I'm surprised most of us are still here!

[Father Kit Cool Gun Garth]

[Father Kit Cool Gun Garth]

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

Drank water from a garden hose, ate raw veggies and fruits that we took right from the plants, played with BB guns, lawn darts and other other evil toys, climbed on Jungle Gyms and overhead ladders, used tether balls and hanging chains, roller skates, pogo sticks, home made stilts, played dodge ball, swam in irrigation canals down stream from pastures and feed lots, hitch hiked all over the country, made swings out of old tires and rope, build soap box  cars with roller skate wheels, shot arrows in our back yards, used home made sling shots made out of forked sticks and inner tubes, played mumble peg with real knives, never heard of seat belts............and much more.

 

We survived and many of us grew up without much illness or injuries.

 

Now we live in an over-protective society and all this is gone.

 

Kids don't have adventures any more, they have computer games and cell phones.

 

Very sad. 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

There is no evidence that those individuals are alive.

[Smokin Gator SASS #29736]

Going along with what Forty posted the big thing was the number of hours as kids that we were allowed to leave the house and go off and play with our friends often with no adult supervision. My brother and I would get the lawn mowed, a couple of chores  on Saturday and we were free to heasout for the day. 

 

Also we were allowed to ride our bikes quite a distance around town. I remember a lot of Saturday movies at the theater with nothing but kids.

[Pat Riot]

This is very true for me and my friends, especially me. I would come up with these outlandish ideas and we had a rule; “Whoever comes up with an idea must be the one to try it first!”

So, I nearly always was first to try. Often I was also the last to try. 

[Alpo]

59 minutes ago, Father Kit Cool Gun Garth said:

That made me think of my bicycle Adventures.

 

I didn't have a cool spider bike like that. I had a full size 26-inch - what they call a cruiser nowadays. I wanted a cooler bike but the parental units kept turning that idea down. I did manage to promote motorcycle handlebars and a banana seat.

 

So I'm riding down the road one day and for some reason I have decided to ride in the gutter. And them big motorcycle handlebars caught a mailbox, and I went sliding down the street. Still have the scars from that one.

 

Another time I am pulling somebody - don't remember if it was a friend or my brother - behind me on my bicycle. He's on a skateboard. We were doing fine until I turn the corner. I had long ago removed the fender from my bicycle, because it was much cooler without fenders. So I turned the corner and the rope comes down behind the seat and the tire grabs it and pulls it down and the bike stopped and I went over the handlebars and slid down the street. No scars from that one.

 

And then there was the time I was trying to do a Pony Express Mount. You know how they would do that in the western movies - run along beside the horse holding on to the saddle horn and JUMP up into the saddle. So I would run along beside my bike and have my left foot onto the pedal and while pushing it down swing on to the bike. That was really cool. Until the time I missed the pedal. And went down on the cobblestones.

 

I remember Mama was more upset that I tore the knee out of my pants than she was about the blood running down my leg.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Did you ever go 70 mph down a road? I did a few times, surprised I’m still here.

[Colorado Coffinmaker]

I get a kick out of seeing the Ever Faithful dog staying with its human.  Super kool

[Blackwater 53393]

20 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

Did you ever go 70 mph down a road? I did a few times, surprised I’m still here.

I used to pedal as fast as I could and grab onto a car or truck going down the road!!  Some of ‘em would tow me for a mile or so.  

One guy had me passing cars like crazy and a cop pulled us both over!! He denied letting me do it and got off with a warning!! I got ratted out to my old man and he did his best to wear the hide off of my behind!!

 

He took the bike from me and scrapped it, but I traded around and built myself a better one in a couple of weeks!!

 

I rode all over my side of town and back and forth to work until I got my “provisional license” at fourteen and a half.  If you had a job and your folks went along with it, you could get a limited use driver’s license at age 14 back then.  That’s when “business REALLY picked up”!  

 

 

 

 

Edited April 21 by Blackwater 53393

[Pat Riot]

16 minutes ago, Alpo said:

I remember Mama was more upset that I tore the knee out of my pants than she was about the blood running down my leg.

