If you lived as a child in the 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's how did you survive?

[srv1]

Looking back, it's hard to believe that we
have lived
as long as we have...

As children, we would ride in cars with no
seat belts
or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup
truck on a
warm day was always a special treat.

Our baby cribs were covered with bright
colored
lead-based paint. We had no childproof lids
on
medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, and
when we rode
our bikes, we had no helmets.

We hitchiked to town all by ourselves.

We drank water from the garden hose instead
of a
bottle. Horrors.

We would spend hours building our go-carts
out of
scraps and then rode down the hill, only to
find out
we forgot the brakes. After running into the
bushes a
few times we learned to solve the problem.

We would leave home in the morning and play
all day,
as long as we were back when the streetlights
came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.

No cell phones. Unthinkable. We played
dodgeball and
sometimes the ball would really hurt. We got
cut and
broke bones and broke teeth, and there were
no law
suits from these accidents.They were
accidents. No one
was to blame, but us. Remember accidents?

We had fights and punched each other and got
black and
blue and learned to get over it.

We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank
sugar
soda but we were never overweight... we were
always
outside playing. We shared one grape soda
with four
friends, from one bottle and no one died from
this.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64,
X-Boxes,
video games at all, 99 channels on
cable,video tape
movies, surround sound, personal cell phones,
Personal
Computers, Internet chat rooms ... we had
friends. We
went outside and found them. We rode bikes or
walked
to a friend's home and knocked on the door,
or rung
the bell or just walked in and talked to
them.

Imagine such a thing. Without asking a
parent! By
ourselves! Out there in the cold cruel world!
Without
a guardian. How did we do it?

We made up games with sticks and tennis balls
and ate
worms and although we were told it would
happen, we
did not put out very many eyes, nor did the
worms live
inside us forever.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone
made the
team. Those who didn't, had to learn to deal
with
disappointment..... Some students weren't as
smart as
others so they failed a grade and were held
back to
repeat the same grade..... Horrors. Tests
were not
adjusted for any reason.

Our actions were our own. Consequences were
expected.
No one to hide behind. The idea of a parent
bailing us
out if we broke a law was unheard of. They
actually
sided with the law, imagine that!

Our generation has produced some of the best
risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors
ever.
The past 50 years have seen an explosion of
innovation
and new ideas. We had freedom, failure,
success and
responsibility, and we learned how to deal
with it all.


If you're one of 'us', congratulations! We
had the luck to
grow up as kids, before lawyers and
government decided to
regulated our lives, "for our own good"..

remember that? huh....

[MidNiteBlu 5.0]

Actually i can relate to some of most of those even though i grew up in the 80's. even when video games first game out original nintendo/atari we would always get kicked out of the house to go play outside.

Funny how i never got a cell phone till i was 17 halfway through senior year after i ran out of gas in my car and had to use a friends phone to call my parents lol.

[Rev]

That pretty much describes it, LOL. (no worm eating though.)

Rev

[Maroon 5.0 LX]

Do you remember when:

There was 2" of cream at the top of a bottle of milk?

Tomatos had thin skins, and lots of juice? Not the thick skinned mushy things we now have that have been altered so they can be picked by machine.

Meat had fat on it so it tasted like something other than cardboard when cooked?

Spare ribs were free for the dogs, as they were considered trash? Now you pay $2.00 a pound for them.

You didn't have to cook chicken and hamburger to death to be consumed and not get deathly ill?

I do.....

[Rev]

That milk with the cream on top was before milk was "homogenized", LOL. Peanut butter also had a layer of oil on top. That must have been early '50's.

Rev

[PKRWUD]

Speed Racer, Peanutbutter on crackers, and Wacky Packs.

That's all we needed.

Take care,
~Chris

i can relate to alot of that stuff too and i grew up in the '80's. my parents never got us a nintendo when i was a kid, i would have never played it anyways i was always outside causing trouble, hell i still am but with cars now.

[Rev]

Back in the 50's, us flathead guys needed Edelbrock or Offenhouser heads, Edelbrock intake manifolds, Clay cams, I can't remember the exhaust manifolds, and 8 volt batteries to start the 13/1 engines.

We were just happy trying to beat those state-of-the-art OHV V-8's.

Rev

[Extremestang]

I can really relate to what srv1 posted. I was born in 1970 (and they were still fighting in Vietnam), things were much different then, compared to today. Blame it on those damn Liberals!

