Posted on 08/15/2014 9:54:14 AM PDT by Drew68
The way things are going, every kid is going to go to school wearing bubble wrap and a helmet. Back in the 1970s (and earlier), parents didn’t stress about our health and safety as much as they do today. It’s not that they cared less – they just didn’t worry compulsively about it.
Parents of 2014 need to be reminded of how less restricted, less supervised, less obsessively safety-conscious things were… and it was just fine.
1. JARTS: IMPALING ARROWS OF DEATH
Can your mind comprehend a more deadly toy than a weighted spear that kids hurl through the air like a missile? No one ever obeyed the actual manufacturer’s rules, we just flung these damn things everywhere. We threw them. They stuck where they landed. If they happened to land in your skull, well, then you should have moved.
After roughly 6,700 emergency-room visits and the deaths of three children between 1978 and 1988, they finally outlawed Jarts on December 19, 1988. I suppose it needed to be banned, but a part of me is sad that kids today won’t have the battle scars and Jart survival stories we had. Goodbye Jart – you were an impaling arrow of death, but I loved you anyway.
2. LOST AND NOT FOUND: SEAT BELTS
Cars came with seat belts in the 1970s, but no one used them except maybe out of curiosity to see what it was like to wear one. Of course, you’d have to fish them out of the deep crevice of the backseat cushion where they often came to rest, unwanted and ignored.
The only “click” heard in the 1970s automobile was your dad’s Bic lighting up a smoke with the windows rolled up. (cough!)
I should also mention that, not only were there no seat belts, child seats were nowhere to be found. Whether it was the front seat of your mom’s station wagon or her bicycle, chances are, you were entirely untethered.
3. SEMI-LETHAL PLAYGROUNDS OF HOT METAL
Remember when playgrounds were fun? Sure, there was a pretty good chance you’d be scalded by a hot metal slide, or walk away with tetanus, but that’s what memories are made of.
The ground wasn’t coated with soft recycled rubber or sand as most are today – they were asphalt. Remember being hurled from a spinning merry-go-round, then skidding across the gravel at full speed? Good times.
I remember my school playground had a metal ladder “wall” that I swear went up three stories – it didn’t connect to a slide or anything. It was literally a ladder to the sky. I remember fully believing the oxygen was thinner at the top. One false move and I’d have been a flesh colored stain on the asphalt.
According to the New York Times we are making playgrounds so safe that they actually stunt our kids’ development. So, while blood was spilt and concussions were dealt on the playgrounds of the 1970s, we were at least in a developmentally rich environment – and we had the bruises and scabs to prove it.
4. PRECIOUS LITTLE SUN PROTECTION
Back in the 70s, your goal was to get as brown as your skin would permit. Sun BLOCK or sun SCREEN was basically nonexistent. You wanted to AMPLIFY your rays, so women typically lathered on Crisco and baby oil to get that deep baked look.
For the kids, SPF numbers hovered around 2, 4 and 8. The idea that you would spray an SPF of 50 or even 30 wasn’t even an option, except perhaps from medical ointments prescribed for albinos.
5. HELMETS: FOR THOSE WITH MEDICAL CONDITIONS ONLY
Whether you were riding a bike, roller skating, or skateboarding, one thing was for certain: you were not wearing a head protection. You would have been looked at as a sideshow freak by other kids, and parents would assume you had some kind of medical condition.
6. IGNORED AND UNATTENDED ON THE REGULAR
Hey, who’s watching the kid in the stroller? YOU MUST HAVE YOUR EYES ON THE KID AT ALL TIMES OR ELSE HE WILL DIE!
My mother routinely left me alone in the car at a young age while she ran errands. Today, this will literally get you arrested. You see, once upon a time it was okay to leave your kids for long periods without supervision (remember the so-called “latch-key kids” of the 70s?), or let them free roam without constant surveillance. Today, parents won’t let their kids go out to get the mail alone, and any fun with friends has to be scheduled, closely monitored “play dates”.
On summer break or weekends in the 1970s, parents kicked their kids out the front door and didn’t let them back in until the sun went down. “Go play,” were their only words, and you were left to your own devices for hours upon hours. Neighborhoods looked like Lord of the Flies.
7. ROUTINELY ALLOWED TO GET SERIOUSLY HURT
This poor kid is about to get rammed in the nuts by a goat, and the nearby adult isn’t the least bit concerned. In fact, he finds this all incredibly amusing! As hard as this is to believe, but when kids got hurt back then, adults didn’t come running with first-aid kits. More than likely you’d be left alone with your pain, with no alternative but to get over it.
In the 70s, parents watched their offspring fall from trees and fall off bikes with a smile.
8. SECONDHAND SMOKE EVERYWHERE
From airplanes to your family car, it seemed the world of the 70s was shrouded in a haze of cigarette smoke. It wasn’t just the fact that many more people smoked, it was the absolute 100% lack of concern for those that didn’t, including children. Teachers smoked, doctors smoked, your parents smoked…. and they didn’t take it to a secluded smoking area, they did it right in your face.
Please don’t interpret this as condoning it. There’s no question that engulfing your child in a thick carcinogenic cloud isn’t a good idea. I’m just stating facts – this is the world we lived in. It was full of adults who didn’t seem to have anxiety attacks over our safety, and we turned out just fine…. right?
