Posted on 09/12/2020 4:32:04 AM PDT by sodpoodle
At the age of 10 we would ride our bikes (in a group) to the Yorktown Battlefield to play. That was 23 miles from home and nobody every got hurt, kidnapped, or in trouble.
“At the age of 10 we would ride our bikes (in a group) to the Yorktown Battlefield to play. That was 23 miles from home and nobody every got hurt, kidnapped, or in trouble.”
Which is probably why none of us was ever overweight.
My Parents were born in 1920 - their families were wrecked by the depression. They never got over it. My Aunts and Uncles and my Parents lived like 1929 was around the corner. They all had good paying factory jobs in the 50’s and 60’s until they retired, but to them they were always the poor kids growing up in the 1930’s.
Remember the coal man delivering the coal to the basement chute and dad shoveling coal into the furnace? Should we get the hard coal which was more expensive, gave more heat, and lasted longer or the soft coal which was cheaper, always the question.
Dad built the first TV in our neighborhood. B&W of course. I helped in the last stages of tuning it, he was tuning a pot behind the set and I was watching to tell him when the picture was clear. He kept saying, “How’s that?” and when I said nothing, he’s make another adjustment. At one point. I yelled, “Stop! There’s a good picture with a monkey eating a banana in a palm tree in color”. I didn’t know that it was supposed to be B&W. He laughed and said, “Very funny, son”.
Then he turned the pot again and there was Abbot an Costello doing a routine, all thoughts of what I had seen were forgotten ... until 65 years later when I read in Popular Science or Scientific American that way back then Johnson & Johnson had been experimenting with broadcasting color over B&W sets. The scene they were broadcasting featured the above description. The Johnson & Johnson lab was a mile from our home. I was not crazy and saw something probably no one alive saw outside of Johnson & Johnson.
I was thinking about my old Shogun Warrior just yesterday.
I rode me bike from the Northside of Chicago to Navy Pier and back, on a regular basis, and thought nothing of it. NOW I thank God I am out of Chicago.
Raydeen and Great Mazinga were my favorites.
Then, after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
—
Lead paint chips were tasty as were the tubs of library paste! Not to mention crawling around poking those funny looking holes in the wall which always seemed to make us cry and bring mommy running, her saying, “Don’t put your fingers into the electrical outlet.”
Or running around the front yard head down watching my feet move until I hit a tree and mom watching from the kitchen window doing the dishes called the doctor who rushed over to revive unconscious me ... twice and into the same tree both times.
Growing up in the 1930s, we didn’t have TV or computers, but there was Jack Armstrong and the Long Ranger on the radio for kids.
The old Italian guy scissor sharpener push cart slowly going down the street with the ding-ding bell.
The Good Humor truck...
High dives...
Senior prom...slow dancing cheek to cheek..
“I really MISS those days.
I hardly ever see kids riding bikes, playing stick-ball or shooting hoops outside anymore.”
____________________
So true. I raised my kids in a small river town. They played outside all of the time with the neighbor kids. I thought at the time it was like Mayberry. Whenever they get together now the conversation quickly turns to their childhood in that town. Great memories. This was the 1980’s. By the way they didn’t have bedrooms stuffed with plastic toys like so many today.
No, silly!
We had a Westinghouse:)!
I still call copy paper...typing paper. The clerk looks at me funny....What is typing paper he asks?
That said, I did have one friend in third grade whose last words reportedly were "I can make it." as he tried to cross a busy intersection. It was very sad. That said, accidents happen all the time. It is worse to raise want Nasim Taleb calls "fragile children".
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Benjamin Franklin.
I'm not sure this actually applies in this situation, but it always sounds good... :)
Wow, now that's really eating "high on the hog." I use to love moose brand limburger with a thick slice of Bermuda onion. Put a hamburger on that and it's to die for.. :)
Mosquito spray truck, water and DDT, kids running behind it getting cool, no one dying, and very few mosquitos.
But after Rachel Carson used her book to get DDT made illegal, I have seen too much malaria in Africa which could have been cheaply and safely dealt with. She and her supporters have killed millions upon millions and I think she wanted to. She was a budding eugenicist in the mode of Hitler and Sanger.
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