Posted on 04/22/2015 11:57:14 AM PDT by Duke C.
‘I used to go to a swim club with a small fake lake and they had a———————————”
They were quite hard to get in those days.
:-)
.
“I’d probably be hauled off to jail and my teenagers in CPS custody but that was in the 1970’s.”
My kids were teens in the 70s also.
I didn’t know where they were most of the time but they always arrived home on time and safe and sound.
They were good years.
.
“They’d throw like the president.”
Heh, my petite 110 lb wife can shoot a hardball into my glove so fast it hurts,
I’d love to see her nail one into the dork-O-dent’s glove so that I could see his (/) wimpy little boy arm fall off.
Army men wars with firecrackers for hand grenades and bb-gun artillery to knock down each others plastic soldiers.
Mixing vinegar and backing soda in plastic containers to make rockets, of course now they have menthos and soda.
Clackers made of epoxy glass balls you banged together or could use as a south American bolos when thrown.
Lawn darts was a fun and dangerous sport.
Chopper forks on your bike made from pipes and every kid tried to make his Schwinn bike with the longest front tire to look like an Easy Rider chopper. Those with extra lawn mower Briggs & Straten engines made makeshift single fixed gear adaptions to turn our Schwinn choppers into real motorbikes.
Real Cherry bombs and M80 fire crackers to blow up those old model airplanes and boats so you could spend days gluing new models together and survive the glue.
The endless baseball game that seemed to last the entire summer and than start all over again with the same friends when school started again during recess three times a day and during P.E.
We played in the city side streets. Almost all of my gang got at least bumped by cars.
Dad brought home some mercury. It was fun to roll it around in our hands.
The reward for raking fall leaves was burning them at the curb.
Catholic school?
Playing with discarded car batteries by putting a long screwdriver across the terminals to watch it arc.
Having Dad task you with throwing out the old motor oil in the storm drain.
Having BB rifle wars with the only rule being, aim from the waist down.
Running away from the Railroad police when they caught you playing in the rail yard.
Hurting yourself bad enough to have to get stitches and having your Mom tell you on the way to the emergency room that; “Your father is not going to be happy when he finds that dinner is not ready.”
Finding out the hard way that balloons in your bake spokes sounds cool but actually loosens said spokes.
Hiding in roadside trees to drop firecrackers on unsuspecting motorists.
Ahhh...good times.
Me too. Cool car.
Finding out the hard way that balloons in your bike spokes sounds cool but actually loosens said spokes.
Or hit one.
We used to go around knocking on all our friends’ doors asking tehm to come out and play. Then we’d play baseball or football or hide and seek or whatever game struck our fancy.
I had actual catcher’s gear, so I was popular when the kids wanted to play baseball.
Or if — horrors! — we bought ice cream from a truck.
Chocolate eclair was my favorite.
I grew up in the New York area.
When I was in high school, our house was at the top of a hill. All the kids — including me — used to take their sleds to the top of our driveway and sled down to Route (, where we would deliberately crash into a snow bak just before hitting the “big” road.
Then we’d drag the sled up the hill and do it again.
Our parents saw nothign wrong with this.
I also had a basketball hoop at the end of the driveway. We would play pickup basketball in the driveway. I had a friend who liked to come around behind me and I’d pass to hime through my legs. We never missed the timing.
Indeed!
When I was a youngster there was an old man who lived down our block, and in his garage he had a huge glass jar of mercury. I’m guessing like a two gallon jar, or rather a heavy glass jug (green glass). My Dad said the guy was a doctor or something who worked with polio kids when my Dad was a youngster, and that was the explanation for his weirdness (he was an odd old man). Not that the explanation made any sense, but we just accepted it. He was a weird old doctor who worked with polio kids in the 20’s... end of story.
Anyways, he would have fun with us kids, and if he was out and puttering around the garage / alley, he might test your strength and see if you could touch the bottom of this jug of mercury. He would say there was a pirate coin at the bottom. It was impossible for a grade-school kid of course. Not that it burned, it was just so much pressure on your hand, it was like pushing through a jug of sand or something, the pressure was immense because of the density.
The crazy old doc could also ride his bicycle backwards up and down the alley (like I said he was a very old man), just a strange fellow. I don’t even think anyone thought about mercury poisoning, I know us kids didn’t, I’m not even sure adults knew the risk of it back then.
It’s funny, as I get older, I tend to forget things people say or things I’m supposed to do on a day to day basis, or from a month or year ago, but things from growing up and being a kid are clear as day to me.
Fascinating how that part of the brain works.
You had rules ???
Great story!
“The teacher looked at him and said, “If I ever hear of you bullying anyone ever again, you are going to get another boxing lesson”.
That is a great story. I witnessed a similar situation in junior high PE class. A class bully who was really a head case was caught towel snapping a small kid who was easy prey. The coach/teacher made the bully stand before the whole PE class buck naked and receive the most impressive towel snapping routine I have ever seen. It mostly worked.
I still miss that smell of autumn, and the smell of distant cigar smoke at a November football game.
[[My mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread butter on bread on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn’t seem to get food poisoning.]]
I doubt this- 3-5 chickens bought have salmonella- and these kids probably did get sick but simply aren’t attributing it to salmonella- there are degrees of illness from salmonella and ecoli as the body naturally fights it off, BUT it can’t fight off completely, and we become somewhat sick but don’t make the connection to the chicken thinking rather it’s ‘justr the flu or a cold’
[[Oh yeah ... And where was the antibiotics and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? Could I have been killed! ]]
If you were allergic, yes.
[[To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family.]]
Yet many kids grew up under severe abuse and mental torture ie: ‘dysfunctional families’ They just didn’t call it that- but it was clearly not a fully functual situation for such kids
[[I can’t recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.]]
They did happen BUT they made us tougher- they didn’t pansify us by coddling us 24/7 like they do today
[[I just can’t recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or Netflix. We weren’t!!]]
True- but we’re not bored today with these things either- however, we are perhaps less healthy
I still wonder how I managed to grow up without air conditioning.
This brought back a long forgotten memory. As kids, when we got hurt when out playing, we’d go to the parent’s house that had Mercurochrome since it didn’t sting as much. For me, that neighbor was right next door. When I was 12 or 13 my mother walked past the bathroom when I was in it scrubbing gravel out of my hand with a scrub brush so I wouldn’t have to go to the ER after a dirt bike accident. She basically said, “I’ll leave you to it.” Heck, I’d been to the doctor once before to have gravel scrubbed out of a knee injury from playing football during school recess in a dress. I really hope she quit worrying about me early in life. I’m sure by the time I was skyboarding she wasn’t. LOL.
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