kids who survived the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's & 70's

[Teresa]

I am going to try to post something that is on the CasCity website that Kjell has.
There is so many responses over there on all posts that I don't know if I can get it all on here..
but I'll give it a shot. I think you all will enjoy it.
( Also... hopefully, it might give everyone here an idea of how easy it is to take a thread and add to it)
Add to this one if you will.... it is an easy one ..I can think of hundreds of things that we used to do....
Teresa

From:
Slone Stranger
Citizen

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!

 

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

[Teresa]

Big John Denny
Top Active Citizen
Location: Stockbridge, GA

I've done all that stuff. That doesn't make me old does it?
Heck, I even remember if you failed a test, that was the grade you got. They didn't let you try again.
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litl rooster
Cowboy Philanthropist
Top Active Citizen
Location: Raggedass Va.,22643

You forgot Lawn Darts (Jarts)....and every boy carried a pocket knife without the fear of some teacher having him arrested nor did they threaten anyone with them.

Can I retake those 50 years.??
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Doc Neeley
Very Active Citizen

I did all those things. My friend from Nebraska said when he was in grade school they would take their shotguns to school so they could pheasant hunt on the way home, They did have to keep them in the coat room.

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Arcey
Underlord of Soot
CAS-L Ghost Rider
Top Active Citizen

Location: Virginia Beach, VA

In and along the salty marshes of the LaFayette River I learned most of my bad shooting habits.

I also learned how to pick up live crabs with my bare hands.  More importantly, I learned how NOT to pick up live crabs with my bare hands........................

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Cyrillee
Citizen
*
Location: Westwego, Louisiana

Yep. I kinda remember fallin outa trees, off horses and houses, latters etc.
Didn't break a bone though (landed on mah head most of the time).
My first rifle, a Remington single shot .22  got it when I was 12, I still have the little lady still shoot it too.
I remember roller skates that attached to your shoes not rollerblades!
And a single speed "Paper-boy"  bike w/ coaster brakes. You can still get them too,  but they aint $55.00 anymore!
  We played "kick the can".
And "cable".. that's when you throw a baseball at a telephone cable n if you hit it you "score" a run.
if it's not caught by the other "team". Great thing about "cable" is that you could play one on one.
Thanks fer wakin the memories!!

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Hemlock Mike
Top Active Citizen
*
Location: Clear Lake, IA

WOW -- is this a trip back or what !!!  Also - where did you dad or neighbor stash a bottle of hooch outside ??
It's a damn miracle we are still here to talk about it.

Mike

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Toccoa Kate
Active citizen
Location: Virginia

This is a great trip down memory lane!!!  I remember catching soft crabs out of the Chesapeake Bay (I grew up in Annapolis, MD), wrapping them in seaweed, and walking around the neighborhood with it till I found someone to buy it from me!!!  Winter time we could prove how "great" we were at sleigh riding by showing how many "cinders" we had in our knees!!  Ahh, that was the life....
Toccoa Kate

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Wildcat Will
Very Active Citizen
*
Location: Southeast Virginy

How about frisbee baseball/football. 

Going out on Halloween night and eating the candy before ya got home.  Not only the candy but the popcorn balls, candy apples and collecting for UNICEF.

Getting a paddling from the coach for talking in class and then when you got home got it again from your dad because he got called about it.

You did what was right because it was the right thing to do.  After all that is what Hoppy, Roy and the Lone Ranger would do!!!!

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Slone Stranger
Citizen
*
I forgot one...how about all those baseball cards that were put in the spokes of bicycles!
Must have wasted eleven million dollars in cards.
"Hank who? Aaron? aww, he'll never be nuthin!
But I'm keeping my Marvelous Marv Throneberry card!!"

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California Lawdawg
Deputy Marshal
Top Active Citizen
*
Location: Woodland, California

Been there, done that, and yes, I was around during that fun time.  Grin

Lawdawg

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Singing Bear
Top Active Citizen
Location  Hawaii

I know for certain, Mrs. Whang would be in jail for the kinds of stuff she used to do to us for discipline in school, by today's standards. 
Mrs. Johnson used to use her yard stick on the tops of our heads and if she couldn't reach us she'd throw the eraser.  Lots of kids around school with a big chalk mark on their backs or back of their heads.
  Cheesy  Mr. Chun, our P.E. teacher in middle school used to turn the firehose on us if we played too much in the showers, as well as using that huge paddle.  He even drilled holes in it so it would "whistle" as it was speeding towards our butts.  We all thought, that's the way it was, tried to stay on the straight and narrow to avoid them and never gave it any thought that it would be illegal one day. 

