Feel yourself longing for the “good ol’ days”? If you are young, that may mean before iPods and cell phones. For others, it may be before electricity and indoor plumbing. How quickly we have progressed!

 

In A Legacy of Rural Virginia Entertaining Stories on Rural Living From the 1800s Through the 1900s, author Donald Payne gives entertaining stories of what life was like growing up in rural Virginia before electricity and when families raised their own food using animals and primitive equipment to work the fields. The work was hard, but he also tells what they did for entertainment, like telling stories at night by kerosene lamps and attending Saturday night square dances and church socials.

 

The book contains many photographs to help describe the tools and the people. I grew up in the country and while I always had electricity, the stories rang true to the tales from my parents and neighbors of how the “simple life” meant hard work, but you always found ways to make fun (without the assistance of electronics).

 

This is a great read for anyone who wants to reminisce about this bygone era not so long ago, or find out what it was like to grow up in the country.