Funny, my Mom was like that. Complaining about what I did to my pants while spraying Bactine on my abrasions. 

 

I am pretty sure Bactine was “Mom retaliation” in a bottle. 

[Blackwater 53393]

17 minutes ago, Pat Riot said:

Funny, my Mom was like that. Complaining about what I did to my pants while spraying Bactine on my abrasions. 

 

I am pretty sure Bactine was “Mom retaliation” in a bottle. 

 

 My mom and grandmother seemed to take the greatest pleasure in dousing whatever cuts and scrapes that I acquired with tincture merthiolate or daubing them with rubbing alcohol!!  

 

Sadists they were, I tell ya’!! SADISTS!!!

 

I recall limping home from a particularly grizzly bike wreck one afternoon. I was wearing a new pair of wheat colored jeans and a sleeveless T shirt. 
 

My grandmother carefully removed my britches and conscientiously picked gravel out of my right thigh and butt cheek and the right side of my torso under my right arm for half and hour.

 

When she was through, she rather unceremoniously doused my whole right side with rubbing alcohol and then smeared carbolated vaselene all over the damaged area!

 

It was all I could do to keep from squallin’ like a mashed cat! And I gimped around for

nearly a week before I got healed up enough to go out and try some other new trick!! 
 

 

Edited April 21 by Blackwater 53393

[Blackwater 53393]

Oh !! Yeah!  I got it from my mom AND my dad for ruining those brand new jeans!!

[Michigan Slim]

Bike ramps on a gravel road. 

Climbing hundred year old pine trees. See the whole town it seemed like.

Fishing at the lake or stream all day. Just be home for supper. 

Later, riding bikes all over Fort Wayne. We moved here just before I was old enough to get into real trouble.

I bought a 69 Camaro for my first car at 16. I don't tell those stories at home.

[The Original Lumpy Gritz]

I remember Mom getting all over me about the skate board riding I did. 

That was before I found out Mom was a WWII, WASP. 

[Cypress Sun]

1 hour ago, Pat Riot said:

Funny, my Mom was like that. Complaining about what I did to my pants while spraying Bactine on my abrasions. 

 

I am pretty sure Bactine was “Mom retaliation” in a bottle. 

 

You got Bactine?

 

Lucky dog...we got the red/orange iodine if we were lucky. No iodine...straight to the 100 and something percent alcohol. 

Ahh....the good ole days.

[Chantry]

4 hours ago, Father Kit Cool Gun Garth said:

 

Survived with a fair amount of brain damage.....

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

23 minutes ago, Chantry said:

 

Survived with a fair amount of brain damage.....

Just look at Alpo...

[Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619]

In addition to most of the above, we had a big ravine nearby that ran down to Puget Sound. We practically grew up in it; we'd be down there for hours at a time.

 

The big thing we did there was rope swings; when you swung out all the way, you were 75-100 feet above ground. If you fell, you'd die. So you held onto the rope and didn't fall (we did have a loop for a foot.....)

[Pat Riot]

4 hours ago, Cypress Sun said:

 

You got Bactine?

 

Lucky dog...we got the red/orange iodine if we were lucky. No iodine...straight to the 100 and something percent alcohol. 

Ahh....the good ole days.

Oh I got the micurichrome(sp?), iodine and the alcohol too. The Bactine was only in the medicine cabinet when times were better. 

[Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001]

rope swing ? 

 

  we chopped grape vines to swing on 

[Capt. R. Hugh Kidnme]

Yep. Played war games with BB guns;  rode inner tubes, on the snow, pulled behind a car; rode toboggans standing upright with 2 others;  jumped off rocks into water in pools when we didn't know the depth; jumped coal car trains for ride to next town;  rode bikes downhill, blindfolded;  jumped off concrete walls into 5 ft high piles of raked leaves, etc, etc.........   All great adventures. I wouldn't trade any of those memories

[Texas Lizard]

7 hours ago, Michigan Slim said:

I bought a 69 Camaro for my first car at 16. I don't tell those stories at home.

