Posted on 08/14/2010 12:35:16 PM PDT by JoeProBono
"Today, while driving during a snowstorm, I thought about a dangerous thing we used to do as kids. We called it "skitching". When it was very snowy out, we would wait for a car to drive by and grab the bumper and let the car pull us through the snow. This was without a sled or anything, just our bodies. You might start out on your feet but would usually end up laying down, holding onto the bumper for dear life. The one who held on longest "won".
I don't think this is possible today, because cars don't have the same types of bumpers and it would be harder to grab one. Also, they seem to plow every two minutes, so there is very little snow on the road, compared to my childhood.
Other things we did: One of us would tie a rope to the back of his/her bike and the other one would hold the end of the rope and be towed along on either a skateboard or roller skates.
I would climb to the very top of the tallest tree I could find and sit at the top while it swayed in the wind.
I would skateboard down the steepest hill I could find and stop by crashing into a bush or something.
Helmets? Knee and elbow-pads? Those didn't exist in the 1970s. It would never have crossed our minds to wear those.
When I was a teenager, my dangerous ways continued:
I would ride on the backs of motorcyles driven by older/drunk/stoned guys and we didn't wear helmets.
We'd stuff about 30 kids in the back of a pick-up truck and ride out into the woods for a party.
I'd stay out all night partying with older guys.
I tried pretty much every drug that was available in those days.
Amazingly, I never broke a bone, OD'd, or got raped.
Those were the days."
A common thing at my house.
Oh yeah...used to ride a three whell ATV. They’re banned now.
One time I misjudged a gap, hit a cinder block with the front wheel and flew at least ten feet onto a gravel driveway.
Enough so that it’s a substantial miracle I’m still alive and unmaimed.
Those who were killed aren't posting. I wonder why!
(Great anthropic-principle illustration!)
At the end of a neighborhood dead-end road there was a 12 foot retaining wall. We’d spend night after night, climbing the wall and jumping onto the paved road below. No clue why we found it fun.
Our favourite sledding hill had several prominent tree and one rock hazards. If we were careful, we could avoid them. We crashed a lot. We’d stay out until our hands and feet were so cold they burned. By the time we walked the 30 minutes home, even the cold water fresh out of the tap stung it was so hot.
Being an older neighborhood, there were very few places to get a good view of the night sky. We’d lay down in the middle of the road to watch the stars.
We’d hang upside down by our knees on the monkey bars on the playground, then unwrap our knees and flip, landing on our feet on the hard ground below. Most of the time we landed successfully. The teachers put a stop to it, though, when one kid broke her arm so badly one of the bones was protruding through the skin.
My dad taught us to use power tools when we were in grade school. We never used any eye or ear protection, even spending hours around table or circular saws, air compressors, etc.
As a teen, used hand sprayers to spray pesticides, fungicides, etc. on fruit trees. We’d spend hours engulfed in the chemicals.
Ride on the back hitch of the tractor with the PTO spinning just below our feet.
I was pretty blase about bicycle helmets until I watched my five year-old lose it on his bicycle racing an adult running down a small hill. He and the bike slid six feet across the pavement, eventually stopping under a parked car.
1. Rode myself and my bicycle into a tree...back in the days before
riders wore helmets. Unconscious for a minute or two but managed to
ride back home (on a bent front wheel)
2. On a family campout, threw a small dixie-cup of white gas onto
a dying campfire...it was immediately “revived”
Somehow I only felt a wonder blast of heat!
I won’t mention any of the “hold mah beer” things I did after age 21!
Circa 1972, climbed to the top of 575-ft-hight Morro Rock (Morro Bay, CA) barefoot. Was 13 or maybe 14 years old. Went with a group of friends. Had to go up the much more dangerous back side of the Rock (facing the ocean) because it was illegal to climb the Rock; would have been much safer if it was legal and we could go up the front side, but then we would have been seen and somebody would have called the cops.
Going up was fairly easy. Coming down was a lot more difficult. I came *this close* to losing my balance and falling to certain death, but Martin Fitts, one of guys with us, grabbed me. I had a huge crush on Martin, but to him I was just a scrubby little brat. I often think of Martin and I hope he is doing well, wherever he is. He and his brothers were great guys.
haha we did the same thing as kids in the station wagon. We also used to sleep back there when we were kids on long car trips.
What gets me is how people now see a kid not in a car seat at say.. oh.. age 16 and they start calling the parents “White trash” or other such names and generally freak out.
Amazing how peoples attitudes change.. amazing and sad.
Incidentally, one of the very greatest posting threads I’ve seen on Free Republic, and that’s saying a lot. THANKS, JOE!!
That New Idea 2 row corn picker was a scary implement with all those exposed chains.
Had a Allis with the hand clutch,you put a days work in driving that bad boy
My father lost an arm to a Allis round baler,the nurse at the hospital fainted when she saw him...spent 2 yrs at VA
Reminds me of a friends little brother on a camping trip we took in the wilds in crappy, rainy weather. He explained, 'all wood is dry, when you have white gas!' FOOMPH!
Instant, toasty (large) campfire. He put more than a Dixie cup's worth on. Quite a bit more.
Was fascinated by a paint spray can ... I could hear a little ball rolling around it it when I shook it, so I got an axe and “opened” it to get the ball ... spent the next few hours at the emergency room getting paint out of my eyes. (probably was about 5 at the time, but funny how well you can remember some things!)
Sledded down my parents’ front-yard hill. Steep, and ends at a road.
Started my bike trips down that same hill (from the driveway part). This resulted once in me running into a running car, crashing onto the neighbor’s pavement, and breaking my arm.
Oh, all this WITHOUT A HELMET.
Oh, and rode in cars AND truck beds - WITHOUT ANY BELTING. Stood up through car moonroof while going over mountain country roads.
Very, very dangerous.
I’m sure I can think of more. Here’s another:
Trekked through woods and streams. FAVORITE pastime for us - walk miles IN streams barefoot, carrying shoes as well as fish nets, etc, to catch minnows and such.
Along with the 1st note: biked miles on paved paths through our “city” - probably “dangerous” in some places due to some iffy neighborhoods AND the fact I could be 5 mi or more from home at age 10.
Wisdom was obtained and he never did that again.
Mom was Mom but she was also Dad's wife and defending her was his first job.
Bike helmets I have no problem with. But knee and elbow pads are too much. You are suppose to have scrapped knees and elbows. That is how you know you are a kid!
“Dad would put the seats down in our station wagon, making a flat surface and my sister and I would sit way in the back.”
This reminds me of my horse summer camps.
Never mind it was dangerous I rode horses.
In those camps, they used to feature going to a local pool after lunch. The horse center had a plain delivery van - just windowless, flat open cargo space behind the front seats. They piled all us kids in there to go to a pool (sometimes pretty far - they varied where we went), up to 30. It was like an illegal-alien coyote operation!
It’s bad enough any “private” individual doing that with their own kids today - can you imagine a BUSINESS doing that with “strange” kids? The businesses were probably the 1st to abandon such approaches to transportation!
LOL
My cousins and I jumping out of their bedroom windows to the ground a few times before we got caught. It was a split-foyer house so not as bad as real 2-storey, but for 9-year-olds, it was enough.
You can have your helmets if you like, but don’t force me to wear 1, OR my kids.
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