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The Last Rebels: 25 Things We Did As Kids That Would Get Someone Arrested Today
Submitted by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods.
Here’s the problem with all of this babying: it creates a society of weenies.
There won’t be more more rebels because this generation has been frightened into submission and apathy through a deliberately orchestrated culture of fear. No one will have faced adventure and lived to greatly embroider the story
Kids are brainwashed – yes, brainwashed – into believing that the mere thought of a gun means you’re a psychotic killer waiting for a place to rampage.
They are terrified to do anything when they aren’t wrapped up with helmets, knee pads, wrist guards, and other protective gear.
Parents can’t let them go out and be independent or they’re charged with neglect and the children are taken away.
Woe betide any teen who uses a tool like a pocket knife, or heck, even a table knife to cut meat.
Lighting their own fire? Good grief, those parents must either not care of their child is disfigured by 3rd-degree burns over 90% of his body or they’re purposely nurturing a little arsonist.
Heaven forbid that a child describe another child as “black” or, for that matter, refer to others as girls or boys. No actual descriptors can be used for the fear of “offending” that person, and “offending” someone is incredibly high on the hierarchy of Things Never To Do.
“Free range parenting” is all but illegal
All of this babying creates incompetent, fearful adults.
Our children have been enveloped in this softly padded culture of fear, and it’s creating a society of people who are fearful, out of shape, overly cautious, and painfully politically correct. They are incredibly incompetent when they go out on their own because they’ve never actually done anything on their own.
When my oldest daughter came home after her first semester away at college, she told me how grateful she was to be an independent person. She described the scene in the dorm. “I had to show a bunch of them how to do laundry and they didn’t even know how to make a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese,” she said. Apparently they were in awe of her ability to cook actual food that did not originate in a pouch or box, her skills at changing a tire, her knack for making coffee using a French press instead of a coffee maker, and her ease at operating a washing machine and clothes dryer. She says that even though she thought I was being mean at the time I began making her do things for herself, she’s now glad that she possesses those skills. Hers was also the room that had everything needed to solve everyday problems: basic tools, first aid supplies, OTC medicine, and home remedies.
I was truly surprised when my daughter told me about the lack of life skills her friends have. I always thought maybe I was secretly lazy and that was the basis on my insistence that my girls be able to fend for themselves, but it honestly prepares them for life far better than if I was a hands-on mom that did absolutely everything for them. They need to realize that clothing does not get worn and then neatly reappear on a hanger in the closet, ready to be worn again. They need to understand that meals do not magically appear on the table, created by singing appliances a la Beauty and the Beast.
If the country is populated by a bunch of people who can’t even cook a box of macaroni and cheese when their stoves function at optimum efficiency, how on earth will they sustain themselves when they have to not only acquire their food, but must use off-grid methods to prepare it? How can someone who requires an instruction manual to operate a digital thermostat hope to keep warm when their home environment it controlled by wood they have collected and fires they have lit with it? How can someone who is afraid of getting dirty plant a garden and shovel manure?
Did you do any of these things and live to tell the tale?
While I did make my children wear bicycle helmets and never took them on the highway in the back of a pick-up, many of the things on this list were not just allowed, they were encouraged. Before someone pipes up with outrage (because they’re *cough* offended) I’m not suggesting that you throw caution to the wind and let your kids attempt to hang-glide off the roof with a sheet attached to a kite frame. (I’ve got a scar proving that makeshift hang-gliding is, in fact, a terrible idea). Common sense evolves, and I obviously don’t recommend that you purposely put your children in unsafe situations with a high risk of injury.
But, let them be kids. Let them explore and take reasonable risks. Let them learn to live life without fear.
Raise your hand if you survived a childhood in the 60s, 70s, and 80s that included one or more of the following, frowned-upon activities (raise both hands if you bear a scar proving your daredevil participation in these dare-devilish events):
- Riding in the back of an open pick-up truck with a bunch of other kids
- Leaving the house after breakfast and not returning until the streetlights came on, at which point, you raced home, ASAP so you didn’t get in trouble
- Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the school cafeteria
- Riding your bike without a helmet
- Riding your bike with a buddy on the handlebars, and neither of you wearing helmets
- Drinking water from the hose in the yard
- Swimming in creeks, rivers, ponds, and lakes (or what they now call *cough* “wild swimming“)
- Climbing trees (One park cut the lower branches from a tree on the playground in case some stalwart child dared to climb them)
- Having snowball fights (and accidentally hitting someone you shouldn’t)
- Sledding without enough protective equipment to play a game in the NFL
- Carrying a pocket knife to school (or having a fishing tackle box with sharp things on school property)
- Camping
- Throwing rocks at snakes in the river
- Playing politically incorrect games like Cowboys and Indians
- Playing Cops and Robbers with *gasp* toy guns
- Pretending to shoot each other with sticks we imagined were guns
- Shooting an actual gun or a bow (with *gasp* sharp arrows) at a can on a log, accompanied by our parents who gave us pointers to improve our aim. Heck, there was even a marksmanship club at my high school
- Saying the words “gun” or “bang” or “pow pow” (there actually a freakin’ CODE about “playing with invisible guns”)
- Working for your pocket money well before your teen years
- Taking that money to the store and buying as much penny candy as you could afford, then eating it in one sitting
- Eating pop rocks candy and drinking soda, just to prove we were exempt from that urban legend that said our stomachs would explode
- Getting so dirty that your mom washed you off with the hose in the yard before letting you come into the house to have a shower
- Writing lines for being a jerk at school, either on the board or on paper
- Playing “dangerous” games like dodgeball, kickball, tag, whiffle ball, and red rover (The Health Department of New York issued a warning about the “significant risk of injury” from these games)
- Walking to school alone
Come on, be honest. Tell us what crazy stuff you did as a child.
Teach your children to be independent this summer.
We didn’t get trophies just for showing up. We were forced, yes, forced – to do actual work and no one called protective services. And we gained something from all of this.
Our independence.
Do you really think that children who are terrified by someone pointing his finger and saying “bang” are going to lead the revolution against tyranny? No, they will cower in their tiny apartments, hoping that if they behave well enough, they’ll continue to be fed.
Do you think our ancestors who fought in the revolutionary war were afraid to climb a tree or get dirty?
Those of us who grew up this way (and who raise our children to be fearless) are the resistance against a coddled, helmeted, non-offending society that aims for a dependant populace. In a country that was built on rugged self-reliance, we are now the minority.
Nurture the rebellion this summer. Boot them outside
Teach your kids what freedom feels like.
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Played that game all through school. Was similar to rough and tumble rugby, without any rules other than if you had the ball you were the queer and you'd better run you're ass off.
Hell, I did em all and walked down a country road with farms lining them toting a 20 ga to go shoot pigeons flying from one hog pen to another. Farmers would wave as they drove by in their beat up ford pick ups at the blistering speed of 20 miles an hour. RIde a horse on a dead run bare back through hay fields, shit, pissed and fucked in the woods like a wild animal. Hunt without a fucking license from some government stooge, have parties and bon fires, water ski without a life jacket, played football in the snow, climbed trees in wind storms, drove the old mans truck at 12 to the feed store, bought the old man cigs out of a pull machine at the barber shop...life was good.
Kids can't do anything these days, they're little hot-house flowers...When I was a kid, my brothers and I, and several neighbor kids, got into a prolonged BB gun fight that got a write-up in Newsday. It was greeted with much jocularity, and a bunch of "You crazy kids!".
Today, our homes would have been raided by SWAT teams, and we'd all be on terrorist watch-lists...
We also thought nothing of combining several separate toys into one GREAT toy, like Barbie, a chemistry set, and the EZ-Bake Oven. Or of paying repeat visits to some dead cat carcass to observe the progress.
Today they'd have CPS on our parents, and force us all into years of court-ordered therapy.
We hung out for a brief time in a house that had been condemned and was probably totally unsafe. Yet no one agonized over the safety of the children..."What about the CHILDREN?", or sued the owner of the clearly-labeled property for creating a hazard...No, when they caught us they yelled at us and told us to get the fuck out and told our parents. The assumption was that we were assholes for being there despite the warning sign, not that we had to be protected from it, or that someone else had to be punished for our actions.
Today's kids are missing the whole experience of being kids, and they aren't learning the necessary lessons of life. You learn so much about interacting with others through your experiences as a kid, with other kids. And you test the limits, and learn what they are through experiencing it, not by 'learning' about it.
That's cause women vote. Women think that government is our mommy and must protect us from ourselves. Women voting = fascism.
naw, don't blame the women. blame the progressives. lots of free thinking gals, and lots of progressive wimp guys around. you just gotta pick your friends right.
In case you haven't noticed, women are progressives. All you ever hear coming from their mouths is..... " you can't do that".
Doc, all women are not progressives, and you can do whatever the fuck you want to (just keep me out of it). :p
-lol.... all that and more..... can't disclose it.....
