Demographic profile of the forum
- Thread starter SGK
- Start date
I thought that too back several years ago.
Creeping up on 71 I still feel like I’m maybe 45, mentally.
My body’s got a different idea
I'm 38. My childhood was the end of what I would call normal childhood. There was no cell phones, internet or playing video games online with all your friends. During summer break if I wanted to hang out with my friends I would have to hopp on my bike and go find them. My friends and I would be outside riding bikes being boys. We would go to the city pool, play basketball at the park, play football at the the library because it had a big rectangular back yard and we would just ride bikes and go on adventures using our imaginations. When I was around 10 years old the first Nintendo gaming system came out. My parents bought my brothers and I one, but we only had one TV in the house. So it was hard to get time to play it. My parents would tell me to be home before the street lights turn on. Nowadays kids dont even want to leave the house. They can communicate with all their friends from a computer or video game. With that all being said I have always been interested in what life was like back when you guys that are in your 60's, 70's and 80's was as kids???
Pretty much what you described: "My friends and I would be outside riding bikes being boys. We would go to the city pool, play basketball at the park, play football at the the library because it had a big rectangular back yard and we would just ride bikes and go on adventures using our imaginations."
Play in the dirt with TonkaToys pretending we were construction companies building the Interstate system, or more modestly the houses being built in what used to be vacant lots on our street. Riding my bike at 6 AM to where a guy'd give us our allotted morning papers to hawk to commuters at a nearby street corner. Reading magazines - Boys Life, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science - looking for things we could build with what we had at home that might do something our parents would then tell us we shouldn't do anymore inside the house. Marathon Monopoly tournaments on a friend's enclosed porch... for days. Building models of everything we could thing of, either as kits (cost $$ so limited in scope) or from whatever we had, then adding a Jet-X rocket engine to see if they'd fly, or just setting them afire out behind the garage... kid stuff in other words.
For a time it was trying to find out as much as possible what it took to build a bomb shelter in the basement. I had double pneumonia before Christmas, just after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Hospitalized for a week (7th grade math teacher's wife was one of my nurses; I didn't lack for homework) across the street from a Nike missile base. Laying in bed I watched shadows of the radar antennas going 'round & 'round inside their domes when the light was right. No worries about Russian missiles targeting Chicago! I knew if they struck I'd never know it... kid stuff, you know?
hogpatrol
Silver $$ Contributor
What was it like? I grew up in suburbia so YMMV. Wiffle ball, tree forts, playing army in the woods, bike riding miles away from home, playing board games, snowball fights, hitchhiking, shooting BB guns, grew and sold tomatoes in the neighborhood. made and sold ice tea and lemonade to construction workers while my development was being built (I was ten), collected bottles from the same area for the deposit. We also rode our decorated bikes in parades on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.
As a teen, with just a friend, riding the bus to the train station, then taking the train to Philly and wandering around the business and shopping districts, probably need a CCW now. This was in between mowing the grass, pulling weeds, taking care of the garden, raking leaves, making your bed, staying up on schoolwork and other assigned chores. Also worked for my father in his landscaping business, 50 cents an hour, the word "allowance" wasn't in his depression era/WW2 vocabulary. If you wanted something, you worked for it.spclark Apart from the last paragraph it sounds like my childhood (although we didn't have many magazines) - and I'm just 55. I grew up in a small city in New Zealand. It was orchard and sheep farming country. Bored? Let's grind a barb into a nail, tie the nail to a broom handle and go eeling which involved walking barefoot slowly down a muddy creek bed waiting for something to wiggle underfoot and then stabbing it. Tasted damn good smoked. We graduated to riding our bikes 20 miles along the river flood banks to go fishing for kahawai at the river mouth. We played rugby and cricket from age 5, and no we never felt the need for pads or helmets (I don't even think mouth guards had been invented). My summers as an early teen were spent driving a tractor or picking ladder on an orchard - well before I could legally drive - to earn pocket money. Later it was dirt bikes, the burger bar on a Friday night and, well that's enough. Lunchtime at high school was time for a game of "bullrush" - only at my school it was Maori vs Pakeha! I paid my own way through university ("college" in US terms) working a 12 hour, 7 day a week shift at the local cannery all through each summer. Happy days.