Don't forget a lot of mothers were also used as guinea pigs for fertility drugs and such without their knowledge.  Still, we're all normal.   
I remember polio vaccinations.  They used to give us a sugar cube laced with the vaccine.  Here in Hawaii we also had to take annual TB tests.  We also had weekly DDT spaying on our streets.  Kids used to follow the truck on bikes zig zagging in and out of the "toxic" fog.  For some reason, we also liked the smell.   

Our summer job was picking pineapple.  Kids nowadays don't know what hard work is.  That's what Dad would say.  He worked the fields using a canvas bag, filling boxes to load on trucks.  We had the "luxury" of mechanical booms that carried the picked pine to the truck.
  Nowadays, I say, "Kids nowadays don't know what hard work is." 
But you know what?  Sad to say most don't. 

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Texas Tall
Top Active Citizen
*
Location: Sydney, Australia


Yeah this is bringing back a lot of fond memories of the early days of my 68 years,and we managed to survive and also seemed to gather a lot of common sense ( sadly lacking in a lot I see to-day). but fun seemed to be our main aim in life.
Good manners and respect for your parents ( although we also thought we knew more than them)
I think was part of that era and I would have got one around the ears from Dad had I tried to push thru a door in front of Mum or failed to give up a seat for someone older on public transport.

Great great days....................
Texas Tall. 

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Mogorilla
Very Active Citizen
Location: Lee's Summit MO

Cutting the corn out of beans, bucking bales, and detassling corn for money in the summer.  Starting working in the field by 5:30 so you could get home by 2 and go to the public pool. 
Tennis ball cannons, gigging for frogs, yup good times. 
A good friend and I have talked numerously about making an online computer game to Kick the Can.
Figured mostly adults would play it though cars to steal in it.

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Blondetta
that blonde gal
Very Active Citizen
*
Location: Rocky Mountains

You forgot-

  Learning to roll your own cigarettes and other things, by your older sisters.

  Taking your older sisters skates & making yourself a skateboard, with them.

  Always ready to bike 5 miles for a swim, in an old gravel pit.

  Playing poker with the nieghborhood kids and getting their allowances.

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Russ T Chambers
Littlest ol' fart Cowboy in Nevada Territory
CAS-L Ghost Rider
Top Active Citizen

Location: Roop County, Nevada Territory

In our neighborhood, we made our own gunpowder, filled pieces of ½ thin wall, crimped the ends, then drilled the fuse hole.      (Lucky we were, we weren't allowed the use of power tools.  Had to use a hand drill!) 
Used then to put out neighborhood trash fires people used to have in 55 gal. drums.  Everyone came away with all eyes and extremities intact, though I sometimes wonder how!!!   

We also used to swing out over the basement holes of new houses on ropes from nearby trees.  I had the stick used as a handle break in the middle of a swing, and after getting up and outta' the 8 foot plus deep hole, the only thing we did was find a bigger stick to use as a handle for several more swings!  Never broke a bone! 

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Coop Trawlaine
Come sit by the fire and I'll tell ya a story.
Top Active Citizen
Location: Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California
Author-Member Western Writers of America


Sliding down the dry tall grassy hill, loaded with rocks, on flattened cardboard boxes....A lot of bruises from the hidden rocks but couldn't wait to climb the hill to slide down again.

The local police officer WALKED the beat and knew every one of the children and their parents and he LIVED in the neighborhood and we all went to school with his children.

How about mowing all the neighbors lawns, and heaven forbid we used push mowers, a rake for the cut grass and the contraption like a metal star attached to the side of a wheel to trim the edges by PUSHING.  On a good week we might have even got paid $5.

Movies were the Sat. Afternoon must, .25 to get in and you got a small (the only size) popcorn and a soda.  Two Cowboy pictures, 4 serials, and 12 cartoons...The cheapest babysitter for our folks...   Yeah, we watched a lot of shooting, punching and some killing in these movies, but the only thing sexual in them was the hero KISSING the lady.  Funny thing about those movies, no one ever took their clothes off.   Heck, the men would even pick up a blanket or their shirt to cover a bare male chest.

We all survived.  Now how could that happen?

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Silent Joe
Top Active Citizen
Location: Amsterdam - Capital City of The Netherlands

Kids, all over the world, are the same. I did the most of this by myself.
Playing wih a wooden boat by the water and let your coat fall into the water. How was I to tell  my Mom?
Playing cowboy and Indian by the age of 12. Going on campouts with the boy scouts and sticked by a hundred of horseflys on my back. But, the most importend thing, we learned respect for everyone and everything.

