What We Had: 70 years ago there were pack saddles, pack horses and by ways over the mountains over which salt, pig metal and store goods were packed. 70 years ago we had tender boxes, flints, steel rasps, powder and tow with which we kindled fire. 70 years ago we had the flail, the sickle, the large wood fire, wooden forks, wooden plows, wooden wagons and sleds and lots of hard work at grubbing, making nails, chopping, burning brush and such like labor. 70 years ago we had two months school per year – an old cabin, puncheon floors, long narrow windows, greased paper lights, high round wooden benches and a roaring wood fire. 70 years ago we had pine-knots, dipped or mould tallow candles, iron lamps, with hog’s lard and other contrivances for light. 70 years ago we had for reading, in large prayer books, psalm books and bibles printed in large type so that old people could see to read without spectacles. 70 years ago we had tents for churches, preaching in the open woods, or in old round log cabins with slab seats and a board platform for a pulpit. 70 years ago we had herb tea, rye coffee, home made sugar mush and milk, ye bread, buttermilk and cheese, pork and mutton. 70 years ago we had fox hunts, militia musters and reviews, apple butter boiling sometimes, raisings, rolling frolics, scotching frolics, chopping frolics, grubbing matches and coon hunts. 70 years ago we carded the wool with hand cards, spun it on wheels, kicked it thick instead of pulling it, dyed it with barks and wore it in wamnses. 70 years ago we had linen shirts, linen dresses, tow cloth pants, linen sheets and pillow slips, linen table cloths and home made garments to go to church in. 70 years ago we had water mills or tread mills and often we lived on hominy or pounded the grain into meal and cooked or baked it in metal ovens over a wood fire. 70 years ago we had cabin houses, cabin barns, cabin stables, clapboard roofs, weight poles, trees and stumps, lots of hard work, frequent visits, plenty of strong course food and mannerly children. 70 years ago Ohio State was the backwoods, inhabited chiefly by Indians, as were all the other states and territories west of that region. Oh, Dear!, What 70 years have done! (signed) Rob Roy --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------