My young kids look at me weirdly when I tell them I remember watching "live" as Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and my shock when I first saw a colour television.
My young kids look at me weirdly when I tell them I remember watching "live" as Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and my shock when I first saw a colour television.
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CORRECT !
Oh great memories it was exactly the same for me except for riding the train where I live there was no mass transit smaller population etc. but we rode our bicycles over the bridge into the next town that had a Kmart that was about 10 miles one way and like you I was about 10 when I did this for the first timeWhat was it like? I grew up in suburbia so YMMV. Wiffle ball, tree forts, playing army in the woods, bike riding miles away from home, playing board games, snowball fights, hitchhiking, shooting BB guns, grew and sold tomatoes in the neighborhood. made and sold ice tea and lemonade to construction workers while my development was being built (I was ten), collected bottles from the same area for the deposit. We also rode our decorated bikes in parades on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.
nmkid
Gold $$ Contributor
You are most certainly a genius!!
nmkid
Gold $$ Contributor
My grandfather on my dad's side would always get a glint in his eye's when he would tell us...The chief walked up to an old Indian princess and asked how old she was? The old woman replied, "I have seen 25 winter's". To which the chief replied, Please tell me, "how many times have you seen 25 winter's? Oh, guess I will have seen 25 winter's 3 times this year.
I just turned 64 this month. In my minds eye I still feel like I am 35ish, but when I look in the mirror, there is this old man looking back. I don't know who he is, but I wish he would get out of my mirror.
Well that takes care of my mental health, such that it is.
As for my physical state, some days I feel and act like I am still in my 40's and generally pay for it the next, other days I just feel as old as Methuselah.
Well that takes care of my mental health, such that it is.
As for my physical state, some days I feel and act like I am still in my 40's and generally pay for it the next, other days I just feel as old as Methuselah.
SSL
Gold $$ Contributor
I was born in 1950 in a small town in Illinois. My father worked for the telephone company and there were no such things as "private" lines. Most in town were 4-party while the rural lines were 8 to 10-party lines. There were no "dial" phones; all operator assisted calls. Phone numbers were only two digits in our town (ours was 51) and if you didn't know the number, you just told the operator who you wanted. Some of the surrounding towns still had "crank" phones. I remember going with Dad to watch when they converted one of those towns to "modern" phones and burned a huge pile of the old phones in a bonfire.
I didn't see a color TV until I was maybe 13 and Grandpa and Grandma bought one for their "Lawrence Welk" shows. Most tvs were still black and white and ran from 13 to 25" with massive cases. First "wireless" phone I saw was a "radio phone" the size of a G.I. ammo box mounted in a car when I was 13. A computer was something you read about in SciFi storys. It was not unusual for a Saturday night entertainment to be parking around the town square and just watching people go by. My uncle owned the local theater so I got in free (admission was 35 cents). Lots of broken ground outside of town to roam with .22s as young as 12...and no one cared. My younger brother and I often camped at the local lake overnight to run trot lines. No one ever bothered to worry about a 10 and 12-year old out alone. Got a transistor radio when I was 12 and thought I was in heaven...but only could pick up two AM stations.
Ran a paper route that covered most of town (bicycle, not car) and then went to work in a local store. Worked for several farmers to bail hay and straw, cut pigs, clear brush and etc. Pretty much lived in the local library (that's where there are those things that have paper pages bound in stiff fiber with words in them) when I had any leisure time that wasn't outdoor oriented. Curfew was generally when the street lights came on. Hard to get into real trouble when everyone in town knows your parents and grandparents and are happy to tell them if they see you doing something wrong. Of course, back then there were very real consequences for screwing up. Teachers had the right to corporal punishment (never knew of any who abused that right) and you probably would get more at home as a result. Town still had a few people with outhouses until about 1960.
