GKL
Forum Supporter
Using your imagination is what made all those toys we had back then so much fun. Nowadays kids (and a lot of adults) just have their faces glued to some kind of electronic device. They're turning into robots. I can't remember the last time I saw a kid sliding on a sled in the winter time and I rarely see kids riding a bicycle these days.
Hey, amazing the fun we had with big cardboard boxes left over from something like an appliance or furniture delivery, and the forts we made using scrap wood, very low tech but still lots of fun !
.....and treehouses we made in the woods, just pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and jar of kool-aid and go hiking in the woods !
We had times during summer vacation where neighborhood kids with their bikes would sometimes just happen to amass unplanned and before you'd know it we could have about 15 kids or so on bikes on a vacant area of a small shopping center parking lot or on the other side of the neighborhood there was a vacant dirt area with hills we'd ride up and down, many kids we didn't even know all riding together without a problem.
Hey even after I got out of the Navy and was in my early 20's I didn't have a car and would have a bicycle I rode back and forth to work from my apartment (this was years before i got married) it was good exercise
I still have the bike radio I used on that bike I rode in my early 20's and it still works (it's from the early 1970's) it had AM and CB reception and uses a 9volt battery, here are pics I just took:
I also remember having both a headlight and taillights with rear left/right arrow turning indicators
I also remember having some kind of siren/horn that had neat sound effects
Remember having a basket on the front and maybe the back too.
......and of course a speedometer, I might have gotten up to as fast as somewhere between 30-40 MPH when going downhill
(the other pics below I just found online as examples, though the left/right rear arrow lights do look exactly like the one I had)
Now all that was on my bike from when I was in my early 20's, I was a whole lot younger when I use to use a clothespin to put a baseball card in the spokes to make noise, of course I remember avoiding using cards from my hometown baseball team
Also, I remember having handlebars like these as a kid, think I got them from an old broken bike that had been trashed and put the handlebars on mine, also remember the banana seats