In the early ‘60’s, we played “Army” and put gravel in aluminum foil, packed it around a “cherry bomb” and threw at the “enemy”...
When they hollered, we said, “You’re dead!!!! We gotcha!!!”
It was really fun....
About 45 years too late for me, but that is cool.
I have fond memories of Jarts, and the family set was still around long after most people - excuse the pun - tossed them out (though the "target" rings had long since been punctured into oblivion). We had a brief interlude during which my friends and I heaved Jarts over the house until my dad saw it and blew his stack. I don't think he would have considered me or any of my friends any great loss, but he was not about to repair the shingles if a Jart fell short.
As for seat belts, one of my earliest memories is standing in the center of the front seat of a '58 Dodge convertible, trying to brace myself by grabbing the top of the windshield frame while my mom was driving frighteningly fast down a hilly rural gravel road. High speed and loose gravel combined with a wallowing, steel-dashboarded, bias-ply tired convertible with no seat belts… what a recipe.
Semi-lethal playgrounds? Oh yeah! I got my first serious injury thanks to a steel merry-go-round whose centrifugal force shot me head-first into a nearby post. I used to have traces of that incident on my skull, but lost track of them as other things knocked me silly. Those industrial-grade, steel diamond plate merry-go-rounds bit me more often than any other piece of playground equipment, although unoccupied swing seats with lots of momentum weren't far behind… always with the corner or the attaching hardware making contact.
Regarding the photo in #5, all I can say is that in my small-town Iowa of the '60's and early '70's, I can't remember anyone's mom out on the sidewalk in short shorts and heels; given the cast of candidates, I don't think anyone would have wanted to see such a thing, either.
Mr. niteowl77
rock fights.
Actual fights consisting of groups of kids throwing rocks at each other as hard as we could.