-- Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. --
Posts: 17828 | Location: New Mexico | Registered: October 14, 2005
I love these threads. Sometimes I think of the shit we did as young teens and I'm amazed considering these days parents would be horrified.
At 11/12 years old I would take the subway from East Boston to downtown Boston, take a walk to the combat zone to go to Jack's Joke Shop, buy some stink bombs and whoopie cushions, see a movie on State Street, go to the arcade, get some food at Faneuil Hall, and then take the T home again.This message has been edited. Last edited by: frayedends,
These go to eleven.
Posts: 12605 | Location: Westminster, MA | Registered: November 14, 2006
Don’t hold it against me, we would also ‘live off the land’ while camping at semi-remote lakes. We got dropped off, well below driving age, 3 of us.
Besides normal things like fish, frogs, clams & cattail roots, we had squirrel, woodpecker, chickadees & whatever we could take down with a pellet rifle.
This was the 70’s, rural MI.
Posts: 6595 | Location: WI | Registered: February 29, 2012
Grew up on a dead end road in the middle of nowhere in the 70s and 80s. I spent the majority of my days fishing, riding bikes, stomping through the woods with a pocket knife and a BB gun, climbing trees, etc.
Posts: 13896 | Location: Shenandoah Valley, VA | Registered: October 16, 2008
As a young kid in the 60-70's, we were outside everyday playing and doing something (mostly sports). I live in a suburban neighborhood, there are kids of my same age then and it is a ghost town in the streets for kid. Nowhere playing or doing anything. Where are they and what are they doing? Imagine they are stuck at the game keyboard. Sad
Born in ‘61 and this brings back great memories for me, and the pic and the description of the biker gang is spot on.
We had a great climbing tree in our front yard that was climbable up to 35’ or 40’ or so +\-, and I had climbed it untold 100’s of times or more that I could do it safely and confidently with a blindfold on which probably scared my mom when she watched me do that. She couldn’t have been too scared though because she requested an encore performance for my dad!
Ah, the “good old days” of more humble and adventurous childhood!!
__________ "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotomy."
Posts: 3642 | Location: Lehigh Valley, PA | Registered: March 27, 2007
Originally posted by frayedends: I love these threads. Something I think of the shit we did as young teens and I'm amazed considering these days parents would be horrified.
I went to a party last night with some friends who are in their early 50s, and there a ton of "back in the day" stories told. It was great fun, and you're right -- parents these days would be horrified.
We all did things back then that a) kids now don't know how to do (corded telephone, anyone?), and b) we wouldn't get away with if we did now.
Hey, we all survived it!
God bless America.
Posts: 14248 | Location: Virginia | Registered: July 15, 2007
For a kid in the 70's it was pretty much the same. We played a game called "Kill the guy with the ball", also known as "Smear the queer" (I imagine that name would put folks in apoplectic shock today). Essentially, you'd get any number of guys, kick a football, all run to it. Someone would pick it up and run and try not to be tackled.
----------------------- You can't fall off the floor.
Posts: 8763 | Location: Rochester, NY behind enemy lines | Registered: March 12, 2002
I remember my friends playing "TAG," aka The Assasination Game. Someone got nominated to be the victim, someone got nominated to take him out, and nearly any place was fair game. Of course, it was done with squirt guns, blunted pencils, water balloons, and whatever else came to hand. Telling a friend "bang, you're dead" on a school bus these days would likely get a kid kicked out of school and the parents labeled as terrorists....
God bless America.
Posts: 14248 | Location: Virginia | Registered: July 15, 2007
I forgot to mention that 3 out of the 5 girls were wearing high top Chucks and jeans with holes in them, but not the same 3 girls. I didn’t ask, but I swear the one girl Bedazzled her jeans. Vans, the shoes, are also quite popular with the kids today.
The 80s are back.
Posts: 12127 | Location: SWFL | Registered: October 10, 2007
Originally posted by nhtagmember: Was doing that in the 60’s and early 70’s in rural Canada
Yup! Same here. Did all that in Louisiana, Arkansas, Massachusetts, upstate New York, and then full circle back down to Louisiana.
"If you’re a leader, you lead the way. Not just on the easy ones; you take the tough ones too…” – MAJ Richard D. Winters (1918-2011), E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil... Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the Lord Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel." - Isaiah 5:20,24
Great times, outside playing sports all year, on the bike when we wanted, basketball, baseball, football, golf, up in the am, home for lunch, gone until bedtime...
Well before Helicopter moms were a thing...
Posts: 24725 | Location: Gunshine State | Registered: November 07, 2008