JMichael said:
Been there done that! :LOL2:
We used to aim for the hands as those were the only things exposed. :LOL2: :LOL2:
I remember Smokes at my parents store for 50 cents. Then Everyone threatening to quit when they became a buck a pack.
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Been there done that! :LOL2:
We used to aim for the hands as those were the only things exposed. :LOL2: :LOL2:
I remember Smokes at my parents store for 50 cents. Then Everyone threatening to quit when they became a buck a pack.
lovedr79
Well-known member
how could i have forgotten about BB gun wars???? "only 1 pump" but it ended up being 10.
Haircuts were 50 cents
odd/even gas rationing
returning soda bottles, 2 cents for the little guys and 5 cents for the 1 lieter
having tomato fights in fields that are now town houses.
delivering the Evening Bulletin on Thanksgiving Day (130 pages)
going to drive-in movies for Sat. night date
Gillete Friday Night Fights
Lunch with Soupy Sales
S&H Green Stamp
Boxes of Government Cheese
odd/even gas rationing
returning soda bottles, 2 cents for the little guys and 5 cents for the 1 lieter
having tomato fights in fields that are now town houses.
delivering the Evening Bulletin on Thanksgiving Day (130 pages)
going to drive-in movies for Sat. night date
Gillete Friday Night Fights
Lunch with Soupy Sales
S&H Green Stamp
Boxes of Government Cheese
fender66
Well-known member
Remember when I could stand up straight, look down and still see my feet?
What's this world coming to?
Sigh #-o
What's this world coming to?
Sigh #-o
PSG-1
Well-known member
Jim said:
LMAO, I remember those days. I can also remember a BB stuck in the knuckle of my right middle finger, I extracted that bad boy by biting my knuckle between my front teeth, and the BB popping out, which I promptly spit out, then started returning fire on my opponent. :twisted:
:LOL2:
We were so violet back then. :mrgreen:
We were so violet back then. :mrgreen:
I remember getting up early during summer vacations, going out all day long and coming home after dinner at some point and my parents not even thinking twice about it.
Now I cant let my kids out in the yard if I'm not out there, and I live in a good neighborhood............ :roll:
Now I cant let my kids out in the yard if I'm not out there, and I live in a good neighborhood............ :roll:
russ010
Well-known member
Jim said:
I was thinking about that the other day... I used to rampage through the woods behind my house as a kid - and be gone for hours at a time with nothing but my BB gun. It's a shame how society has changed
PSG-1
Well-known member
Back in the 1950's the average range for a child was about 6 miles. Heck, when I was a kid (and it wasn't in the 1950's either) I traveled as far away as 40 miles, in a boat.
Now the average range is about 6 blocks, because the world we live in has become so dangerous and violent.
The criminals are winning, and the citizens are losing. We're losing freedom and liberty every day. If it's not being threatened by a common street thug, it's being threatened by the thugs and parasites we have on payroll, as our elected 'leaders'
Now the average range is about 6 blocks, because the world we live in has become so dangerous and violent.
The criminals are winning, and the citizens are losing. We're losing freedom and liberty every day. If it's not being threatened by a common street thug, it's being threatened by the thugs and parasites we have on payroll, as our elected 'leaders'
overboard
Well-known member
Now, now! [-X
But it's true! =D>
But it's true! =D>
JMichael
Well-known member
Single parent household but yea, we'd be gone from early morning until hunger was more tempting than the fun we were having.Jim said:
Learning to swim and in later years ski in a river that was loaded with trot lines submerged logs etc.
Using 1 gal. paint can lids like a frisbee before frisbee was invented.
Creating our own games out of simple things like a bike tire and a stick
Baseball games on the fly, played by anyone that showed up (our own version of sandlot)
Ah but we were a fearless lot, 10 feet tall and bullet proof. #-o
PSG-1 said:
There is soo much I'd like to say on that subject, but I'll refrain because this is about times long since past and the good memories of those times. And if I started down the dark path it would all be gone. :wink:
MrSimon
Well-known member
Jim said:
Boy ain't that the truth. I'm only 35, but my brother and I used to romp through the woods for hours and hours ... or jump on our bikes (no safety gear) and ride miles from home. Mom and Dad sort of knew where we were, but not really. And there was no cell phone or GPS tracking chip. All we had to do was be home for dinner.
After having kids, my wife and I would sit and talk about the "good old days" and how our neighborhood wasn't conducive to our kids having that kind of childhood ..... so we sold our house and bought a smaller one on ten acres that backs up to hundreds of acres of woods.
My five year old knows how to start a campfire and my three year old knows how to step on the base of a pricker bush to get over it. And they can both tell the difference between a trout and a sucker when looking in the creek. I could be wrong, but I think those skills are equally as important as what they learn in school.
