who here is as old as me?

[reba]

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread Mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e. Coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE...and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either; because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.
Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house (no lawsuits back then). Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes. We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

 

[th1b.taylor]

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread Mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e. Coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE...and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either; because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.
Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house (no lawsuits back then). Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes. We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

You grew up in my neighborhood? Even Black Ladies spanked my butt and twisted my ear to get the information of where were my parents. Horrible times, I actually understood people cared about the young Bill Taylor, Social Misfit.

 

[Sparkey]

Did you forget your citation maybe?
No worries, reba. I found it for ya:
'Alternative' truth title: who here is as old as me?

Original title:

How Did We Live? (https://www.crossroad.to/Victory/stories/how-did-we-live.htm)

by Unknown author
​

PS - how you been? I too remember the "good ol' days," maybe too often. Mostly it was the wild shenanigans we kids got into that come to mind. It was a different time. Ever see "Summer of 42"? No, we never had a pretty next-door-lady type (and would not know what to think if we did) but Mom would let us "play" all day and the only restriction would be distance (ie, "Don't cross the street." But [blocks upon blocks of ] woods out back are okay.) and time ("You be back by supper, young man.")

There was a remarkable lack of supervision.

 

[Corn Pop]

No im not as old as you.

 

[Sparkey]

The Statute of Limitations serves to protect me (us) from prosecution so I can tell you a story but shhhhhh... keep it between ye (dear reader) and me and the mouse over there in the corner.

The neighbor kid (I'll call him "Don" because that was his name) and I were both trouble makers. This will come as no surprise to any who know me. By ourselves we'd be the source of several dinner conversations throughout the neighborhood, "Did you hear what that Donny did?"

"Yeah, but if you think that's bad, what about Mike's latest? Did you hear?" Separate was bad enough, but together we were trouble to the 2nd power or trouble squared (*trouble*)². I can't remember the year exactly but we were young. I was a 'safe driver' in my own mind because my sister gave me a motorcycle when I was 13 (a Honda 90 she bought, running(!) for $25). We must have been either 13 or 14 years old.

One day we were visiting a friend who was helping her sister babysit. There was a purse. Just over there. Whose fingers actually stole the money doesn't really matter because we were both complicit in the crime. We were also $50 richer and the only problem (to our way of thinking) would be how to spend it quick enough.

We wanted to visit another friend but my motorcycle didn't have a license plate. It was used on back trails only - which are now paved but then? Miles and miles of undeveloped land. And since we were little "Don Juan" wanna-be's there was this girl... Sound like a familiar story? Famous last words maybe? Yeah, but little did we know. Her family had been old friends with Don's family and had visited during the summer. Don had her phone number and that was that. All there was left to do was find a way to get there. Bus was out of the question. Too many cities between us.

The brother of another friend said he'd "rent" us his licensed motorcycle for 10 bucks and we were off within the week. It was 307 miles one-way from our houses to hers. We we wanted to avoid ferries and chose to ride around the Puget Sound which stretched the distance considerably. Federal Way, WA to Port Townsend. We packed snacks, spent two quarters to fill the gas tank, and had a great time.

So much for, "Don't go too far, young man." Right? Up at the crack of dawn. Made the trip in record time (no traffic). Below isn't a route map. We didn't take the Freeway because it had not yet been built. To give you an idea of our trip:

 

[JohnDB]

I drank from a creek and when feeling poorly stuck to drinking water from a garden hose.

I had never heard of a bike helmet or pads for wearing while skateboarding.
I could even cook a potato using a tin can and some string using sticks and matches...Or even a lighter.

A fort that we built was necessary for every reformed neighborhood club for us guys to keep the girls out.

Fighting with said club members was a given without even thinking of legal action.

 

[Eugene]

I was near ten years old before I ever noticed a flushing toilet, was amazed at water from a facet, or was aware there was something called electricity. I do recollect one time going to a neighbor's house some distance that had a radio where we listened to a Joe Lewis championship fight, although I never questioned why we could hear that. Cell phones? We didn't have TV's until I was around fourteen I think it was. Ice boxes were the norm because refrigeration wasn't even thought of yet I suppose.

Coal or wood stoves were the norm in heating and cooking appliances, making our own clothes was mom's job, as well as heating a large piece of metal called an iron on top of the stove to get it hot; the handle could be switched between iron bases.

Food was processed differently in that there was rationing of sugar, and other products due to WW2, We grew ten acres of sugar Cane to turn into molasses or sorghum syrup which could be bartered with others for products we didn't grow.

Soap was lye and pig lard boiled down in a large pot, and that may be why wild wolves didn't want us; it sure smelled different. School was one room shared by kids up through the sixth grade; I don't know what they did with kids older than twelve.

