I was raised in the Midwest in a town called Dubuque. I grew up with three sisters and two brothers, a mother and father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and cousins by the truckload. When we had a family reunion there was probably 150 of us altogether. I also grew up with 40 or more kids on my block, not to mention the 800 kids I went to school with.
And thinking back now I can’t remember one single kid that ever came down with cancer. But today there are so many kids with cancer that we have special hospitals set aside just for kids with cancer!!! I’m not going to profess that I know the cause of cancer, but I have my suspicions.
I can tell you a few of the differences from my era compared with today. As kids, we were constantly outside doing things like riding our bikes, playing tag, climbing trees to get to the cherries and apples, raiding the neighbors watermelon patch or tomato garden, seeing how many red currents we could get in our mouth at one time or balancing ourselves on the top of the fence, trying to reach high up into the trees to get the ripest and juiciest plums. As far as soda and candy are concerned those only came at special times like Christmas or birthdays. And fast food restaurants were unheard of.
Most families back in those days had a garden of their own that they depended on for survival. Money was tight and jobs were short, so if you wanted to eat, you needed to raise most of your own food. Not one single garden or fruit tree had even an ounce of chemicals sprayed on it!! And believe it or not, the sky was deep blue and the water ran clean. I guess it’s time to end my article with that old saying “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out”.