:D
agreed.... we've become a society of wimps
we need to destroy it before we can start to rebuild....
everything is so paranoid now. the cops used to give kids a ride home if they caught them climbing water towers, walking on railroad tracks, drinking, shooting air rifles in town, trespassing, whatever. now they arrest everyone for anything and everything. sometimes they just shoot them.
You forgot lemonade stands. Thank God I don't have kids. What a societal hellhole.
You shoulda seen my dad when I sold his trumpet at a "garage sale." I don't think the state comptroller was involved, but jeeze I couldn't sit for a week.
Bottom line we r a nation of pussies. The MSM have turned men into women and vice versa. If it wasn't for our ability to blow up people with superior technology we would be overrun by any nation.
If it weren't for the fact that we are protected by the Atlantic ocean
to the East and the Pacific Ocean to the west, we would be overrun
by any nation.....
but best not be overconfident, the times they are a'changin'
skim boarding after heavy rain, catching crawdads, bottle rocket fights, throwing eggs/dirt clods at ...
tackle football, home run derby, wiffle ball, setting grass fires, skateboards, shooting arrows straight up in the air, bb guns
riding all over town on bikes...esp during summer, fishing, crabbing, stealing playboys from 7-11
i never did any of it. just heard stories :)
One word: lawyers. Lawyers fucked everything up because anybody could get sued for anything and everything became a liability. Fuck lawyers
You can say that again.
And they won't stop until they are stopped by force.
I'm thinking more like put an M80 up the ass of every lawyer.
Yes, I did most of those, and loved every minute of my "freedom" and being a "normal" & happy kid...and am still here to tell the tale as a "normal" & happy Baby Boomer! :-)
#26 Cow tipping. But Pretty sure that was illegal in the 80s too.
My brother bought a '51 Electra-Glide with all the crap on it when I was 16. He gave me his 650 Triumph TR6.
I rode it to Florida. I had a learner's permit. As kids we would resurrect ancient Cushmans and raise hell on em til the cops hauled them away and made us go to court and be threatened with serious trouble, then we'd do it again.
We jumped mopeds off too high ramps like Evel Kneivel. I got racked up real good once.
I miss those days.
Fuckin-A, Daisy.
I bought one last week from Amazon. $29. I've been peppering squirrel asses all week.
Seventeen has turned thirty-five
I'm surprised that we're still livin'
If we've done any wrong
I hope that we're forgiven
Got a few kids of my own
And some days I still don't know what to do
I hope that they're not laughing too loud
When they hear me talkin' like this to you.
John Mellencamp
All 25 plus
Dirt clod wars
Roman candle wars
Jumping off the roof
Wading through swamps and catching craw dads
Sliding over the lake dam spillway and launching off the concrete abutment.
Riding bikes no handed
Rigging battery powered rocket launchers to remotely launch bottle rockets at cars going by.
Filling toy trucks full of lighter fluid and lighting them and crashing then together.
Walking on thin ice to retrieve shot ducks.
Noodling for catfish
Putting lawn chairs on the roof to watch tornadoes
Racing cars and rolling them then rolling them back and driving off.
Racing go carts between traffic-not recommended
Yea, I almost died many times but it seems like if you always lived on the edge it made you tough enough to survive.
beautiful list, I remember doing every one of those.
Lancelot Link
Johnny Quest
Doctari
Combat
Rat Patrol
I Dream of Jeanie (especially what was under those thin layers of fabric!)
Gilligans Island (Especiallly Mary Anne!)
Bewitched (Who didn't want to have a wife like her?)
The Twilight Zone
The Midnight Special
Speedy Gonzalez
---------------------
Our country is dead. I do not recognize it.
I have scars on every finger of both hands from learning to use my Swiss Army knife to make bows, animal traps, punji traps, arrows, atlatls and darts, quarter staves, and sticks to fight with as swords. I may have cut myself, but I learned to use a knife and to keep it damned sharp. I also learned to handle cuts, even deep ones, without a doctor.
Don't get me started about learning to use an axe...at least I still have all my toes and shins intact.
Let me add: pine cone fights, bb gun fights, and we used to put a small hole in little green apples wherein we would insert firecrackers...apple sauce grenade fights!
I raced go-karts when I was 14-15 yrs. old.
Was always wanting to ride that thing.
One week-end when no organised race was going on so my Dad took me to a big parking lot at a factory.
Unloaded it and no sooner than a couple trips around the bldg. a gaurd pulled up. He waved me on but talked to Dad saying we had to leave.Dad had the gift of gab so the Gaurd eventually said finish out the day but don't come back. So Dad kept talking to the Gaurd and finally the Gaurd says to my Dad that I can come here on week-ends and he'll let the other Gaurds know it's o.k.
Thanks Dad! I miss you!
Happy Fathers day Dad! You're the best!
Me and the other neighborhood kids used to build carts out of discarded wood and bicycle tires, then ride them down hills, on the streets, to see who could get the farthest.
Just hoped that no cars were coming at the intersections, and trains on the tracks, at the "wrong time."
We all survived.
Times change faster than you think.
Things we did just 15 years ago.
1) Bicycle on the highway with no helmet (because the route was faster for those 4-5 blocks)
2) Bicycle on sidewalk to cut corners etc...
3) Drinking and smoking behind chinese resteraunts ^^ . . .
4) Doing other questionable things behind Chinese resteraunts . . .
5) Going to internet cafes to play counter strike (while smoking dubees at the same time eating hotpockets) (those were good times).
6) Bars with fake ID'S . . . etc
7) Sneaking beers and pizza into movie theaters and leaving a mess of cans and bottles lol
8) Drinking on random peoples front steps (although I have to admit 1/20 times we did it someone from the group would self sacrifice and take the court summons).
9) Shooting paintball guns in our backyards.
etc..
etc..
We were a lot more free 10 - 15 years ago.
I cant imagine the level of freedom people enjoyed 20~40 years ago . .. you guys were probably parked outside police stations smoking joints and drinking beers in a running car while getting blow jobs from a 2$ hooker, while 20 college girls washed your car and cleaned the beer cans out of the back seat to raise money for their cheerleading teams . . . lol
The future is going to suck, people will be stuck in virtual cubicles playing games where they aren't even allowed to virtually commit a crime.
Grand Theft Auto will become "pet the pony".
^^. ..
True story...
we were living in Aurora Co, after a couple months being homeless in Cherry Creek, back in about 65/66. Uncle Troy came out to visit from California and Dad, for a while, was home from Viet Nam.
Dad, Troy and I get in the car and go to a grocery store in Aurora. I'm in the back seat, about 7 years old or so, Dad and Troy each have an open beer, and the back seat is pretty much filled with beer cans. They park at the store and a police car parks right next to them since the guy has to run in and get milk or some shit to go home with. Dad and Troy put their beers on the Ramblers dash and get out, I'm still trying to figure out the new-fangled seat belt that was just installed..open the door and kick out about a dozen empty beer cans (old style, heavy tin where you had to punch the top of them with an opener) as I get out, and just as the cop walks by my side of the car.
Cop stops, then helps us collect all the cans rolling around and toss them back into the back seat. Goes on his way.
That's how it used to be.
Haha he helps you put the cans back in the car.... pfft if you did that today with non-alcaholic Ice Tea cans they would probably draw a gun on you, make you walk the line, and write you up for littering.
True story, one friend got a ticket because the inside of his car was too damn dirty that the cop couldn't search the car ^^ (soda cans , coffee cups and clutter)
Yeah, I had a spiel, but it boils down to fuck anyone in goverment. Take no shit from them.
There is no one in the federal government worthy of life other than the military and a select few prison guardsl. (We do have common psychopaths that need to be housed until we kill them.) The psychopaths infesting our government deserve the same treatment.
We used to sit at the end of the runway at Philadelphia International Airport to watch the planes land. N/W of the airport was OK because there was Island Road. South of the airport was Delaware County/Essington. We would walk up some train tracks, get stoned, and watch planes fly over our heads at about 50 feet until some L-1011 came in at 10:20 p.m. Sometimes we'd jump the fence and walk up the runway to watch them touch down.
i raised my kids to be free while warning them they may end up in jail because of their attitude. college professors love my daughter's free(subversive) mind. girls love my son's rebel(normal) attitude.
Jarts gentlemen....Jarts...
Now you're making me misty from going back in time.
Did all that stuff and way more.
When my friend and I were 17 we told our parents we were going to camp out in each others yard. (parents said as long as it was okay w/friends parents)
Sean had a minibike and I had a 3 wheel Honda.
We went to a beer party and got hammered instead.
Left the party about 2 am and got on a highway to head back when immediately a County Cop passed us oncoming.
Cop turned around and hit the lights on us but we kept going towards a abandoned railroad bed full bore.
Sean got scared and dropped his minibike and him in tall weeds and hid.
Not me - I had that county cop on my ass - 20' behind me going about 35 mph w/ his lights on 'til we came to a dugout area that a summer camp dug to discourage dirt bikes coming thru. I could throw that 3 wheeler around easy an got thru on the side but the cop was forced to stop. I went slow then back to Seans' house and waited for him.In the distance I could hear Sean coming and had a few laughs.
