O.T. Childhood memories

P

Pragitam

Joined
May 22, 2002
Messages
198
You lived as a child in the 60s or the 70s. (Some of us in the 40s and 50's)
Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we
have.................

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and
when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention hitchhiking to
town as a young kid!)

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then
rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running
into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we
were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. No cell phones.

We played dodgeball and sometimes the ball would really hurt.

We got cut and broken bones and broke teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame but us remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank sugar soda but we were never overweight........we were always outside playing.

We shared one grape soda with four friends, from one bottle and no one died from this?

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X Boxes, video games at all, 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cellular phones, Personal Computers, internet chat rooms, we had friends.

We went outside and found them. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rung the bell or just walked in and talked to them. Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves!
Out there in the cold cruel world! Without a guardian. How did we do it?

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and played with pocket knives and ate worms and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, cut our fingers off, nor did the worms live inside us forever,

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.....
Some students weren't as smart as others so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade.
Tests were not adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected.
No one to hide behind.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law, imagine that!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever. The past 50 years has been an
explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to accept, cope with, ignore and/or handle the situation.

And you're one of them.

Congratulations!
Please pass this on to others that have had the luck to grow
up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives........for our own good?

Anonymous (sent to me by a friend)
 
That was back in the days of corporal punishment. When the kids were affraid of their teachers instead of the teachers affraid of the kids. When parents, once notified that their kids had been spanked, would storm the schools talk to the teachers; then thank them and spank their kids some more. Back then kids respected their teachers, teachers respected the kids parents, and kids were allowed the opportunity to grow. We often had guns and knives in school, yet no one was shot, stabbed, or sent to prison.

My 7th grade history teacher was a recent Vietnam vet who could sometimes be encouraged to liven up our lecture with vivid descriptions of weapons at war. My 8th grade Science teacher would moonlight as a NYC detective sargent, and would often unburden himself by dropping his revolver on his desk. My 8th grade buddy Rob once decided that his fathers revolver was an appropriate subject for show and tell, and we knew enough to make sure it was safely unloaded and to tell him that the gun was unsafe and in need of repair. I spent most of the fifth grade trying to trade comic books for Jimmy Myer's hobo knife. Regretably, I never closed the deal, even more regretably I lost those comic books.

n2s
 
We entertained ourselves.
We made our own toys.
A jack knife,Barlow, stockman,trapper, Boy Scout or other knife was in the pocket of every kid.
With these, we made projectile weapons.
And just about everything else we needed.
Neighbors were called Mr. or Mrs. But they let you hang around when they were pounding nails or changing spark plugs.
They invited you fishing and hunting.
They didn`t rat you out if you dinged something with a BB.
You cocked it by putting the bbl. on your tennis shoe and putting all 50 lbs.on the lever.
A window, you would have to pay for somehow as a five year old.
That was a base ball. I didn`t shoot one out.
Lawn work was the usual penalty.
If we did not come home for lunch, Mom knew that we were cooking something over a twig fire.
A Winchester Mod. 67 cost $16.50 earned by Boy`s Life magazine door to door sales plans.
I still have the rifle and it is not registered.It never will be.
Luger P-08`s and G.I..45`s were $15.00 at the War Surplus store.
The feds only were noticed on 15 April.
 
Your neighbors had guns in the house and nobody thought anything of it. Your neighbor taught you proper firearms handling, and your folks thanked him.

S.
 
In some ways I think we have lost as much as we have gained down the years. More technology. More "civilization". More "development". Less respect. Less resposibilty. Less freedom.

Looking back at my own childhood (1970s), I wish we had retained some of the things I remember fondly. Like the vast rubber estates where I played. We made fishing rods from bamboo and catapults from mangosteen branches and had great fun with them. Places with trees, rivers, ponds - all gone now in the name of development.

Andrew Lim
 
Great stuff.

I remember Mom and Dad worrying about how they were going to pay the rent -- $3 per month -- 1938 - 39. And I recall after doing some research on Dec. 8, 1941 telling my Mom not to worry that the war with Japan would be over in 6 weeks. "The whole country is not as big as California," I remember observing. Mom said she thought it would last a lot longer than 6 weeks and I wondered why she didn't know as much as I did.

Some things have changed. Others haven't and never will.
 
One of the best things from that era was orange crates. We made everything from roller skate scooters to swords and shields, and then used the scraps to start the coal furnaces in winter.:) :)
 
What did you think ourselves will be, in the 21st century?
Full of rockets in the sky.
Silver space suits on all of us walking along the shopping mall.
Talking to wristwatch televisor, not cellphone.
Our dinner consists of some tablets.
Great computer center of some cubic miles.
Paralizers on the waist of all of us.

... Scarce chance to know Uncle Bill, HI, and all of you. sigh.
 
Rant warning -

I was part of that era too having been born in 1950. My dad was part of that era when it was assumed that "There ain't much that a man can't fix, with enough money and a 30-06".

Substitute a set of mechanic's tools for the 30-06 and you could rebuild an engine. And most everyone ( men ) had a set of tools. Might not be in a big craftsman tool chest 3 feet wide and 5 feet tall, but you had it. If you didn't have what you needed, you depended on your neighbor to lend you the tool and made sure you returned it.

Many folks still lived on farms and ranches, and that meant that you were supposed to know how to fix it yourself or where to get the information. But more than that, there was an unspoken code that you didn't give up until whatever was broken got fixed and working again.

When I was 12 or so my parents divorced and I went with my mother as was expected of custody at the time. I did see my dad often but not to stay with him and get involved in his projects. Finally when I was in my early twenties, I got to live with him while I went to college and work part-time in the same shop for a year or so before his death. I wonder sometimes what it would have been like having him around to show me how to fix problems as they came up rather than with my mom who expected men to know those things and women to know other stuff.

I think the U.S.A. has since lost a real part of it's character - the can do it attitude - that is not yet completely gone but is dying off. And with it the sense of personal responsibility that nearly every man was taught to assume then.

End of rant.
 
I was born in '51, raised out in the country in Alabama. Had more fun than the law allows. Everybody had a pocket knife. Spent the days roaming around the fields, hollers, & creeks with my buddies. Didn't have any teams, just showed up in the afternoon at a church down the road that had a diamond, & we played baseball til dark. Summer time we fished at night in the Tennessee River, & coon hunted in the fall & spring.

Everybody knew that you didn't go up to somebody's house with out hollering to let 'em know who was outside, or you might get a load of birdshot down your way. Break in a house to steal, & you'd find that the birdshot had been replaced with buckshot.

Wore overalls to high school & didn't think anything about it. After I started driving to school, winter of '66, left either a shotgun or rifle in the truck to hunt with after school & nothing was ever said. Probably find a firearm in every vehicle driven by any of the male students.

Wish I had known what a khukuri was back then....would have beat all those hours with an axe, brush hook, & machete cleaning up fence rows, etc. around the place.
 
In 1965 was 5 years old. Folks gave me my first bb gun. Loved it. Went everywhere with it. Couldn't cock it. I would wedge it, put it against my foot just right, not enough strength to cock the thing. So, I would shoot it then run into the house and have somebody cock it for me. Drove all the adults insane for a while. They would see me coming and roll their eyes or get this funny expression on their face. Me and the other kids all had bb guns and always had them with us, running around the neighberhood, and nobody ever paid us any attention. You don't ever see that anymore. My sister wouldn't let me buy bb guns for any of my nephews. Way too dangerous. Too bad.

Wolvesclaw
 
And 50 years ago today I was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba at the supply depot putting together a load of cargo to ferry out to the Warrington.
 
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