Ah, a 4-10! And a beebee gun, a 22 rifle, a slingshot, bow and arrows. Short of hand grenades, most everything was available.
Growing up in the 1970s & How We Should All Be Dead!
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I used to make my own using empty Mills bombs my Uncle Charles always brought home on every leave during WW1!
We used to blow up stuff with m-80's that we "somehow" managed to obtain. Nothing like the smell of burning styrene along with flying shrapnel to make you happy to be a kid.
This thread is a blast of nostalgia. I guess I'll just leave this here.
http://textfiles.com/anarchy/
http://textfiles.com/anarchy/
80's child here. Oh man, do I feel sorry for my kids! The older neighborhood kids had an underground hangout they dug out of the ground then laid plywood from the surrounding house construction boom over for a roof and then covered with earth where the grass eventually grew. You had to cross a creek that had cut deep into the ground by about 15-20 ft by swinging on a garden hose attached to a culvert pipe from the street drainage to get to the other side where a corn field housed the "fort".
Who knows what the older kids did there but for a five year old, it made you feel like Indiana Jones.
We also "gasp" rode our bikes to school! My wife' who grew up in a small town (40k) vs. me a city 1m, really struggled with letting my youngest ride ihis bike the whole two blocks without following him in the car!
I'm a big advocate for seat belts, but damn, this country has been pussified!
Who knows what the older kids did there but for a five year old, it made you feel like Indiana Jones.
We also "gasp" rode our bikes to school! My wife' who grew up in a small town (40k) vs. me a city 1m, really struggled with letting my youngest ride ihis bike the whole two blocks without following him in the car!
I'm a big advocate for seat belts, but damn, this country has been pussified!
Erector sets were made of metal with real nuts and bolts, not this plastic crap. Your Superman Halloween costume could go up like a roman candle if a flame came near it. Good times!
Seatbelts and helmets. The main source of organ donors comes from people who don't use either. We owe the terminally stupid a debt of thanks.
Kids in my 'hood did this too. Nothing like a hangout where adults cannot see what you do, and the goats cannot be heard by bystanders.
I've heard sheep are better- nice n soft wool, and tiny horns. Main reason why shepherds' tunics have no zippers- so as to not scare the sheep.....
A few highlights from my forthcoming autobiography "The American Art of Defying Death in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century":
- The first photo ever taken of me was done by my father, through a window into the hospital nursery, of my aunt, a nurse, holding me in her arms and a Salem in her mouth. I was about an hour old.
- I was squired about in a car seat that sat on the front seat. The only restraints were to keep me attached to my car seat.
- Everyone my age has a hand print on their chest that is still visible in X-Rays. It is the hand print of our mother's right hand. You remember, the one that functioned as the seat belt when something interesting happened on the road. It is a badge of honor.
- I grew up in the Evel Kneivel era. We all had bicycles and we were all experts at locating things to jump and constructing ramps. As time went on, we also became experts in the immutability of Newtonian physics and field expedient first aid.
- After one jump went particularly awry, I appeared at home with my noggin leaking vital fluid at a pretty brisk pace. My mother saw me and flipped straight out. My father appeared, demanding to know what had interrupted his peace and quiet. He saw me and having been through World War II simply said, "Sit." I did as ordered. He grabbed a kitchen rag and commenced to scrub away at my head. When he was satisfied with his handiwork, he poured alcohol on it with one hand while holding me still with the other. I held that rag to my head until the leaking stopped. No doctor. No concussion protocol. No problem. Yes, I do have a cool scar to this day.
- Was I unsupervised while playing with knives, firearms, and explosives? You bet. Did I hurt myself or anyone else? Nope. Oddly, neither did my friends.
- Did I walk the two miles home from elementary school? Alone? Yep.
