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From the time I can remember, to around age 8-9.....Only time I saw daddy ,he was asleep in the bed ( My 5th or 6th Christmas he was awake and playing with me ) because ,back then he was running from here to Seattle Wa. every 7 days ( all two lane roads back then ) in an 18 wheeler.
Momma had the duty of keeping my little ass in line........and boy ,she knew how to put an ass whoopin on me. Peach tree right beside tha back door and it weren't no shuckin the knots off them limbs........whelps on my ass and legs looked like washboard. Didn't take me long before I got wise enough not to get caught fuckin up.
Seems a lot of us older folks were raised in a "Spare not the rod" kind of homes. Maybe thats what's wrong with todays kids.
Maybe ?Seems a lot of us older folks were raised in a "Spare not the rod" kind of homes. Maybe thats what's wrong with todays kids.
We had a big steep hill that lead down to a creek 15-29ft down with big vines hanging down from the trees, sometimes theyed break when you swung out over the drop, good luck to your ankles lolA Coke in the OG thick bottles that came out of a chest cooler type vending machine. Remember them? Open the lid, put your nickel or dime on the slot, then slide the next bottle that’s hanging by its neck thru the track until you got to the little gate that opened cause you paid.
Then get a penny back on deposit.
Also, Tarzan swing in the woods behind the neighborhood. Rope, old tire, swing out over the gully. We managed to survive stuff…and thought it was great fun…that the twinkies of today would call child abuse. Lol
Oh, kids piled on a toboggan. I mean every 7 y.o. We could stack on it, in western PA where had lots of hills. Damn thing couldn’t be steered and we didn’t care. Haha
Big Bertha with Triple D engines or go homeModel rockets. You know the rest.
My 2 oldest sons have started riding their bikes without training wheels the past few summers and the first thing they did was rummage around the garage for some scrap wood to make ramps. I can’t wait until the youngest(turning 1 in a month) joins them in their mayhem. Wait…yes I can. The oldest and youngest have hemophilia so I have that to worry about on top of everything else young boys do
I’m sure that won’t be as much fun, for some reasonThe secret is to jump from concrete on to the grass.
Hehe...Putting M80's in mailboxes....
Hehe...
We made time delay fuses, light a cigarette and poke a hole in it and stick the m80 fuse in the hole, you now have an adjustable time delay.
first time we did it it seemed to take too long so we sent a kid down to ck on it and of course it went off right when he got there..
Priceless
5 speed with " Springer front forks and front drum brakes " ?
Two things that were forbidden . No going to the river and no playing on the train tracks .
So, we always went to the river and of course, we spent many hours messing around the train yards and grain elevators.
Heh, we did that with trains.Not trains but street cars...in Pittsburg. Used to put pennies in the tracks to be flattened as they were run over. Ah, the simple pleasures of Eisenhower's America![]()
Maybe that's the reason I am an only child ?Being reminded by my mother that "if I had been the first borne, I would have been an only child".She still makes this statement on a regular basis.
I had one of those, it was silver and called the Gray Ghost.5 speed with " Springer front forks and front drum brakes " ?
Possums were much better.Putting M80's in mailboxes....
When I was about 4 years old, I realized I lived in a house full of fucking idiots. I grew up in a room with my brother, he sat on his bottom bunk picking his nose and digging shit out of his toenails and smelling it for 16 years. I had a sister who ate nothing but candy until she was 12 or so. People who had those parents who looked at your report cards or cared about your schooling are a mystery to me. My parents could have cared less. By the time I was 6 or 7, I spent my summers outdoors until dark. When I was old enough to push a mower, I mowed yards for money for school clothes and extras I wanted to buy. My mom would steal any money she found or get nasty and charge me for rides or meals until she got half. I had no idea what grace was and the first time I heard someone say it before dinner I was mystified. We drove by every church on our way to eat Chinese food on Sunday. My parents hated God more than they hated their children, hahahahaha.
By high school, I was self funded and my parents thankfully divorced. My mother moved in with a drunk from Boston and my dad could care less what I did all day as long as I brought home a loaf of bread and gallon of milk sometimes. Every now and then my dad would take me to a gun show or something and once in a while we would go hunting together. Otherwise I literally grew up doing whatever I wanted and going to school. I maintained an honor roll gpa and was in JROTC. I graduated in 1981, in lieu of going to the ceremony, I was on a plane to Europe for the summer. I went to Spain for 3 months, came home, moved out and then found a job, a year later I joined the military and left, never to return. I live diagonally across the North American continent from the ones that are left, they live in Florida and apparently parole rules keep them from traveling to the Pacific Northwest.
Yeah, it was a different time and place. The best thing about it was no one cared what you did 90% of the time. No cell phones or electronic tethers to follow you around. You could grab your fishing pole and bike and go to the lake or river for the day and fish all day. I made extra cash selling catfish and carp to a couple of old black ladies who lived on the way home from the lake. If I picked them blackberries, they would bake me a cobbler for the trouble, it was always awesome. Me and my buddy Anthony would buy a half gallon of ice cream and eat a cobbler and ice cream until we were overdosed on sugar, it was awesome. For even more extra money, we would catch escaped chickens from the Holly Farms processing plant and sell them live for a dollar each.
My childhood was typical.
Summers in Rangoon. Luge lessons.
