Posted on 06/17/2015 4:35:26 AM PDT by HomerBohn
Can you imagine seeing a 12 year old driving a tractor down the road these days?
Yes, having bottle rocket fights, Burning ants with a magnifying glass, eating grapes off the vine, wild raspberries and tomato’s without washing them.
When I was on active duty in the 70s, I had a brand new 2LT for a roommate. Boy actually didn’t know how to boil water to heat a hot dog, couldn’t fry bacon, or scramble eggs. Just hadn’t been taught. Taught him to cook burgers on grill and BBQ chicken.
These days there'd be helicopters and a swat team.
When we were even younger mum would knock us up a coupla Vegemite sandwiches and point to the front door saying "make sure you're home before dark" Our lives revolved around our bikes back then (and making 'bolt bombs')Great days!
About 20 years ago we made one from an old bicycle fork and surgical tubing. A wheelbarrow of defective tomatoes from the garden were used as ammo. Local kids gathered around three adults and wanted to shoot tomatoes. A busybody called the cops. They saw what was going on and fired a few rounds too.
Had woods two blocks from home that had a creek running through it and spotted snakes, turtles, frogs, and of course captured tadpoles to take home.
My cohort of about nine boys played army on those woods. Even dug foxes with the surplus army e-tools which every dad seemed to have at least two. One time we tied up two of us as prisoners of war and put them in the foxhole, went off else where shooting clods of dirt at each other. Went home for dinner and remembered we left our friends tied up in the hole. Couple of meals taken standing “seared that memory” for us. ;>)
When I was about 8 or 9 a big storm line was being installed at the edge of the woods, the equipment being left over the weekend. Well we crawled through the drain pipes and all over the equipment including what we called a steam shovel even though it wasn’t. What did we know. So there we were in the cab making engines noises, trying to tug on the levers, when one of us pulled out a knob that started the engine. We couldn’t figure out how to shut it down and cigured we’d better scoot quickly. Talk about a fear laden week end, thought for sure we’d be discovered and get punished beyond our most horrible imaginings. Of course we ztayed as far away from the big machine. Lucked out that it just ran out of fuel before Monday morning without any adults noticing.
You did not mess with adult tools or vehicles, ever. Except when adults weren’t around...sometimes.
Explosives: Firecrackers, Roman candles, cherry bombs, M-80s, sparklers, etc.
Diving into the rock quarry pool. We said it was bottomless.
Playground fights were no big deal...unless some teachers pet or momma’s boy squealed.
BB-gun, pellet gun.
Trick-or-treating alone after dark.
Riding in the car: Lying on the bench that’s below the rear window and behind the back seat.
Setting up ramps and jumping our bikes like Evel Kenieval, rope swings over the creek that ran through town, jumping from the hayloft into the hay pile below, driving ATC’s (the trikes), BB gun wars with friends, my dad setting us on his lap so we could drive the car up and down the alley behind the house, all sorts of dangerous things we did.
One summer, probably 1969, two friends and I loaded up our packs and went on a three-day, forty mile hike on the Appalachian trail.
I had an old 16mm projector. I would use a shed with electricity, charge 5 cents admission and show the same old silent comedies over and over again. My sister sold Kool Aid for 5 cents and we had a ball.
The same kids kept coming back.
The driver cause the stack to fall once and I fell between the tractor and wagon while it was going across the rows, rather than along the rows. Luckily I landed on a bale and bounced sideways away from the wagon--otherwise I would've been run over.
I know at least two parents who were still cutting their kids’ toenails in college.
Seriously.
Disgusting.
Car seats...and seat belts? Did cars have them? I was stopped in CT for not having my son buckled in... In a 1954 Sunliner my friend owned. I told the guy it DIDN’T. have seat belts. He told me my son shouldn’t be in it then.
Did most of the stuff on the list, early 60’s to early 70’s. Also made gunpowder, smoke bombs and fireworks, some of which went BOOM :). 5 pounds of saltpeter/sugar makes one helluva smoke cloud.
Carried my .22 rifle & ammo on a plane as an unaccompanied minor. We kids were free to roam my grandpa’s 90 acre farm and shoot when we got there.
At home, I made a target in the basement from a bunch of old phone books. Shoot, then look up the bullets in the Yellow Pages.
One favorite was putting a polyethylene bottle on a stick and lighting it. It would burn and the drips make the most unusual sound, VOOP, VOOP. We would set up army men in the sandbox and simulate napalm attacks.
A 50 gallon trash burning barrel full of cattail catkin fluff really goes up in flame fast.
I did pretty much everything on that list, so did my kids, and thankfully, so will my grandkids... Other than the school stuff, because they won’t be going there at all...
Throwing rocks at living things was verboten unless it was for defense.
When I was about 12 I was sent by my Grandfather to the local hardware store for a case of dynamite and some fuse. Put it on account, unpacked it so the whole case would fit in the baskets on my bicycle and rode the 1 mile back to the farm. The good old days.
I remember we set up a ramp for jumping our bikes and after about half an hour there were 12-14 smaller kids lying on their backs in a nice neat row for us to jump over.Of course a few got landed on but no-one died.I did however bend my mates sister's bike in half on a heavy landing.Took it back to their place like nothing happened.His sister did have a puzzled look on her face the next time she rode it.
One more.At the end of our street there was a 2 acre paddock that the local council used as a temporary dump for cut down trees and such.After a few weeks of dumping there were 5 or 6 mounds of trees and branches the size of a house so naturally every kid in the neighbourhood burrowed in to make forts.Our fort though was far and away the best because ours had a fireplace.We only got to use it once and though it was indeed nice and warm it got a little out of hand rather quickly.We ended up running for our lives into an alley and huddling there listening to all the sirens.Who knew burning things down and blowing stuff up could be so much fun (though at the time we each had a pantload of bricks!)
And you didn't put a bike lock on it because no one would steal it.
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