A Tough Generation

[Wyandot Jim]

I think a lot of us on here are the same generation. How many of you got sick and or fell off of one of these???

Split my scalp open on one of these while in first grade.
One of the teachers took me to Dr. Thompson who stitched me up and back to school I went with bloody shirt.

 

[Feel the 'Pane]

Boy, that sure brings back memories!

I remember the playground
competition was tough. We would see who could stand in the center the longest.... and someone always got hurt when loosing their balance.

Wouldn't trade the memories for anything!

 

[eveled]

A family we were friends with had one of these. It was set up on top of a retaining wall. So for part of each revolution you were like 100 feet in the air. Ok it was probably only 10feet but it seemed like 100.

 

[Ride1949]

 

[Watertender]

There was a city alderman near here several years ago who caught holy hell for saying monkey bars when the city put a new playground in for the ghettoites. Kids today would have no idea how to have fun at a playground like we had as kids. Anyone remember sitting on a piece of wax paper to go faster down the slide?

 

[turd]

Nor was there any rubber pellets or pea gravel around ANY of the play equipment. Oh, glory be how did we survive? Mom was off in the picnic area having coffee with the other mothers.......

 

[turd]

We who could not afford sleds went down the snowhill on a piece of cardboard. Woohoo!

 

[contender]

Ahh the memories.

 

[NC FNS]

Another father’s unsympathetic parenting style usually involved him saying, "The stupid shall be punished." Makes sense to me, but nowadays it seems like the stupid shall be coddled.

 

[Hvymax]

Nor was there any rubber pellets or pea gravel around ANY of the play equipment. Oh, glory be how did we survive? Mom was off in the picnic area having coffee with the other mothers.......

Don't you mean smoking???

 

[Fox Mike]

When I was a kid I lived in the country. I can't remember ever seeing one of them 'twirl around' things till I was almost a teen. I rode my bicycle without a helmet and have the scars to prove it. Climbed, and fell out, of trees. Drank from the garden hose. Played dodge ball. If you sucked at sports you just were never asked to be part of any team. Swam in Cadle creek while watching for small "logs" (graygun will understand what I mean). Took our .22 rifles to the dump near Triton Beach and shot at rats or cans if no rats showed. We drove tractors on the State road long before having a drivers license. It was legal so long as there was a 'working item' installed. Sickle bar qualified. Actually we drove cars too but that is another story. Cut grass with a push reel mower (gumballs were a reel stopper). Raked the fall leaves and burned them in the ditches by the house without notifying the local fire department since the closest one was fifteen miles away at that time. Pollution wasn't a concern and the smell was something one never forgets. Things today are so very different. Kids don't realize what they have missed.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

Nor was there any rubber pellets or pea gravel around ANY of the play equipment. Oh, glory be how did we survive? Mom was off in the picnic area having coffee with the other mothers.......

Mom was home. We could either ride our bikes or walk to the park or school playground/killer of the stupid. How many of you tried to go all the way around on the GIANT swings. Good thing the swing seat chains went slack first.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

Raked the fall leaves and burned them in the ditches by the house without notifying the local fire department since the closest one was fifteen miles away at that time. Pollution wasn't a concern and the smell was something one never forgets. Things today are so very different. Kids don't realize what they have missed.

That was a big event in small town Ohio during the early/mid 50s.
Most people would burn the leaves at the street curb or next to the road. It was a time to roast marshmallows and wieners along with drinking fresh apple cider. Remember racking a big pile of leaves just so you could jump into them. Then rake them up again.
Halloween was also a fun time. Our town would have a costume contest for us kids. In 1953 I was 10 YO, and my sister was 7 YO
won first place. I went as the Big Bad Wolf and she was Little Red Riding Hood. I put a rope around her before we walked on stage. This was a fun time for the us kids.

 

[tazbigdog]

I got a couple.

 

[Watertender]

We who could not afford sleds went down the snowhill on a piece of cardboard. Woohoo!

A little later in my misspent youth I can sort of remember about 2am on a February morning being fueled by half a case of beer and a large pizza sliding down the hill at the country club. My buddy and I got a case and 2 large pizzas about 11pm and by 2am we decided that using the pizza boxes as sleds was a grand idea. After we froze ourselves having fun we went to the all night diner to thaw out with coffee and cheeseburgers. We were driving around in an old International dump truck with about a 45 mph top speed so we were not going anywhere fast. Today he is a doctor and I know better!

 

[Wyandot Jim]

View attachment 32356

That kids that looks like he is falling is in a swing.

 

[jimbo1096]

Oh yeah, been through all of that and still survived. I may have bad knees and a bad back today because of part of it but back then we were invincible. And I remember going down to the river when I lived in Texas and was about 10 years old and we all had a contest to see who could ride the rapids with no flotation devices. I almost drowned that time and I didn’t win. Between the fast cars and the stupid things we all did it’s a wonder we are still here today. And that doesn’t even include a trail bike that I thought was the fastest motorcycle in the world and could jump anything.

