As I draw closer to the end of my time on earth and look back on it, I realize that my life as a young boy growing into manhood was practically a paradise. My parents were great. I had a father who made me toe the mark but was fair and honest and a mother who was surely one of God’s angels on earth. They loved each other, and they loved us children. The advantage of that was to become evident as I grew older.

Life was simple in those days. There was no inside plumbing to worry about, and no furnace in our basement. The fuel to heat our house was bought with a crosscut, a double-edged axe and a buzz-saw. There was also sweat involved, in fact there was sweat involved in almost every aspect of that simple life. One of the advantages of that was that very few of us put on any extra weight. Pleasures were many, but simple. Fishing in Pipe Creek was free, and the fish were plentiful. We swam in its clean waters in the summer, and in the winter, we played on the ice. We had “Old Man Harrelson’s Hill” to coast on, a real screaming sled-buster of a ride if you had the nerve to “Go from the top.” We made believers out of a lot of strangers on that hill. When chores are done, most young people spend their time looking for something that brings pleasure, and the opportunities I had were endless. Pipe Creek was a generous mistress.

In those days after darkness settled on my world, we used to play a game called “put and take.” I seem to remember a top with many facets that said either put or take and there were objects you could take if the top had take showing when it fell over on its side, and if it said put, you had to give something back. The truth of put and take has become obvious to me as I have grown older, and it is not to be denied. That truth is this: You can’t take much out of life if you don’t put something into it. If you want to “take,” there is always going to be a “put” sooner or later.

This truth never dawned on us when we were young; we were too busy planning our next venture into pleasure to be concerned with the work of preparing for it. If it was going to be a picnic up the creek under the old hard maple, we never considered the work of picking and slicing tomatoes, pulling and cleaning green onions, peeling and slicing potatoes, and gathering firewood. No, our minds were already centered on the taste of those smokey fried potatoes. We would work a couple of hours for the 10 minutes of pleasure we had gobbling it all up. Put and take, it was a rule that couldn’t be denied, but we were blissfully unaware of its significance.

Then, along came chemicals for the farmers to use on their fields.

Pesticides and herbicides, and they forgot to mention suicides for the streams. These chemicals were a “take” for the farmers because they got more crop for less work. But there was a “put” for the streams in our neighborhood.

Gone from Pipe Creek were the water weeds that grew along the edges, gone were the huge schools of minnows that crowded its shallows, and the numerous crawdads. Only a few of each remained to remind us of what used to be. The green heron disappeared from its banks, and the kingfishers thinned out. Put and take. To make life easier for farmers and increase yields, we nearly destroyed the eco-systems that were our streams. Young people enjoy our streams today and see nothing wrong with them. Only us older people can see what is lost, because we knew them when they were still as God had made them.

The lives us older people lived when we were young taught us that to have, you had to give. Nothing was free. We knew well the fact that God feeds the birds, but He doesn’t throw the food into their nests for them. We lived that lesson, and as I look at the paradise I grew up in today, I can see what the “take” has cost.

Much has been changed, and I would be the last one to say that most of it wasn’t for the better, but the price was there. We just didn’t read the tag.

I thank God that I was privileged to grow up in a time when we all realized there is a put and a take. Life is much easier today than it was then, but I am afraid many have either forgotten or haven’t yet realized there is always that “put” that has to be dealt with sooner or later, and if you aren’t willing to put for what you take, then someone else will have to put for you. It’s an undeniable truth.

• Joe Bowyer is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com.