was a secondary crop. He always planted a “tru
Good Old Days Magazine4 min read
Our One-Room Country School
Ridgeway #2 stood atop a hill some distance from our farm home in North Dakota. It was a little one-room school attended by the children of four farm families. In any given year, about 12 to 14 children attended classes there. I received my first thr
Good Old Days Magazine2 min read
Q&A: ON YOUR MIND
Each issue on this page, we will feature a question that will be sure to prompt a flood of heartwarming memories. Send your 100-words-or-less responses ASAP to Editor@GoodOldDaysMagazine.com or to Good Old Days Q&A, 306 East Parr Road, Berne, IN 4671

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