Lately it seems all the stories we hear on the news are about drugs and the violence caused by drugs. It’s meth labs, crack cocain, drug related shootings, and almost daily we read of drug arrests in our community. I often wonder where drugs were when we were growing up? When I was a kid, I never knew anyone who was on drugs, or knew anyone who knew anyone, on drugs. I knew a few kids who were reputed to drink beer, but not a single one was in my crowd of friends. Did you ever wonder why there was no drug problems back then?

Now that I think about it, maybe we as kids did have a drug problem, just a different kind. I well remember being drug out of bed before daylight to milk cows and get ready for school. Also being drug to church on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights. I remember being drug to family reunions, picnics, and funerals. I remember being drug around a 20 acre field behind a mule and plow way too many times to count. And along with my brothers, being drug out in the woods with a crosscut saw, an ax, and a mule and slide, to cut the winter’s supply of firewood. I was also on occasion drug out behind the barn, if I told a lie, disobeyed my parents, was disrespectful of others, or stayed too long in the woods, which was my most frequent infraction. When I was very young, I was drug to the back porch and my mouth washed out with soap, if I dared to utter a four letter word. I was drug out to the cornfields to chop out weeds, no matter how big the fields might be. I was drug out on the hottest days of summer to work in tobacco, put hay in the barn, weed the garden, grub sprouts from the pasture, draw water from a well, and repair broken gates or fences. I was drug out to go help some old neighbor or widow whether I thought they needed it or not. I was drug out with a lantern to take younger siblings to the outhouse on frigid winter nights. I was drug to the homes of family and friends, to sit for hours and listen to elders tell tales about people and events of days gone by. I was drug out on Sunday evenings for long family walks in the woods, for fishing and swimming, in the rivers and creeks.

Now don’t get me wrong, when I say “drug” I don’t mean literally forced to do these things, for I knew better than to go that far, but that is a whole different story. Maybe, just maybe, some of our younger generation’s drug problems stems from not having enough of the other kind of drug problems that faced the youth of past generations.

(Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it….Prov. 22:6)

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