IHEARD a guy complaining the other day about all the modernization that has taken place in the last few decades.

"I just wish we could go back to the time before we had electricity and all this technical stuff," he said.

Then the man uttered two sentences that I suppose I have heard a thousand times over the years.

"Life was so simple 100 years ago," he said. "Those were the good old days."

Those good old days! How we long for them again. How we wish we could just go back to about 1900 and bask in the glow of all that simplicity.

I've talked to plenty of people who remembered those days well and told me all about them. Here are a few of their recollections.

Women didn't shave their underarms or legs back in the good old days and most people, especially in the country, didn't take a bath between the first frost of fall and the last frost of spring.

Few people brushed their teeth and the only time someone went to the dentist was to have a tooth pulled. Little kids' teeth rotted out and adults had either lost all their teeth or were snaggle-toothed by the time they were 50.

Some people got dentures when they lost their teeth but even those who did seldom wore them except to preaching on Sunday or to funerals. Why? They never fit right. Mostly those false teeth were kept in a jar of water in a kitchen cabinet.

Few if any roads were paved and when it rained or snowed you were up to your wagon hubs in mud.

Since there were few bridges on country roads, when it rained really hard you couldn't ford the creeks and you were stuck until the water level dropped--in maybe two or three days.

What if you needed a doctor while the creek was up? Well, too bad. Just like you, the doctor had to wait until the water went down to get to your home. Of course, when he got there his expertise was limited.

There were no antibiotics and if you had pneumonia or some other disease that is highly treatable today, well, you probably died.