A Simpler Time

Remember these?
 

My sister and I used to fight over who got to lick them and then put them in the book. 

My husband and daughter and I were perusing the local "antique" shops on Saturday--the kind where you walk in the door and the theme song to "Sanford & Son" pops into your head-- and I saw this little gem sitting in an open drawer of an old Singer iron foot-pedal sewing machine, the kind my grandma had in the back room that she used to make oodles of Barbie doll clothes, next to the loom where she made rag rugs, and I did a little dance of excitement when I saw it.  Of course my 6 year-old daughter asked what was wrong with me and my husband sort of pretended not to know me when I did a little scream of delight.  The point is that I was obviously reminded of a much simpler time, a time when grandma could send the 7 year-old down to the corner grocery store--the kind that had all of two registers (in case there was an afternoon rush) and a butcher's counter at the back because meat came wrapped in paper marked with that black oil pencil, not in a shrink-wrapped plastic--to get a carton of milk by her 7 year-old self.  And the ice cream truck was the ice cream truck where you spent your allowance or whatever you could pester grandma into giving you because the truck and its driver didn't make parents think of child predators.  Yeah.  What happened to that?