Posted on 07/06/2009 10:51:37 AM PDT by JoeProBono
Bike helmets? SPF? Veggie meals? No way, if you grew up in '50s, '60s, '70s When Phyllis Murphy's mother was pregnant, back in the 1950s, her doctor advised her to take up smoking for relaxation.
A few years later, that same mom smeared her toddler's skin with a concoction of baby oil and iodine for a deep, rich tan. Now, safely in adulthood in Vancouver, B.C., Murphy fondly recalls childhood as a time of leaping from rooftops and accumulating “more scars than Joan Rivers.” And Tim Palla, a 46-year-old pastor, spent his childhood just north of Pittsburgh where he got just one vaccination, gobbled wild berries and mushrooms, drank from the ditch, and chewed road tar like gum.
Like Palla and Murphy, many of us who were raised in the 1950s, '60s and '70s are survivors. We were tiny daredevils: sun-blasted, pocket-knife-carrying, bottom-spanked, cow eaters. We ran the streets armed with BB guns, boxing gloves and bottle rockets, wholly unprotected by bike helmets, sunscreen or Amber Alerts. Our houses were filled with the blue cigarette smoke of our cocktail-drinking parents and we believed it wasn’t supper without a mountain of red meat.....
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!”
Now, mothers run around behind their children with purses full of bandaids, lysol, and anti-bacterial lotion, disinfecting anything and everything that might possibly come in contact with their little angels, and hysterically spraying neosporin on every little cut or scrape that they get. Of course, this prevents the children from ever building up immunities against real infections, and when they do run across one, they get sick big time.
And people wonder why children get sick more often and have more allergies now than they used to...
And we could play all day as long as we were in before dark. And all the moms had implied permission to punish someone else’s kid who misbehaved. And then call the mom who typically ‘doubled down’.
Thos were the days.
Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.
Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.
I used to lay in the backseat window well of our Chevy Belair, ate raw cookie dough, and never owned a bike helmet.
I played outside until dark - that’s 10pm in the summer in Kentucky, roamed the woods completely by myself, and was allowed, at age 5, to visit the toy aisle at JC Penney alone.
I won’t let my kids in their own front yard unattended...and that’s one reason why there is a Pit Bull always on guard in my yard.
My brother’s and I are survivors of the 50’s. Our parents let us ride around without seat belts. For a special treat the next door neighbor would pile a bunch of us in the bed of his pick up and speed around country roads. Didn’t he know we could be ejected???!!!! We’d put on roller skates and let another kid pull us by a rope attached to his bike (which had special sound effects from a deck of cards attached to the spokes with clothes pins). I remind my mother she’s very lucky we didn’t all sue her for child neglect and abuse.
There are a lot of very neurotic moms out there. However, I do swear by Neosporin if you have a scrape or cut. It really speeds the healing process. We had iodine and bandaids (40’s and 50’s). We ate meat a couple of times a week (couldn’t afford more), we watched TV in the 50’s as a family and listened to radio as a family in the 40’s. We went out and played without structure or supervision. There was no such concept as scheduled play time. There were no helmets for bikes or motorbikes, just for football. We are in truly different times. Some changes are good. I do believe in seat belts (if I choose to wear them) and airbags and there have been other improvements but there are a lot of parents who are royally screwing up their kids heads with all of their scheduling, protection, rules, etc. I also blame the schools.
Oh well, I rant on. Enough.
Great pic.
As a veteran highway cop told me 10 yrs ago....back then we took the bodies to the morgue and the car to the body shop to get fixed.
Now the cars go to the scrap yard and the people walk away.
My son is 12 and I swear he is of a different time. He absolutely hates, tv, video games and being inside. Give him and his buddies a ball and they will entertain themselves for hours. Plus they could fish from morning til nighttime.
