Thanks, Doc. These are fun to read.
There are so many good memories. In our little southern town of 300 people, 10 of us from age 18 down to 12, would ride bikes down a gravel road to Dale’s fish pond to go swimming. Some of the younger kids couldn’t swim but the parents didn’t worry about that because it was the older kids’ job to take care of the younger ones.
These same group of us guys went out into the woods one day to build a log cabin. We chopped down trees with AXES and HATCHETS and actually got the walls up to about 3 feet high. Later we used it as a fort when we played war with REAL BB guns. A year later in that same part of the woods I killed my first rabbit with a .410 shotgun.
We walked on the railroad track. Remember the scene in STAND BY ME? That happened to my cousin, my brother and me. It was a short bridge but the train snuck up on us. My grandparents, my parents and my brother are all buried in a cemetary about a quarter of a mile from that bridge.
I fell asleep many nights listening to WLS out of Chicago. I’d wake in the morning and the battery on my transistor radio would be dead. Eventually I’d sell enough “coke” bottles to buy a new battery.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
There are some things I don’t remember.
I don’t remember video games.
I don’t remember computers.
I don’t remember calculators.
And I don’t remember having hundreds of TV channels to watch. There were three channels and during the day all that was on were soap operas. No kid wanted to watch those so it made us get up out of bed every morning in the summer and go find fun things to do. If we couldn’t find something fun to do, we’d make it up. My cousin once said “Our exploits were only as limited as our imaginations”. Kids today don’t have imaginations.
I remember when I was like 7 I used to ride my bike 4mi out along a semi truck route to my great Grandparents farm.
(no shoulder, no helmet, no worries)
I would get out there and “Shorty” My Great Grandad, would give me a dime to get him a plug of beechnut chewy tobacco.
I would ride 4 mi back to Browns drug store. but the tobacco on the counter along with the dime, get like 3c back, no questions asked and ride back out to the farm, where lunch would be waiting.