Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.

-- Franklin Pierce Adams

Sometimes, it seems, the good old days weren't really all that good.

For example, I bring up homemade ice cream.

Yes, I know, there are many people who prize this summertime treat, but most of them also favor outhouses and butter churns.

I know. I grew up in a culture and community that bragged on its hand-cranked, ice-salted, do-it-yourself ice cream, but I have to tell you, it never seemed to be worth the effort.

The first minute of cranking the ice cream machine was sort of fun if you were, say, a 10-year-old boy. But soon it became boring and tiring, and you'd switch arms several times and crank ever so slowly and begin to look for a younger companion or sibling to take over the duty.

Your reward?

Eventually, it would be a watery vanilla soup that tasted like frozen milk. Not even bits of peaches or strawberries could save it.

And even if everything did work out and the ice cream sort of turned out OK, the best compliment one would hear was, "This tastes as good as what you buy in a store!"

That, eventually, is where most of us went to get our summer ice cream.

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TRAVEL MAIL: Apple and Al send a card from Paris, where "The Eiffel Tower in the evening was fantastic."

Also in France were Dr. Edouard and Cheryl Servy , Dr. Richard and Valerie Kimmel and Rick and Robin Allen , who were in Augusta's sister city Biarritz, where the men played golf in the Biarritz Cup.

Dan and Linda Trowbridge , of Evans, are traveling the Ohio River and Cumberland River from Cincinnati to Nashville on the Delta Queen. They also visited Mammoth Cave.

Frequent summer traveler Jerry Coates , of Hephzibah, visited the Natural Bridge of Virginia. "We were here on our honeymoon," he writes.

Diane , Tyler and Kyle Cole , of Beech Island, send greetings from the North, and they've been busy. "We left Beech Island on June 30 and our first stop was Hershey Park, Pa. A side trip to Yankee Stadium on July 6 to see the Yankees-Red Sox was amazing. Yanks pulled it off in the 10th inning. We have also traveled to Six Flags in New England, Uncasville, CT, Freeport and Kennebunkport, Maine, and today we head to Vermont for a week to fish, golf and visit with family before we head home."

Melissa is in Columbus, Ohio, touring the city's Park of Roses, which she says has nothing on Pendleton King Park's Hydrangea Garden.

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TODAY'S JOKE: Here's a question and answer from James Hartman .

A lot of folks can't understand how we came to have an oil shortage here in our country.

Well, there's a very simple answer. Nobody bothered to check the oil. We just didn't know we were getting low.

The reason for that is purely geographical. Our oil is located in Alaska, California, coastal Florida, coastal Louisiana, southern Illinois, Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Our dipsticks are located in D.C.