Recently, he and some friends were staying with me at my parents, they have a pond in their community. The boys insisted on making their own fishing poles, they did buy some hooks, like and bobbers, but they went into the woods to find the perfect sticks to use. Before the day was through they caught over 140 Bream. The next morning, kids from all over the neighborhood were showing up to fish, they all wanted the home made poles too!
1970s child here (born ‘63)
We had some much freedom parents today would flip over. I do with my own kids. The world seemed safer back then, but who knows... that “nice guy” who hung out near my elementary school and taught the kids to play soccer turned out to be a pedophile; nobody questioned it at the time.
Then again, most of what we did wasn’t necessarily lethal - although it could be — but it was not always harmless: run around freely, bike rides, car races, rope swings, dope, beer, ... my parents didn’t have a clue.
Here’s the downside of the no-dangers world of today’s parenting: kids are immune to the little dangers, so they expose themselves to larger dangers to compensate. For example, I’m convinced that the promiscuity of today’s youths is related to the sheltering that keeps kids from figuring out things by themselves. Without the gradual exposure to sexuality through free interaction when young (”be home by dinner”), kids go without healthy adult-free mixing and go straight to purely adult-free matching. Just a theory here.
I think that the “X” sports is a result of this phoneomenon. We got out our agression on bicycles and skateboards without having to jump rails. Kids today are either confined to the park or go wildly footloose on their own.
Add to it all youtube, and you have a bizaar mixture of nannyism and inmates-running-the-asylum. It must be enormously confusing for today’s kids.
It was the days before 24/7 news channels, ignorance was bliss.
If something bad happened a thousand miles away, it would only be on the local news. Now, it’s on CNN and people react as if it happened in their own town.
If you grew up in rural Colorado the gravy days went on into the 80’s.
Had to remove a BB from a friend’s cheek after a dust-up with some older kids. Missed his left eye by about an inch and a half. Bottle rocket wars were an annual event. A few of us owned actual firearms before we started junior high and had permission to hunt on our own. Shotgun shells were about $5 a box at the corner hardware store/soda fountain. We could legally purchase and use chewing tobacco. You didn’t want to chew at school though, because if you got caught the principal made you eat your can of snuff. Amber Alerts? Didn’t need ‘em. Everybody knew everyone else in town, and the kids were armed.
Sigh...
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I got that set for Easter in 1965! I was worried that the bunny wouldn’t find me since I was dropped off at Grandma’s house the night before. You see my little Brother decided to arrive that morning. I was so innocent at 4yo that since my parents had told me we were having a bunny not a baby that when Dad told me I had a brother I told him I’d rahter have a bunny! Those were the days!
Mothers were probably extremely protective in the 1800s before modern emergency rooms. Post WWII doctors got pretty good which enabled Evel Knievel to break most every bone in his body and live to tell about it. People engage in extreme sports today because of their confidence in high-tech hospitals. But Obamacare will probably put an end to that.
Jim Carroll - People Who Died Lyrics
Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
On 26 reds and a bottle of wine
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
He looked like 65 when he died
He was a friend of mine
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
Bobby OD’d on Drano on the night that he was wed
They were two more friends of mine
Two more friends that died
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
Judy jumped in front of a subway train
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others
And I salute you brother
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
Herbie pushed Tony from the Boys’ Club roof
Tony thought that his rage was just some goof
But Herbie sure gave Tony some bitchen proof
“Hey,” Herbie said, “Tony, can you fly?”
But Tony couldn’t fly, Tony died
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
Brian got busted on a narco rap
He beat the rap by rattin’ on some bikers
He said, “Hey, I know it’s dangerous, but it sure beats Riker’s”
But the next day he got offed by the very same bikers
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
On 26 reds and a bottle of wine
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
He looked like 65 when he died
He was a friend of mine
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
G-berg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten
So they died of hepatitis in upper Manhattan
Sly in Vietnam took a bullet in the head
Bobby OD’d on Drano on the night that he was wed
They were two more friends of mine
Two more friends that died
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room
Bobby hung himself from a cell in the tombs
Judy jumped in front of a subway train
Eddie got slit in the jugular vein
And Eddie, I miss you more than all the others
And I salute you brother
Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died
I'm extremely cut off from TV news. Once in a great while I catch a few minutes of it -- and it's just rapes, murders, arsons, home invasions, and botched surgical procedures. About 500 tragedies a day, I reckon. I live in a small, rural town, with a population that is 98% white. But when I watch the News, I start thinking that some teenage gang is going to jump me on my way to the shed.