- Did I get bullied in school. You bet. Did everyone else? Pretty much. Did we cry and tell the teacher? No. A straight right to the face of the offending party was the straight path to permanent resolution. When teachers broke us up, did we get suspended, anger management class, or, stuffed animals to sooth our feelings? No. We got told to stop our nonsense and get back to whatever it was that we were supposed to be doing.
- Did I regularly ride in the back of a pickup truck? Oh, yeah.
- Ride a minibike with no helmet? Helmets are for guys who can't ride!
- When canned Coca-Cola arrived, did I tear off the pull tab and drop it into the can before drinking? Yep.
- Did I grow up in a world where people smoked everywhere? Yep. You mean inside? Absolutely. I mean in theaters, restaurants, court rooms, in fact, I mean everywhere but church. And, yes, that means in elevators too.
- Did I spend my high school Friday nights drag racing? You bet. Helmet? Nope. Seat belt? What's that? Did anyone die? No. Get hurt? Only their pride. In fact, the police never came near the place. They all knew what was going on, but, they left us to it. While on the subject of seat belts, every car my parents owned had seat belts. When cleaning the car, my father always tucked them into the gap at the back of the seat, like every other American with pride in their automobile. He taught his children to do it too.
- Later on, I lived in a college dormitory, on the 8th floor, with a window that would open large enough for a beer keg to fit through it. I am still not at liberty to divulge how I know that to be true.
- Then there's a whole conversation to be had about the zaniness of 18 year old "adults" being able to legally purchase joy juice. That could never go wrong, could it?
I could go on, but, I think I've proven I am in the choir here. Needless to say, it was awesome. We lived outside even when we were inside, literally, because we had no air conditioning and my mother would throw the windows wide open, even in the dead of winter, to "let some fresh air in." We were utterly free. No rules. No PC nonsense. No Facebook. No cell phones. Just us, our imaginations, and our real, live, in the flesh friends. It all worked because we had parents who instructed us from day one what the true rules of our lives were and the draconian punishments that awaited us if we violated those rules.
I did my best to raise my children the same way and, as you may imagine, had more than a few lively discussions with other parents, teachers, school principals, sports coaches, and so on. I was successful in the main and they have both remarked on how their old school childhood experiences have made them different from their peers and how happy they are about it. My kids are on their own now, but, I am lucky enough to have almost weekly dinners with them. We talk, laugh, I smoke my pipe, my son smokes his pipe, and my daughter occasionally joins in. Life is good.
Cheers,
Chili
- The first photo ever taken of me was done by my father, through a window into the hospital nursery, of my aunt, a nurse, holding me in her arms and a Salem in her mouth. I was about an hour old.
- I was squired about in a car seat that sat on the front seat. The only restraints were to keep me attached to my car seat.
- Everyone my age has a hand print on their chest that is still visible in X-Rays. It is the hand print of our mother's right hand. You remember, the one that functioned as the seat belt when something interesting happened on the road. It is a badge of honor.
- I grew up in the Evel Kneivel era. We all had bicycles and we were all experts at locating things to jump and constructing ramps. As time went on, we also became experts in the immutability of Newtonian physics and field expedient first aid.
- After one jump went particularly awry, I appeared at home with my noggin leaking vital fluid at a pretty brisk pace. My mother saw me and flipped straight out. My father appeared, demanding to know what had interrupted his peace and quiet. He saw me and having been through World War II simply said, "Sit." I did as ordered. He grabbed a kitchen rag and commenced to scrub away at my head. When he was satisfied with his handiwork, he poured alcohol on it with one hand while holding me still with the other. I held that rag to my head until the leaking stopped. No doctor. No concussion protocol. No problem. Yes, I do have a cool scar to this day.
- Was I unsupervised while playing with knives, firearms, and explosives? You bet. Did I hurt myself or anyone else? Nope. Oddly, neither did my friends.
- Did I walk the two miles home from elementary school? Alone? Yep.