Brother used to trap muskrat - 5-6 $ a pelt back in 1972. Not me. I'd bring bricks from a old house and antagonize the muskrats 'til they would come at me at which time i'd bury their ass in mud w/the brick and just wait 'til they quit moving. Bro always wondered how I got way more pelts than him.
Hey, this is fun!! I could go on all nite.
somehow you reminded me about the beer train. a train would stop at a local grocer wholesaler to unload. they would open all the car doors that needed to be unloaded and one of them was a car filled with cases of beer. we only took what we could drink that night, not enough to notice. beat the hell out of fake ids.
try that today and the cop will jump out and empty three clips in your back.
"Brother used to trap muskrat - 5-6 $ a pelt back in 1972."
Thanks to the anti fur whackos, muskrats bring less than that today. Try 50 cents in 2015 dollars compared to $5 in 1972 dollars. HUGE difference. Thanks to environmental whackos, hawks are protected and muskrat populations are at an all time low.
Meat Trapper - Where i grew up (Mn.) there were so many 'skrats you would of had a field day. They were everywhere. It was really fun.
We had way more fun than that. But you cant prove it was me.
I wonder sometimes if the lack of scraped knees, wallowing around in the dirt and mud, and foraging the creeks for tadpoles and crayfish in today's youth has anything to do with their weak immune systems. So many allergies and illnesses today that none of my friends had.
millennials have no idea what fags they are.
At ten years old riding bikes ten miles to the Missouri river with no more parental control than sticking our head in the door and yelling, " Hey, mom were going to ride bikes."
how bout skitching, halloween war pranks, snapping the back of girls bras, johnny-ride-the-pony, ringolievio,stealing cars, (oh wait, that came later.)
oh and zip gun fights and firecracker fights, and fist fights, mumbly-peg and territory with knives. nyc was soooo much fun!!
Bra snapping was a wonderful gateway drug! It turned into a lifelong addiction to girls for me.
Looking back I'm surprised I made it into my mid teens without any serious injuries... no way I would let my kids do this stuff, but I'd be upset if they got in real trouble for it... bb gun battles, bottle rocket battles, tame m80 battles, setting off .22s in a vice with a hammer, digging underground rooms that could have easily collapsed and buried us... great times.
Edit: oh yeah, exploring abandoned and condemned structures and low rises, running from the occasional homeless guy within... ahh the nostalgia
Except for riding in the back of a pickup truck and taking sharp things to school, my kids do all that, or have. This list doesn't even scratch the surface of what we were doing for fun in farm country. There wasn't a whole lot of fun to be had, so a kid had to look pretty hard to find it. We did. At least I think we did. Some of it I don't remember so clearly.
America's so-called Political Correctness and Pussification are wildly overblown. Sure, there's a ridiculous cultural mythology that we should all wrap our kids in bubble-wrap all the time, and many of us cluck and wag our fingers at "irresponsible" parents of other people's kids, but it's like Church. We don't really do that, either. I know, I know; I'm a terrible parent for having let my kids walk the 3 blocks to school once the younger one was in 1st grade. 'Cause Kindergarten is a little young for that. And I probably shouldn't have let my kids take the city bus by themselves when they were 10. I know; you can't get out of your car without tripping over a predatory kidnapping child molestor. Or hell, they might get hit by lightning or something.
But the point here is, I'm trying to raise kids to be functional, self-reliant adults. I know they're not going to survive life; "On a long enough timeline..." yadda yadda. I just want the to be able to make most of the calls for themselves.
And, actually, so do most parents. The cops and child protection types who go on TV all the time know this too. "Selective Prosecution" is the phrase of today. My 16 year-old got a dishwashing job, and on weekends (and all summer) works until 1:00 AM. He rides his bike a dozen blocks through the city. No cop will hassle him, nor will any of the dope dealers on the one corner he'll pass by. He actually knows how to go past drug dealers on a city sidewalk without freaking out.
The pop-culture mythology is a bunch of bullshit. Fortunately, most people know it isn't for real.
"I'm trying to raise kids to be functional, self-reliant adults"
As am I.
This is all fine and good brave adventurers. But let me ask you, how many of you have got in the face of a TSA agent and his supervisor and lectured them on the Bill of Rights. Get some balls and stand up or your childhood means shit.
What makes you think we haven't?
If you are NOT on the Watch List then you are lagging. (Most likely you are Cherry Picker. You post here.)
I am there. FUCK 'EM.
One can always ignite Thermite canisters on top of those Electrical Transformer Boxes and cause Electrical Blackouts...on HOT SUMMER NIGHTS.
Who needs a gun?
Will that be good nuff fer you, Atticus Finch?
The best part is that Jade Helm begins. Let's give the participants something real to do.
Was going through security at O'Hare airport just two years ago. My wife and three young daughters were with me, and they 'really' wanted them to go through the scanner. I told TSA I refused to be scanned and my girls as well. They relented, but told us we would have to go through a pat-down and made that seem like a horrible experience. I told the TSA guy I'd rather watch to make sure they don't assault an underage girl than take the chance of some pervert having their images.
The TSA guy was not amused and when it was my turn, called over a really big guy to intimidate me a little. I told him point blank that if he touched my junk I would call the cops. After being chided, I waited for him to basically go on his knees to pat my lower legs, then asked "Sir" he looked up and I said "this is all for free right" in the best gay voice/tone I could muster.
Guy jumps to his feet, gets right in my face, and says "you are free to go" there were a bunch of people watching and laughing at this point. I suggested they get security dogs if they really cared about safety.
The control freaks don't care about us at all, they just like being in charge and telling us what to do. They can go die...
when I was 13, we bought a bunch of thse giant rockets in Missouri at BOOMLAND. It was huge...almost professional grade.....about midnight, decided to light it up and shoot it over local lake from the Dam.....as soon as it took off, the light from the afterburners lit up the lake, and the fucking thing is headed striaght for two old guys fishing in the dark with no running lights......We're thinking...Oh fuck....at which time, the rocket hit the water broadside to the boat, skimmed off the surface and went right between the two guys.....both of which we last saw diving overboard....Scared the living shit out of us......kept checking the paper for drowning victims.....or a police report of the attack.....
That's funny as hell. I can visualize you kids lurking around to see if the old codgers were dead or not without giving yourselves away :)
When I was 23 I bought this monstrous rocket in Alabama and brought it home to Flawed-duh for my then only son. That night we walked a block or so to the Gulf, on a bridge, lit a bunch of bottle rockets and then I pulled out the Supreme event...needed his helpo in getting it set up in the sand under the bridge (same bridge my wife and I found a body under..in a skirt...with a beard)...anyway point the fucking thing out towards the Gulf, run the lead back the five feet or so and light it. We high-tailed it back up to the bridge.
It lit, sailed about a hundred feet towards the Gulf, then did a loop and shot back at us at a level that damned near took our heads off. It then did another turn upwards, where I breathed a sigh of relief, then dipped and missled right towards someones house. Just as I feared that it would break a window and explode inside, it instead blew up just outside with a fourth of July pop that woke up the neighborhood. Along with the pop was this star stream of sparklers and shit going off.
My son and I are standing at the side of the bridge, I have no idea what was going on in his five year old mind, but mine was a litany of Holy Fucks...we were just far enough away to be hidden from the owner when he came out, and just close enough to see and hear everything he said.
Son says "We probably ought to get out of here before mom finds out."
That's when I knew he was a keeper.
Could do most anything you wanted, one fear and one only that was about not breaking the ONE absolute rule, the prime directive " Dont you dare hurt yourself ! " It really was "All Good"
The rule in our house was, "Don't let your [little] brother get hurt!" Which actually was kind of limiting.
Fishing with M-80's, throwing them in the water and collecting the fish that surfaced after the explosion.....
Getting dogshit putting it into a paper bag, dousing it with lightwer fluid and lighting it on fire and only then ringing the doorbell and running away....
we used to play a game we nver named but it was easily the stupidest load of innocent fun i ever had not including all the not so innocent fun. whoever was around saturday morning would search for fresh dog poop, the bigger the better. we would stick a black cat firecracker with half a fuse in the middle of it. we would crowd around it after choosing the person who had to light it. as it was lit, we would run away from it as fast as we could. if you got hit you were out. last one to not get hit won. there was dog shit all over everything.
My grandfather fondly recalled the summer when he and his friend, both high school students, went to work for a construction gang where they were given the job of removing tree stumps and other obstructions --- with DYNAMITE. They were given no real training and not much supervision. I'm sure OSHA would go ballistic now. But they managed to survive the summer with all limbs intact and no property was damaged. Without any help from the government. And despite the fact that not ALL of the dynamite was actually used for removing tree stumps.
I have great memories of my childhood in Brooklyn, NY in the sixties and seventies. I recognize the list and could add even more. Wish my grandchildren could have the same
My brother used to throw lawn darts straight up into the air then stand perfectly still while they landed inches away from him.
