The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

_ Elwood Jones has led a long and storied life Page 6 of 9 continues to operate the company today. 1 } Retirement and reflections ; | Elwood may have retired 24 years ago at age 65, but he didn‘t slow down } much. He has seen many projects come out of his woodworking shop, and in i the first few retirement years he cut and sold firewood â€" even now, he cuts it as ! he approaches his 90¢" birthday. He is hoping that someone will come forward , soon and take over the string of bluebird houses he has built and maintained. f Asked how life has changed since his youth, Elwood offers that the pace of life was much slower then. In the 1930‘s it didn‘t matter if you worked or not â€" you weren‘t making anything anyway. If you took a half day off it was no loss. People now have to get to work every day. Business is a rat race â€" people push themselves. It seems he isn‘t following the trend. He jokes that he‘s trying to slow down â€" not too much â€" he doesn‘t want to stop. In the 30‘s and 40‘s, kids left home to ease the financial burden on their families. Aside from work, there were a lot of good times, a lot of satisfactions. House parties were common, and they went to dances. One gets the sense that Elwood misses the values of those times. People don‘t appreciate their possessions today. "When you work six months to buy something, you appreciate it," he reflects. He is particularly concerned about the consumerism of today‘s youth. "It doesn‘t hurt young people to go without certain things. When they are supplied j with all their wants they don‘t appreciate their possessions." ; Health care is one aspect of life which has improved. Before the onset of public health care, people in need of medical care died when they couldn‘t afford to see a doctor. His grandfather‘s pension was $20 a month back in the 1940‘s, Some people refused to take their pension, arguing that it was charity. The one and two dollar bills, now long gone, were once the staples in people‘s wallets â€" now the $20 tops the list. Spend a few hours with Elwood Jones and you find you are in the company of a http://www.cramahe-now‘convindex.php?view=artic]e&catid= 1:latestâ€"news&id=1186:elw... 2/18/2011