Do you think this past year of 2017 flew by as quickly for you, as many others think it did for them? The newest thing I read somewhere is that it’s a sign you are having a very good life if you believe that time is passing too quickly. It shows that you have been very busy, you’ve been in good health and you have been happy most of the time. Most retirees wonder how they had time to work at all, since now it takes all the time they have, to do what they have to do.

I would like to take one last look at some of the articles from 2017 to see if there is anything of interest I could add before I jump into 2018.

I started the year by writing about shopping in Downtown Delaware back in the 1950s. Some readers mentioned how they liked being reminded of all the stores they miss from downtown. They include the Nectar, the L & K, Uhlmans, and the News Shop, (where you could buy a cigar and smoke it inside the store). But the store that was missed the most, was the US Store. They liked having a grocery/meat market downtown. You might say that it was a real “Convenience Store” before the term “convenience” became so popular.

Later, I wrote about our nephew, Rick, being killed while riding his motorcycle home for supper one evening. An extra note about him is that because he had gone to school to learn how to fix motorcycle engines, a motorcycle club has set up a scholarship fund in his name to help other young men have an opportunity to have the same type of training he had.

The article about the Children’s Home in Delaware surprised a couple of people when they found out how hard the children had to work every day both before and after school. It serves as a lesson for us to treat others as though their heart is breaking, because it probably is.

I had an article about the 4-H kids with horses, taking riding lessons at our farm. This Christmas, for the very first time, three of the teenagers put up strings of Christmas lights along the rooflines of two of our barns. Their names are Cora, Tristen and Mattie. (And who says teenagers aren’t doing good things these days?)

After having Vertigo for 17 days, I finally got well. A friend recommended that I take a medicinal ingredient called “Loratazine.” It’s an over-the-counter antihistamine that comes in a box of 30 tablets and is taken once every 24 hours. The cost is only $4. Since it can be taken by a child as young as 6 year old, I gave it a try. After taking the third pill, I was well! It’s great that I can now stand on my own and walk out into open space without holding on to anything. I was so used to hanging on to someone, that I continued to do it, long after I was cured.

Employees who had worked at the old courthouse mentioned how much they missed it when they moved to the Hayes Building. Back in the ’60s, the employees, along with their entire families, gathered together each Christmas in the second floor courtroom for a pot luck dinner and fellowship.

My last comment about any of the articles is about the young children who were asked what the word “Love” meant. One of the children answered, “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas, if you stop opening presents, and listen.” Later, I found out that the child who gave that answer was a little 7-year-old boy named, “Bobby.”

This wraps up 2017 for me. As for writing articles, it turned out to be a good year that kept me busy thinking of various subjects to write about. However, choosing to write about how fast time is flying doesn’t hold true for the beginning of this new year of 2018. It’s been a very bitter cold six days of January so far, with all the snow and ice that came and stayed all week.

We can be very thankful if our furnace is keeping our house warm, if we have water pipes that didn’t freeze, and if we have electricity so that if we turn something on, it comes on. Also, if our cars start every morning, and if we have enough money to buy groceries. I don’t think many of us will ever look back on this first whole week in January and ever think that it passed by too quickly. I know I won’t!