By Mary Ellen Shaw When I was a young girl I remember my mother had a thick green hardcover cookbook.  It was her “go to” cookbook and the pages looked it. Various recipes had little remnants of ingredients that had been dropped on the pages over the years. In browsing online for its name, it…

The written word back in my youth did not appear on a digital device. It showed up on a piece of paper and was written with a pen or pencil. In the 1950s many young girls recorded their own personal experiences using a ballpoint pen to write their words. We had diaries complete with a…

Back in the 1950s and 1960s people came to our homes to provide services that are handled very differently today. I remember when the milkman came to our house to deliver milk in a glass bottle. His name was Mr. Adams and he always arrived about the same time of day. He greeted me with…

From the time we are kids, life seems to make us “wannabe” something that we will probably never be. We might “wannabe” the kid who gets picked first by his classmates to play on a team. Or we might “wannabe” popular, pretty, handsome or thin. But as we grow up we realize that wishing doesn’t…

The ads for “Back to School” items have been appearing in flyers for most of August. They bring back memories that are happy ones for me. Back in the 1950s every neighborhood in Rutland had a public school close by. I would have attended parochial school at Christ the King but they didn’t have a…

By Mary Ellen Shaw Many of us learned some type of hobby from our parents. Perhaps we didn’t appreciate what we were taught at the time. But with age comes wisdom! My mother loved to crochet and do embroidery, along with a little knitting. All of these hobbies take patience and practice. I never caught…

The world is very safety conscious these days and that is a good thing. When I look back into the 1950s, and before, I wonder why some of us are even here! Many of the houses on our street had “garages” in the cellar. Ours was one of them. We always had a full-size car…

For most of us no time passes faster than the summer months. Back when you were a student on school vacation it really zipped by. Summer vacation officially started when we left school, chanting, “No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks.” The “lazy, hazy days of summer” were about to begin…

  Recently I looked back way beyond the days of my own yesteryear. A coffee meeting with two cousins took me back to the late1800s. One cousin, Betty, lives in Rutland so I see her often. I barely remembered my other cousin, Kathie, as I had not seen her since I was about 10 years…

A group of friends met for breakfast the other day. One topic of conversation was children’s birthday parties in the 50s. A popular trend today is to celebrate at a rented venue. But we all remember our homes as “party headquarters” back in the day. A birthday party was announced with a handwritten invitation. It…

Did you ever look at an old picture of yourself and say, ”What was I thinking?” I have a feeling that females say that much more often than males. In fact, many males (my husband included) have worn their hair the same way throughout their lives. Perhaps that is why people they meet after long…

When May rolls around I am very anxious to spend time in my flower gardens and have fun playing in the dirt. As we mature, we acquire a sense of pride in our property. We want our yards to look nice. This involves more than just cutting the grass. An attractive landscape around our home…

Most likely we can all come up with expressions that are clearly associated with our parents. It’s also likely that these expressions will be heard by future generations. After all, “they”say that we turn into our parents at some point in time. When I was in elementary school I used to go to my Cousin…

Back in the 1950s when I was a child if you wanted an ice cream soda or a sundae, you could head to one of the downtown Rutland drug stores. They had lunch counters where you could get sandwiches and ice cream treats. These stores were not part of a chain and they didn’t offer…

When is the last time you received a letter in the mail? I bet it’s been awhile unless there is someone in your life who actually owns a box of stationery and enjoys taking “pen in hand.” Letter writing is slowly becoming a lost art. It also means a big piece of history will be…