Getting 35 stiches being hit by a baseball bat and cut by old time aluminum tpped football cleats playing pick-up baseball and touch football in the park. Breaking my hand boxing with my dad with big 12 ounce boxing gloves.
Getting up early on Saturday and meeting friends by the tracks near our house, jumping on a slow moving freight train and hitching a 5 mile ride to Fish Creek where we would spend the day in the water.
Sneaking into the Ogden drive-in for dusk till dawn Planet of the Apes.
Epic rock fights on Sundays in the local lumber yard, 15 - 20 kids.
It may have already been mentioned, but can we go back to the 40s and 50s with cap guns!
anyone have a chemistry set that you could actually do things with??
(not to mention toxicity)
Anyone play with mercury from thermometers and thermostats ??
I stjll have about 5lbs for my manometers
I remember a bottle of mercury (around 1 pint) on a shelf
in my high school chemistry lab that got dusted around
when they dusted the shelves because the janitors thought
that it was glued down.
At the age of 9, riding around our little Kansas town on bikes on and around July 4th, I remember lighting and throwing fire crackers we had bought at the Dairy Queen. I held one too long and it went off in my hand. I lived. Many such tales. Our parents had no idea where we were.
What a great Friday night thread!
Scaramouche scaramouche will you do the fandango?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7nOO4BeG54
#26. Drinking beers with my Dad at the local tavern at age 9 or 10 and getting hammered.
the sad and fucked up things here:
1) yep, no problem at all, no one cares
2) wouldn't recommend it in the cities, but no one cares outside of them
3) um, yea, of course
4) helmets?
5) hell, there's a fender shelf thing designed for people to ride on
6) wouldn't advise it to be honest, it's grey water for outside... using drinking water on the lawn is kinda stupid
7) depends on where you are, in most places it's fine despite what the media claims
8) climbing? sure, no one cares
9) snowball fights? you can hit a cop, the cop will most likely play back
10) protective equipment?
11) we use razor blades to sharpen pencils, a small knife is nothing to worry about
12) the notion of camping here is still pretty foreign, but you can do it and no one cares
13, 14, 15) no one cares about it here, do whatever
16) of course, all kids do this here still
17) guns are controlled here, but you can go to a range and shoot all you want.
18) no one cares about saying words, there are no "trigger" words here like that (and yes, some will claim otherwise, but there are and always have been limits everywhere)
19) this is honestly rather rare, having your kid working for money here like that is the same as saying you are too poor to buy them things. in the foreign community though, you see it more, no one cares.
20, 21) don't really apply to the real world anymore anywhere
22) i just hosed down my boy the other day after he was playing in the mud all afternoon. a neighbor saw it and was shocked, but loved the idea and thinks it was a good idea too.
23) nah, that doesn't happen here... then again, they can still whack a kid who is causing trouble
24) but of course... these are normal games, local variations of course, but no one cares
25) more common in the countryside, less so in the cities
oh, this is in china by the way, that evil unfree commie place full of evil where the government controls everything and no one has freedom.
I noticed in a trip to Sth China (Beihai) that if your vehicle is electric, there's no requirement to register it. Not even a number plate needed. Most people ride electric scooters with no official 'permit' at all. Also, some people actually make their own electric vehicles, and drive them on the roads.
Try that in any Western country, see how far you get.
We used to tobogan down "Murder Hill". No one ever was murdered, but just about everyone got hurt to varying degrees - so much fun. Getting jurt was just a nuisance when we were kids.
And no signs or barricades were ever erected, and no one got sued either.
We used to take our firecrackers apart and use the power to make BIGGER firecrackers.
Here's a few items from my list of 'stupid stuff I did as a kid.' Yes, there are items 1-3 omitted. Also many later items. Never mind them. Country: Australia.
3. The 'how tough a spring is it?' incident. Maybe aged 10? I had taken apart a big old electrical moving coil meter. One part was a large steel U-shaped magnet. Maybe 4" height of the U, and 1.5" side to side. I thought 'I wonder how tough that steel is?' So I gripped the base of the U in a pair of pliers, put one edge of the U flat against concrete pavement, and whacked the other side of the U near the end as hard as I could with a big hammer.
I'd expected it to fracture at the bend of the 'U'.
Turns out the steel was very tough, and springy. The hammer struck the end a little off, stored most of the hammer's energy in the U-spring, then slipped off to the side. The U-spring then snapped back - ignoring the pliers holding it, and flying up. It hit me on the forehead, right temple just at the hairline. Made a nice deep cut, that still has a faint scar. A bit lower, and I'd have had a big piece of steel through my eye & into brain.
4. 'Home made nailgun' stupidity. As a child, around 10. I'd been experimenting with KClO3 & S mixed 50/50 explosive in foolishly large amounts. My dad had showed my how to make this, and the materials were at that time available from ordinary chemists. The mixture is quite a high velocity explosive, and very friction sensitive. One of my mistakes was to keep nearly 200mL mixed in a screw-top jar, on a shelf in my bedroom. I only realized how risky that was, after I'd made it. At least I knew to be very careful to avoid getting any of the powder in the screw cap rim or threads. I 'disposed of it' (bang!) quickly once I realized it was a suicidal idea to actually store the stuff, and especially like that. But the really insane near-death thing was the time I wondered how strong an explosive it was. So I drilled a hole the diameter of a nail head in a block of steel, packed maybe a couple of matchhead's volume worth of KClO3+S mix in the hole, inserted a short nail head first, then... put it on the concrete outside, sat next to it, and whacked the nail hard with a hammer. <BANG!> The hammer reversed it's arc very violently - ending up swinging itself and my arm back past my head. The nail just completely vanished. I have no idea what trajectory it took, but apparently, luckily, it didn't intersect any part of me.
5. The 'I conduct electricity well' incident. At age... maybe 14? I'd extracted a mains transformer from an old valve TV set. It had a HV secondary, of a few hundred V. Also the 240V primary, and a couple of high current 6.3V filament windings. I also had an arc welder, which has a current limited output of about 20V under 150A load. I wanted to make big HV arcs.
So I wired all the HV windings of the transformer in series, with one end going to the grounded metal ice cream tin (remember those?) I put the transformer in. Put the two filament windings in parallel, and connected them to the welder output. The HV output had a length of thickly insulated HV wiring, with a bare wire end. I filled the tin holding the transformer with oil, dunked the transformer in the oil and let it sit a few days till (hopefully) all the air bubbles had worked out. Then fired it up.
The HV would begin an arc at (I recall) about two inches, and would draw out to several inches before quenching. A very respectable fat and buzzing high current arc. I had a lot of fun playing with Jacob's Ladders and stuff with this.
Till one day I happened to accidentally drop the HV wire (was holding it in long nosed insulated handle pliers I think.) The falling bare wire end passed near to my left pointer finger. I recall a flash, and myself flying across the room (downstairs laundry) and hitting a wall. Only a few feet, but it was pretty surprising. There was a nice neat round burn hole through the skin on my finger. I couldn't find a corresponding burn mark on my feet, but the current must have gone from them to the concrete, slightly damp floor.
I have no idea what the current through my torso must have been. Several tens of mA? I had no way to measure the current output of that thing. Also the shock was very brief, since the wire fell past and so the arc only lasted briefly.
There was no one else around. Apparently my heart didn't fibrillate, and restarted OK.
Obviously, it's not the electricity that throws you, it's your own muscles. So if your knees were straight at that instant, nothing much will happen.
Oh and yes, I'd had an arc welder since about age 11. I'd asked for it for Christmas, whole extended family chipped in, and I mowed lawns for a year paying off the remainder. Had heaps of fun with it. Not all constructive.
6. The 'dynamite kids' weekend. While in early high school, one of my friends lived at Menai. Back then that area was still mostly bush. Their house was pretty isolated, with bush all around, that continued down to the river some Km away. He'd found an old carton of dynamite, plus some mercury fulminate detonators and fuse cord in his dad's old shed. He also had a .22 bolt action rifle and a pack of ammo. We thought it would be neat to go camping down by the river for a weekend, and blow & shoot stuff up. So we did. Neither of us knew much about dynamite.
It was the old kind made mostly of sawdust and clay, soaked in nitroglycerin. The caps were small brass cylinders, open at one end. The idea was to push a length of fuse cord into the cap, push the cap into the end of a putty-like stick of dynamite, light fuse and retire. We tried a cap & cord on their own first, but the cord just shot out of it and the mercury fulminate jetted flame rather than detonating. Where the flame had played on the ground it left a fine film of silvery mercury residue. Obviously the caps had to be crimped to the cord. We had pliers... So I crimped each cap onto the cord with pliers. Lucky streak #1 - none of the caps blew up in my hands due to deforming too much of the cap body. I understood the deforming had to be confined to very close to the open end of the cap, so was careful.
But worse, much worse... we noticed the sticks of dynamite had a coating of whitish-clear crystals, sort of like crystallized sugar. We ignored it, and pushed a cap into a stick for each explosion. We blew up tree trunks, and various rocks. It was great fun.