Work was a way of life regardless our age, fishing was for food, not sport and many times done at night with a kerosene lantern wading in a stream and gigging the fish with a pronged tool while trying to avoid water moccasins we would disturb in the process.
I have absolutely no idea how we survived through all this????

 

[Sparkey]

We learned to make 'dynamite' too. Simple enuf. Salt Peter, Coal, Sulfur. Easy to get at the corner drug store. Just tell 'em Granny wanted to take care of a stump or som'thing. 'Gullibility' was not in the common vocabulary yet. "Why would such sweet, angel-faced kids lie?"

We'd made what we called ¼-sticks and then taped them together. The problem was getting the casings. Since I had 3 older sisters whose idea of a good time was going to the CSO and dancing with soldiers (they saw it as a 'Patriotic duty') it wasn't that difficult to convince them to help. Yeah, it's a felony. I know. Did I mention the Statue of Limitations? Okay then. We drilled the fuse hole on a slant figuring it would close with the pressure and make a more efficient explosion. There were always older kids around to help but my friend had a whole set of encyclopedias in the basement and we were rather studious for the right cause.

Our idea of 'safe' was to extensively dry-test our shoe-string fuses (soak them in salt-peter and let them dry, cut 'em to length). We had to give ourselves enough time to get away, right? Safety was important. But that's where our thinking stopped. We didn't think about anybody else - who would? Only somebody who wanted to discourage the brilliance of our collective genius. That's not us, no way!

So it was off to the beach to find a 'cave' in the cliff side and "THERE IT IS!" To quote Kelly Bundy of Married with Children fame, "Urethra! We found it." There was a hole probably made by a bird - with a perfect diameter for Boomer! (We named the explosive 'Boomer'). Luckily, nobody strolled by. We had our posted guards. Both up and down the beach. Trusted teenagers all, filled with patience and responsibility, he says, tongue-in-cheek.

Nobody was coming. "Light it. Hurry up! Light it!" There's nothing like rushing the critical moment, right?

Then we ran. Ran like hell. Because even we understood how dangerous it was. But the explosion was rather anti-climatic. The sand surrounding the bomb dampened our thunderous expectation rather well. But then, a pregnant pause later, and the sand just slid down in a huge sheet of sand-alanche. *Poof* the cave was no more. It was a dangerous cave, you see? Some poor kid could have been playing in it and it could have come down and smothered him or her. Suffice it to say, "Our neighborhood is better off with us around."

 

[KevinK]

Actually, I think that's the formula for gunpowder. Dynamite is based on nitroglycerine. At any rate, we did the same thing. The hard part was going to a pharmacy for the saltpeter (potassium nitrate); some knew we were making our own firecrackers, others believed we were just pickling cucumbers.

When I was growing up, we never called it a "refrigerator" (though it was); we used the term "icebox", based on the days when a man in a delivery truck or horse-driven carriage would drop off a massive block of ice using huge ice-tongs.

 

[Sparkey]

Actually, I think that's the formula for gunpowder. Dynamite is based on nitroglycerine.

Thanks for correcting me. *wink* :nod

But we did not stop at firecrackers and made what was tested as approximately equivalent to ¼ sticks of dynamite, oops, I mean TNT. It wasn't the salt-peter that was difficult for us and if all you wanted to do was roll your own lady-fingers out of newsprint? We could buy cans of gun powder or black powder (produced in difference grain size and burn rates) but the amount of smoke produced was the chief thing we noticed. No problem. We could buy ether and chloroform too. Eventually we bought high quality fuse on a spool, but it was the casings that made them work right. And they were absolutely prohibited. They were stolen and smuggled off of Ft Lewis army base. It was our little claim to fame.

I probably should have said (if I were trying to speak technically) that we made the equivalent of 7 microtons (μt) of TNT releasing approximately 1,288 kilojoules of energy but it's just a story and poetic license covers such pedantic, punctilious nonsense in any case. My friend may have done the calculations as he was the smart one of the bunch. I was a more of a late bloomer along for the ride.

All this is missing the point though. There was no such thing as "adult supervision" when I grew up and we were well aware of it. Growing like weeds. No cultivation whatsoever. 'Tossed by the wind' seems an apt description.

When my sons were raised "adult supervision" was replaced by the "Snoopy Neighbor" syndrome. If they jay-walked after exiting the school bus I would get a phone call before they could run the 2 blocks home. I heard about my boys "defacing public property" when they were throwing rocks at apple trees to knock down and eat an apple. And it was public property too. But not in my day. My mom would say, "A little birdie told me," but that was code for "I guessed right, and you just confirmed the guess by asking how I knew." It didn't take too long to figure it out.

NOTE: I've edited POST #8 (above) to enclose the word, dynamite, in single quotes. Thx again for the assist.