My kid’s generation weren’t totally whimps. I got to see the impact of what can happen when you put dry ice into a 2 litre bottle of water, and what happens when you tape a bunch of sparklers together. Better boom factor than we ever had.
My little sister would fall asleep standing up and leaning on my dad’s shoulder in the truck. I liked to get down on the floor board and play with my cars on the seat.
“We used running chainsaws and called them Charts.”
Now we know what happened to you.
You caught a Chart while it was in the air and running with your head.
Are those “snakes” still around? Haven’t seen them since I was a kid, but I haven’t really frequented fireworks stands in decades. Mostly I recall us kids putting bottle-rockets in the barrels of our toy rifles and firing them at each other.
Used to be a lot of toys with projectiles flying out of them. Loved the old Estes and Centauri model-rockets. Still have a slew of old Tonka/Buddy toys... heavy, metal toy-cars and such, full of nice, sharp edges.
Showing these to kids nowadays, or talking about my childhood experiences seems to blow their minds. Still hard to think of the 1970s as so culturally distant from today, but it all started adding up, and you can now recognize the massive sea-change.
rock fights.
Actual fights consisting of groups of kids throwing rocks at each other as hard as we could.
We'd poke a hole in the bottom can, squirt lighter fluid down the barrel and in the bottom hole, stuff in a tennis ball down the barrel and light the bottom with a flaming stick.
Wait a second, and... THWUUUP! The tennis ball fired out about 100 yards. Of course, then we'd have “wars” with each other firing rocket-propelled tennis balls at each other.
Ah, good times. And we lived to tell about it!
After scout meetings we played a form of mumbly pegs called stretch. Stick your knife in the ground and the other kid has to step one of his feet over to it. Then he takes a turn. The point of the game is to stick it so far out that he falls over making the stretch.
When my dad found out he was shocked! “You are dulling your knife?? How are you ever gonna kill anybody with your knife so dull from stickin’ it in the ground?!”
I told the other scouts and of course we were all so moved by such unassailable logic that we never played the game again.
Our troop motto: “252 is better than you!” Good times indeed.
We made our own darts using a corn cobs, nails, and chicken feathers. My brother perfected different designs for accuracy and distance.
Yep, words can not describe in 1965, when those X-Ray glasses I bought didn't work. :(
I remember this toy we had in the 60’s that you poured a liquid plastic into a mold and then heated in a small heater which would make worms and bugs. You could make rubber cockroaches, centipedes and other bugs. We once left it plugged in and almost burned down the house.
Then we had a soldering gum like Stick you’d plug in and could burn words and pictures into a piece of wood. Left that plugged in a few times and we only would realize it cause the heat would cause something to melt and/or start smoldering and we’d smell the stink.
Creepy crawlers, that is it!
your wife would be worth her wait in gold in the near future.
With the cost of healthcare, and the fact that healthcare service quality will be like employee customer service at a downtown McDonalds, a man or woman who can do all what you posted will be invaluable.
Two words: Hobby Lobby. They have most of those things. Other arts/crafts stores (Michaels, for instance) have them as well, but HL is particularly well stocked.
But also look into whether you have a dedicated mom/pop hobby store in your area and explore that/those first before going to the large chains.
6. IGNORED AND UNATTENDED ON THE REGULAR
When I was about 4 years old we were camping with a bunch of my Dad’s siblings and their kids at a big reservoir in Kansas. Our car was parked on a big hill up above the swimming beach where all of the moms and kids (my dad and uncles were fishing elsewhere)were swimming and sunbathing (and in the mom’s case smoking and drinking Old Milwaukee). I wandered away and went up the hill to our old Dodge. It had the pushbutton transmission on the dash. I was obsessed with the car radio and apparently started pushing the buttons on the transmission and got the car into neutral. The car rolled down the hill, narrowly missing running over my mom and Aunt Lois and went into the lake. My older brother (now deceased God rest his soul)pulled me out of the car as it filled up with water. I still hear about that one from my surviving relatives at the family reunions.....
we called them Polish Cannons.
By the way, this thread is one of the funniest things I have read in years. Everyone sharing so many common stories of what we all grew up with.
All the garbage today, the Obama presidency, Ferguson Racial crap, bad economy, the Middle East, lack of border, etc etc, its nice to read these stories.
My dad kept a spray bottle with alcohol in it in his garage. His garage was also the neighborhood bar. He had a beer fridge out there full of PBR and Schlitz. His buds would be out mowing their yards at daylight so they could finish up and get to Dad’s bar by 10 AM.
For fun, he would spray the alcohol through a lit lighter at wasps to catch them on fire.
I had my first Schlitz at 14 in that garage.
I used to really love playing with mine. Mom kept having to buy me more Plasticgoop.
BDParrish, the kids I knew played stretch by throwing their knife at the other guys foot, usually 10-15 ft away.
If the knife didn’t stick in the ground, you didn’t have to stretch. I watched in fascination as the teens played such a stupid game.
Sorry about the size everyone!
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Like packing black powder from firecrackers into empty C02 cartridges to use for blowing up beehives etc. in a nearby orchard?”
Or using the same as depth charges for muskrat in the nearby swamp...
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