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mtmarfield
Active citizen
Location: Orange Co. Southern California

   Greetings!

Ah, the good ol' days. There were some really great chemicals, readily available; blew a hole in my bedroom wall.
Shooting flies off the mint plants in the backyard with my Webley .22 air pistol; it freaked the upstairs lady out a bit, but her son informed her & set her at ease{?}.
Lawn Darts! A couple of buddies used to play "chicken" with those; Paul's big toe got skewered to the lawn.
Dad & I used to hunt rabbit on the east side of Edwards AFB... Hell knows what'd happen nowadays!

Be Well, All!
M.T.Marfield

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[Teresa]

johnrtse
Very Active Citizen
*

Believe it or not,  As late as 1973-74, I attended a 2-room schoolhouse in Almelund, Minnesota for 3rd & 4th grade  (The building dated from the early 1900's, and still stands today as a museum).  During the spring and fall,  LONG lunch breaks consisted of building forts in the woods with sticks, twine,  and burlap bags from the local feed mill.
In the winter,  There was an incredibly huge hill behind the school for snow sliding.
A little later during the mid-1970's,  I was real big into Evel Knievel.  I used to jump my bike and was considered the best in the trailer court where we lived.   And, I still have the scars to prove it! Not a single broken bone, though   

Great post- the memories are just flooding back!
John

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Outlaw Gambler
Cas City Vendor
Citizen
*
Location: Little Log House in NE Wisconsin


I remember taking all day hikes to a place called "spooks grove" woods, we built forts out of the limbs and sticks and played cowboy all day, we took a lunch and came home for supper.  Put playing cards in the bycicle spokes, going to a neighbors because he had outdoor lighting in his cement driveway and we could play basketball there until 10pm and no body bothered us and our parents knew where we were and that we were ok, upsetting outhouses at halloween,  older cars that had horn rings in the steering wheel could be made to continuously honk by inserting a stick in it - no one locked their cars back then, gas at $.36 a gallon, full service gas stations where one to four guys would fill your tank for a buck, clean windows, check oil and belts, air in tires.  Listening to the Lone Ranger, Capt Midnight, Green Lantern, and Amos and Andy on radio.

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Grapeshot
Grapeshot. Cpt US Artillery
Location: Aberdeen, MD

Oh yes. Wonderful memories.  Making home made rockets from spent CO2 capsules and stuffed with match-heads cut from the end of book matches.

Home-made cannons made from steel pipe and end caps.  Gun powder salvaged from roll caps to make the cannon go bang and shoot a pebble into the side of the house or into the cieling of the front porch.

Riding a bicycle to the shopping center to get an Estes rocket engine and model rocket kit.

Fishing for mackeral off the pier or the light house, (Lived in Newport, RI).

Having a deep respect for the law and police officers, especially since I had an Uncle and two cousins on the force.

Not being able to do anything wrong without my Dad finding out about it.  He seemed to know everybody in town.

Playing Combat with our friends.  Reenacting the battle of the Alamo or the Civil War.

Watching "The Grey Ghost" series, "The Gallant Men", and Combat on a black&white TV.

Swiming in the red tide, messy, but we survived.

Yeah, kids don't know what real  fun is nowadays.

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LazyyK Pejay
Top Active Citizen
*
Location: Amarillo, TX

I grew up in a home where lying was the worst offense, your character was your badge, you called all adults "yes sir and yes mam," and you did your chores because you were a team. If you failed you got up and did it all again until you were successful.

LazyK Peja

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Fighting Bob Evans
Citizen
*
Radios had tubes and a portable radio weighed 5-10 pounds (depending on the battery size). Radio programming was Tom Mix, Jack Armstrong, Tennessee Jed in the afternoon and Jack Benny, Fred Allen (remember Allen's Alley?), Henry Aldrich and Our Miss Brooks in the evening.

We couldn't go downtown because of Polio. Cars had only stick shifts, chokes and clutches and the racier drivers had "necker's knobs". 

