All kids carried a pocket knife when I was young. Things brought in for show and tell then would trigger a three police dept Swat response now... BB guns, cap guns, inert WWII grenades, swords, bayonets, bullets, etc.

It was common practice to ride the school bus with a 22LR if you shot in one of the shooting groups. People brought guns to school in cars for hunting after classes were over. I can remember several people standing around a car at lunch admiring a new shotgun.
Just imagine that now.
What makes me roll my eyes is having liberals/cityfolk tell me regularly that "there are more guns around now" than before... They are clueless.

Played Mumbley-peg during recess in grade school because most of us carried jackknives. Brought my .22 to school in 7th grade and kept it in s teacher’s closet do I could go squirrel hunting after school.

I attended high school from 1986 to 1990, there are many things that we did back then that would get us expelled now.

During that time period we could still dip and smoke on lunch break, and breaks between classes. Heck we could dip/chew tobacco during ball games until idiots kept spitting on home plate.

During that time period a lot of fights that occurred did not result in expulsion just in school suspension or after school detention.

Hazing still went on, and practical jokes that took things a little too far but there were very few instances that the jokes were intended to be malicious. Heck PC did not exist then, and many of the acts in the yearly talent show took shots at everyone.

When I was in high school in the late 80’s there would be dozens of pickup trucks in the school parking lot (Gwinnett County) that had deer rifles on their rifle racks in the back window. A lot easier/faster to go straight to the woods right after school and hunt deer instead of needing to go home and grab your rifle then go out to the woods. Nobody even thought twice about it back then.

Elementary and jr. high - I liked to doodle and draw - cars, guns, tanks, ships with guns, planes with bombs. The guns I liked to draw was the 30-30 lever and the one with the loop lever on Rifleman and of course Sgt. Saunders Tommy gun.

I was never creative enough to chew my pop tarts into the shape of a hand gun.

Similar to the OP, I too had a business. Every morning I would stop at a 7-11 and fill the trunk of my 66 Chevy Impala with all types of soda pop.
I then iced them down using large coolers and I sold them at school. At exorbitant prices. In the hallways between classes, at lunch, whenever. Teachers also bought them. I made a nice profit and it kept me in gas money.
In elementary school, I was deadly with my bean shooter. Bic pen spitballs too. And I would often throw a penny against the fire bell in study hall to see the Pavlovs dog type response that I could get.
The girls would often kick their used Kotex pads around the hallways, back and forth in a kind of nasty menstrual soccer. A chick I later arrested for shooting her BF figured out how to fasten Kotex pads to the fencing around the football fields. They waved gaily in the breeze.

Stuff I got away with then, but not today? Pocket knife carry is one. Jumping into a car at lunch time to go off campus is another, many high schools nowadays have mandatory closed campuses. I also have brought nunchakus to school several times.

I only attended high school thru 11th grade. (long story), and I had to work outside of school to pay room and board to live at home.

I did have a single shot .22 rifle that I used a lot to put meat on the table. Rabbits, occasional pheasant, doves.

That .22 was nearly always in my car at school. Don't know how it is there these days (North Idaho) but back then it was quite common to see rifles in cars, kids walking the streets with a .22 after school, etc.

Don't know how it is there now, but suspect much of what was day to day common would get you some unwanted attention.

Back then, the police chief often walked the streets during the day time. He got to know a lot of kids that way and was always fun to talk with.

How long is the statute of limitations?

4th Grade for Show and Tell I brought in one of those fake german lugers from Japan. An accurate collectors reproduction.

I brought it in on the bus and showed everyone in class how to field strip it.

I didn't tell the teacher what I was bringing and there wasn't anything said about it.

Our high school abutted the town's muni golf course. We had open campus during free periods but you couldn't leave the grounds if you weren't a senior. We'd bring our clubs in the car and sneak on the course to play three holes then return. A few years later when my brother was a senior and the drinking age was 18, a bunch of them would take their fake IDs and go to a local pub for lunch.

