You Old Timers will relate to this...

Remember when cars didn't have seat belts?

When kids went out trick - or - treating on Halloween by themselves, at night?

When misbehaving in school meant: a) getting punished at school; and, b) getting punished when you went home, too.

Times have changed ....
 
I am only 21, but seem to remember things being quit different when I ws growing up:

I did a report on going shooting over the summer, and taped shell casings to it, and DIDN'T get expelled under some zero tolarence policy. :eek:

I can remember bringing a pocket knife to school on a few occasions, teachers knowing about, and nothing happening about it. :eek:

I sed to climb trees, walls, fences, and would get all cut up and scraped. I would just go home and wash off with some soap and water. The only time I was in a hospital was when I got hit in the eye with a stick, but still didn't want to go as I was fine, but my mom freaked. :eek:

I eat rare hamburgers, steaks, and put them back on the same plate as the raw food when they came off the grill. :eek:

I walked home from school alone, and stayed home alone until my parents got back from work. When I went into 7th grade I took the subway to and from school on my own. Even walked through some back allays some days. :eek:

I remember going into bars with my dad and uncle, and sitting at the bar with my coke. :eek:

I started driving before I legally could, and drinking before that. :eek:

I played with knives, guns, and fireworks. I cut myself, burned myself, bt am still alive to tell about it. I even used some cigarettes to light off fireworks with my parents around, and nobody worried that I was smoking, because I wasn't. :eek:

My first job, at aroud 16 or so, was doing landscaping for a company. I worked with all sorts of machines, chainsaws even, and would come home cut, bruised, and filthy. Nobody worried about it, or said I was in any danger. I was just doing a crummy job until I graduate college. :eek:


I am sure there are more, but these are off the top of my head. It is amazing how quickly things change sometimes.
 
Lets see grew up on Lake Ontario.Swam in the Lake with my friends from about age ten. Took boats out at about 12.Played out on the "frozen" ice that forms along the shore,climbed inside the caves that built up.

Today if a kid went out on it they would call for an ice rescue team and lock up the parents.

At around 13 could take out a 12ga. and meet up with my buddies.

Apple wars in the orchard across from my house. :) Think of a snowball fight,but with apples. :D

Slept in forts in the woods.Left after school,be home sometime tomorrow.

Hitchhiked when I needed to get somewhere.
 
I'm 50, and I can't remember alot of my "younger years"...(It's that growing up in the hippie culture of the '60's sort of thing...:D.:D.).

But I do remember being able to take a pocketknife to school, and not having the SWAT Team called on you if you showed it to a friend during recess.

I also remember when gas was $0.39 a gallon, and only $0.30 a gallon during the "gas wars". I've now seen it up as high as $2.85 a gallon a few months ago.

I remember when it cost $0.75 to get in to watch a couple of movies and a couple of cartoons, and a large popcorn and a coke was $0.75....Then after the movies you could take "Cindy-Lou" to the local burger joint for a nice homemade-style burger and a milk shake for just a couple bucks.

Yes, I remember when cars didn't have seat belts, but I also remember when a guy could work on his own car with just a socket-set, a couple of wrenches, a screwdriver, and a hammer...Long before cars had computers in 'em.

And I remember when the only video game was "pong".
 
At 47, I only recently told my mom SOME of the things I lived through. She just kinda sat there staring. I only almost died a few times that I know about and probably a bunch more times when I didn't notice Death just missing my shirttails.
I grew up on what was the outskirts of northeast San Antonio.
We hunted the creeks and fields armed to the teeth with ALL manner of weaponry devices.
We built fires.
We played in an abandoned farmhouse and outbuildings.
We killed dozens of rattlers (some over 7' long) with bb guns.
We played outside in thunderstorms.
We swam in floodwaters.
We camped out in scrap lumber forts.
We got stung stabbed and chewed. (Texas)
We blew stuff up.
We played on the train tracks.
We played on trains....
We knew what hurt. Firecrackers. Stepping on nails. Wasps. Rocks. Other stuff.
We had chemistry sets with real chemicals.
We supplemented those with household cleaners and solvents....
We learned how to clean up toxic spills.
We thought the mercury from thermometers was really cool.
We had enormous fun.
Then when I was 7 years old.... :eek: :eek: :eek:
 
I remember collecting soda bottles along Old Dominion Drive and washing them out so that I could collect the 2 cent deposit for them and that way 25 bottles would pay for the Saturday Matinee at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. That was a good deal when my allowance was 50 cents a week and I mowed 2.5 acres of lawn in the summers to get it.

Hiking, shooting, and fishing along Difficult Run where it flows into the Potomac just below Great Falls. I was climbing out of the rocky cut through which it runs one day and hauled myself up to a ledge only to find it occupied by a copperhead snake sunning itself. I backed down and gave the right of way to the snake.

Drag races along a straight stretch of Old Dominion Drive

And, PhilL, you may laugh at Benadryl and bee sting kits, but I had a friend who was on a ladder and was stung by a bee. He was dead by the time that he hit the ground. Me, I used to throw stones at paper hornets' nests and tie a 4" firecracker to the end of a long stick, light the fuse, and very quickly stuff it up the hole in the bottom of the nests. But I HATED the goddamned yellowjackets; those are the meanest little bastards you ever I ever ran into.

Yes, we used to shoot, carry guns, knives and God alone knows what all. My best friend as a kid had a Sten submachine gun. When the word got out too widely that he had it, the cop who was assigned to McLean passed the word through my brother that he had best get rid of it before the police had to take official notice of it. Can you imagine police treating it that way today? He dumped it off of Chain Bridge into the Little Falls of the Potomac along with a cast-iron jockey boy that he and another friend had stolen one drunken night from in front of Bobby Kennedy's house. The water runs very fast and very deep at the Little Falls.

During the summer of 1959, my friend and I built a log cabin in the woods behind his house. I look back on that as one of the most fun things that I ever did, although we busted our butts doing it. During the next summer, we had to deal with a bunch of copperheads who had taken up residence underneath it. We chinked up the foundations with logs and mud, let the mud dry, and then tossed a sulphur bomb through the one opening that we had left. As the snakes all came slithering out, we were waiting with shotguns and had a copperhead massacre. We weren't bothered by any damned snakes under the cabin after that.

On hindsight, I sometimes marvel that we lived to tell the stories.
 
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