Born in 1956 I grew up on a 240 acre farm with what became a national wild river running through it. In rural northern Wisconsin.
Most of my free time was spent hunting, fishing and trapping.
I spent more time in canoes then I ever did on a bike cycle.
For me my childhood was fantastic one could not ask for a better one. We were not rich being one of eight meant a lot of hand me downs.
During my Jr. to SR. high years I made money making hay working at a filling station pumping he , mowing lawns, catching minnows for the local bait shop ect and trapping.
I made more money trapping in a month then I did working all summer at a job. I carried guns to school on the bus to spend a week end at a buddies house for hunting.
It was a fantastic time to grow up.
A friend of mine, born in 1959 or so, put himself through college trapping on the Minnesota River just outside of the Twin Cities, MN.
In 1975 I back-packed in Wyoming for two weeks by myself at the age of 15. (I still can’t figure out why my parents allowed me - and encouraged me.)
In 1977 I was in love with a gal that loved to ride horses, fish and hunt - and those were the days when a gal like that didn’t have to become transgender to “be who they really are.”
“Born in 1956 I grew up on a 240 acre farm with what became a national wild river running through it. In rural northern Wisconsin.”
I’ve got ya by 16 years..class of 1940. Too young for WW2 and Korea (I remember them) but just right for Viet Nam. I enlisted in 1963 but by the grace of the Almighty spent my time behind the Berlin Wall instead of Viet Nam. Virtually all my male cohorts of that era spent time in the military.
You grew up rural while I grew up south side of Chicago. Even at that, my father taught me to drive stick shift on those busy city streets at age 12. Chicago public schools were great at that time. I grew up loving guns, fishing and the outdoors thanks to my father and the boy scouts.
I will always maintain the opinion that the country turned the corner downwards with the election of Johnson over Goldwater in ‘64. Watched with dismay from overseas as America deteriorated during the later ‘60’s. We are paying dearly for this decades later.
Obama years were devastating. Often found myself tearfully reminiscing the earlier golden years of the ‘50’s. “The Day the Music Died” kind of summed it up...while watching old cars destroyed by Obama’s “cash for clunkers” disgrace. Damn the left.
I was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1947. My Dad was in journalism school on the GI bill. I grew up in Reedsburg, with Grandparents in Wonewoc, Mauston and Amberg (North of Green Bay).
Allowance was $0.50/week. Life for a young boy in a rual farming community was a delight! Bicycling, fishing, baseball, sandlot football, fishing, adventures in the woods and fields, fishing, and did I mention, FISHING?
Three Stooges and Micky Mouse Club, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best.
Life was good, surrounded by Veterans of World War I, World War II and the Kids from the Korean War. Taught to love my country in my school, church and home. Boy Scouts were like you saw in “Follow Me, Boys”.
Then, in the late 60s, the country turned to shit! Thanks, Liberals!
I fished for crab coming in with the tide. Other Japanese kids were doing the same with bamboo pole stabbing forks. They built a fire and we cooked and ate the crab legs.
They spoke no English and my Nihon was limited but we all knew what we liked.
Today, the tidal area has been land-filled and is the home to an oil refinery and Nissan car assembly plant.
I was born in 1965 and lived through this period, it was a blast. My great grand parents had a wood cook stove, barn and smoke house and lived on edge of mountains with a big creek. At age 5 and 4 me and my little brother were out there with great grandfather using a hatchet to splint kindling for cook stove and did fine. The left would melt down now . At age 7 and 6 we were using a lawn mower to cut grass by ourselves. We carried bucket upon bucket of coal from the coal bin to the house in the winter to keep the fire place and stove going to stay warm. And if the tv wasn’t coming in good you were sent out to turn and adjust the tv antenna even in the dark and dad would smack the wall when you hit the magic spot with the antenna.
At age 6 my parents built a house next to my great grandparents and we grew up with BB guns, air rifles, plowing gardens, weeding and harvesting. We burned and cleaned fence rows, dug ditches, had bikes we rode allowed all over town, store, little league games and practice etc... We had fist fights in school, got paddled and spanked again if we started the fight or if we didn’t take our part. We could walk down town from parents business and at the Sports Center grill and get a hot dog, fries and coke for a dollar. And we went with great grandparents once a month to town for groceries where we ate in cafe and had a blast with them. We went to church every Sunday morning and evening. It was expected and fun.
The Kiwanis had and still do a pancake breakfast a week before Christmas where for $2 you got all the pancakes, sausage and milk you could eat and parents would give us the money and tell us where it was and say walk and we did. In the summer we played baseball, stayed home and when lunch time would head to great grandparents and she would have dinner cooked.
We had chores and did them or faced a spanking. I listened to Dad rail against Carter and fuss at Cronkite and other America hating leftist pretending to be journalists even in the 70’s. Dad and mom worked long hours sometimes Dad would go in at 4:00am, work day until 5:30pm come home eat supper and watch news and relax for an hour and then go to basement and start doing work he brought home with him. There were 5 kids and they never made over $30k combined but they bought their home, kept us clothed and fed, and made sure we had good Christmas and never took a penny of welfare. That was my rural Kentucky mountains life in the 70’s. It was good!!!