Posted on 03/04/2016 10:06:31 AM PST by PROCON
If you grew up in the 1960s or 1970s, then you know how relaxed everything used to be. Our parents never forced us to wear seatbelts, we pretty much at whatever we wanted, and were given way more responsibiity than we should have been given. It's a little sad kids today won't get to experience half the things we did, but looking back, there's a good reason why they won't.
Were these 12 things we did as kids kind of dangerous? Yeah, maybe some of it was.
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Matchstick guns. I swear that mine would light a “strike anywhere” match on it’s own but this is the only video I could find and you have to light it yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC2BSb9MZYc
Ouch! I forgot about those.
When I was about 10, we lived on a street on a steep hill. The road took a 90 degree turn at the bottom of the hill, where there was a barbed wire fence. I got a metal wheeled skateboard and started down the hill. Well over half way down I realized that I was going way too fast to make the turn or to jump off without getting hurt. So I crouched down and sort of sat down on the asphalt just before the turn. I tore the seat out of my pants and still ended up in the barbed wire.
That and paddle ball for some reason I have yet to figure?
man, those things were as dangerous as they say!
Mercury collectors use it for explosives.
We used to buy what we called “rocket fuel” from the local Army-Navy surplus store. 10-pound bags for a quarter. It was the contents of artillery shells that looked like rabbit pellets—small green cylinders with holes running longitudinally through them. We would stick a pin through the center hole, wrap the pellet in tin foil, using the pin to form a rocket nozzle, and twist a nose cone on the other end. Then we’d remove the pin, hold the pellet by the nose cone with a wooden clothespin and hold it over canned heat. When the pellet ignited we’d toss it up and release the clothespin. That pellet would shoot like a rocket about 200 feet in the air.
Pretty soon we were wrapping two, then four, then six in the foil. Eventually we had cylinders about 2 1/4” in diameter and about a foot long. Talk about a fireball! And we lived!
It was my job to shift gears as my dad depressed the clutch pedal.
Strange though, I don’t remember being seatbelted. Maybe I should sue.
I loved Lawn Jarts, but the only problem I saw was they were not explosive.
“I don’t think the DDT trucks were dangerous to human beings.”
DDT was not dangerous to anything except harmful insects.
I rather imagine that Rachael Carson is rotting in Hell for the millions of deaths she brought about.
I was one of the parents.
When we took a trip the “way back” of the station wagon was popular with the kids so they could play cards while on the road.
.
Yes, we lived, amazing.
Notice nobody has mentioned a television or video game yet?
When I was in high school, a group of us always had our rifles in the car or truck...After football practice, about 5-6 of us would head out to deer hunt in the last hour of light...
I remember when I was not quite 14, playing with a b-17 that was located at a nearby air museum that my friend who was sixteen worked for. He hauled out the APU and we plugged it in and I got in the cockpit and flipped the switches I was told to flip and we rotated the inside right prop around a few times just for kicks. I
Good point.
Most kids weren't fat or obese back then either.
Best thread this year nomination!
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