- Did I get bullied in school. You bet. Did everyone else? Pretty much. Did we cry and tell the teacher? No. A straight right to the face of the offending party was the straight path to permanent resolution. When teachers broke us up, did we get suspended, anger management class, or, stuffed animals to sooth our feelings? No. We got told to stop our nonsense and get back to whatever it was that we were supposed to be doing.
- Did I regularly ride in the back of a pickup truck? Oh, yeah.
- Ride a minibike with no helmet? Helmets are for guys who can't ride!
- When canned Coca-Cola arrived, did I tear off the pull tab and drop it into the can before drinking? Yep.
- Did I grow up in a world where people smoked everywhere? Yep. You mean inside? Absolutely. I mean in theaters, restaurants, court rooms, in fact, I mean everywhere but church. And, yes, that means in elevators too.
- Did I spend my high school Friday nights drag racing? You bet. Helmet? Nope. Seat belt? What's that? Did anyone die? No. Get hurt? Only their pride. In fact, the police never came near the place. They all knew what was going on, but, they left us to it. While on the subject of seat belts, every car my parents owned had seat belts. When cleaning the car, my father always tucked them into the gap at the back of the seat, like every other American with pride in their automobile. He taught his children to do it too.
- Later on, I lived in a college dormitory, on the 8th floor, with a window that would open large enough for a beer keg to fit through it. I am still not at liberty to divulge how I know that to be true.
- Then there's a whole conversation to be had about the zaniness of 18 year old "adults" being able to legally purchase joy juice. That could never go wrong, could it?
I could go on, but, I think I've proven I am in the choir here. Needless to say, it was awesome. We lived outside even when we were inside, literally, because we had no air conditioning and my mother would throw the windows wide open, even in the dead of winter, to "let some fresh air in." We were utterly free. No rules. No PC nonsense. No Facebook. No cell phones. Just us, our imaginations, and our real, live, in the flesh friends. It all worked because we had parents who instructed us from day one what the true rules of our lives were and the draconian punishments that awaited us if we violated those rules.
I did my best to raise my children the same way and, as you may imagine, had more than a few lively discussions with other parents, teachers, school principals, sports coaches, and so on. I was successful in the main and they have both remarked on how their old school childhood experiences have made them different from their peers and how happy they are about it. My kids are on their own now, but, I am lucky enough to have almost weekly dinners with them. We talk, laugh, I smoke my pipe, my son smokes his pipe, and my daughter occasionally joins in. Life is good.
Cheers,
Chili
Great story!
That was one experience I didn't have to put up with. There were a couple of goofballs who tried, but I have a constitutional inability to allow that. As they found out, when I hit them they tended to go down and stay hit. Not that I had a lot of fights as a kid. People just sensed that it wasn't a good policy to mess with me. But I also think that bullying has become much more of a problem than it was when I was in school. And I blame scared school officials who let bullying parents run over them. Schools didn't tolerate the kind of bullshit they now do.
Heck yeah. Rode bikes everywhere. Jumped countless ditches with said bike, I knew how to patch a bike tire at 3-4 yrs old. Rode go carts without helmets, flipped it and even got ran over once. Fell out of trees. Thrown from horses. All kinds of crazy stuff.
Miss all of it.
Miss all of it.
I just got my hands on some of those lawn dart Jarts, funny you should mention it. I loved those when I was a kid. Survival of the fittest I say..
The day we moved into our brand new house in 1964, in a new city, I was 11 and I met a neighbor kid my age. Our yard bordered a huge chunk of woods, (all houses now) that was a kids paradise for years to come. After we were walking down a path in these woods for a while goofing around, this new kid climbs up a tree near the path. So I climb a different tree close by like we all did. All of a sudden the other kid some how fell from pretty high up, like 10 or 12 feet, and landed flat on his back, knocking the wind of him, but otherwise nothing wrong at all, and we're just laughing about it. After a little bit we're looking around at the ground, and all around the whole area someone had used an axe to whack 1" saplings off, about 6" to 8" tall. There were some right next to where the kid landed on his back. 8O
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