Posted on 06/21/2015 2:03:59 PM PDT by QT3.14
“.blowing up ant hills with fire crackers.’
Many an ant got a ride from our gorilla firecrackers. We also had cherry bombs, silver salutes and m-80s. We used to rubber band the big guys to a rock and drop them in the lake. They would explode and bring up a few bullheads.
Now you can’t even buy ladyfingers.
Sigh.
I’ll add some of the things I did that I can think of:
-Going deep into the woods by myself when I was 8.
-Going deep in the woods and staying over night in my Army surplus shelter halves tent all by myself when I was 12.
-Winter camping by myself when I was 15.
-Shooting critters and other kids with my BB Gun - Daisy Rider.
-Getting shot by other kids with their BB guns.
-Jumping off a 30 foot rock/cliff into a lake with my friends when we were young teens.
-Building tree houses and forts in the deep woods.
-Making trail and camp fires all by myself since I was in Cub Scouts... And NEVER causing a forest or brush fire because a good adult woodsman taught us how and what NOT to do.
-Smoking my first cigarette when I was 13. Yeah, we weren’t allowed to, but I had to try it! Puked my guts out but kept at it until I was 46.
-Staying up all night at my friend’s garage when his parents were away. Drinking beer and fixin’ cars. We were 16.
-Desiring to join the military and nagging my parents to allow me when I was 17. I signed up on my 18th birthday.
We played war with BB guns.
We used to play “Ante Over The Shanty” with a rubber “spongeball” at a one room schoolhouse. That was 1946 and out in the boonies where we were, the spongeball was all we had.
I live in an area with a population that some would call undocumented. Most of them live the lives we are talking about here. Many have access to fireworks from Mexico. Most will leave their 8 yr old in charge of the 4 yr old because their 16 year old sister is around the house some where. The parking lots light at their church needed work. They built a 12ft platform out of 2x4s and an used piece of plywood. Tied it to the light pole and climbed up the ladder. It was still not tall enough so they pulled the ladder up and leaned it against the pole.
I’m 50ish.
Gun swap in school parking lot.
Carried knives in school
Hitchhiked
Drank beer
Smoked
“Settled” issues behind the gym after school.
Harassed girls (got beat with a paddle by badass gym teacher for doing so but no police record)
Engaged in what is now called racist hate (see teacher mentioned above was black and we got set straight again without an arrest record)
Played with mercury in chem class.
Pantsed the class geek (now the rich kid and forgiving guy)
Then we moved onto high school.
All in all our teachers turned most of us into good kind thoughtful adults. Our parents? We prayed the that the teachers would not rat us out because they would have killed us for some of these things.
I jumped off an outdoor toilet using an umbrella as a parachute when I was 8. Only did it once.
At five years old I walked a mile to the train station hoping to meet my dad when he arrived on the commute. Only problem was it was 3:OO pm and train didn’t arrive until 6:00. A nice old man offered me a ride home and I arrived safe. Today I’d have been a face on a milk carton.
Grade school/middle school:
2nd-6th grade played in the levee woods of the Mississippi climbing on shipwrecked barges from Hurricane Betsy.
11 years old I’d go to work with my mom and my bike and ride and explore all over the French Quarter in New Orleans until she was finished for the day.
Ritually chased the DDT mosquito fogger truck through the neighborhood on our bikes riding in and out of the cloud.
Played and skim-boarded in every summer street flood.
Hitch-hiked a lot. Started when I was 12.
Used to take a woman’s panty hose and fill a foot of it with flour then beat each other. The flour “explosions” were hilarious.
Got drunk at an eight grade dance, passed out and puked all over the new school lobby furniture.
Use to beach comb the mangroves at the bay and build rafts which we then took out into the bay.
Tossed bailing wires onto the power lines to see the sparks. All fun and games until we blew up a transformer.
Every kind of homemade firework and smoke bomb was made. Used to buy saltpeter at the feed store for 60 cents a pound.
Used to put a calcium carbide in a milk jug with a little bit of water, seal it up and poke a hole in the side. Squeeze it and light it. Fun flames until one lets go of the squeeze and sucks the flame back into the jug. Quit doing that after the explosion that singed my eyebrows and made my ears ring for two days.
Crawled inside every dried up sinkhole we could find.
Jumped off the house roof onto the ground for the heck of it.
Bike trips to the dump to scavenge half the day for treasure.
High School:
In high school we’d take a 22’ boat out to the gulf stream to fish with no life jackets, no radio and no float plan. But, we had plenty of beer. (ranks as the most stupid thing ever).
Jumped off a 3O’ flood dam swimming all summer.
Used to have “king of the hill” battles on a gas pipeline 20’ above the water. We’d get three kids each side then shimmy out and fight.
Free dove 50’ to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve a Hawaiian sling spear. Blew out all my air and had none for the trip back to the top. Never do that!
Regularly swam in water with alligators.
Buddy was in the hospital. Friends and I went to visit at night and created a ruckus. Sour puss nurse Ratchet kicked us all out. We decided to climb up on the roof and find our friend’s room to continue the fun. (windows looked out over the roof). We tapped on his window and the curtains were pulled wide open by nurse Ratchet. Had to outrun security on that one.
Car racing, drinking, overnight fishing/camping trips, all around hell raising.
when my boys were young, their father made a 7 foot kite out of newspaper and moulding....once he got it up in the air it could lift the boys off the ground slightly, they loved it...It finally went down and they had to go looking for it. Found it actually about 1/2 mile from the house..we lived in a sub-division.
That photo of the girls standing on top of the moving train is obviously a photo-shop. But I’m sure it actually happened.
Boxcar kids. Carole, Kirk and Goldie. 1954, Marcola, Oregon.
Growing up, I was the only girl in my neighborhood.
Camp-out lasted all summer. We played War in the woods, caught crawdads in the crick, had skateboard races (while being towed by maniacs on Huffy’s), drank beer, played chicken in the pasture where a neighboring farm kept a nasty bull, shot at eachother with BB guns, built huge leaf piles under trees and then had contests to see how high we could climb, jump & land (those ended when one of the guys missed the pile & broke his arm).
No one watched tv, though we always had a radio with us. To this day I would rather listen to baseball on the radio than sit through a game on the boob-tube.
Good Times
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