When you could bring a toy like this to show-and-tell (which I did), and not have the entire frigging state go into meltdown.
This is a common story of our childhood that was unfettered by a central socialist government.
Is this a Bucky Covington song?
Thanks. That email pretty well nails it.
My go-cart had an old lawn mower engine (no brakes).
Great article....but I got my first bb gun when I was six, and I didn’t put my eye out.
God has been replaced by government now, and the results were totally predictable.
And rode minibikes with lawnmower engines and no helmet! Got spanked with a leather belt when we needed it!
Thanks
This brought back a lot of memories.
You sure this from Leno? This seems another one of those emails that when checked out, finds he did not send it out, someone else did.
I grew up in Southern California. We’d have blazing summers, with playgrounds that were tiny and full of metal structures, old tractor tires, and concrete in awkward places. Not that the sand was much better, for most of the year it was just as hard as the concrete.
I look at playgrounds today with hundreds of thousands spent on wheelchair ramps, rubber mats, plastic coated structures, and even roofs. Gone are swings and jungle gyms, what is left are boring slow slides, plastic tic-tac-toe games and if you’re really lucky, a climbing wall that extends all of three feet up.
Great for the under 5 set, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone past on the running course and seen a seven or eight year old bored with the playground and instead sitting there with an iPad.
On the other hand, the life expectancy of an American at birth has increased from 53.7 in 1930 to 73.7 in 1980 to 78.3 in 2010. I have no opinion as to whether the increase in life expectancy is because of the nanny state or in spite of it. I will say, howevr, that I would rather die a year younger than live in a society where government dicates every aspect of our lives from craddle to grave and children are suspended from school for merely pointing their finger like a gun.
I remember being four years old and following my older (by a few years) brother all over the neighborhood. My neighborhood was in the process of having many new homes built. So we played in the dug out ground. We had an old farm field next to our neighborhood which was also our ball diamond. The railroad tracks were one block away. We walked the rails many times despite being warned by our mothers.
We climbed the bluffs near our homes...where every year kids fell off and died. Including one kid from my neighborhood. We did all the things mentioned in the article...all without parental supervision. No parents watched either our sandlot games or our city rec league games. No kid wore a helmet when riding his bike. Things were a lot different then.
Bump for the survivors of no seatbelts in cars with steel dashboards!
He left out a very important part of the 1930 - 1979 time period. Everybody was bored to tears.
Back in the ‘30’s, especially in the Southland, about the only entertainment people had were tent revivals. Some have gone so far as to blame lynchings on sheer boredom.
By the 1950s, and the great suburban western expansion, social tension had about reached a boiling point. While the end of the war pretty much ended omnipresent segregation in the North, much of the “Bible Belt” was still ruled by small town religious cliques that mistreated those outside of their sect.
The “sexual revolution” was actually a “cultural revolution” by people sick to death of their defined roles in society and wanting something better for themselves and their children.
The first big breakthrough gets little credit but had a huge impact: Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System. For once, people could “vote with their feet”, and they did.
The in the 1960s, the light dawned that industrialism had made much of America a polluted mess. This is when cleaning up, both nationally and personally, suddenly became important.
The 1950s diet of meat, flour, sugar, salt, fat, liquor and cigarettes was really taking its toll.
But the giant breakthrough came with the breakup of AT&T: entertainment! Finally we had information we didn’t have to wait for, and was filtered through the big three TV nets and the local paper, days or weeks after it happened.
“Dad, why is polar bears fur white?”
“Gee, son. I don’t know. Why don’t you go to the library, find and read a book about polar bears, and find out? It should only take a day or two.”
“No thanks, dad. I’ll just Google it.”
Oh the memories! Sweet!
Those were the days when parents, the public in general, and authorites protected children. We no longer “protect” children...we weaken them.
as women entered the workplace their power in the family
even a two parent one
grew exponentially
and women are just more cautious about boys being boys
and in time men just accepted all this and also became more subservient
yes...we have a problem with single moms and baby daddy culture...our biggest threat to me....before Islam and spending and homosexuality and gun control
and men under 45 just get more and more pliant as women get more and more bossy
it's weird
and I am living it as an older dad and my wife is a hair older too...compared to our parenting peers and us with three boys ...6,10,13
our kids love it
and every boy within a mile or so is at our house all summer...a bit of a challenge I confess
wifey cooks for them...teaches them to have manners (South)...since most don't anymore...even southern kids born to GenX and Y parents
we let them play with horses...shoot guns supervised with parental permission
sleepovers in the barn or tree house
KTMs and Go carts
or sitting up late with me watching war movies..and they get the added benefit of hearing me drone about how it was once or my overseas exploits...PG version...or history
but when I meet these younger folks ..their parents...it's just too strange the dynamics...over protection...indoor kids...bossy..even if cute...mommy...mousey daddy who doesn't own a firearm...or just a shotgun maybe
and their dads all sit around at night playing video games in their 40s....college grad fairly well off guys
Williamson County TN...
I never thought it all would come to this...we were actually optimistic in the 60s/70s
oh well
won't be long men like me will be dying off like we've watched the WWII/Korea guys and next will be the Vietnam guys and then my gang...the lost 70s lads...but at least we were real guys
As far as pregnant mothers smoking, my mother didn’t smoke when she was pregnant with my sister and me, and we had healthy birth weights. She began smoking heavily for my subsequent 3 siblings, and their birth weights were significantly lower. My youngest sister barely weighed 5 lbs.
My daughter in law smoked with her first pregnancy, and her son had a low birth weight, looked scrawny for a long period of time, and now has asthma.
As far as pregnant women being tested for diabetes, maybe they should have been. I had gestational diabetes, and was put on a very healthy diet, which I followed to the letter. I put on just a couple of pounds per month, and my son was born weighing close to 7 lbs. Had I not been put on the diet, there was a good possibility that I would have put on too much weight, and my baby would have weighed more than 10 lbs. and could have developed diabetes as well. Some people did not survive the 50s, 60s, and 70s that may have if their mothers had been tested for certain prenatal problems, and had watched what they ingested when pregnant.
Society had yet to be culturally cleansed by unethical liberal perverts back then. It was a public culture that was safe and good for childen. It was a culture that respected children and familes. Moms were home to keep an eye out. Our society had clear moral values and expectations and it was taboo to interact immorally with children. Adults harming or corrupting a kid was a big deal and crime was not a central concern. People were entertained by people who were not totally depraved like today. School teachers were not permitted to corrupt children’s honor, moral behavior and values. There was no culture of death. There was no unjust, illogical p.c. zero tolerance to trip up a child.
Parents can not turn their children loose today in any way because liberal society is totally corrupt and dangerous. If parents were good people, they would not turn them over to public schools for liberal brain and heart washing either. The schools are lording over the better judgement and moral values of parents. If the parents organized and pulled their kids out, and closed some schools, it would stop fast.
I love to ask people “who’s childhood would you rather have, yours or your kids?” After a bit of thought, the answer almost always comes back “mine.”
Amen. One item really made me laugh. My Dad had the nerve to drive me home from my Grandmothers in a station wagon that had little, to no brakes. I’ll never forget my Dad going onto a sidewalk to pass stopped traffic at a light. He’d be put in prison now....
Bump for later emailing...
I always quote Robert Heinlein when my wife gives me the stink eye for being tough on my 3 sons:
“Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.”