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Four generations of Matusek family gather

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Texas museum of fine arts celebrates 60th anniversary, lines up events

<p>Ah, this time of year what can be tastier than a good cup of coffee with a couple of slices of toast, maybe with jelly?</p><p>That&#8217;s a nice snack to whip up for late night or early morning, right? Just the thing for these cold, wet, gray days here in Northeastern Pennsylvania.</p><p>But &#8220;the good old days&#8221; were another matter. You had to work, work, work for the simplest little pleasures &#8212; something we tend to forget when we grow nostalgic for the past.</p><p>Today, you plug in an automatic percolator that brews your coffee and then conveniently shuts off when it&#8217;s finished. Or, you can go the drip route, which also shuts down when the brewing is complete and can be programmed to prepare your coffee so that it&#8217;s right there for you when you wake up &#8212; like you&#8217;re the king of England or something equivalent.</p><p>Now, let&#8217;s brew up some java the way many of our older folks grew up doing it.</p><p>My parents, in their early days, had to earn their coffee. You&#8217;d fill up your percolator and put it on top of the stove &#8212; in our case a huge coal stove in the kitchen, with temperatures impossible to regulate with any accuracy.</p><p>Here&#8217;s an important note. You couldn&#8217;t just go off and watch TV while it was perking. There was no TV for one thing, and if you didn&#8217;t keep an eye on the contraption it would over-perk a form of coffee that you could have taken outside to fix a pothole.</p><p>So, you&#8217;ve got your coffee. Now, let&#8217;s make the toast.</p><p>For the longest time our &#8220;toaster&#8221; was a pair of tongs designed to hold a slice of bread over the fire. Then we upgraded to a toaster that didn&#8217;t pop up or shut off by itself or do anything except stage what today we call a controlled burning</p><p>You&#8217;d put in two slices, close the little doors and mentally time the operation. If you guessed right, you had two nice pieces of toasted bread. Otherwise, you had a kitchen that would have set off a smoke alarm, except that &#8211; like TV - smoke alarms hadn&#8217;t been invented yet.</p><p>Now you&#8217;re going to need some milk for your coffee and some butter and jelly for the two slices of toast. So, it&#8217;s off to the refrigerator.</p><p>Very likely the &#8220;fridge&#8221; is actually an icebox of uncertain temperature. Hopefully you remembered to order a big block of ice earlier that day or the day before, and so you&#8217;ve got milk that hasn&#8217;t spoiled and butter that hasn&#8217;t melted and jelly that isn&#8217;t turning into grape juice.</p><p>One misstep, though, and you&#8217;d kick the drip pan under the icebox and spill water all over the floor. Hopefully you&#8217;d have thought to empty it so you didn&#8217;t have to interrupt your snack.</p><p>If everything has worked well, you&#8217;re ready to enjoy your tasty treat.</p><p>A 1974 book by Otto Bettman entitled &#8220;The Good Old Days &#8212; They Were Terrible&#8221; punctures the myth that life in the distant past was some sort of Eden.</p><p>Nostalgia to the contrary, in most ways, we are better off today, and you can see that even in the simpler things of life. It&#8217;s been decades since I&#8217;ve heard jokes with punch lines involving road tar coffee and carbonized toast, two daily hazards our grandparents and their predecessors faced.</p><p>I just hope I don&#8217;t get lazy. Let&#8217;s see, where&#8217;s my travel mug. I think I&#8217;ll head out to the convenience store.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Remember When </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/web1_TOM_MOONEY-2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Tom Mooney Remember When </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Remember When</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history columnist. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Remember When: Had to work for simple pleasures in good old days