Maybe our problem is that we want too much.

This realization struck me as I read an elderly couple's attitude about their lives in the book "Another Country" by Mary Pipher.

"We had nothing but a good time," they recalled.

I had been worrying about the state of our nation -- the housing crash, the devaluing of the dollar in a near recession, two wars and the threat of a third battlefront, the outsourcing of jobs to Asia, the high costs of fuel, and so on.

That's when pictures of my own life flashed through my memory -- the exuberance of our children the first time we stayed at a motel, the vacation when we bought lunch meat and bread at a grocery store for a picnic in a roadside park, the jug of ice water and the snack cooler we carried in the car, and the tent we pitched during a weekend at Kirwin Lake.

These days, the highways are lined with eateries that range from McDonald's to Applebee's to Olive Gardens. When you drive along these "civilized" strips in every town of any size, you see motels that range in price from the Super 8s to the Hiltons.

All you need is a credit card, which is a great boon to merchandisers and a mixed blessing for everyone else. Take away everyone's credit card, and the American economy would crash.

You see, I remember my first credit card, which was issued by Texaco about 45 years ago. With that Texaco card in my wallet, I could buy gas almost anywhere and, miracle of miracles, we could stay overnight at every Best Western motel in the nation.

Before that, vacationers carried nothing but cold, hard cash. When the cash ran out, they were out of luck unless they could write a check -- which was extremely unlikely when you were 500 miles from home.

So, for the most part, average Americans with limited incomes didn't travel far or often. Instead, they visited the neighbors or socialized with everyone along the Main Street that was alive with shoppers every Saturday night.

Before air conditioning, they gathered on front porches to drink iced tea and eat snacks. I especially remember walking along a residential street in Osage City one summer evening in 1954. I moved there that summer from K-State to work for the local newspaper.

As we walked downtown for an ice cream cone, this particular street was aglow with ornate three-globe lights. Children laughed gleefully as they played in the front yards, while the adults gathered on porches to enjoy the relatively cool breeze after another hot Kansas day.

Yes, we had nothing but a good time.

Today, in search of that good time, we fly half way across the nation in gas-guzzling airplanes, and drive amid thousands of gas-guzzling cars -- and we worry about $4-a-gallon gas. We hope more oil can be pumped from the earth, and more coal can be mined, or wind turbines built, so that our air conditioners and appliances will operate.

We watch the price of a 13-ounce package of coffee increase from $3.89 to $5.25 and are told high food prices are the farmer's fault because he grows corn for ethanol. Never mind that the coffee was grown in Colombia.

We hope for new sources of power from the wind and the sun at the same time that we argue over the benefits versus the problems. We turn to the government for answers, only to find that they're busy with re-election breaks and don't have time to solve our pressing problems.

The problems seem endless as we struggle with two or three jobs to earn an acceptable living. But, in truth, this nation always has worried about what seemed to be insurmountable problems. And we're still here.

Maybe we need attitude adjustments. Perhaps, when seen in a different light, less actually is more. "Quality time" has become the catchword of our harried nation. We rush faster and faster so we can squeeze in a little smidgen of time to actually sit down and talk with our children or eat a meal together.

Looking back at my family's especially good times, I can't remember whether our business was prosperous that year or whether we were in a recession or a boom era.

All I can remember is that we had a good time.

Darrel Miller lives near Downs in rural Osborne County and is a retired weekly newspaper editor.