TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!

[minus5]

Originally Posted by westofyou

I know a kid who died in his sleep in english class... let's ban reading!!

Yeah but didn't this guy have something to do with that?

[dabvu2498]

We also walked across the top of the spillway at Acton Lake (Hueston Woods). When we got back to the shorter end, we decided to slide down. Not bright.

[MrCinatit]

I played in the street.
I ate paste like it was a delicacy. I also swallowed my gum - including the Topps baseball card gum. Other culinary delights included: ants, dirt, dried dog food, a fly, food which had been on the floor for longer than 30 seconds, and cooked broccoli. Guess which one disgusted me the most.
I talked to quite a few strangers.
The playgrounds in my neighborhood were built on concrete - not grass. It hurt. A lot.

[NYMoose]

Boy does this thread bring back fond memories.

[TeamCasey]

Didn't everyone have a dead man's hill?

Our was in the woods where we sledded. Huge hill where we built a ramp that launched you into the creek if you didn't roll off at the last minute.

We dragged sleds behind snowmobiles.

We drove snowmobiles unsupervised.

We jumped from hay mowns.

We had crab apple fights, horse manure fights and BB gun fights (Bad, I know).

We had all the night games - Capture the Flag, Pansy ball, Kill the guy with the Ball.

Baseball games always - I was automatic catcher for both teams. (The only girl in the 'hood).

[TeamCasey]

Catching snakes and snapping turtles.

[dabvu2498]

Originally Posted by TeamCasey

Catching snakes and snapping turtles.

And crawdads and frogs.

We abused our arms severely also. We'd throw baseball all day then throw under the streetlight at night.

[westofyou]

Back in the day, parents didn't come to all your little league games and they certainly didn't hang around your practices like *some* parents do today... you know who you are.

[durl]

It's funny reading through all these things (I also slept in the back window of the car and ate food cooked in lard...) and then thinking about how protective people are these days.

Now we protect kids to such a degree that they need pills to cope with the stress of it all. I'm glad I was a kid back then and not today.

[dabvu2498]

Originally Posted by westofyou

Back in the day, parents didn't come to all your little league games and they certainly didn't hang around your practices like *some* parents do today... you know who you are.

My 12 year old season we had two pitchers, total, on our "all-star" team. Both their dads coached and it was nothing for them to throw two six inning games apiece in one day.

Neither of them ended up hurt, either. Just burnt out.

[westofyou]

When I was around seven I lived in a neighborhood in Detroit and there were (I'm not kidding) between 28-40 kids within a single block. My mom would let us out the door and to get us back she would ring a cowbell. We would play in the woods or any of the numerous homes being built. There was never *nothing* to do, ever....

[TeamCasey]

How many kids could you pack into the back of a station wagon where the seats faced each other - no seat belts or child seats?

I was my Dad's "co-pilot" - I'd climb over the front seat to get him a fresh Black Label out of the cooler. He always drove with one between his knees.

[nate]

My uncle used to hitch an old GTO hood to the back of his snowmobile and give me rides.

Used to walk across train trestles.

Drank tap water in Brazil.

Good times!

[CrackerJack]

Ah yes the 70's childhood.

Eat breakfast, go outside, come home for lunch when mom yelled or we got hungry, then go back outside all day until mom yelled for us again. And yell she did. There might've been one overweight kid in our entire grade school the entire time - maybe 2.

I had a bannana seat bike an no helmet of course.

I watched a girl break her leg sledding, as it went right down into a concrete sewer cover - we kept sledding there that day and into the future

Baseball or whiffle ball was played daily with anything we could use for bases at cul de sac end of the street. I played with guys 2-3 years older, and my request to play was usually met with a punch to the gut.

The woods had carved out trails, forts, and was a virtual Lord Of The Flies set

No cable TV, no computers, no video games, and you finished your unsavory vegetables and meatloaf, and endured it, just so you could enjoy a cookie or two afterwards. You had to earn the right to eat sugar in my house.

Going to Burger Chef or McDonald's was a rare treat.

[Johnny Footstool]

I recently got the "Sesame Street Season 1" DVD. It starts off with a disclaimer that it is for nostalgia purposes only and that it might not fit the needs of "modern preschool children." What? Has the alphabet changed or something, I wondered.

I watched it, and most of the scenes were wonderfully innocent. Then they showed a film of a bunch of kids playing Follow the Leader. They played in a field, then in a wooded area, and finally ended up at a construction site. As the kids squirmed through narrow drain pipes, climbed rickety ladders, and staggered across shaky beams balanced precariously over open pits, I thought, "Ah, *this* is why they included that disclaimer."