We learned to make 'dynamite' too. Simple enuf.

 

[Eugene]

When I was growing up, we never called it a "refrigerator" (though it was); we used the term "icebox", based on the days when a man in a delivery truck or horse-driven carriage would drop off a massive block of ice using huge ice-tongs.

Hi Brother KevinK, when we said Ice Box that’s all there was in the cities. I can’t remember how long a 25lb or 50lb blocks of ice lasted but it near was useless in comparison to today’s refrigerators. Milk men delivered often, and even then they sold sour, and clabbered milk at cut rates which they couldn’t keep cold long enough either. I do remember fresh milk at four cents a quart, sour milk at two cents, and clabbered milk at one cent per quart.

Mass production of modern refrigerators didn't get started until after World War II.
http://www.keepitcool.com/history_of_the_refrigerator2.htm

 

[jasonc]

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread Mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e. Coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE...and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either; because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.
Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house (no lawsuits back then). Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes. We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

I was doing that In the 80s.

Im.not over 50,lol

 

[smaller]

No teevee's. check
No indoor running water or toilets. check
Coal or wood stove heat only. check
Grandma still used a spinning wheel to make wool yarn from sheep Grandpa sheared on the farm. check
Kids started working, actually doing labor, as soon as they could understand English and walk. check

 

[abide]

I was near ten years old before I ever noticed a flushing toilet, was amazed at water from a facet, or was aware there was something called electricity. I do recollect one time going to a neighbor's house some distance that had a radio where we listened to a Joe Lewis championship fight, although I never questioned why we could hear that. Cell phones? We didn't have TV's until I was around fourteen I think it was. Ice boxes were the norm because refrigeration wasn't even thought of yet I suppose.

Coal or wood stoves were the norm in heating and cooking appliances, making our own clothes was mom's job, as well as heating a large piece of metal called an iron on top of the stove to get it hot; the handle could be switched between iron bases.

Food was processed differently in that there was rationing of sugar, and other products due to WW2, We grew ten acres of sugar Cane to turn into molasses or sorghum syrup which could be bartered with others for products we didn't grow.

Soap was lye and pig lard boiled down in a large pot, and that may be why wild wolves didn't want us; it sure smelled different. School was one room shared by kids up through the sixth grade; I don't know what they did with kids older than twelve.

Work was a way of life regardless our age, fishing was for food, not sport and many times done at night with a kerosene lantern wading in a stream and gigging the fish with a pronged tool while trying to avoid water moccasins we would disturb in the process.
I have absolutely no idea how we survived through all this????

Eugene you seemed to have live here in Barbados because all the things you mentioned were part of "earlier years" here in Barbados. I still wont let you know my age though

 

[Mike S]

I was doing that In the 80s.

Im.not over 50,lol

Steak tartare.

 

[jasonc]

View attachment 11094 SiLos are about 100 years old at the most to 70 at the youngest.here was where we got our fresh milk delivered.

Ice house? I have a photo of what might have been the first one and if not there was one later one that was in use in the 70's

 

[Edward]

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread Mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter and I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e. Coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then. The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE...and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option... Even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah... And where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed! We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat. We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either; because if we did we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off.
Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house (no lawsuits back then). Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof.. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that? We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes. We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac!

Oh, darnit. I thought we were going to get to know how old you are. I must be as old as you, or close because I do remember those days. We rode bikes without helmets, and lived. We wandered our rural neighborhood as pre-teens armed to the teeth with 22's, SG's and sometimes my dad's AR15 and nothing bad ever happened, unless you count the bad day that the rabbits or squirrels had, lol. When we got bit by a dog, we didn't learn how to sue someone, we learned to stay off of that street!

I took two DEWAT hand grenades to school for show and tell in the 4th grade, and the FBI wasn't called in. No evacuation, no swat teams, no lockdown. I did have to keep them in the cloak room, I wasn't allowed to keep them in my desk. I thought that was unfair. I wanted to keep the hand grenades in my desk!

 

[Edward]

I probably should have said (if I were trying to speak technically) that we made the equivalent of 7 microtons (μt) of TNT releasing approximately 1,288 kilojoules of energy but it's just a story and poetic license covers such pedantic, punctilious nonsense in any case. My friend may have done the calculations as he was the smart one of the bunch. I was a more of a late bloomer along for the ride.

Wow, that's some firecracker, Brother! If I did that right, 1288 kilojoules figures out to right at 950,000 foot-pounds, or, enough energy to lift 950K pounds, one foot off of the ground. That's a lot of energy! Long fuse, long fuse!

 

[civilwarbuff]

No im not as old as you.

I don't think anyone here is a old as reba 22222
DID I JUST SAY THAT?

 

[reba]

I wanted to keep the hand grenades in my desk!

you would