Some years later, I learned that the crystals were probably crystallized nitroglycerin, which is supposedly extremely touch sensitive. Both of us (mostly me) were gripping these sticks in one hand while pushing a cap into the end of it. Not to mention lugging a box of it around in a backpack. We were half a day's walk from anywhere.
I still find it astounding we both survived that.
Not a near death experience, but relevant: For a while I was in the high school military cadets. We had ex-WWII 303 rifles, though only got to fire them on trips away. However we were allowed to take them home. On the train from school. So some days there would be lots of teenagers on the train with 303 rifles. No bolts... unless you smuggled one out, which did happen. Nobody got offended or terrified.
I too think the current 'safety obsession' atmosphere is toxic, and sure to end badly for civilization. Personally I think that's the intended outcome, and it's another dimension of Elite plans for a global cull.
You can't buy KClO4 down at the local Rexall any more.
But you can make it. Potassium Perchlorate is fun stuff.
This lack of life skills thingy is a huge positive. When the Big Meltdown finally occurs these people will be naturally selected within 3 weeks.
Think about how wonderful a world we are going to live in when sheeple and consumers become an endangered species.
When we were kids we used to make pipe bombs and explode them inside various old junk at someone's farm or in remote woods. Relatively harmless fun and it was pretty thrilling actually...This was before the goverment invented terrorism of course. Now they're discouraged from thinking up the most wild and crazy mischief and learning about cool stuff. The government ruined it for the kids. Sad really.
Grew up in Afghanistan. Dad had funds so I went to an American school in Kabul (AISK), even though i was a local. For show and tell we could see whose house got hit by the biggest peice of shrapnel. Those were the days man.
Florida is Ground Zero for the Agenda 21 protocols.
That's where they have the shoot to kill law that Walmart lobbied for.
That's where the parents were shut-down by the School Board bitch who said there was nothing wrong with teaching kids that there is no USA.
That's where the mother who sent her kid to school in a shirt with derogatory statements on it was put in jail for child abuse.
That's where the parents of the kid who was playing in his yard for 90 minutes were arrested.
Florida has and ICLEI named "Forever Florida" and they've already taken 10% of the land in Florida under BS environmental rules. Now they're moving in on the kids. If I lived in Florida, I'd leave.
I came from a very straight family and was not allowed to get into _any_ trouble growing up as a kid. I was not allowed to own a motorcycle when I turned 16. Trouble was for the other kids in the neighbourhood, but I was forbidden to get into any trouble by my father. One did not cross my father unless you really wanted trouble.
NOTE: I eventually became a rebel and decided to annoy the old man by buying a drum set so he would regret not allowing me to get a motorcycle. He never complained about the drumming, go figure? I bought a muscle car, and slammed a small block with open headers in it, and the old man never complained. When I eventually brought a motorcycle home in parts and started rebuilding it in the basement the old man reminded me that he told me never to bring a motorcycle home. I told him that I had abided by his wishes all along and only brought motorcycle parts home. He glared at me with contempt and never mentioned it again. :)
We used to steal crab apples from a guy's tree just down the street from my home. He would load shotgun shells with rock salt and shoot us in the ass. I stayed up in a tree for about three hours one night when he came out after hearing some noise!
My dad taught me how to shoot a pistol, under very close supervision, when I was five years old. Where? At the local Christian school. The school had an archery and marksmanship team and a shooting range. Where? Leesburg, Virginia, just outside the Beltway. I grew up to be an Infantry officer and was the best marksman in my battalion. Today, well, none of that would have happened. How did America get so wussified in the space of a generation?
I got my first 22 single shot rifle at age 6. I promptly shot the windows out of my grandmothers barn.
My dad whipped my ass, and gave me another box of shells.
Age five, dad and I went to my Uncle's house in No. California (the one I rolled joints for) for Thanksgiving. Now bear in mind, all men in my family, including me, are pure Irish Bullshitters. I didn't know that at five.
Dad handed me a rifle, pretty sure it was a .22. Said don't shoot unless you know what you're shooting at.
On the way to where ever we were going, Dad and Uncle grilled me on techniques of big foot hunting. They filled me so full of bullshit that all I knew was that once I was in the woods I'd better shoot the first thing that came my way.
We pull up to a clearing and Uncle says to get out and be specially quiet...there's too many big feet in the area and they really love my peanut butter sandwich. I have a gasmask pouch with my sandwich in it, and a .22 in my hands at five years old, walking through the star wars redwoods (we didn't have starwars, yet, back then, but those trees were/are real) I feel less than an ant as dad and uncle hang back and let me hunt for bigfeets. Now, I'm pretty sure they loaded me with no more than five shots,l but as far as I knew then, I had a machine gun with unlimited rounds.
I go on for a while and don't see anything, then hear this big thump and thud-thud thud, and dad shouting "Holy Shit!", and I squeezed off five shots in less than two seconds in the general direction of the noise. No fucking way was a bigfeet getting my sandwich! Looking back, say at five years and one day, I'm pretty sure what I heard was dad or uncle tossing a big rock into the woods.
Dad yelled, "Stop shooting, I think you got him!" and came up to take the rifle from me. He and uncle went to check my 'kill'. I went to the bluff to check the hundreds of logs floating down the Russian River, some banging into the bridge down below. As I stood at the edge, the ground gave way and I flipped about three times before I managed to grab a blade of grass and hang on. Dad appeared at the top and he and uncle joined hands as he came down to get me. Looking back it was a damned near sheer drop to the river from that bluff.
Once they pulled my dumb ass up, they took me to my 'kill'. I'd hit a redwood tree, five times, and Uncle was impressed. He held a fifty cent piece to it and covered all the marks. Not bad for a five year old at ten feet distance.
Exactly. Most of us had pre-experience as kids prior to going into the military. Now they bring in wusses, no experience whatsoever. Biggest injuries are paper cuts. And the State Department thinks we're going to fight the Russians and come out without a scratch? They're in ozone land, for sure.
Oh yeah, a few more less-lethal childhood games:
In those days (1960s) Australia celebrated Queen's birthday with fireworks. LOTS of fireworks. For a few weeks each year most local shops would be loaded with huge amounts of them. The largest 'bungers' would blow your hand off if you were stupid enough to hold one, and the rockets... came in sizes up to 'f-ing huge'.
So of course we would take them apart and make *bigger* ones. I had a lot of fun trying to make strapped-together and multi-stage rockets, though they usually failed spectacularly and/or comically
Then there was 'billy cart racing'. I have no idea how come no one died with those. We had a steep, dead-ended tarred street that was 'ideal', in that it was very steep at the start, and nearly flat for a section at the bottom. The improvised carts (that we all made ourselves) used large steel ball-races for wheels, so they could 'drift'. No brakes at all; to slow down you went sideways. Those things were damned fun!
Now and then neighbors on that street complained (to us kids, not the police) about the noise. But other than that, nothing.
Those were the days. You jogged a memory I'd long forgotten. Every morning my friends and I would go to the local shop and stock up with all the fireworks we could buy with our lunch money. The problem was, we didn't have the patience to wait until cracker night. We'd let them off during lunchtime at school. The cane was no deterant.
We used to buy real fireworks components from a company called Liberty Industries (long since gone)
https://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/1983/CPSC-Warns-Of-Illega...
We also bought a book about making your own fireworks. Doing it right actually makes them safer, as you are using cardboard tubes and other components which disintegrate when exploded, instead of throwing shrapnel at you from a plastic or metal tube. We did the colored streamers for the air bursts, rolling the stuff out like thick dough and slicing it into little sections, then letting it dry. Our stuff worked pretty good. For the mortars, you used black powder, to launch as a propellent. The mortar tube, although made of cardboard, would survive serveral uses. For the report (explosion) for what you launched up into the air, you used an industry standard flashpowder (easy to make) called Thunder #1. Thunder #1 would explode without any containment. Same stuff they use in the little 1 1/2 inchers. Of course, you could make them as large as you wanted. Everything was assembled using Elmer's glue. You had to work on top of newspaper, so no static. Acrylic shirts were a no-no. Now, I'm sure you'd get raided with the Mraps and vested, helmeted eager baton and AK wielding law enforcement. No more fun anymore. Just stupid mind numbing TV. You now get to watch the "pros" do it, and get paid for it. And you really don't get any of the experience. Like trying to learn to fly a 747 watching videos. I don't care how many times you watch the training video, things change radically once you put your ass in the real seat.
Oh, and PS: None of us ever got hurt. Imagine.
It's called freedom but there's legislation against that
2 liter Coke bottle + liquid Drano + aluminum foil = BOOM!!!!
Now = terrorism.
I demember trying to see how many kids we could get on a bike. I remember getting 5 on one, and the girl that was on my shoulders' mom took pictures.
I also remember walking freely on the street.with my Sheridan pellet gun on my way to the bayou. I was free to camp, hunt, build fires, etc. My Dad was cool about stuff like that.
