Posted on 06/17/2015 4:35:26 AM PDT by HomerBohn
How about getting on a bus and going to the movies on Saturday? Or getting dropped off at the mall?
Sitting in your dad’s lap and driving the car.
Having rock wars - two teams of kids on different sides of the creek, with a raft in the middle going down the creek. Guys with rocks on the raft, guys hiding in the little structure in the center of the raft. People throwing rocks at the raft as it floated by. Everyone took a break so that they could get the raft back up the creek. People argued about who was going to get to be on the raft first.
Sleeping outside in the backyard under the stars in the summer.
Playing ‘smear the queer’ on the playground. Guy with the ball gets to run around with it while everyone tries to tackle him on the pavement. Once tackled, you give up the ball.
As an altar boy, there was always snacking on the unconsecrated hosts, or taking a pull from a bottle of muscatel used to fill the cruet before Mass.
Bringing the neighbor kids over to haul railroad ties and bricks in the backyard, then paying them #5 and taking them to the local corner store to load up on candy, and thinking we kids got the great end of that deal.
Our parents smoked in the house. Fed us liver.
We erected massive bicycle jumps on the cul-d-sac and jumped kids who laid under the ramp. Nobody had a helmet on. Ever. I can’t remember the last time I saw I kid with a BMX bike jumping in the street, even off of driveway ramps that are built into the sidewalk.
Unsupervised use of firecrackers and fireworks. Unsupervised use of Estes Rockets. Unsupervised use of wrist rockets and BB guns.
Kids raised in the 1980s?
I gave “The Dangerous Book for Boys” to a buddy when his lads were 8 & 9.
They LOVED the book and the activities therein.
By the way, kids didn't sling dead cats in the 40s and 50s, if you came across a dead and threw it, that was pretty something that you came across that day, it wasn't a child hood activity.
We used to build rafts and wait for the creek to rise and float a few miles. Ever gig? Got my first gun at eight years old and started hunting soon after. Walked to school dodging coal trucks and crossed the creek on rocks after the swinging bridge washed out. Put rocks in our snowballs if we were throwing at someone we didn’t like. When I was 12 blew a tree down with half a stick of dynamite, got in a little trouble for that one. Worked for my dad in our mines and hauled house coal for extra pocket money. I did it all and then some. Hell raising was our past time. Then I discovered girls and women.
All the while breathing 100 degree dust...precious memories.
Kids today would have seizures requiring hospitalization just watching this on a video.
We had an IH Super H with a couple of home made wagons...what was your rig?
Well, I never came home so dirty that Mom had to hose me off, while I was still a child.
Had to have the wife hose me off one time after getting the truck stuck while deer hunting.
Not really sure if that counts in the “child” or “adult” category, though......
I’ll add to the list...
Bottle rocket wars with my friends (no eye protection!!!)...
Making Evil Knievel style jump ramps for my mini-bike...
Back yard shooting as a minor (unsupervised, but then my Dad taught me how to shoot at age 7 and hunt at age 10)...
I ALWAYS carried a knife (it was a tool)...
Not only mowed the grass with both push mower (age 7) and rider (age 9), but bush hogged about 5 acres several times a year on a Massey-Ferguson starting at age 12...
I lost count how many of those I went through. Quite a few gliders too.
The good old days!
What kind of list is complete without fireworks?
Travesty.
Drag racing.
In the 50s and early 60’s, nearly every schoolkid’s dad was a WW2, or sometimes Korean War veteran. So kids brought all kinds of dads’ war souvenirs into school for “show & tell,” including captured edged weapons. I even remember a Japanese sword. I went in with a piece of German AA shrapnel that smashed through my father’s B-17, and his father’s WW1 French 37mm tank shell with propellant and explosive removed long before. Today any of the above would get a kid a lot more than arrested.
Or going with your older brother to see Flash Gordon serials at the movie theater early on a Saturday.......all for a nickel!
Lived on a Marine Base as a kid, 29 Palms, CA. We got ahold of a parachute and tied it to the tongue of a wagon. Wind came up and we took off down some dirt road in back of base housing.
We couldn’t see anything in front of us except the parachute and man were we flying fast ... until we crashed. Ouch! Rocks and cactus. Once was enough, we never tried that again; but what a ride.
The one I fell from, though, was a friend's whom I was helping to get in his hay.
Our family didn't have a baler--we converted a horse-drawn hayrake to be used by the Ford, and raked the hay into rows, then forked it all up into the haywagon, and used a hayfork in the barn to pull it up into the loft.
We were pretty much a 19th-century family farm operating in the 1970's. :)
Building a go-cart out of scrap wood, steered by a rope (those of you who have built these know how it is done) with your friends, and going down a hilly street at what seemed to be a multiple of the speed of light, dodging traffic and crashing into a dirt pile at the end of the ride.
Then, doing it AGAIN.
When it was YOUR turn.
I drove my riding lawnmower down the street to my lawnmowing job...one day.. I drove my lawnmower during my paper route. I drove it down a state highway...try that today...(or a kid with a paper route.)
Rust holes in the floor...I had that when my dad bought an AMC Ambassador wagon when the IAM (the union at Pratt) went on strike. He bought this wagon from the state, because he didn’t want to use his Vette to go through the gate. The floor was rusted in places. The IAM unions loved to scratch car of management when they are on strike.
Now.. those bought me back to childhood...one day, my friend made a hot air balloon with a trash bag...(with no warning label that says may cause suffocation if put on head.), wax, gasoline and fire. It hit the roof of my friend’s house, but then it landed 5 miles away...we followed it on our bikes.
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