To the editor:

Gluten, lard, oh my.

Oh, good grief. I’ve been eating gluten all these years and didn’t know it. I’m doomed. I’m sure my insides must be ruined. It’s sad that we didn’t have labs warning us of all the bad stuff we were eating.

Why didn’t they let my Mom know that cooking with lard was bad for us. If they had she might have lived longer than her 103 years. Of course, I wouldn’t have been exposed to all those scrumptious pies that she turned out with all that lard she used making the pie dough. I guess there just wouldn’t have been any because Mom always said you couldn’t make good pie dough without using a lot of lard. Mom, if you had only known what you were feeding your family.

And all of the delicious fried chicken that came steaming hot out of that skillet full of lard. Mom, you should have known better. Just think of all the times I sat at the table devouring piece after piece and you had no idea what it was doing to me. Oh my, I’m sure I won’t last more than 20 years or more. And I so wanted to reach 120.

Gluten-free. That’s what is on nearly all the packages these days. What is the stuff? What does it look like? How do I know it when I see it? What does it taste like? Does it taste at all? What does it do to me if I accidentally eat some of it? (like I have been doing for the past 86 years.)

And to think I have eaten foods that weren’t organic! Oh, and I just remembered, Dad would put cow manure on our garden … and we ate stuff out of it. Oh, no, no, no. How could they have raised us that way? I guess Dad paid for it by living to only be 96.

Well, I guess our parents got by with it. If there had only been a child protection agency back then. And it wasn’t just the food they made us eat, it was child labor as well. Working on the farm when we were just youngsters would be a great case to bring against them.

When I think about doing all of those chores without pay I can just see a lawsuit. My dad would not get away with making my brother and I slave out in the fields. Putting up hay, shucking corn, weeding, plowing, etc. How could he! No wonder my knees hurt now. All these aches and pains I’m having now at 86 can all be blamed on my parents.

If only we had TV back then we would have known what pills to take. No one told us there was a cure for tiredness. We just thought you sat down and rested for a while. Little did we know.

No one told us that we should lock our doors. Why wasn’t there someone to tell us kids we shouldn’t be playing ball without uniforms and an umpire. It’s a wonder we weren’t arrested. Oh, what an uneducated life we lived back then.

Don Hill

Seymour