:LOL2:
I remember jumping bikes with no safety gear! :beer:
2 flat tires in a row ended my evil kenevil days.
I remember jumping bikes with no safety gear! :beer:
2 flat tires in a row ended my evil kenevil days.
I used to have a real original big wheel with the hand brake. The front tire had a flat spot from all the skid stops. :LOL2:
The new ones are budget, no hand brakes....... :LOL2:
The new ones are budget, no hand brakes....... :LOL2:
Kismet
Well-known member
Fine. I hope you guys are happy. You made me look up what was once an annual post of mine in a forum long-gone. As I re-read it, some of the smells, and feelings, return.
Enjoy, as you choose:
When I was a kid on "da sout side a chicawgo," (circa 1950 ish)
There WAS a guy who walked the alleys, with a clanging bell, and a two-wheeled cart supporting a grinding wheel. Maybe more than one guy. Sissors, knives, any edged tools got sharpened. The alleys weren't paved back then as far as I can recall.
There were also "junk" men, who had horse-drawn wagons (Honest) who would be scavengers of tossed stuff, or be asked to wait as the still-too-good-to-be-garbage stuff was brought out and loaded up in their wagons.
And "Johnny, the Milk Man," whose ? Wanzer Dairy (don't recall now), truck wheezed the alley-way, with blocks of ice, just ASKING to be attacked by kids for ice chips, when Johnny was carrying glass bottles of milk, cream and half-and-half back and forth to the houses.
The alleys were our playgrounds, battlegrounds, adventure parks, and learning centers back then. There were always men working on their cars, or building furniture, or painting stuff, or repairing something or other on the benches after work, or on the weekends. Depending on the personality of the guy, kids would learn from or run past the open garage...always peeking to see if there was "neat stuff" in the garage.
And since I'm on this track...There was a time..about the end of the first week of January in Chicago...when the "big kids" (7th-8th graders) would start the collection of discarded Christmas trees, dragging them to the sandbox in the City Playground at, er....66th and Talman.... The younger kids would join in, and eventually, as many as 30 or more dried and discarded pine trees would be collected, along with plant sticks, any wood found in passing, cardboard, and whatever wasn't tied down that couldn't be described as "too good to take."
Concurrently, this motley crew would have collected the biggest baking potatoes they could sneak out of the house, chunks of butter, aluminum (tin) foil, and salt and pepper...and of course...no napkins or plates.
This was often the coldest time of year in the City, but like the pioneers before us, as dusk drew nigh, paper would be crumpled, strategically placed, the little kids would be threatened back away from the corner of the sandbox, and a match would be struck and touched to the paper at the base of the construction of piled trees.
As I write this, I can hear the " WHOOOOSSSHHHH" as the brittle and dried pine needles and twigs, then limbs, then the trunks themselves caught fire and sucked all the oxygen from the area to create a flame..that in my mind's eye...must have been 30 feet tall some years.
Why no adults called the cops or fire department, or why no burning embers flew to set garages or houses afire, I do not know.
We NEVER had police problems.
Anyway, eventually, the fire would burn down, the big kids would concentrate the fire and the potatoes would be pierced and wrapped in foil, and then inserted in the burning coals.
Then came the test of character, for the pants, woolen mittens, shoes were all soaked, and starting to re-freeze...there was only so much space in the radiant area of the fire...and the frontier aura of the moments heartened our young hearts, as we endured some parts being singed and others frozen awaiting the "spuds" with the now-melting butter in our pockets, our faces burning from alternating cold and heat extremes, and the dark of Winter night making the brilliance of the coals, or fire, become more intense...and we waited, talking about god-knows-what, maybe emulating the "big kids", dunno....
Until finally, some natural leader of the big kids would poke the embers and claw out a blackened and torn ball of foil, and peel back the metal wrapping...
and then...just then...the skin on the "spud" would break and a billow of the best-smelling steam in the world would rise up into the darkness and cold.
The butter (whatever was left) and the salt and pepper were brought out, and each kid tried to identify HIS potato (es). Some were charred a half-inch thick, others partially uncooked, but nothing has ever tasted better than those hot baked potatoes in the middle of a city playground sandbox in the dark of an early evening, with the taste made vivid with too much butter on fingers, an uneven distribution of salt or pepper, and the charcoal flecks that were inevitable as we ate these wonderful pioneer foods in the shadows of the street lights on a winter's night.
The fire consumed itself, the kids would straggle home to be yelled at for the grime on their clothes, and some of the older kids, and the younger-but-one-day-gonna-be-fire-tender kids, stayed, watched, and eventually smothered the last of the coals.
And then we left.
A winter night remembered for a life-time.