Oh brother! Hahaha! How about this. I figured out how to make nitroglycerine after 7th grade chemistry. Me and a friend used to explode huge trees into smithereens in the deep forest with the nitro we made. I used to stay out all night... and I do mean ALL night (until dawn when clear) with my telescope starting at age 8. I used to walk several miles through a forest to an observatory starting at age 12, and observe all night alone, walking back when it got cloudy or at dawn. I swam across a 5-mile wide lake several times before I was 12 years old (yes, I was an excellent swimmer). And cliff diving. Neighborhood boys regularly played tackle football without helmits or other padding (but wouldn't let me play, the jerks).
I won't continue, but I do admit that I was quite the outlier even back when I was a kid. Still, this article makes me shake my head, and wonder how kids today will ever develop real self-confidence without learning to test themselves. Humans are finished.
Thanks for the memories!
I learned how to make nitroglycerine in 7th grade too.
Through the process of trial and error, got the mixture right.
I was shocked at the hole it left in the building.
I was (still am) a good swimmer, too.
Swam across large lakes using alternating breaststroke/backstroke, many miles.
Once swam across a reservoir underwater, without coming up for air, on a dare.
Dived off a dam to the bottom of same reservoir (~50 ft), holding my breath, and brought up a twig from a submerged tree as proof (again on a dare).
Did the cliff diving, too (~70 ft).
And free hand cliff climbing (once whilst under a mind altering drug).
All by age 16.
Those were the days.
Yes, those were indeed the days. Of course, the way I live now makes people think "you must be kidding", even though I consider it very safe. Okay, there is some risk when I fly my little 260kg airplane across the south-pacific in 2000km ~ 4000km hops. But... I'd probably survive if I had to ditch.
What kids and young folks don't seem to understand when they read our tales, or listen to us describe our crazy stunts, is this. First, we were very seriously concerned about killing ourselves or badly injuring ourselves, and took that completely seriously.
Kids today seem to either "take zero risk", or go to the extreme opposite, just throw themselves into insanely dangerous situations thinking there is no risk (or not caring).
When we talk about this stuff, what doesn't come across is the care we took to keep from trashing ourselves. Like cliff diving. Learn to dive from 1 and 3 meters in swimming pools. Then at the cliffs, gradually increase the height, never by more than 50% in any increment. Oh, and make sure you know how deep the water is. Swim down until you reach the bottom (or submerged tree limbs or whatever), and scout out the depth over the entire potential landing area.
So when we talk about this stuff, we probably sound like completely insane morons. But in truth, we were learning to be very prudent at the same time we were learning to do amazing and incredibly fun things. In parallel.
And we didn't need adults to tell us to do things this way. Hell, adults never let us do any of this stuff back then, just like adults won't let kids do this stuff today.
I suppose another way to say this is... we were very grounded. Today, seems like almost nobody is grounded, they're all floating around in abstract fictionland practically from birth to death.
It really is fun to think back though. I'm glad I'm still doing [supposedly] "crazy" things. Helps make life worth living.
In Los Angeles there's Chatsworth Park (I believe, it's been over 50 years) where we used to have family reunions. One of the attractions was the rock and shit to climb, but paramount were the train track through the rocks. Once we were old enough to climb the rocks, we spent a good deal of time walking into the train tunnels and running back, estimating how long it would take to get the fuck out of danger if a train came through. Meantime, we'd wait for the trains and put pennies, rocks and other shit on the tracks to see what would happen. But we always watched the tunnels, regardless of what others might have figured out and did, to time the trains.
We probably spent three or four years at this up until I was twelve or so. One year, Dad, Uncles and much older cousins went up and I hung along. They started walking into the tunnel and my gut was saying 'Wait, hold on!' Two Uncles dashed out and went separate directions with a locomotive less than two feet behind them. The train went by and the general feeling, including mine, was that there would be no other train for at least thirty minutes, long enough to get through the tunnel. So we all started marching along the rock and ties of the track.
We had no flashlights, no water, none of that safety shit...this was the 60's/70's! Almost halfway into the almost half mile tunnel we see a train approaching quickly.
I can see that I don't have enough time to get back out and don't have enough time to run forward. My Dad, Uncles and Older Cousins are starting to trot backwards. I follow, they saw a hole in the tunnel wall I didn't. As it was, there wasn't much room for all of us. When we all tried to fit in the hole, there were frantic grabs to pull me deeper but the train came too fast and, once it was on us, we were too awestruck to move.
There is nothing like having an entire train go by, with all the noise and glory contained in a tunnel, less than six inches from your nose. Feeling the 'whoosh' of various ladders and outcrops as they whiz by as all you can do is try to flatten yourself as much as possible against very hard, pointy, bits of rock. You don't dare move, breathe, or even blink. The noise and motion is overwhelming.
And when it's all over, the first thing you do is check your underwear...because you're certain you shit yourself.
Half the kids these days think they are the star of their own personal fucking video games. Major disconnect from reality.
Don't worry so much honestann. My children are getting an education in life that is not the official script by any means. My kids question authority and the oldest seems to have some leadership skills. She is smart for age 10 and she is apperently a silver and copper bullion hoarder as she assembling a nice little cache. SHe has sieveral ounce of silver already and it is not part of my collection. I told her that she has to monitor the situation with her bullion. I told her I would not be monitoring her collection and that she has to do that herself. Of course, I peak once in while and we are good so far.
Of course, there is more that I teach these kids that Mom CAN NOT unteach once learned by a four year old male and ten year old girl. I have a traditional family in some regards in that it is husband and wife, husband works, wife stays home and raises children. Pretty rare these days but I have a method of accumulating things and then selling for what hopefully is more than I paid. I am a picker and good wrench so the kids get to see how things really work. I take Mrs.M and the kids to the car auctions and other auctions I go to. We have made that car auction a monthly family event.
You never know what I will do at the car auction. Mrs. M has a heart attack on some of my bids and the tells me that, "You love rust you idiot." or "That thing is a piece of shit; don't buy it". Sometimes I buy a salvageable older car and it means work. It depends on what I see of value and of course have to make a little for the effort. My kids are learning that you need to identify a market and develop a strategy. I don't make a lot of money flipping cars but I end up positve cash flow. The used car market is really competitive right now because no can afford a new car anymore. The used car market is where it is at because everyone needs transportation and most people prefer a motorized vehicle. I fix them as best I can and sell them cash only. Cash for clunkers after-market.
I think the chilrens get to see some interesting mechanical things.
Best thread ever! I got the clear message that proper behavior a boy was pretty much covered by Tom Sawyer. He'll my first girlfriend was even named Becky.
Cherry bombs, M-80s and a brick of Black Cats. The possibilities were endless.
When I was about 14, I figured out how to make a strike-anywhere kitchen match launcher + igniter from a common clothes pin. I've seen a few items about these on the net, but not exactly how I made mine, which would ignite the match as it was launched from an inverter clothes pin using the metal spring. I would shoot flaming matches at my friends and enemies alike. Great fun. My dad was impressed -- it would shoot out big flaming matches with great force.
Here's a good example of something that wouldn't be tolerated today... There was this grumpy, mean old man in my neighborhood, the kinda old man that would shake his fist at kids anytime he saw us walk by. Every Halloween, it was a yearly ritual that most all the kids would do -- we would pummel his house with dozens and dozens of eggs and toilet paper all of his trees and his house. The adults and even the cops would tolerate it. It was the annual pay back to that asshole old man that everyone hated. The adults would secretly cheer us on. This would never happen in today's world -- we're all so sensitive.
Still in diapers I used to walk - well more like waddle - to the neighborhood store ... for smokes.
5th grade my buddy's bro - home from reform skool - inked us our first tattoo. (Of a cheery popping.)
6th - First hangover. (Dry heaves suck. Hair of the dog works.)
7th. Quit cigs - The girls in classes' blouses started to *blossom* and the hack cough was gonna be a deal-breaker.
Junior year. Marriage (shotgun). Dropped out of HS.
18th birthday. Enlisted. (Marital problems solution.)
22 til today. Battered bruised scarred to the bone - and beyond. But still above ground and I know - KNOW - every day is a blessing.
Shake a hand, make a friend. Look a man in the eye. Keep your word (but don't give it unless you can.) "Everything gonna be alright."
Peace y'all.
PS - Oh yeah - click on Zhedge first thing in the morning (or afternoon as the case may be.) ;-)
HA ... Some *slight* embellish in the above but overall - in the main - on the square legit.
Might be thread of the year.
bye, bye american pie.
but now you are all so much more exceptional aren't you. lmao
tick tock
Awesome thread! You country boys did good, but us city kids, sure learned how to wreak havoc, nonetheless. 1964, Dad and Mom, emigrated to Los Angeles from Quebec, Canada. And I mean, Downtown Los Angeles! I was five years old and Mom enrolled me in Kindergarten at Logan Street Elementary School and showed me how to get there, by myself! I ran back home, the first day, because I couldn't speak english! Mom made me go back! We lived in Downtown, Los Angeles, up until 1970 and with both Mom and Dad working full time, by 1968, I was nine years old and in charge of my two younger brothers, after school and all summer long. We lived in various neighborhoods, mostly by Echo Park and McArthur Park. For fun, we'd rouse the wino's out of the bushes and the ivy where they slept, during the day. Boy, were they pissed, when we'd be poking them with sticks and then running away, tee-hee-ing the whole time. And I was nine, my other brother was eight and the youngest was seven!
