Who remembers these?

[Vito]

It's OK pal, the kids today didn't have half the fun we did! Riding in the back of a pickup truck, playing with BB guns, no seat belts in cars, riding a bike with no helmet, hitch hiking, painful punishment....

Mark in Michigan

OOOOHHHHHH YYEEAAHHHHHH........

 

[airbornebob]

It all boils down to .... "Today's kids have had their imagination co-opted by technology. The ability to go "Outside and play" has been substituted with.. sit down with this screen and "play". Its sad.

 

[hoser]

How about "shagging" [grabbing on to a vehicles bumper in the snow and going for a nice little free ride]

I don't think there was very many kids that didn't do that back in the day. Bunch of us were honing our bumper shagging and three of our friends caught the ride and was headed towards us. One of the guys I was standing with started jumping up and down yelling "LET GO!! Of course, the guys on the bumper couldn't hear this and then they hit the dry spot. Oh, it was not pretty at all. That quiet nagging little voice that shows up from time to time and say's, "don't do this "Well, that voice and their road rash was all the convincing I needed. It was at that time it became a spectator sport for me.

 

[HungryGhost]

Those were the best!!!

 

[maxxkatt]

I too had to pay a high mark up for smuggled in firecrackers. Big time criminal I was! lol

My favorite were bottle rockets.

We used copper pipes as a gun. put the bottle rocket in the end of the pipe and light the fuse and aim it at your opponent. What fun. You never knew if it would go exactly where you aimed it so that added to the fun.

 

[maxxkatt]

AAhhh, Diga you've stirred my old brain cells....we used to wear motorcycle helmets with the visors and have bottle rocket wars. Man we were stupid. But that was fun!

Mark in Michigan

We did it without helmets or any type of goggles and had the fights on bicycles like knights on horses jousting with our copper pipes as launchers. After a few bike wrecks just trying to light the rockets while riding, we gave that up. I am wondering how/why we came up with stupid ideas. But get 3-4 boys together and stupid ideas seem to come effortlessly to us back in those days. Makes you wonder how we survived getting through our childhood.

 

[maxxkatt]

I remember them but don't recall using them much because 1 at a time just didn't do it for me and my buddies, when it came to caps we liked to detonate whole coiled rolls and even whole boxes at a time with a hammer or brick, very loud. We also liked to use magnifying glasses and the sun to detonate them, which is a little more fun than guns since you never know exactly when they will go off, the surprise of a little explosion never gets old.

Yeah and use a magnify glass to burn your name in park benches and other wood items.

 

[maxxkatt]

How about "shagging" [grabbing on to a vehicles bumper in the snow and going for a nice little free ride] ?

We were constantly doing that, hours and even whole days at a time, into the night. After school we would get a cute little girl [accomplice] to wave down a car and ask what time it is ,, While the guy was gladly obliging, half a dozen of us would latch on to the bumper, so much so that sometimes the car couldn't even get moving, and a few would have to drop off.

It was somewhat of a sport and I was known as one of the riskiest. One time a Ram truck was waiting for a train to pass so me and my buddy latched on to his bumper for a free ride to the store we were going to. guess he got tired of waiting and decided to back up, my buddy hopped out of the way in time but all I could do was just lay down and hope he didn't run over me, I can still remember looking up and seeing that transmission spinning inches over my head, he cut the tires and just missed me.

Other hazards were sewer lids, if you didn't see them coming in time you were in for a rough ride, you'd go skidding for 10-25 yards depending on how fast the vehicle was going ... Railroad tracks would also ruin your day, but we generally knew where those were at and were rarely surprised by them. Don't see kids doing that anymore and I guess its for the best, easy to see the danger now but seemed like a great idea at the time.

Train hopping too, I was a massive train hopper, sometimes going across the state then hopping a train back. I'd hop fast ones, slow ones, was thrown from more than one that were going too fast and I lost my grip. That stopped when a guy I knew, not really a friend, got his leg cut clean off hopping trains. I asked him about it later, he said it didn't hurt at all, and he thought it was just a nightmare and not really happening. Luckily he survived, got a fake leg and walked so good you'd never know he only had 1 leg.

