This pantry has sat on our farm for generations, offering cold storage for canned fruits and vegetables.

Nowadays, it stores rakes, ladders and a lot of cobwebs, but I remember fetching applesauce, beans and other foods from the shelves stacked with Mason jars.

Some were in cans tfrom the cannery on Canning Factory Road near Floyd and most of it came from the apple orchard that is long gone or the garden that has gone unplanted and unused for years now.

Nowadays, the cans of fruit and veggies come from places like Food Lion, Kroger, Slaughters or the Willis Village Mart.

Like our orchard, the canning factory is long gone and the pantry/cellar just outside the house is a storage shed and reminder of things past.

Some will try to tell you it's the same.

It's not.

Like so many other things in this country of ours, the simpler times are long gone, along with the innocence and pride that accompanied those times.

A lot of people have moved into Floyd County in recent years hoping to recapture some of the feelings of those times but such a search may be a futile cause. In the best of times, the past serves as a lesson where we learn not repeat the mistakes of history.

But more often than not, we ignore the lessons of the past. Like this pantry, reminders of the past remain but their original use has long gone and most likely will never return.