Exposure to that melodrama does make one fearful. So I avoid it.
I’m a big Jim Carroll fan. I saw him do several readings years ago. It was always hard to say if they were great or terrible — his performance style was quite unique. I found the readings enjoyble on multiple levels.
LOL! Forgotten that one.
I’m trying to make my kids childhood more “normal” ,, like we had in the 60’s and 70’s ... on the 4th of July my neighbor caught a baby gator (about 3 foot) in the pond and we had him in the swimming pool for a while ... my 5 year old was a bit leery but my 3 year old LOVED holding it...
If I took a picture of my son and his friends yesterday and make it back and white it would be like going back in time. It was drizzling out, they were barefoot and shirtless playing stickball in a grassy area beside the house instead of the street.
My son and his friends fish, race each other on dirt bikes, shoot skeet and target shoot (2 of his friends have their own ranges on their property w/adultsupervision)and play backyard baseball and football. They’ll do all these things in one day, breaking it up with jumps in the pool to cool off. And then camp out in the yard. We just have to check him for ticks.
From the article-
[“The bottom line is that things like bike accidents where a kid died because they didn’t wear a helmet, those rarely occurred. But if your kid happened to fall and was one out of 10,000 who died, you must live with knowing it was preventable,” Berman said. ]
No, today, one of 10,000 is the week’s abortion tally!
Give me the good old days!
We don’t live too dangerously here, but DH has DS1 drive tractors, wagons and equipment on the road from farm to farm.
It’s not unusual here.
A Hispanic man got in a fender bender with an 8-year-old neighbor boy driving a tractor and manure spreader down the road. He argued with the cop that the kid should get a ticket or something, too. Turns out the Hispanic had no license. (Qu’elle surprise)
The cop told him the kid was street-legal, but he wasn’t.
We swam in the Missouri River, just downstream from where 4-packing houses dumped their blood and guts from the kills prior to learning such was valuable. Water had a red tinge and occasionally a cow organ chunk drifted by. Catfish the size of a small car. The river froze over and we could walk over to Nebraska in the winter. (Saved the dime bridge toll.)
Good old days
At the age of seven and a half we moved to larger house in the midst of the oil fields. My sister and I along with a dozen other kids spent our summer days free from the confines of adult supervision. We slid down grassy hills on cardboard box sleds, piled up tar covered rocks in a nearby creek to make a swimming pool, used jack knives to cut bits of tar from the roadway for chewing gum, created a variety of forts from high a top a chicken house to deep under an abandoned farmhouse.
I had a wonderful childhood.
Our family of eight rode thousands of miles on vacations WITHOUT seatbelts, with Dad smoking his stogie in an enclosed car. Those things (seatbelts) were once novelties!
And we could play all day as long as we were in before dark. And all the moms had implied permission to punish someone else’s kid who misbehaved.
Yes, I got spanked at age 4 by a neighbor who was concerned that I had decided to plop myself down in the middle of a street. I’m sure my mom thanked him for it.
...boot mounted luggage rack, ash tray, AM radio, heater, wire knock-off wheels,and lap belts. I remember my folks fretting that I would be thrown from the vehicle in an accident. I assured them that in the case of an accident I would be firmly impaled by the non-collapsible steering column which was essentially a piece of pipe pointed directly at the driver's heart.
Luv it!!!!
My mother said that her mother never did a lick of house work after her and her sisters could do it, they were Irish also. Couldn't cook either, my fathers mother showed her how.
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