Indeed it was... and it was also inconsistent. There were decent ones amongst the tart yellow citrus fruits.
I'm more guilty than most about the good old days, but they weren't always that good. My F-I-L got a new 11-48 for waterfowling some time in the late 1950s, and it was one of those guns that had small, but irritating hitches. He was delighted with the way it looked and was pretty proud of it, but it was not 100%. Eventually it had a major meltdown (a lifter or some such thing, IIRC), after which the local gunsmith packed it up and sent it to Remington to be fixed. It came back in the form of a new 1100, which served him well until he passed away decades later.