In the spring we'd make meat helmets
When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really.
At the age of 12 I received my first Scribe.
At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles.
There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it breathtaking...
R
Arriver at Edwards in November of "65". Dad worked at the Rocket lab across the lake bed. 8th grade, awesome place!Lived at Edwards AFB during the X-15 era (moved there in 55 or 56). One of my "jobs" was to take our coke bottles back to the store for the deposit and I get to keep the change. Usually spent it on comic books, or Sci Fi Pulps.
I stopped once at the Liquor store (right next to the market) and found out he gave a penny more for bottles, so 6 cents for a coke, and 11 cents for a quart soda bottle. I gave him a wagon load, and headed for home. On the way past the alley that led to the back of the stores, I noticed a cage with the door open full of soda bottles. Wow! I had no idea where they came from, but I went to it, parked my Radio Flyer, and filled it up with coke bottles. Two cases on the bottom (wooden cases, remember those/) and a bunch of quarts in the corners and laying on top. Got about a buck and a half, and told the guy, I'll be right back. Went back out to the cage, and loaded up again, and went back in. Now the box he kept the bottles in was getting full, so after I left, he decided to empty the box. You guessed it, into the cage. I walked around the corner, and down the alley, and boom, ran into the guy. He wasn't real mad, he sort of laughed and said "Hey, kid, you're cleaning me out!".
I asked him, what the deal was, and he told me patiently, that this was where he stored all the returns. I was pretty sad about this, and started digging into my pocket, but he said, "Hey, kid, Forget it. Just don't tell your friends". It was locked after that. Hey, I was only about 7 at the time.
That place was amazing. We could see the Engine Test Stands on the mountains on the other side of Roger's Dry Lake, which would fire engines occasionally, and we got to watch the X-15 fly a LOT! Three major air shows a year (Armed Forces Day, Open House, and 4th of July).
Moved from the old housing to the new housing, at that edge of the developed area was butted right up against the open desert. My brother and I ran around out there endlessly. Saw the X-15 land several times, climbed around inside the B-52 that carried it, and actually worked for my dad in the Big Hangar when I got a little older (changing TO's, taking pages out of the manufacturer's manual and replacing them with updated pages. Met Scott Crossfield, Ivan Kinchloe, and a couple of other pilots.
After that project he worked on the B-58, which was a really cool plane. Dad brought home a couple of jars of Epoxy. Said this is new stuff. Stunk to high heaven. He told us the the wings on the B-58 were honeycombed, and that the epoxy was what the company said to use to fix any damage to the wings. He said he wouldn't use it on more than a couple of inches, since he didn't trust it yet.
Lots more. Great time as a kid.
After he got out of the service, we moved to LA just before I said, "Uhuh" and joined the Army (1966). That last summer "Them" was on TV, so we had to get into the Storm Drains. Wow, what an adventure that was. We explored miles and miles of these tunnels.
"We didn't know what we had, and we didn't know we were the last".
Allegedly I launched one inside the house somehow...allegedly.
dude, you should punch that cock sucker in his face and stuff those stupid gifts up his stupid dumb ass.Fall of 1993, my first deer hunt with my dad, I was 14. My Dad was a Vietnam Draftee, hated guns, hated being in the woods more. I was adopted at birth, so my desire to hunt and love of guns was certainly genetic, and not inherited from him. I had a Mossberg 500 shotgun with the 28" barrel purchased with money earned from mowing lawns. Loaded with slugs, and to make things worse (for him), it was raining that morning. Instead of bailing on taking me because of the rain (which being in raining woods reminds him of vietnam), he took me, and toughed it out. It sucked, it was cold, everything was wet including us, and we didn't see shit, and looking back the gunfire around us wasn't helping him. I will always remember, and appreciate, that fact that he took me anyway, and didn't bail on that. He's bailed on plenty more things, and even today he's a virtual stranger to my daughters who are 14 and 17, and he lives 20min away. I will unlikely see them these coming holidays because i'm unvaccinated, and not liberal, and thus won't be invited. I try to remember the good memories, and leave the bads ones to die on their own. He's 78 now, and it seems like the only times that I see him are when he stops by and drops of gifts for the girls for their birthdays or xmas (which he comes while they're at school so he doesn't have to see them), or when i'm in the hospital for my, hopefully no longer reoccurring, medical issues. Each time I see him he looks a little worse. I will however always remember that he did that for me.
Branden
We would stand shoulder to shoulder in the road taking turns lighting and throwing bottle rockets down the road as far as we could most of the time they’d launch back towards us and if you were “tough” you’d just stand still like a moron.I have a friend,, who shot off 70 bottle rockets inside the high school hallway, on the last day of school. It's my understanding, that they looked for him a long time, but they never figured out who it was.
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I had a big shell launch up, not explode, then BOOM right in my face lol
The same mine was an abandoned trailer park that literally had trees growing through it I shot the windows out with a bb gun.LOL a pyro maniac too!! I set fire to the local middle school after me and my friends broke all the windows.Also had a nice fire going along side the local supermarket.
My folks tell a similar tale...Being reminded by my mother that "if I had been the first borne, I would have been an only child".She still makes this statement on a regular basis.
NOPE. my dad saved and re-used everything, but one of his rules was never re-use a nail.Leaving the new ones and picking the bent used nails?