We'd see heroin addicts flopping on the sidewalks and wonder why they were wiggling so hard. We witnessed a bloody murder aftermath, with tons of blood on the steps of the apartment and looked with fascination, at the huge knife that the cops had confiscated and had in the back of the car. When we moved in 1968, we were by Rampart Station (police), between Echo Park and McArthur Park. We were only a block away from the main facility for the Yellow Cab Company and we'd sneak over the fence at night and play in the section they had reserved for wrecked taxi cabs. One of the fun things we did there was to let the emergency brake loose and let the cabs roll down the hill into other cars (and then we'd run away!) to the sound of cars crashing into each other. We'd also utterly destroyed construction sites! We got so good at it, that the LAPD, was on the lookout for us! One day, we were having fun, moving broken concrete pieces weighing hundreds of pounds and dropping them down into the large concrete tubes, embedded in the ground for the foundation of a future office building. There was water, twenty or thirty feet down and the geysers were spectacular! Then suddenly, three LAPD black and whites came bouncing onto the site at high speed, red lights blaring on the roof and we did, what we did best, we ran like the little demons that we were. Man, could we run! We charged over fences, ditches, through half finished buildings and when we got home, we ran into the bedroom and hid under the beds, panting and sweating.
Our Mom, knew something was up and with her, then broken english, with a French Canadian accent, shouted "what the hell did you boys do!". Then she saw the Police cars cruising down the alley behind the house, and another unit rolling out front. Man, was she mad, but we never fessed up to what we did. We were so bad. We shoplifted soda pops in our lunch boxes from the liqour stores, broke into places and took the first dollar that they made out of the frame. I won't tell you about the pounds and pounds of quarters that we somehow 'obtained'. We sure were big shots to the other kids (at least for a little while!). But we did some 'good things' too (honest!). Every Sunday morning, really early, we'd go to McArthur Park and we had a deal with the guy who ran the paddle boat concession. We'd get a hose and brushes and scrub all the seagull crap off the boats and get them cleaned up. For doing that, we'd get the use of one of the fiberglass blue, red or yellow paddle boats for the entire day! We had so much fun. It wasn't till recently, that we told my Mom, all of the stuff we did! She couldn't believe it! Good times indeed and a great thread!
When I was in 1st grade -about 6 years old, I was waiting for my mom to pick me up after school, and as usual, she was more than a little late. I got tired of waiting so long, and I wanted to be big and impress her, so I decided to try walking home on my own. It was only a few miles in the snow, and I thought I could make it.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, I couldn't quite remember the route and found myself hopelessly lost. I was terrified.
This was well before cell phones. I did the only thing I could do. I bravely wallked up to the nearest house and rang the doorbell. Bawling my eyes out, I pleaded my case to the nice, motherly-looking lady who answered the door. The kind woman took pity on me and let me come inside while she called my mother.
My mother drove around frantically looking for me before returning home to receive the call.
I can't help but feel my guardian angel and the Holy Spirit must have been looking out for me that day!
Today your mother would be jailed for child abandonment and the nice lady who helped you jailed for harboring a fugitive
blame the litigators
There was a family friendly panacake restaurant called Sambo's (anybody heared of the story of little black Sambo?) and you could buy cigarrettes or chewing tobacco from a vending machine in the lobby. That's a two for one right there.
the story of little black Sambo...
Our local Sambo's was changed to have Sambo be Indian, as from India in the late 70's. (It's a Denny's now) I chase my whiteheaded grandson around the sofa now threatening to turn him into Tiger Butter.
And I had firecrackers from our bi-annual trip to Mecca, (i.e. Arkansas), to visit relatives with a wrapping label sporting a "pickaninny" eating watermelon in the field. Being from California, I had never heard that term outside of an old Little Rascals episode or when going to Arkansas / Louisiana.
Race relations were much simpler as kids.
All of the above and some:
26. Walking to school alone from age 5 and hence thereafter.
27. Having fun with fire crackers, bungers, penny bungers and thunders (lightning bolt thunders were theeee... bestest)
28. Shooting noisy birds with air rifle in back yard, aged 8.
29. Playing arse - throwing a tennis ball as hard as you can at an individual running to touch the wall 50 yards away before he touches the wall.
30. Not going home for the night just for the fun of it, aged 9. Getting walloped for doing it.
31. Sitting next to open train doors watching the suburbs go by.
32. Working for a few hours age 6 for a pack of Batman cards with two strips of bubblegum ('60's).
33. Smoking in buses, trains, hospital emergency wards, bank managers office, aeroplanes, government departmants. Basically, smoking anywhere you fucking wanted because our taxing guvmints gaves us the Marlboro Man.
34. Stealing family car keys during monstrous parties and driving around age 11 while oldies partied.
Ah well, those were the days....
The batman cards made me reply...I worked for the Wacky Packs...the ones from the 70's. I just sold my collection for around $1000....Wacky Packs needed to grow up and traded in for some Silver. What a great thread.
Having fun with fire crackers, bungers, penny bungers and thunders...
Arial bombers - ingredients: 1 Homing pigeon, 1 ea. M-80, 1ea random length "dynamite" fuse, (min. 12"). Tie said fuse to factory length M-80 fuse, tie to foot of bird. Light and release.
Would typically fall to ground somewhere in the middle of town, only occasionally flutter to roof of local bowling alley in which case said pigeon would not be returning home.
Our Dad used to let us drive the car by sitting on his lap when we were 8 or 9 years old. I also remember kids walking to and from school without their parents, running around barefoot and unsupervised outside all summer, selling "Grit" magazine door to door alone, having lemonade stands, creating our own neighborhood "carnival", playing with fireworks, trying to smoke cigarettes with my cousins behind the garage, egging houses, playing doorbell ditch, making crank phone calls, walking by ourselves in the winter about a mile to the park to go sledding down a huge hill without helmets, riding our bikes to our friends' houses, the park and 7-11 to buy candy and Slurpees, and riding several miles on the trail through three towns until we made it to our cousins' house.
Oh! I almost forgot all the dangerous (and fun) things we did on the playground! We JUMPED off of swings. We jumped ONTO the the merry-go-round we were spinning for our friends. We DANGLED upside-down by our feet or our knees from the monkey bars. Have you noticed that see-saws and merry-go-rounds have gradually disappeared from playgrounds?
This is dead on............
I have been noticing this over the last 20 years...........
all of a sudden the kids cannot play in the"woods" for fear of being stolen.........
Unreal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I was 12 years old, I not only had a job (it suked, paperboy) But I would go on 12 hour bicycle trips and no body cared........
Always loved smoking weed at 4 am before I too k off on my bike to deliver sunday papers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What a rush!
Rob, is that you?
Great thread.
Growing up in Ohio provided access to buckeye trees. Buckeyes are Gods whisper in a boy's ear - "throw it". Perfect size and weight for throwing, slindshots. A good buckeye tree provides near infinite ammo. If ammo runs low in the midst of a buckeye fight, one kid keeps throwing while the other climbs to crazy heights to shake the tree hard enough to make more buckeyes fall. When buckeyes first fall from the tree, they're in a shell / casing, with sharp prickers, almost thorns. If you didn't like the person you were throwing buckeyes at, you'd use the prickered version. Sometimes it would stick right in the target. For friends, you peel the cover off and throw the smooth, hard, buckeye.
There was a river a few miles from home, usually tame, but Colorado river wild after a rain. We had to get a boat/raft to experience the rapids. Not far from home was a defunct building supply company that had a heavy metal "cement tub" laying around. We decided this was perfect for shooting the rapids. Thing probably weighed 500 lbs. We and a friend decided to take it. Dragged that thing over 7 miles in broad daylight thru suburban neighborhoods. Hid it near the riverbank and waited for a rain storm.
Storm came and went and we raced down to the river. Two big tree branches would be our oars. My friend chickened-out and would not cast off with me. I went without him. Didn't think about the dams and fords, and low bridges (duck!) Almost made it to Lake Erie. Had to bail out by grabbing a hanging tree branch.
Almost bought the farm, but what a ride.
Bike races down steep curved roads, with car & truck traffic.
Who could ride their bike the longest with no hands, with eyes closed.
Use Mom's clothspins to attach baseball cards to your bike, so the wheel spokes would hit the cards, giving that motorcycle sound.
Special baseball rules where, if you hit the house of an especially hostile neighbor, that was 3 outs.
18 hour long hide & seek games in the deep woods.
Lots of hitchhinking on the Ohio Turnpike. Nobody cared.