Hard to get expelled if you don't show up for school. I was a part time student, I usually took a couple of days a week off, the weekends were not long enough.

In those days I collected WWII military items. Between myself and several friends we outfitted the school musical The Sound Of Music with authentic German uniforms, flags, daggers, and even firearms. (1990ish).

I also left the country while on a field trip without telling anybody.

A classmate brought in her Granddads war chest from WW1. Inside were memorabilia, medals, photos, a couple of knives / bayonets, a spiked helmet, and a holster with a loaded Luger.

Our history teacher was of thick German descent and very cool. He cleared the weapon, took the bullets, but then passed everything around very carefully. I believe he kept the chest in his room to show other classes until the end of the day and ensure he handed the pistol over to one of her parents.

This would have been a school lockdown, near mass shooting averted from some wannabee Nazis (never mind it was all WW1 stuff).

But it was simply a very cool show and tell with zero drama.

Personally I always had a pocketknife, snuck out of classes to goof off, standard kid stuff of the day.

Saw plenty of trucks in the parking lot with gun racks with a shotgun or 2. Kids shooting birds after school was the norm, although I didn't do it.

Deliberately targeted girls on the opposing dodgeball teams during co-ed phys ed days.

But then, we all did.

We never did anything really bad, but I definitely would have been expelled ten times over if I were in school today. The real remarkable thing is that I didn't graduate all that long ago...2002, but I was overseas, so zero tolerance wasn't really a thing.

We didn't have guns (overseas), so that was never a thing, but I carried a pocket knife every day of HS, and teachers often asked to borrow it. I did shoot my buddy in the eye with an airsoft gun one day in the locker room.

Fireworks were a big thing over there, and we would go out on lunch break and blow stuff up...glass bottles, old TV sets, anything we could find. Once we started a fire on the railroad tracks next to the school. We would roll old tires down a hill at workers walking home for lunch and then run when they came after us.

Once in 6th grade we were hanging out in a woods on lunch break and some college kids showed up with their girlfriends and wanted to get rid of us, so they pulled out switch blades and told us to beat it. They were at the bottom of a big hill, below a 6' drop off. We went to the top of the hill, got a bunch of huge cobblestones and threw them down the hill at them. Those stones weighed about 30-40lbs apiece, and were probably going 40-50mph whe!n they went flying off the edge of that drop off. We took off running, so I never found out if we hit them, but they would have caused some serious damage if we did.

One year we went on a school ski trip near the polish border. At night we'd go out and sneak into Poland just to say we did. Looking back most of the stuff we did was pretty harmless, but a bunch of it would have gotten us in big trouble today.

quote:

Originally posted by mholmes:
Graduated in 1986, regularly carried a pocket knife through high school. During dove season we would bring our shotguns to school (leaving them in our vehicle ) and go hunting after school.

This is my experience as well having graduated in '65'. A buddy of mine and I really got into bird hunting and in the fall and we would leave school to go hunting 3-4 days a week. The shotguns were always in the gun rack of my friends pickup.

As far as pocket knives go, I started carrying one at around 12. Every male kid I knew did as well and nobody gave it a second thought.

At the time, I could hardly wait to graduate and get out of high school. Looking back on it, I now realize some of my favorite memories were from that time.

Jim

Making my own Katana in metal shop and winning an award for it
Making my own Rambo knife in same metal shop

Yes, we all carried pocket knives and the teachers knew it.

Also, during Christmas gift exchanges, the boys would exchange such things as bricks of .22's. The teachers and school admin knew it and never blinked an eye.

I dunno. I always had a pocket knife, but heck, there are at least a few kids at my kids’ high school that always have a pocket knife too. Some of them are girls. Granted, they are not at a public school, but at most I expect any of them “caught” would be told not to bring it. It is kind of an interesting school - they seem to be more interested in teaching character, citizenship, and fostering a love of learning than getting bogged down in administrivia.