 

[Ride1949]

That kids that looks like he is falling is in a swing.

You are absolutely right. He was circled in the first pic I posted. After a closer look I see the connectors for the swing on the bar. Mia Culpa.

 

[eveled]

Any one else remember how you got off a swing?

We would just jump when it was at its highest. It seemed like being launched from a catapult.

Our playground at school had a big rock, two sections of concrete sewer pipe and two tractor tires, one red for girls, one blue for boys.

 

[Mobuck]

I didn't spend much time on a 'playground' but the other entertainment possibilities were at least 2x more dangerous. Seems like my right leg was the landing spot--3 knee surgeries and hundreds of stitches. Left leg-- nothing much. Oh, there was that time when Doctors wanted to amputate my left foot but that's an entirely different story.

 

[Johnny-Baseball]

We who could not afford sleds went down the snowhill on a piece of cardboard. Woohoo!

Not me. I grew up in North Texas: no hills, no snow. No problem.

 

[JiminMaine]

Also survived riding in the back of pickups and the "Way Back" in the station wagon when on trips.

One of my friends had a "Puch" two-cycle motorcycle. If you rocked it backwards and popped the clutch you could get the engine running backwards. Then we would see who could ride it the farthest and fastest backwards. Helmets?, aren't those what football players wore.

Those were the days.

 

[Johnnu2]

All of the above + my father had no problem allowing me to tie my JS Higgins 22 rifle (in its case) to my bike (handle bars) and peddle two towns over, where there was an indoor shooting range in the basement of an Episcopal (?) church; there was adult supervision there. Was told not to take the box of bullets out of my pants pocket until I got to the church.... I obeyed totally.
BTW, at the time, we lived about 17 miles north of Manhattan, NYC. All legal back then. Try it today................(?)

J.

 

[KIR]

Don't know if this post qualifies for this thread, but since tonight is Halloween...There is one thing I really miss from the celebration they held at the playground across the street from where I used to live. That would be a huge bon-fire. Everyone brought in old wooden furniture and it was piled high around the 2nd base soft ball field. Best part of the evening. There were booths run by the local teachers from the nearby junior high school. Down by the third base dugout two tall wooden poles were put into the ground with a $5 bill in an envelope stapled at the top which one had to shimmy up to get it. Of course the poles were greased so it made it difficult to climb up. $5 was a lot of money in those days and there were a lot of guys who were willing to climb up the pole for it. They also had a costume contest and I am proud to say I won for my grade three years running. It consisted of a horrific rubber mask and a white sheet. Since I lived in a neighborhood with Mexicans on one side and Blacks on the other, it was a wonder I was not killed, but then I was just a kid. My prize each year was a new leather wallet. I turned the costume over to my brother and he won two years in a row, but he wanted a store bought clown outfit his third year and lost! Great times growing up at that playground during the 50's.

 

[Snake45]

My elementary school had not one but TWO low-rise merry-go-rounds. Of course the idea was to get one going as FAST as possible, jump on, and TRY to stand up in the middle. Dizzy! Fun!

We also had a "jungle jim" that looked like a big box with a smaller box on top of it. I guess the "big" box was about 6 feet high, 6 feet wide, and maybe 15 feet long. It wasn't hard to imagine it as a tank or submarine, or, with a little more imagination, the nose of a B-17.

 

[Gopher]

Ahh the memories.

Ahh the scars.

We rode bikes with no helmets or padding too.

 

[Jeepnik]

It all sounds like my childhood. I managed, don’t tell their mother, to do many of those types of things with my boys. Like me , they survived with a few minor scars and a break or two.

The Corps taught them well, but I think their early training helped bring them home mostly in tact.

 

[Jack Ryan]

Any one else step on a nail? My "tennis shoes" were always on the verge of a hole worn through the bottom and it seems I got a tetnus shot about three times a year and those were only the ones my parents found out about. One time that nail went all the way through and out the top and I walked all the way home with the stupid board stuck on the bottom. Oh yeah that was fun when they saw that.

 

[dreamer]

Any one else step on a nail? My "tennis shoes" were always on the verge of a hole worn through the bottom and it seems I got a tetnus shot about three times a year and those were only the ones my parents found out about. One time that nail went all the way through and out the top and I walked all the way home with the stupid board stuck on the bottom. Oh yeah that was fun when they saw that.

Stepped on a nail that came out the top, pulling my foot off the 2x6 managed to pull down the transverse metatarsal arch, so after beating the infection had to wear a special shoe to reform arch, the fun never stops

 

[dannyd]

It's depends on the parents more than anything else on how the kids played and what they were a load to do.

My kids are 44 and 41, they had bikes, no video games, played outside and went to work when they were 16 and a day. (they had their 16th birthday off to get driver's license) They also drank from the water hose and one broke her arm on the monkey bars and survived.

So, it's not so much a generation thing as it is a parent thing.

Having late bloomers babyboomers for parents didn't do many kids a lot of good, because it was never their kids fault. My kids grew up with military justice, where your always guilty until proven innocent.