Posted on 04/18/2015 5:32:00 PM PDT by Daffynition
Mommyshorts.com asked their readers to submit childhood throwback pictures from the 70's and 80's. Judging by these pictures, it's a miracle the generation survived. Here are 20 things parents did back then that would be considered completely questionable today:
{snip pix at source]
(Excerpt) Read more at distractify.com ...
Brother, friends and I did all this in the late 60s and early 70s in the Pacific NW:
Building tree-houses 30 feet or more up in the trees.
Building bike jumps in the street, taking off from up the hill and hitting the jumps as fast as we could see how far we could fly.
Climbing the Douglas fir trees (some as high as 150 feet or more) all the way to the top, just so we could touch the top.
I was in the bed of a small Datsun pickup while Mom was teaching my brother how to drive in a school parking lot. At one point he panicked while heading straight for a water filled ditch as she yelled at him to STOP! He drove right into the ditch and I ended up holding on in the back hoping I didn’t go flying out.
Jumping on our bikes in the morning and heading out to explore and not getting back until dinner time. Lots of places to explore in the woods back then.
Building rope swings on huge evergreen trees and staying for hours jumping out over a deep ravine holding on with just our hands.
BB gun fights out back in the forest. Never put an eye out.
Finding swamps and deep holes filled with water out in the woods and building small rafts to get around.
Lots more, but the sad thing for me now is that my brother turned into one of the parents of today who never lets his two kids do anything. Won’t even teach them how to ride a small bike at ages 7 and 6 (both girls). Gets paralyzed with fear if they, God forbid, start climbing on the slides in the kids area at the park. Yelled at me once for giving the oldest a small cutting tool to cut weeds with in the back yard. Sad.
There was a patch of woods near our house where we spent much of our time - climbing, building tree houses, playing with fire, etc. We had a basketball goal on the street where we played till the old lady across from it called the cops on us. We played pickup baseball and football in the school yards in the neighborhood. We rode our bikes miles away from home with little or no money in our pockets, just a backpack with some sammies and snacks. None of this was supervised, and cell phones didn’t exist yet - we all had curfews that we didn’t dare violate, if we were home for meals and bedtime we were OK. Somehow we survived and grew up into (mostly) responsible adults.
Now that my own children are adults, I see so many of their friends that have never grown up and have no clue how to deal with the world’s complexities. I see kids in their mid twenties that wouldn’t survive 10 minutes outside of their parents’ protective nest. And these are the leaders of tomorrow? Oy.
My Mom still blackmails me with a picture of all 4 of us kids in the bathtub. 2 boys, 2 girls. Ages 5,4, 3 and1. Lived in the country, had a cistern.
Cool. When we played cowboys and Indians, my brothers and I were always the Indians because we were Indians and had all the right regalia. One kid had an old prop pistol from the Gunsmoke set. His dad had been a grip on the series. When I was a toddler, Milburn Stone was our landlord.
Just reminiscing this evening about those days and how we would build forts, tree house [without P&Z showing up w/ a summons], rafts that Newtoidaho mentioned above.
Dinner was always between 5 p and 5:15p ....you better be on time.
I remember crank phones. Pick it up and have “Sarah” ring Floyd’s barbershop or whatever. Later we had a black phone, but no dial. Pick it up and click the receiver a couple times to get the operator. Wanted electricity? Turn on the generator. Rural electrification was still a few years off. Wanted cool milk? Go get some out of the root cellar through the trap door in the kitchen floor. Sweating in 95 degree heat trying to get to sleep? Wait for the end of September to get the “air conditioning” turned on.
Times have changed. Divorce used to have a *stigma* to it, as you say...it’s commonplace now.
You should know what we did that our parents never knew about......
Heh. My 3 *boys* are in their 30s now....and every so often .....at a fam gathering, one of them will tell about something they did, that I didn’t know about. I thought they were *angels* as kids.
Great for making crank phone calls. "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"
My(our) set up not quite that bad. Alley had 8 lanes but unlike this one, had a shield in front.
There was an opening between 1/2 etc so pin boy (DON’T CALL ME BOY) could shuffle between both lanes...pins flying all over the place and buttheads throwing while in the pit...had a pretty good arm and lofted more than a couple pins over the top of frame.
Only caught one betwixt the running lights once, they were ALL scared to death since I was so young...shook it off but they made me fill out tax forms etc to sort of make it ‘legal’...so I have a FICA witholding from 1954...
I did put a derelict or two out of an honest living.....HA...
You better let him out. He can’t breathe!
When I was 15 the cool thing to do was sneak a joy ride in the family car. You drift out of the driveway and start the car rolling down hill. The Watergate hearings were a perfect time as so many parents were glued to the TV. Surprisingly none of my friends ever got caught, me either, and we did this a lot.
Around supper my Dad would whistle when the food was ready. Dad could whistle louder than anyone I knew, I swear you could hear him three blocks away. So one of my friends would poke me in the ribs and say 'your dad's calling you' and I'd go eat.
Afterwards we kids had to clean up ( my sisters still ask why they had to wash and dry and I didn't...I don't reply...( why it was I had to get on the roof and clean out the gutters or why I had to crawl under the house every fall and light the pilot light and they didn't ...but you know)...
We could stay outside after dark if we were near the street light which was fine cause it was too hot when we had no A/C but at 9:30 Mom would make me come in and go to bed, but I would listen to my transistor radio until the room cooled off via the giant window fan....Ha the crazy stuff I heard on that radio...
we literally got set loose in Annapolis Md back in the day to run the red brick streets, harass every gift shop owner, and then to invade the Academy and spy on the midshipmen....we were only 9-10 yrs old or so....WE HAD A BALL!!!
All my Baptist friends went to church Sunday AM, PM and on Wednesday night. Us Presbyterians just went Sunday AM.
We had Christmas parties at school too and our Christmas programs consisted of each grade singing 3 Christmas carols all verses. We were also taught all the patriotic American songs and American folk songs. We were taught songs like The Erie Canal, The Streets of Loredo and many purely American songs. It was wonderful. I still remember them. We also rode on that “shelf” in the back seat where the speakers were. The dog rode there too.
I’ve been having a good time reading all your experiences and reminiscing about those earlier times.
An experience I had in 1944 would have gotten our teacher not only fired but doing some time in stoney lonesome if it had happened today.
President FDR had just died and we kids were talking about it in class when I innocently said, “everybody has got to die sometime.” The teacher was a super Lib and when she heard about it took me into the cloak room and paddled my butt. I was 9 at the time and the paddling didn’t hurt but it sure pissed me off.
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