Posted on 02/06/2010 8:02:54 AM PST by Dallas
is that a Western Auto, Huffy or Murray
Schwins were more elaborate
believe it or not those style bikes were first designed for folks with physical and mental handicaps but folks thought they looked cool
remember folks who would turn a bike upside down on the frame and make it taller
I hope I wasn’t one of them. LOL
medical help is better and washing machines
that is what my old grandma born in 1905 used to say
Yeah.
I get a bit paranoid about the safety of my six and nine year old Sons.
I’ve learned that if you keep a camera (or a picture taking phone) and use it frequently at parks where one’s little children are playing, the weirdos will keep away.
That was an enjoyable read. I grew up at the same time and we were all over the map. The game of “Risk” outside kept us all entertained one whole summer. Anything within 10 miles was game and everbody knew everybody. We all grew up together and went through all kinds of experiences that we keep to this day. As far a supervision goes, if you wronged an individual you got your ass beat.
I had a cast on my right arm to the elbow in 6th grade....had a spell there where I was a “good” kid and the folks bought me a new stingray bike with 3 speed shifter on the frame forward of the banana seat.....sissy bar........and cards...
now son...DO NOT ride this bike til we remove your cast ok ?
soon as the folks taillites went gone......was racing the neighbors and hit a car coming around the corner on our street
new cast LEFT arm armpit to knuckles, new cast RIGHT arm armpit to knuckles
reckon the folks were mad ?
it got worse.....two broke arms ....who whipes my butt ?
Ma’ma ............ rough times
We used to go play in the DDT fog when the mosquito fog machine came down the truck. The fog was so thick you couldn’t see your buddies or even hear them.
I grew up in southwestern Michigan. It was a grand time to be a kid - lots of youngsters in the neighborhood and always someone to join a game of cops & robbers or cowboys & Indians. Baseball bats turned into machine guns, and I was always envious of the boys who could make such persuasive machine gun noises. We played hide and seek on summer nights until well after the street lights came on. Parents knew we were nearby, and it was OK.
I don't think kids today would know how to play Simon Says, Mother May I, or Red Rover. Cowboys & Indians would just leave them scratching their heads. We loved to jump rope with silly rhymes like the one about the lady with the alligator purse.
Our neighbor had one of those Kool-Aid pitchers with the smile on it, and always had ice cold Kool-Aid for us on hot summer days. She also gave us graham cracker sandwiches filled with leftover chocolate icing whenever she baked a cake for dessert - yum. Our bikes were basic transportation, and we loved to ride over to a local ice cream shop for a treat.
What a great time!
I grew up in an outlying neighborhood in Jackson Miss with maybe 200 homes in it surrounded by woods etc.
We were given time limits (dark thirty) but we could go anywhere but down to the store about a half mile away on the boulevard without permission....farmland, golf course etc
There were a couple of feminine boys that stayed close to home and one couple of kids whose daddy was a cop were real strict but the rest of us roamed...scores of us
I don’t think we even had locks on the doors to our house.
I’m having trouble reading your post - could you please repost using a larger font? TIA.
in my tiny hometown, the Johnsons’ did not even have a front door...just a sheet
Best of all men were men and women were women, guys were guys and gals were gals...nobody had to figure that out....any ‘thing’ else was just that.
‘54 here. Forts were big when I was a kid, too.
Remember when some very wealthy people in town donated a large piece of land to the township for a park just outside my neighborhood (we were surrounded by parks which had ponds, creeks, big climbing trees, hills for sledding, sheltering woods for spying on lovers....no end to entertainment).
The parks people bulldozed an area in early summer that year to build a road and parking area. They pushed a bunch of earth into a long ridge and left it like that and it got covered with weeds and grasses. The neighborhood kids got together and built an elaborate fort above and below ground. It was amazing. The older kids had one end with the better fort and the young kids got the other end where they put in cruder earthworks. In between was an obstacle course and we had all kinds of scenarios we played out. I was completely obsessed with the whole thing for a while.
One morning in late summer we all headed to the fort - ran up the hill and stopped in shock. The bulldozers had flattened our fort! We were devastated for at least a day until we started to enjoy our pre-fort activities again and or course other new adventures.
I had great parents, a wonderful area to grow up in and have lots and lots of good memories of childhood. We may be getting older, but we were very lucky to grow up when we did in the golden years of American life. Those really were the days.
I once built an elevated clubhouse in my backyard with nothing more than scraps of wood found around the neighborhood. It had electricity too, courtesy of an extension cord run from the house, and an old light socket and bulb I found, which hung from the ceiling by a nail.
Try to get away with doing that today. You’d have the city inspector down on you so fast your head would spin.
Amen.
My son came home from visiting him and said mom, he cannot even pee without help. Both arms in casts... I did feel sorry for the kid, he was a good kid with a big problem.
I am a girl and when I played with my girlfriends we played at home, mine or theirs. But I was the only kid with a horse and when I rode I was alone and I went miles and miles on city streets and open country as well. If someone had kidnapped me my parents would not have a clue where to begin looking.
Oh my, how did you ever survive that....it would send todays parents into spastic head explosions..
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