Screaming all the way down Ridgecrest on a flexi-flyer and shooting across Ponce de Leon Ave. because the only brakes you had were steel tabs that rubbed on the front wheels.
I'm still here, just suffering a little from dain bramage... I mean brain damage.
;(
I rode a bike and didn’t wear a helmet or knee and elbow pads!!!! *GASP*
14 years old. Family vacation. West texas. We ran out of gas. My dad has to stay with car and rest of family. So he tells me (14!) to hitch hike into the next town and get help. I did!
A lot of people want to live in a totally safe society where nothing bad ever happens and no one ever gets sick and no one ever dies. These people try to expand government in their quest to build that utopia.
Personally, I really don’t desire a safe society. We are all going to die. Bad stuff will always happen. I would trust in personal responsibility and let the chips fall where they may.
Riding bikes as a group to THE HILL.
It makes the pile of gravel look like an ant hill. It was a huge pile of dirt from the state highway crew who were building a freeway.
The path down the hill was steep and treacherous, a fall would result in horrific road rash and a long painful ride home.
I don’t remember a trip to the ER from that. I think the only ER trip was when I was running past a tree at night and caught my head on a low branch. Lots of blood. I still have the scar on my bald head 40 years later.
Every kid in our neighborhood had a toy gun. We played cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, soldiers etc.
We pointed them at each other and shot and you’d pretend to die if you got hit and you never heard of a school shooting
or a kid running around with an actual gun.
2, 5, 7, 9 and 11.
Loaded guns were clearly NOT allowed in classrooms. (They had to be unloaded, and left in the cloak room.)
During winter in Buffalo, we would take a ladder (a wooden one!) climb onto the garage roof and jump into the 4 foot drifts after a heavy snowfall.
Our school superintendent was an ex-FBI agent! Needless to say, one (both teachers and students) rarely got by with anything disruptive. It was all about respect and learning. And, respect was not just during school time it was all the time!
Our sheriff was 6;6” and an ex Texas ranger!
We did not lock our doors unless we left on vacation.
95% went to church on Sunday and you could not buy beer or wine on Sundays or shop at the malls/retail stores. It was A DAY OFF given by God to REST!
The football boys gym was baling hay during the summer! And, those guys are still strong in their 70’s!
Kids fought to get the few summer jobs at local businesses.
Mom made all our dresses. We had 5 each, one for each day of the week for school. By the end of the season they were faded. We also had to iron them.
The bed had to be made before we left the front door every day.
We walked to school, back and forth at lunch and home in the afternoon. Almost 4 blocks each way.
Mom’s had to call their kids home several times a day as we wanted to play with the neighbors as much as possible.
TV shows were heartwarming and funny.
We blessed God and He blessed Texas and America!!!!! AMEN!
Thanks for the post . . .I remember it well. The “good ole days” were just that. . .GOOD.
We ran around the neighborhood all day without adult supervision and when thirsty, we drank straight from the faucet behind the bushes next to the front door.
There were slides, wooden teeter-totters (hurt like the blazes when skin of your finger happened to be between the two joined planks), the spin-a-wheel, monkey bars, tall swings and all on black asphalt and gravel. Many a scrape and a bruise found on the premises.
We could ride our bikes, even after dark, to the neighborhood shopping center, have a soda, take in a movie, and then ride home. The bookmobile had a schedule to keep and came round like clockwork in the summer months (at that time we had summer vacation from the end of May until day after Labor Day). And the schools were NOT air conditioned. YOU sweated.
In Texas heat, you sweated a lot.
“If you guys are going to beat each other up go outside and do it!”
We rode our bikes to Who Knows Where to play in places that only we knew, never having to worry about freaks or psychos or pedophiles lurking behind every tree.
We said ‘Yes sir’ and ‘Yes Ma’am’ to total strangers and would hold the door for them as they entered the stores, since there were no automatic doors in those days.
We drank sodas with real sugar, not HFCS’s and never gained an ounce.
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Riding in back of a pickup truck down the freeway - loaded with friends, booze, chewing tobacco.
The only sporting equipment we had were a broken bat that was nailed and taped at the handle; a coverless baseball held together with tape; a broomstick and a Pennsy Pinky (or Spaldeen) for playing stick ball, punch ball and stoop ball.
We could take our pocket knives to school to play mumbletypeg peg and no one cared......................