Sneaking onto Cleveland Rapid Transit trains, then sneaking into Cleveland Indians games, then sneaking onto a train to get home. Not a dime spent.
Walking thru bad areas of town to see why they were bad.
I can relate im in ohio as well i lost a lot of school backpacks throwing them up in a buckeye tree trying to knock down the big ones lol
I can relate im in ohio as well i lost a lot of school backpacks throwing them up in a buckeye tree trying to knock down the big ones lol
When I was 16 I borrowed dad's truck and drove from Ontario through Detroit over to Sandusky and down through Ohio to buy a raccoon hunting light. The man making them expected me, but couldn't believe it was a kid that drove to his place when I knocked on his door.
I'd never let a 16 year old drive my truck that far today...what the sam was dad thinking?
I always wondered what a buckeye was? Every where I looked there were signs calling it the Buckeye State.
WTF is a racoon hunting light?
He invented the 8lb box of batteries that belted onto your hip to night hunt. They were the first rechargeable nickle cadmium batteries I had ever heard of. It had a helmet like a coal miner's light, and a big hand held light. It would pick up coon eyes from a mile away.---They were expensive...$280 in 1976. But one night I made $540 on hides.
Awesome! Thanks
Playing spin the bottle at school. Wonder what would happen if you got caught doing that nowdays. Probably put on a sexual deviant list. Oh yes, playing on the log booms on the Frazer River in B.C. and falling in. That was a close call.
Soaking cat tails ( bullrushes ) in gasoline to use as torches to explore old beaver dens. They'd lock me away for my own protection now :-P
ill add my story/memory i was staying a friends house and we got bored, so he got out his dads old single shot 22 that gun was so dirty a shell wouldn't fit in it, so we cleaned it and then he loaded it and some how the trigger got pulled i felt the wind off that 22 it barely missed me but the phone one the wall was not so lucky you could still use it but the middle row of buttons didn't work any more lol. Next morning his mom asked what that noise was and i said we were playing with firecrackers she said oh ok but next time at least go outside haha
ill add my story/memory i was staying a friends house and we got bored, so he got out his dads old single shot 22 that gun was so dirty a shell wouldn't fit in it, so we cleaned it and then he loaded it and some how the trigger got pulled i felt the wind off that 22 it barely missed me but the phone one the wall was not so lucky you could still use it but the middle row of buttons didn't work any more lol. Next morning his mom asked what that noise was and i said we were playing with firecrackers she said oh ok but next time at least go outside haha
I remember when i was 10 years old my dad bought me an exotic slingshot, .........he would probably be jailed for that today.
The "snuggie tree"..We used to "hang" other neighborhood kids from a tree limb 6 feet off the ground,by their underwear..We'd leave them their swaying in the wind,until an adult came along,and freed them,or until the elastic band in their underwear snapped..
Terry, Pat, Brad and I were hunting beaver, muskrat and chickens along the creek.
Thirteen years old and heavily armed with .22 and .410.
Hunting was poor, nothing much to shoot at.
So Terry took a bead on a rock and fired.
The ricochet caught Pat along the side of his head
As he went down, yelling, "I'm hit, I'm hit,
I dropped my gun and the frikkin thing went off.
Two pellets went through my down jacket but missed me.
The gouge out of Pat's head wouldn't stop bleeding
And we had to tell Pat's parents the truth as we went to the hospital.
I didn't get to use a gun until the next spring.
I did everything except 11 and 13. From 14 on, jumped off a 45 foot train tressel into the river every summer. Always left the house saying I was going to "ride my bike" and not once was I asked "where are you going?" (it was obvious to my parents that riding a bike was all about having no destination). As a result, I eventually road with a friend to Oregon and back to California when I was 17, and our folks did not expect me to call every day I was gone. Made and shot potato bazookas --- and passed that skill on to my son, much to the amazement of his buddies. Planted an organic garden on a quarter acre and sold veggies all summer to pay for the bike trip. Bought a used rototiller for the garden and, as a result, had to learn all about small engine maintenance and repair. And walked to school alone from the second grade on.
None of this was unusual. If anything, I was a little more careful than many of my friends. Older twin boys up the street built a pipe bomb one summer and it blew off of of the boys' smallest two fingers. Interestingly, prior to the accident he was a real jerk, and after he starred in our high school play and was a completely different guy. His brother though never changed.
I knew a kid who was "looking" at gasoline under a magnifying glass and burned his face off.
more memories: dorms at college were the worst.
--- raiding the head for TP, making fist size spitwads and dropping them on cars from the 7th floor...
--- covering the floor of the elevator with dixie cups stapled together and filled with water...
--- wedging somebody's door with pennies so they couldn't open it, then rolling lit firecrackers into the room under the door...
--- simulating an earthquake by simul-shaking all three walls of somebody's room (this was Berkeley, everyone already quake paranoid)...
--- and of course, there was the guy who made the tennis ball cannons, and we'd fire shots at the dorm across the way...
Yeah, siphoning two garbage cans of water under a guy's door, and shaving cream in a large envelope, stomped on under the same door the next night. One guy got a road kill ground hog put under his bed that rotted for ten days...his roomate had mono and everyone just thought it was him stinking.--(I didn't do that one)
We actually stole a truckload of bricks and bricked in a guy's door one night. But the worst was when the women's hall attacked our floor for a water fight. Water was running down the stairways...it took weeks to dry up. We did get shit for that as the government had printing offices right below us.
I used to hunt raccoons at night to pay for my university costs. Hides were a great price ( $75 each in the 70's) and the area was crawling with them...but I used to keep the hides in my room refrigerator and the gun in my room...and the campus police knew it ...They thought it was weird but didn't care. Just doing this would get me ten years in prison today. Home owners would phone me to come and shoot them.
A lot of cars had "moonie" hub caps. In one brilliant episode we put our bottle-return money together, and sneaked a roll of Anthony's dad's construction tape (the shit makes monster duct tape look like sissy tissue paper). Our attention turned to the most recent annoyed neighbor who ratted us out to our parents and we got beat (absolutely deserved, never the less, though....) got the largest whole fish we could buy, taped inside his moonie hub cap.
About a week later in a nice hot summer, you could smell the guy driving down the street. Believe it or else, it took a while to figure out from where the smell was coming. When it's sitting with the engine off, it wasn't that bad. When you started the engine and had it running, the rising heat from the engine completed sucked the smell away from the wheel well and into the engine bay. You opened the hood, and were covered in the stench. I remember the men standing around his open engine with their handkerchiefs over their nose and mouth. "How could that smell be coming from the engine? It smells like rotten fish."
In those days there was no Febreeze, nor fancy resistant fabrics, so the entire interior of the car also had to be scrubbed with soap and bleach to kill the smell.
When the mystery was finally solved, IIRC, I was only in school or in my room for about 2 years. ;) Today you'd definitely end up in Juvey Hall.
lmao!
Salt Peter and sugar made great smoke bombs
Science brand stump remover, and equal part sugar. Long lasting hot fire producing voluminous white smoke - cleared the upper floor of my high school from an empty locker in Junior year. good times, good times.
If you get the time to scrape up a bunch of bird crap, like from under a sycamore tree, and mix that in, it produces a putrid stench that takes weeks to remove from inside any building, rendering said building uninhabitable.
Full tackle football during recess complete with pile ons (they were called something completely different then.......)
King of the hill / mountain with snow hills /piles (i.e. get to the top of the snow hill / pile and defend the top by pushing invaders down)
"skitching" by holding on the bumper of a car and being dragged down an icy road.
The only time anyone really wore seat belts was when one drove on the I system, or on a race track, maybe.
I bet nearly all of us posting tonight did not use a child seat for they did not exist then, were exposed to lead paint, played Dungeons & Dragons, were in shop classes in school, and wonder of wonders, did not lose our collective shit.
So, where did everything go wrong?
Perhaps it started with Barney. That is what my friend and I came up with one night during a long conversation anyway.
Fuck yes. King of the Hill.
Never needed/used a seat belt because everybody was watching out for everybody else. Driving was a major personal responsibility. Now fuck it, I had my seatbelt on when I T-boned somebody while I was fucking with my smartphone. So, I'm a responsible person.
I was was born in '51, our house was built in '48. The whole fuckin' thing was covered inside and out with lead oil paint.
We used to build ramps and steep chutes on sledding hills. After 3 times up and down on the vanilla hill, and not want to build up the action, ya had to be a retard.
The other day I'm coming out of a card store, and there's a young mother prepping to go into the Post Office. She's got a mailing envelope tucked under her arm, with the side of the van open. She's undoing the kid from the seat, dealing with the kid's blanket and all kinds of stuff. So I'm curious. Yep, she goes into Post Office, probably gets the stamp she needed and posted the enevelope. Comes back out no more than 3 minutes later.
Now... is she neurotic because the kid might die or be stolen while she is in the PO for a few minutes?
Or.... is she neurotic that she will be arrested and her kid taken away if somebody catches her leaving the kid unattended, locked in the car?