Enjoy, as you choose:
When I was a kid on "da sout side a chicawgo," (circa 1950 ish)
There WAS a guy who walked the alleys, with a clanging bell, and a two-wheeled cart supporting a grinding wheel. Maybe more than one guy. Sissors, knives, any edged tools got sharpened. The alleys weren't paved back then as far as I can recall.
There were also "junk" men, who had horse-drawn wagons (Honest) who would be scavengers of tossed stuff, or be asked to wait as the still-too-good-to-be-garbage stuff was brought out and loaded up in their wagons.
And "Johnny, the Milk Man," whose ? Wanzer Dairy (don't recall now), truck wheezed the alley-way, with blocks of ice, just ASKING to be attacked by kids for ice chips, when Johnny was carrying glass bottles of milk, cream and half-and-half back and forth to the houses.
The alleys were our playgrounds, battlegrounds, adventure parks, and learning centers back then. There were always men working on their cars, or building furniture, or painting stuff, or repairing something or other on the benches after work, or on the weekends. Depending on the personality of the guy, kids would learn from or run past the open garage...always peeking to see if there was "neat stuff" in the garage.
And since I'm on this track...There was a time..about the end of the first week of January in Chicago...when the "big kids" (7th-8th graders) would start the collection of discarded Christmas trees, dragging them to the sandbox in the City Playground at, er....66th and Talman.... The younger kids would join in, and eventually, as many as 30 or more dried and discarded pine trees would be collected, along with plant sticks, any wood found in passing, cardboard, and whatever wasn't tied down that couldn't be described as "too good to take."
Concurrently, this motley crew would have collected the biggest baking potatoes they could sneak out of the house, chunks of butter, aluminum (tin) foil, and salt and pepper...and of course...no napkins or plates.
This was often the coldest time of year in the City, but like the pioneers before us, as dusk drew nigh, paper would be crumpled, strategically placed, the little kids would be threatened back away from the corner of the sandbox, and a match would be struck and touched to the paper at the base of the construction of piled trees.
As I write this, I can hear the " WHOOOOSSSHHHH" as the brittle and dried pine needles and twigs, then limbs, then the trunks themselves caught fire and sucked all the oxygen from the area to create a flame..that in my mind's eye...must have been 30 feet tall some years.
Why no adults called the cops or fire department, or why no burning embers flew to set garages or houses afire, I do not know.
We NEVER had police problems.
Anyway, eventually, the fire would burn down, the big kids would concentrate the fire and the potatoes would be pierced and wrapped in foil, and then inserted in the burning coals.
Then came the test of character, for the pants, woolen mittens, shoes were all soaked, and starting to re-freeze...there was only so much space in the radiant area of the fire...and the frontier aura of the moments heartened our young hearts, as we endured some parts being singed and others frozen awaiting the "spuds" with the now-melting butter in our pockets, our faces burning from alternating cold and heat extremes, and the dark of Winter night making the brilliance of the coals, or fire, become more intense...and we waited, talking about god-knows-what, maybe emulating the "big kids", dunno....
Until finally, some natural leader of the big kids would poke the embers and claw out a blackened and torn ball of foil, and peel back the metal wrapping...
and then...just then...the skin on the "spud" would break and a billow of the best-smelling steam in the world would rise up into the darkness and cold.
The butter (whatever was left) and the salt and pepper were brought out, and each kid tried to identify HIS potato (es). Some were charred a half-inch thick, others partially uncooked, but nothing has ever tasted better than those hot baked potatoes in the middle of a city playground sandbox in the dark of an early evening, with the taste made vivid with too much butter on fingers, an uneven distribution of salt or pepper, and the charcoal flecks that were inevitable as we ate these wonderful pioneer foods in the shadows of the street lights on a winter's night.
The fire consumed itself, the kids would straggle home to be yelled at for the grime on their clothes, and some of the older kids, and the younger-but-one-day-gonna-be-fire-tender kids, stayed, watched, and eventually smothered the last of the coals.
And then we left.
A winter night remembered for a life-time.
I remember when I bought my now 40 year old son one of these for his 4th birthday. He loved it and flat-spotted the front tire also. :LOL2:Jim said:I used to have a real original big wheel with the hand brake. The front tire had a flat spot from all the skid stops. :LOL2:
The new ones are budget, no hand brakes....... :LOL2:
PSG-1
Well-known member
Awesome reflection into the past, Kismet! What a great story. =D> =D>
phideux
Member
simbelle said:
Too much of that Panama Red?????
HANGEYE
Well-known member
For the "NORTHERN" folks, remember the orange styrofoam ball that was put on the cars radio antenna so you could see it over the snow banks.
Some great stuff from days gone buy folks. Keep them coming.
Some great stuff from days gone buy folks. Keep them coming.
