We can put them on a chair as usual and continue reading the two print papers from Belfast and Rockland that have been promised new life.

Don't call us old fashioned for wanting to put our feet up and read some print newspapers, catalogs, and books. Yup, it's nice to go online and read something about which you're concerned and hasn't yet hit print. And, sure, we order lots of "stuff" online, buying from displayed merchandise that magically appears on our computer screen, and books -- we love the smell and feel of books, new and old -- available online.*

Old fashioned, in my old-fashioned (maybe) opinion, is when my bus manager and I chatted the other morning about the "good old days." These were they days when vaporlock forced me to carry my fishing pole in my old-fashioned 1936 Plymouth. Vaporlock would stall the car, and if I were lucky, it was on a nice day near a good trout stream. The "good old days" were when a flat tire actually went flat -- on the spot. You had to play with that choke to start the beast. The "good old days" were when I had to mail a manuscript away and wait just this side of forever to find out that it was either rejected or purchased. In the "good old days," I had a choice of wearing either those smelly canvas and rubber sneakers or shoes with leather soles. Who in Maine wears leather-sold shoes?**

Putting our feet up to read the paper in the morning with a cup of coffee is very much now. It's relaxing. We can shove the paper back and forth to show each other an article. In the evening, I can put a marker in that print book just before I doze off on the sofa while not watching TV.

That online buying, part of the "good now days," is nice too. A year ago we bought a bed from Amazon.com. I wanted to shovel the snow from the front walk so they could get to the wider front door to carry it into the house. A UPS truck brought it, the bedframe in two identical boxes and the mattress in a third box, which was about four feet long by about two feet wide. We put the two halves of the bedframe, a sturdy metal one, together and tightened the bolts to keep it together in about five minutes. Just like it said in the directions.

Not that I ever read directions. That five-minute promise just happened to catch my eye. My "good now days" eye, by the way. A half-dozen years ago, I had an emergency operation with lazer and I forget the other that saved my vision. In the "good old days," I would have lost sight in that eye.

The mattress? We took it out of the box, cut the plastic wrapper, and it inflated itself in a couple of hours. No, it's not a camping mattress. It's a very nice and sturdy queen. It's so nice we have to share it with two kitties every night. Kitties know a good mattress when they lie on it.

We buy our food supplements online at a price about half offered at a local store that sells them. They arrive in our shed via UPS three days after we order them. Try(ied) that in the "good old days."

Online also allows me to write my columns without worrying about the word count, as I had to do in the print versions of everything I ever sold or was employed to write. In addition, online always surprises me when readers email me about the column. What surprises me, I guess, is that what I type on the "good now days" computer and hit the "good now days" "send" key actually gets read. People, real people, actually turn on their electronic gadgets and read what I write.

Who would have ever thought, in the "good old days?"

A great advantage of the "good now days" in writing by computer is that when I find a mistake -- which happens often, I simply delete and rewrite the word. Also "spellcheck" helps me make corrections, although that feature of the "good now days" doesn't help me use the right word. Did I write "their" when I should have written "there?" "Spellcheck" doesn't help correct that.

The print weeklies are different than the dailies. We read the news first in the dailies. In the weeklies, we read the news last. First we have to look at the "Aunt Bessie" columns. It's important to know who went where to visit relatives. It's also important to know which church is having a bake sale or supper, not that we attend either. It's just nice to know they're there (not "their") if we wanted to attend. It's interesting to read an "Aunt Bessie" column about how things were in the town of Searsmont 100 years ago. (There were no Toyotas, only horses, in Maine known as hosses. There were a variety of types of buggies and wagons. I read that somewhere in a print book.)

We love to browse the real-estate section to see which camp on which lake we'll buy this week. Well, which camp we'd buy if we could buy a camp this week. It's also fun to look at the old farmhouses for sale and wonder how many generations of mice come with them at no extra charge.

The weekly takes us home.

Thanks, Reade Brower, for deciding to buy the Belfast and Rockland papers' assets to keep them going for us.*** From the numbers of letters to the editor we've seen expressing sadness that the Village Soup papers were being discontinued and expressing gratitude that weeklies will continue, in print and online, in those areas, I'd say Dolores and I aren't the only ones Brower is allowing to keep our feet up, our coffee filled, and the weekly news -- or gossip -- flowing.

Thanks, Reade. It's nice to know what we'll do with our feet on Saturday mornings.

*One thing I especially like about old books, old ones I mean from a century or longer ago, is that their stories are based on what life "is" like then. No pretense, no trying to redo what it was all like then. Because then is now in those books.

**Because I was a young out-of-stater tourist who didn't know any better, I wore leather-soled street shoes on my first climb up Katahdin. By some miracle, I didn't break my neck, but two weeks later the soles came off, leaving me with a lesson learned.

***I've never read the Village Soup paper about the Augusta area, but I knew the Bar Harbor Times well and think it's too bad it won't be there. Yes, I know the Islander is there, but it's a newer addition to Bar Harbor and, well, it's not the Bar Harbor Times.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2012