I've heard famous/rich folks say that the happiest days of their lives was when they were poor and just getting started in life. It amazes me the differences my older sister and I saw in our growing up years. She's of the 'Glass half empty mind set, and I'm of the 'glass at least half full' way of thinking. She says we never had any fun growing up. I recall playing 'swinging statues' or hide and seek in the dusky dark, with crickets and Whippoorwills doing their nightly thing. The game was often called for lack of 'hiders' because they had decided to fill a jar with lightening bugs to admire as they dropped off to sleep - scratched up feet and ankles stinging from being scrubbed clean in the wash pan before going to bed.
 
We also had enough kids to play a game of ball. Of course it seems we would have a fairly decent ball and a stick for a bat, or the other way around. Spirited games would continue till one of the big kids hit the 'ball' too hard and knocked it a bug hunting, as my Mother in law used to say. After halfway looking through the weeds and bushes in the edge of the cow pasture where we played sometimes the baseman would get mad and go to the house....there went the ball game! And mercy, did we roam! I would drag the kid that could barely walk and Joyce would sling the baby on her hip and away we would go to the woods, fields, gullies or pond. Any snake unlucky enough to cross our path was sent quickly to 'Snake Heaven'. We didn't know what the deadly stinging snake looked like that our parents warned us about, so we just killed all snakes just in case. You couldn't have hired us to touch one of the critters. If only we knew back then that sister Reba was scared of snakes, OR that sister Joyce is scared of mice. What wonderful fun we could have had ! Oh yeah, I thought we had a fine childhood except for losing Daddy when I was nearly 10....Jeannie T

Strangely enough keeping one of those cute little Chihuahua's does appear to help asthma sufferers.. When I was growing up they were known as 'Asthma dogs,' and folks swore they helped.. Went to great length's to get them, as they were hard to come by back when most folks kept beagles or hound dogs to help put meat on the table and act as a watch dog against varmints. The 4 legged kind as well as the 2 legged ones that roamed the countryside during those hard times. Few people in our farming community had a 'lap dog'. I don't know the official thoughts on how this works, but whatever seems to help, I say. Have read about it but it's forgotten..
 
Remember rabbit tobacco? The rabbit tobacco made me think of us having ear aches when we were little. Daddy made a corncob pipe, filled it with rabbit tobacco and blew the warm smoke in our ear. No, I don't think it worked very well, and Mama said later on it made Daddy sick. He was a nonsmoker. One of his remedies was to put one end of a green persimmon sapling in the fireplace and catch the sap that bubbled out in a spoon and pour this warm liquid in my ear. Another remedy he used was chewing goldenrod weed roots for an upset stomach. I've heard of that several times. One Spring he was in the house, so must have been sick...I was about 4 or 5. He told us to go get him some Goldenrod roots.. I remember they looked like white fishing worms....[I know later on in the season they get a purple tinge...] He told us where some were growing on the side of a field. We were rather bemused, as you might think, but if our parents said do it we did it...Don't taste too bad, but until I have to resort to eating roots I intend to rely on Tums or  'acid' pills.