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Lorelei Longshot
Citizen
*
Location: Houston, Republic of Texas


I remember going to the Handy Andy store every year when school started to get a real cigar box for free to keep your pencils in.

collecting glass bottles along the side of the road and turning them in for a penny deposit each.  (Earned enough to buy my first Barbie when she first came out.)

gas wars and prices as low at $0.19 per gallon.  You could drive around in the 1950 Chevy for three days on $0.50 worth of gas (1960s).

you were rich if you bought $1.00 worth of gas at a time

everyone left their doors unlocked and most of the time open with only the screen door closed

attic fan in the hall ceiling that sucked in cool night air during the summer (that's before we got spoiled to air conditioning and anything cooler than 95 degrees was considered "cool").

being dropped off at the swimming pool in El Campo and when you were ready to come home, calling using the pay phone that cost $0.05, but you didn't really need a nickel because the call went through and only after the person answered would you have to put in the nickel.  Course Gramps knew who it was and would get in the car and come get you.

Gramps left the keys in the truck parked outside.  If anyone needed to borrow it, they would (even if Gramps wasn't home) and they always returned it

Those were the days

[Teresa]

Howdy Doody
CAS-L Ghost Rider
Top Active Citizen
*
Location: Bakersfield CA


TV and the movies were fit to watch. Saturday afternoon matinees had cowboy heros riding across the screen. Lash LaRue and Red Ryder were favorites of mine. My brother an I had cap guns, first was the ones that took a roll and later we got the new style that took the disk of 6. We imitated all the cowboys in every way, except we left the gittin' the girl part out. What did we know then?

Then there was TV. Shows we liked were Rama of the Jungle, Howdy Doody (fancy that), Red Sox baseball, The Buster Brown show ( plunk your magic twanger froggy. Never could figure what a twanger was). The 3 Stooges, Soupy Sales. Getting to stay up late and watch Milton Berle and see Farful the dog and the men of Texaco.

Getting good grades and getting a Roadmaster for a reward. With whitewalls on it too. Listening to 78 records that told a story. My favorite was Hoppy, Lucky and Windy.

Playing for hours with a Lionel train set was a lot of fun. Then there was Cub Scouts and later Boy Scouts. Summer camp on beautiful lake Ione in Conway NH was great for the few years we went and we learned archery, wood shop, riding and yes the junior NRA. Shot our way into medals and bars my brother and I. One shot at a time in those old converted bolt action rifles in .22 shorts.

Then there was the late 50's and we would listen to the radio on an antenna we stretched out to a tree, so we could hear the station from NY that had Elvis on it ( He was banned in Mass and NH) I think it was the Alan Ginsberg show we listened to. About that time we got into horror movies. The Blob was a favorite. I remember going to the shoe store and having my feet x rayed for fit inside the shoes. Cool.

Then the 60's and there was still lot's of cowboy shows on TV, Ed Sullivan was a must on Sunday Nights. He had a group from England with funny haircuts called the Beatles on. Muscle cars for those that could afford them at $2k a piece. 3 two barreled carbs and four on the floor was the rage. So was Smitty mufflers, lakes pipes, fender skirts and such too.
Then it was the Navy for me and we were required to wear our uniforms in and out of the gate and then in the late 60's we were told not to wear our uniforms off base. Then there was the Zumwalt years and no one knew who anyone was, because they took our crackerjacks ( bell bottomed uniforms) away and made us wear blazer type stuff and ties. No more scarfs or dixie cup hats. You couldn't tell enlisted from officers.

70's were where I saw the most changes that I didn't care for. Manners went away, total respect took a vacation. The economy was pretty good until the first so called gas shortage and you had to line up for gas only to find out you could only get 10 gallons. Lot's of folks got suspicious of big business after that.

So, about that age I finally woke up to a lot of reality and a heap of responsibility and it is CAS that takes me back to those younger years. I love getting out to a match and being dressed in cowboy clothes and mixing with folks that want to leave the rest of the world behind for a few hours of some great fun with others that feel the same way.

So far I have survived.

[Wilma]

After reading most of the preceding postings, I have decided that I must be older than most of the participants in this.  I don't remember polio shots because there wasn't a polio vaccine yet. 

We listened to Terry and the Pirates if we could get the papers delivered and had the time before we had to go get the cows. 

We had chores to do when we got home from school and if any friends came home with us they could either help with the chores or hang around until they were done.  They usually helped so we could get to playing sooner.  They did this because we owned the sports equipment and it couldn't be used unless we were with it.

There wasn't much time for playing between getting the chores done and meeting the bus to pick up the Wichita Beacon that we threw before going after the cows.

I guess the older you get the more there is to remember.

[genealogynut]

I asked Don if he remembered Terry and the Pirates, and he said he did.  As for me.....I had never heard of them.

[Janet Harrington]

Me, either.