Posted on 10/09/2018 7:29:41 PM PDT by vannrox
This is a walk down “memory lane” as I relate what it was like growing up as a young boy in the early 1970’s. I was in my early teenage years. I went to school, watched a lot of television, and played with my friends. Enjoy…
As strange as it seems, there is very little on the internet about what it was like growing up in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It’s almost as if it was scrubbed from existence. In it’s place we now have the Obama narrative of a racist nation and terrible injustices. That narrative has nothing to do with reality. It is a scripted lie intended to manipulate people into believing something that just isn’t true.
Here, in my own little way, I would like to relate some stories of what it was like for me growing up as a kid. For “shits and giggles” I have chosen the year of 1971. It was the last year that I had as a kid before I had to go out and work at 14 in the coal mines.
This narrative takes place in Western Pennsylvania. We lived in a small town about a two hour drive from Pittsburgh. It was a hilly and tree shaded world, with railroad spur lines that snaked in and out of the hills and crossed over viaducts and into tunnels. I well knew those lines as I would often walk along them with my friends on hikes and adventures.
Visiting my Aunties
Many weekends my parents would drive into Pittsburgh to visit my relatives. Both were from Pittsburgh, though from different areas. We would take turns visiting the families. In the morning we would visit my father’s family, and in the afternoon we would visit my mother’s family.
(Excerpt) Read more at metallicman.com ...
Since I have been on FR (2004) I save many snippets of text I write and put them in a special folder.
When I retire, I think will write a book. Being a military brat at that time in the world kind of set me up in a childhood that seems to me...both completely typical of childhood in those days, yet...somehow, completely untypical at the same time. I can’t explain that.
What did stick out was the lack of inside stuff, television, video games. I know I watched television, but when we were overseas, I don’t recall watching television at all, probably because it was the Armed Forces Television Network. I do remember watching the evening news, they showed a map of Vietnam with the little flame icons in various places, I remember some thing where they talked about 200 US soldiers being killed, but can’t remember where that was. I should look it up, can’t be that hard to find.
But...no TV, no video games. Everything seemed to be outside for me.
“Took a sledgehammer to a car for a quarter a blow.”
Heh. We used to go up to Clancy’s Drugstore and hangout. One time on the wide gravel spot in the road some guy had a car parked, and a sign and a small sledge hammer. We started off giving him .25 or whatever it was for a hit. Then gave him a dollar for five, and it ended up he said “how much do you have and you can whack on it all you want.”
It’s pretty fuzzy after all these years, but the cops showed up and the guy was gone. And probably three or four of us kids were beating on the car. If memory serves correctly it had been stolen! (We were maybe ten or 12 at the time - and didn’t get in trouble. That time!)
Hahahahahahahaha! That is an awesome story!!!!!
I openly laughed reading it, I can just visualize that...:)
Damn, she had cankles even back then. She deserved the name “Her Thighness” even back then.
The amazing part is that you’re still alive.
Yes. The computer can make numerous changes to timing, air/fuel ratio etc. as you drive which allows for higher compression without lead. I think some engines have as high as 10-11 psi now and turbo or supercharged can be higher than that.
Lead was a health issue. It can cause developmental problems if ingested in high enough amounts. That said my two sisters and I grew up in an old house with lead paint, on a heavily traveled street, RIGHT next to a gas station in the 50-60’s and slept with our windows open in nice weather, and all turned out alright (5 Master’s degrees between us.
The argument was the lead from exhaust in the air tended to settle into the soil where small kids could be exposed. Lead paint was a bigger issue, but I won’t argue that the problem was magnified by the gov/press into a bigger problem than it was.
LOL, I always wondered about that rope swing...we had an old car innertube tied to the end of that old hawser we had found on a beach, and you would sit in the innertube and run yourself out over the road off the little “cliff”, timing it for when the buses went by so you could see the people inside bug out...you would go out over the road from one side of the tree, then come back to land on the other side.
For extra fun, you would bounce up and down in the innertube, often wildly spinning (deliberately) as you did it. We had contests to see who could get the most spins in before hitting the other side.
If that old innertube had ever broken, whoever was in it would have been a grease spot whether a bus/car hit them or not...it was that high above the road.
It was right in front of our house, too. I never heard a peep from my parents that maybe that wasn’t a good idea.
But boy, was it great fun, expecially when the roof of the bus would pass under you!
1971 I was 14 too - We played outside. We shot BB Guns in the woods. We rode our bikes everywhere. We played tackle football in kid’s yard at the corner. We got into fights, then became good friends. We punched bullies in the nose and were praised by parents & teachers when we did. Our parents sided with the teachers and our teachers expected us to pay attention, behave, actually do our homework, and we tried and pursued good grades. Our heroes were astronauts. Pro Football was huge and they actually hit each other. Vietnam was real as my brother and sisters all had siblings of friends come home killed or maimed. Girls were an unknown un-explored territory.
Wheelus AFB? That’s pre-Gaddafi. Dad was stationed in Naples when we heard in mid-’69 that Gaddafi ordered us out of Wheelus; the USAF cratered the runways to make it useless.
There were also scads of furious Napolotani in the streets. Later learned that Gaddafi had threatened to dig up Italian WWII dead buried in Libya; the Italian government sent in an airlift & evacuated their dead.
Nothing like growing up as a military dependent. See the world and not even realize it. Last month went on my first cruise, to Alaska. Boring to me but to other passengers it was a real thrill; what dull lives they live.
That striped crotch....eyebleach!!
That photo of kids climbing all over the monkey bars would give today’s parents a severe case of the vapors.
I was there, BTW. No sense of danger whatsoever.
Today he would be out of the lineup for weeks ...
A tour of the Oval Office and West Wing are almost impossible now if the POTUS is in the facility. Very few will ever have the chance again. You are a lucky guy.
...except we played King of the Mountain, last kid standing won after repelling all boarders...by any means short of biting. Lots of falls...no teacher interference in that or Dodge Ball. They understood we had to burn off energy. Only time recess out doors was with held was during rain, snow, or below 40° or so temps.
Ah yes, bb guns, mini bikes, and hitchhiking (later in the 80s when I was a teen). Awesome list.
By 1971, I was about 14 y/o
You are old!
LOL
I am not much younger, I can no longer brag that I was born in 1962! My niece and nephew look at me like, Whoa, born before water was invented!
Freegards
The day after that speech, "LOSE" buttons were being worn all over the trading floor of the NYSE
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