Ouch!

 

[Vito]

It all boils down to .... "Today's kids have had their imagination co-opted by technology. The ability to go "Outside and play" has been substituted with.. sit down with this screen and "play". Its sad.

Oh that's so true... sad but true.

 

[markinmichigan]

And here we are all still living it up! What's the old saying? "The older I get, the better I was". Only the good die young, I'm gonna around for a while.

Mark in Michigan

 

[KingTotsalot]

This is a royally good post, bringing back many childhood memories! Before KT was recognised as Royalty, He had many childhood friends...mostly boys....My father had part ownership in a summer resort and one summer we lived out there...in 1956....Large spring fed swimming lake also creek fed. Learned to swim there....Noodling for bream below the dam! Fishing in several creek holes, catching crayfish for bream bait! Hiking around on the local hillsides.....I remember getting into some stinging nettles with a friend while wearing our swimsuits....running and jumping in the coldest spring on the place. Getting a 100 or more chigger bites on my legs, getting them infected and being told by the Dr. I could not go swimming the rest of the summer! That was a major bummer! Going squirrel hunting with my Dad. He would sit me on a tree stump and go off and stalk them! I would get one shot at one, and he would come back with 6! HA HA Riding my bike with flip-flops on. Hiking up our local mountains pushing the bike, then flying down, trying to never hit the coaster brakes! Digging worms in our backyard and taking an handful of them and chasing one of friends around with them yelling SNAKES, SNAKES! HA HA Building a tree house in an empty lots yard and then the irate neighbor coming out and cutting the pecan tree down. He got in trouble by the land owner ! Then building a tree house in my back yard and camping in it, then getting our bicycles in the middle of the night and riding all over town, and seeing NO ONE! Not even a policeman! Having a snack of toasted white bread, cut into small squares and then having honey drizzled all over it! Yum! All done with no safety equipment....no helmets, knee pads, etc. Playing mumbly peg with my friend and him sticking his pocket knife in the top of my foot. Mom poured merchurichome in it and it stung worse than any bee sting, and putting a bandaid on it and telling me it was fine. Yep, playing with liquid mercury and coating pennies with it!

I think kids of my generation were just tougher than kids are nowadays. Having a cane pole fight in the backyard, beating each other with 10' canes and no one whining, just laughing and having a good time! Come inside before dinner, just in time to watch the 3 Stooges on our B&W TV! Watching Friday Night fights on TV with my dad, and everyone knew wrassling was fake!

 

[Xxray]

At school at recess we liked to play a game we called "Kill the man with the hat", which was a variation of "pom-pom", where 1 guy would be selected to be "it", all the other kids, often dozens, would start by a fence and run to a safe line, then back to the fence. Usually played in snow but not always, the 1 kid would try to tackle another kid, then you had 2 guys that were "it". Then 4, 5 ect, until there were more guys "it" than running the gauntlet. Eventually there would be just 1 guy left to run, he was the winner but he still had to run the gauntlet until tackled. Often the girls would form spontaneous cheering squads, cheering on the guys they liked - And no, they weren't allowed to play, and none wanted to.

"Kill the man with the hat" we invented in elementary school I think because the playground was not large enough for pom-pom, we tossed up a hat, one kid would jump up and grab it, then run for his life, because the goal was for everyone else to swarm him and drag him to the ground after chanting "1, 2, 3".
You might think that no one would really want to grab the hat, but just the opposite, it was a badge of pride and honor to be the kid with the hat, any timid/frail kids simply did not play.

"King of the mountain" was another rough game played anytime we could find any type of hill, I'm sure most here played and know the simple rules.
We also liked to take tennis balls, soak them in alcohol, set them on fire and play catch with guys in a circle, anyone who dropped the flaming ball was labeled a chicken retard, and they stayed lit for quite some time. Sometimes we used knives for a variation ,, Teachers must have been aware of what we were doing but they didn't seem to care, they were glad that we found something to occupy ourselves.