From time to time I will be writing about the stores and businesses in Saguache during the 1930s when I was a boy. At that time the population hovered arount the thousand mark -  today it is slightly more than 600. If memory serves me correctly, there were not more houses then, but most families were much larger.  I recall families of 8 or 10 members who lived in small houses of 1000 square feet or less.

So many things have changed down through the years, such as in today’s world we have come to accept all of the gobbledegook that surrounds us. Strange sounding phrases like WWW.STUFF.COM.

I well remember when things and people were called by their proper names, before the days of abbreviations. For instance, the President of. the United States was called Herbert Hoover. It was a short time later, during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration that the “alphabet soup” language came into being. Newspapers nationwide soon carried headlines about FDR and some of his recovery programs such as WPA, PWA, REA, CCC, TVA, etc. Within a few years, the USA was involved in WWII of which I served as GI. 

(To you olde time “Crescent readers,” who may not agree with what I will write regarding Saguache merchants of the 30s, I offer John Woodard’s response when his brother disagreed with some of the facts in John’s book: “Dammit this is my book and this is how I remember it.”)

Seriously, I will welcome any of your memories -  if we don’t write some of these things down, in a few years, no one will remember). 

P.S. One of the perks of writing this column is, I get to wish friends out there in “Crescentland” A HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON!