Wonderful Days Of The Past

http://zanylol.com/past.html ^

[navysealdad]

What a wonderful life we had as kids, not a worry in the world.

[LouAvul]

Me too. Life used to be good. Then we threw God out of society, education, government and most of religion. Now we have infanticide, faggots and corruption. Thank you democrats, you reprehensible sorry excuses for humans.

[Terry Mross]

You had a bike with an odometer? Wow! You were rich! Just kidding.

My high school English teacher died today. She taught mythology in the 9th grade so I was in her other classes for four years. In the 9th grade she wore my butt out with a paddle. I didn’t tell my mother because if I did I would have gotten another whipping from her.

We played war with BB guns. We took axes to the woods and cut down trees to make a fort. We swam in snake infested creeks. We did this from the time we were ten years old. But I do sometimes wonder if we weren’t a little more mature than kids today.

[exit82]

LOL! yeah, the speedometer had an odometer. .got it up to over six hundred miles before it crapped out.

I think the freedom we had back then did make us more mature in one way, we knew how to look out for ourselves. still did dumb things, but not fatal things.

Playing war was a staple. I was an expert in “dying” with a flourish.

A well crafted ambush made for a great day.

[Windflier]

We Genx’ers may be the last generation to remember any of this.

If only you could know the things we Boomers remember. I don't think any generation of American children had it so good.

[T-Bird45]

1955 edition Boomer here. I enjoyed your recollections and share many of them with you. It was a unique time that was extended through our kids because of living in the middle of America. It probably was not able to be extended to their peers that lived in different circumstances and locations because the conditions had changed so much.

Things that had passed and were not available for my 1980-born son to experience:

Having a paper route - it was all done as motor routes.

Learning to drive a stick shift - we owned only automatics.

Farm work - little contact with agriculture and too much liability for the farmer to take on a teenager.

Bike rides like you described - living in a tract-home suburb of a metro area comes with arterial streets that are not bike-friendly.

There’s probably other things that didn’t/couldn’t happen but we tried to maintain some things.

[rlmorel]

My parents used at various times a bell, a large triangle, and...their voice.

I remember playing all those games and “Crack the Whip”

I remember the metal roller skates, and how I would take them apart, hammer them flat and nail them to boards to make skateboards that would never stand up to the first crack in the sidewalk they met, causing either the front or rear wheels to fall of and causing you to crack up.

You never see a group of neighborhood kids playing baseball or tackle football (with no equipment)

It is almost an unwritten rule amongst parents not to let more than three or four kids congregate.

[rlmorel]

Heh...remember the generators that you put on the tire to drive the chrome torpedo shaped lights that were attached to the handlebars?

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Kids in the 70's: No knee pads, helmets, brakes or over-cautious soccer moms. That's just how we rolled.

I remember the Evel Knievel era well. We never understood the need for a landing ramp, and why it hurt so much when we landed.

The ice cream man is coming!

[rlmorel]

"...cap pistols with roll caps..."

Hehehe...I know I'm not the only one out there who would take the entire roll, put it on the sidewalk and drop a brick on it to make the whole roll explode!

It was loud enough to make your ears ring, but it sure went through a box of caps fast!

I can almost remember the narrow white box with red writing on the outside that held four or five rolls.

And, of course...toy guns. That your parents would buy for you. This was the most amazing toy gun I had...

Now, parents would call the police if they saw you with that. And the police might shoot you when they saw you themselves.

[rlmorel]

Hahahaha...remember how all the kids, no matter what activity you were engaged in, would stop bolt still for a second when we got the first inkling of whatever the ice cream truck used to play?

We must have looked like a bunch of meerkats...

"ICE CREAM!"

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

We must have looked like a bunch of meerkats...

Hehehehe... Loved my 10-cent root beer Popsicle, but the bookie's kid could afford Italian Ice. At least I'm not still bitter. Pretty much, anyway.

[Vermont Lt]

Yeah, those were the days...polio, Cold War fears, Jim Crow.

Yup...lets go back to those days.

[autumnraine]

Was watching one of my kids (and mine from back in the day) movie, Wayne’s World.

Never see kids playing in the street and yelling “CAR!” which immediately pauses the game until the car passes.

[autumnraine]

Good lord at the ridiculously dangerous bike ramps we made.

Piece of wood on a cinder block? That’s a ramp!

And my post below about the big wheel wipe out (ripping the brake after going what felt like 800 miles an hour)

[autumnraine]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJWEvP9gtww

We were born to mothers who smoked and drank
Slept in cribs painted in lead based paint...

Not that we shouldn’t learn how to be safer, but dang... how DID we survive?

[autumnraine]

Lyrics to the video I posted...

We were born to mothers who smoked and drank
Our cribs were covered in lead based paint
No child proof lids, no seat belts in cars
Rode bikes with no helmets and still here we are, still here we are
We got daddy’s belt when we misbehaved
Had three TV channels you got up to change
No video games and no satellite
All we had were friends and they were outside, playin’ outside

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world
School always started the same every day
The pledge of allegiance then someone would pray
Not every kid made the team when they tried
We got disappointed and that was all right, we turned out all right

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world

No bottled water, we drank from a garden hose
And every Sunday, all the stores were closed

It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time
It was a different world
It was a different life
When we were boys and girls
Not just a different time It was a different world
It was a different world

[autumnraine]

I was a tomboy. I was the Annie Oakley of war. And always had to up the boys on the block (until puberty, when I all of a sudden got pretty to them, LOL) Anything you can do I can do better... but even they will say that I added to the fun. Regardless of if I was a GIIIRRRLLLL. Those prissy girls always irritated me. And then, as I said... puberty hit. Haha

[autumnraine]

ICE CREAM!!!!! ICE CREAM!!!!!

You ain’t got no ice cream, cause you are on welfare... whoops!

[autumnraine]

Heck, apparently now you can’t not only have a cap gun, you can’t make a pancake in the SHAPE of a gun.

Oh Lord. Now I know why the world has sunk...

[rlmorel]

Hahaha...I had the biggest crush on the neighborhood tomboy. Her name was Beth Boyd, and she was the younger sister of one of my classmates. He looked like Drew Carey, but she had short blonde hair and jade green eyes, she could outrun me, and when we wrestled, she beat me because my mind wasn’t on wrestling...:)

I was twelve years old...that probably explains it!