Any off spring you know of???

 

Texas Lizard

[Stump Water]

3 hours ago, Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619 said:

The big thing we did there was rope swings; when you swung out all the way, you were 75-100 feet above ground. If you fell, you'd die. So you held onto the rope and didn't fall

 

When the contractor built the "neighborhood" (one dead end road with 16 houses) they ran 12/3 for temporary power in the trees behind the construction sites.  There was a big ravine behind the houses across the street.  We found a remnant of the temp power line and used it to get a good running start and swing out way over the ravine.  

 

Then one day we climbed the tree the line was in and found it attached by one staple.  

[Michigan Slim]

1 hour ago, Texas Lizard said:

Any off spring you know of???

 

Texas Lizard

Maybe? 

[Eyesa Horg]

Seems I did a lot of variations of the above stunts and still here! Jumping off the roof of our 2 story house with a parachute made from a bed sheet was fast and painful! But we mostly walked it off!

[Injun Ryder, SASS #36201L]

I won't tell the stories, but my ex-wife was worried that I might go bald (didn't) and then all of the scars on my head would show! 

 

(I was well known at the local clinic for head injuries that required stitches.)

[Imis Twohofon,SASS # 46646]

At 14 I found one old clamp-on roller skate, the wheels turned fairly well so I separated the front and rear halves, nailed them to a piece of two by four found on a new home site and took off down a steep hill in the subdivision we lived in. It was between the mountains and suburbs of Denver, so fairly steep and Loooong. About half way down and at too high of a speed one of the wheels decided to depart the contraption and the board decellerated way faster than I did. I found myself falling forward on asphalt at speed and slowed my crash by running on my hands and feet until I could get back upright. My palms and fingers were a little short of flesh for a few days. Mom put BagBalm (used on cow udders for scrapes and cut, a mixture of vaseline and kerosene) on the cuts and scrapes. I still hate skateboards.

 

Imis

[Sawhorse Kid]

We are still here because the older generations were built to last.  

 

 

 

Edited April 22 by Sawhorse Kid

[Sixgun Seamus]

5 hours ago, Chickasaw Bill SASS #70001 said:

rope swing ? 

 

  we chopped grape vines to swing on 

We had a great grape vine swing that landed in a patch of poison ivy. I was the only one that could use it because I guess I was immune to it. I never got poison ivy till i was in my 60's.

[Rooster Ron Wayne]

Oh man the things we done lol 

Thank God everyone did not have cell phones to record the things we lived threw 

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

13 hours ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

There is no evidence that those individuals are alive.

Look at ME!  I's still alive....mostly.

[watab kid]

yup , there was no tree too tall to climb , no ravine too steep or covered with trees too tough to sled , no stream that could prevent us from going where we wanted to go - without safety gear [we would have been laughed at] but we did carry first aid kits on our many excursions as good boy scouts did , so many things id never think of doing anymore and am glad my kids didnt try but ....it made us who we are today didnt it ? 

 

what are our youngsters being made into today ? 

[Rex M Rugers #6621]

I remember my last bike incident. Was riding down the sidewalk , coming up on a street crossing , with a curb on the other side.

So , I thinks , I see kids hopping over curbs all the time. Sooo , I yank up on that handle-bar , no lift at all. Front tire hits curb , me

and the bike do a 180 , I lands on my back with the bike on top. First thought was "Holy s##t , I hope I didn't break that left wrist again.

(That's a whole nuther story) I looks around , nobody saw it. I really wish someone had filmed it. Be worth a lot of giggles.

I gets up , check myself over, all O.K. This happened 9 years ago , when I was living in the small town of Crane, TX. I was 72  at the time.

I recon some critters don't get wiser with age.

Rex 

[Vail Vigilante]

The reality of it is that most times you wont get hurt as badly as you think you might.

What I have learned during my mis spent youth and continuing mis adventures.