There were no malls to hang out in (did have a couple drive-ins - Dog and Suds and A&W) that always had kids, but only if you had wheels. Not cool enough to hang there without a car. A kid's disposable income was counted in cents for most that didn't work at some job or another. Only entertainment besides the theater was a pool hall (den of iniquity condemned by most of the "church ladies", a slot-car track in a hobby store and a skating rink. Church on Sunday was pretty much expected and there was always a faint suspicion cast around anyone who didn't go.
Had the "shelter under the desk" drills in case of nuclear attack in school during the Cuban missile crisis and knew people that dug bomb shelters. Knew lots of people who had served in WWI, WWII and Korea. Kept hearing about some place called Vietnam. Parents and grandparents were terrified that JFK was elected. Just knew that meant the Pope would rule the USA. Big push towards fluoride in the water to build strong teeth. Big drives for inoculations for measles, small pox,polio and such. Knew several people who had been afflicted with polio. Saw quarantines for scarlet fever and mumps. Local hospital had a TB ward.
Yep...lots of changes.
SSL, That was a great description of what life was like for a kid growing up in the 50's and 60's. I knew about some of the things, but didn't know about phone number being 2 digits long. One thing I remember now is all the TV channels "5 channels total" would turn off or just be a white static screen after midnight/1am. I believe the channel would turn back on at 6am with the morning news.
ronsatspokane
Gold $$ Contributor
Ain't that the truth. Who is that old man in the mirror? And after three days of pruning apple trees, cutting up dead fall and chipping it all up with a tractor mounted chipper I'm feeling more like 90 instead of 62. Hope the back holds out for another day of it.
I see more of us old-timers, 80 plus are responding - keep thinking & moving & enjoy stuff (like food, drink, fishing & shooting) that won't hurt too bad or not at all.Vivid past memories like when my dad & I saw a WWII U Boat periscope making a wake about 1/4 mile off shore at Race Point, Cape Cod - was it a hunting German? or possibly a huge striper dorsal fin?
I also can remember nuke drills at school in the 50's, polio, iron lungs, closed beaches, VE & VJ days, grampa's (a decent, kind, Christian gentleman) WWII trophies (photo attached of the one I keep in my desk) obtained by fair trade from German POW's ( more than 100K souls transported from N. Africa to Hampton Roads area, VA & NC) and then there was Korea & Viet Nam.
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As a young kid growing up in the 50's, I always been one who loved to explore (still do). Do to father's job instability, we didn't live in the same neighborhood for long periods, but mostly in suburbs close to large city center. So my friends and I often walking around exploring and finding ways to get in a little trouble (much of which my parents never new anything about . . . and often was able to lie my way out of a predicament). Didn't spend much time in front of a TV and parents didn't have one until I was age 8 and then watched just a few shows like Mickey Mouse Club, Houdy Doody and some Captain Kangaroo. But summers were quite different as I often spend summers away at my grandparents place, which was in a very rural setting where I and a friend would build a raft to float in the large nearby creek and fish for catfish, or just swim or sometimes wade in the smaller creek by the house and occasionally catch steel head with our hands, shoot whatever we could with BB guns and when older had fun hunting with shotguns and 22's. So, growing up and had one foot in a somewhat suburban life style and the other foot in a rural one.
Since I never got any kind of allowance to spend, I found ways to earn some money, like collecting people's old news papers and taking stacks of it in my little red wagon and haul it to a recycling warehouse that would pay me by the pound. Or I'd take my dad's push mower and offer to mow neighbors lawn for a price (depending on the size of the lawn and/or how hard it might be to mow) or pull weed for them by the hour. When at my grandparents, there were a lot of wild blackberries around so my friend and I would pick several gallon cans of them and sell them. Also at my grandparents (who had acre of property with large vegetable garden and large lawn area), where late at night I'd hunt night crawlers and package them up to sell to local fishermen.
Looking back at my childhood, it wasn't what many would consider ideal, but I think of it and feel it was actually quite wonderful. With some near misses . . . I'm pretty happy just still being alive.
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have replied. since youve gotten around 300 replies and isnt there 40,000 members its hard to say what true makeup is. its a good idea though.
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