By Rennie Phillips

A week or so ago, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that she was under the weather with what sounded like the flu to me. So I commented that her Grandma Goldie would make Marge and me chicken soup when we got sick.

The soup was almost worth getting sick just to get. Not really, but the soup was awesome.

My friend who was sick commented they just don't make women like Goldie and Alma anymore. This got me to thinking, which in itself is probably dangerous.

I thought about it for several days, and I had to kind of agree but disagree as well.

Women who were born in the early 1900s were special. Most of them are gone today, and as a society, we really will miss them. But I believe we have some special women who are alive today.

My wife is one. I'm not saying that just because she is my wife, but it's the simple truth. But there are a lot of ladies who are just good women and mothers.

My friend who was sick is as well. They would sacrifice for their children, but they also would pound on their hind ends to straighten them up. And heaven help you if someone threatened to hurt one of their babies.

Kind of like a mother grizzly bear that had a bad morning and no coffee and you were messing with her cubs.

What we lost was a generation or two of those who were refined by a tough life.

We have lost most of those women born around the first of the 1900s. My mom was born in 1911 in Denmark and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents when she was little. They settled in the Sandhills of Nebraska in what is now Arthur County.

Like most immigrants in that area, they lived in a sod house with probably a dirt floor at first. Mom grew up picking up cow chips so there was heat to cook on and also to stay warm in the winter.

Water came from a hand pitcher pump in the yard, and the bathroom was about 50 yards from the house.

Mom knew what it was like to go through World War I and World War II. She knew what it was like to go through the Great Depression. Nothing back then was easy. Absolutely nothing.

Some tasks that we take for granted now took hours back then. One was taking a bath.

Even back in the mid-'50s, bath time took a lot of effort. Mom would put several teapots on the stove or several big pans to heat some water.

We had a pitcher pump, so it took a while to pump enough water. Once the water was hot, mom or dad would dump the water in an old galvanized bath tub.

We took our bath in the kitchen. My younger brother was first, and then I was second, then Mom, and finally Dad got his bath. They kept adding hot water to keep the water warm enough. We took one bath a week.

Just washing the clothes was a chore. Going to town every couple weeks or once a month for groceries was a chore. Making a living was a chore. Many relied on milking cows for the milk and the cream to make ends meet.

Life was hard. But a hard life either made you or broke you.

I'm not saying we need to go back to the turn of the century and live like they did in the early to mid-1900s. But we can make life too easy for virtually any age group.

My wife and I have a number of cats because we live on a small farm.

Without the cats, the mice and rats and snakes would just move in, and we'd have a problem. But if we feed the cats enough cat food, they have no need to hunt and catch mice. If we feed them a little cat food, they are motivated to go hunt.

I believe the same principle applies to almost any aspect of life.

As a boy, I wanted an old 1903 .30-06 at the Coast to Coast store in Ogallala, Nebraska.

Dad said I'd have to earn it. So dad bought some hogs, and my job was to feed them and take care of them. As a reward, I got a couple of the hogs to sell for the gun I wanted. I'd carry two 5-gallon buckets of slop out to the hogs night and morning. You had to carry two to kind of balance the load.

Now and then it was corn. And when it was all said and done, I had my rifle.

Dad could have just bought it, but I learned a valuable lesson by earning it.

For some, welfare should be freely given. But for some, welfare should have to be earned.

There has been a ton of talk about writing off the loans to college students. I think it would be an awesome gesture but not real smart in the long run.

Why not earn it? This could be through public service or assisting the elderly or teaching in low-income areas or working in small neighborhoods or serving in the military.

I think we have become a nation of lazy individuals who want a hand out and not a hand up.

I was listening to a farm news network the other day, and they were talking about the need for farm labor to harvest the crops of vegetables and fruit and such. The announcer stated very bluntly that Americans flatly refused to work in the fields and harvest the crops.

There are jobs, but no one that wants them.

I believe we have the potential to have a new generation that could be as great as the Almas or Goldies or even like my mom. Or men like my dad or Bob Kramer or old Bill Slinkard, just to name a few.

The first requirement is good parents who raise the kids right.

Second is a good school system where the kids learn reading, writing, arithmetic and how to behave.

Third is learning how to work, even if it's a paper route or sacking groceries for Clara May or at Schnucks.

Fourth is to find a career where we can spend our lives enjoying working.

Hire a kid and invest in their future.