[Crazy Horse GT]

LOL I REMEMBER MY MOM& DAD PUTTING 4 KIDS IN A CORVAIR, i rember my dad working 2 sometimes 3 job's just so we could have pinto bean's to eat, i remember only 3 channel's on tv, your right jame's. back then a fight was just fist's, if you got hurt, it usually meant a butt busting, no law suit, i remember if you acted up in school, you got paddled , then got it again when you got home, last but not least, i remember when we used to pray at school & say the pledge of alligence.

[lx mike]

[sigh] the good ole days[/sigh]

[1969Mach1]

Well most of this is before my time but I can relate in away that I see the generations getting lazier. I was born in 1984. And I only got a cell phone a week ago due to travelling to school (hour drive) and so I figured it would be in my best intrest to get one. But other then that I didn't need one before. I've never really ridden in the back of a truck, but due to bad experience. I broke my arm playing with my cousins in the back of my dads truck when I was little. I jumped out and hit the curb with my arm and broke it. lol =) But I remember getting in fish fights all the time and just walking away good friends. Now I am worried at looking at someone the wrong way and getting shot. Scary world....

[Crazy Horse GT]

what's a cell phone , lol we had party line phones 2 or 3 family's on one line, if your nieghbor was on the phone ,you had to ask them to hang up to call someone, no lie.

[Topless In Texas]

Originally posted by lx mike
[sigh] the good ole days[/sigh]

NO LIE MIKE!!!!!!
I can relate to all of that!!!!!!!! I remember when I was about 5 or 6 and my big brother had a REEL TO REEL TAPE RECORDER (BEFORE THE AWESOME 8-TRACKS THAT ROCKED!)and was recording songs off the radio.... (the BIG CONSOLE STEREO W/ THE PULL OUT LP PLAYER DRAWER AND THE KNOBS FOR THE AM/FM RADIO) No Dolby or anything like that!
I made my own "reel to reel" out of the covers of my coloring books!!!! (im not lying! I really remember that!)
Ya....OUR kids will NEVER EVER EVER relate to or be able to expierience the things we did or the way things were.
Kinda sad in a way. Life was carefree, innocent, and if it was not, you did not hear about it....
If someones phone was busy, youd call the operator and do an 'emergency breakthrough' cuz there was no call waiting....
I remember trying to win record albums off of radio stations but all we had was those damn rotary phones and it took 3 minutes to dial the damn number!!!!! ( I acutally won 2 of them when they were HOT or first came out...the sound track to THE DEEP and Queen "We are the Champions.." I still have them!
geeez.... I feel old all of a sudden...crap...hang on... my pager is going off, my cell phone is ringing, my pc is crashing, and my car alram is going off. LOL Wheres my Palm Pilot?????????
TNT

[JaxTheDJ]

Oh I can really relate to those things,most of which I did...LOL,I was born in 1958 so I saw most all of them happen. Wonder how the people nowadays would like to work on a real musclecar with NO aftermarket parts available and you had to MAKE most all your own racing parts? Remember dual point distributors?all steel cooling fans?The early Holley carbs from hell? and forget drag radials,if you could afford slicks,you were the MAN!!! otherwise you ran on bias ply tires......LOL ,all headwork had to be done by hand and cams were available in 3 choices.Racing sure has come a long way since the early 70's when I started. 12 second 1/4 times back then were for guys with a thick wallet,now anyone can basically run 11's or better with bolt on parts. Times sure have changed for the better.

[cyberstang5.0]

Even though I was born in the 80's, I really wish it was still like that but with the exceptions of the comptuer, TV/Cable/Satalite, cell phones/pagers, and can't forget A/C

[chuck88]

Those sure were the good ole days.

Remeber Trick or treat. We used to come home from school grab a bag and bang on doors till 10:00 PM stopping home to empty the bags and go out again. Just us kids no parents.

I also remeber toys like gumby with the metal pieces inside. I remeber putting plastic into metal molds and cooking thme to the point of boiling the pplastic and then picking up the sizzling mould to place it in water to cool and then pulling out a rubber bug.

Toys are a lot safer now. safer to the ppoint of boring.

How about tv remebr the old shows they actually showed violence. Now the kids cartoons don't even fight people they are always fighting aliens and other odd things and no one gets hurt.

Bring back the old days.

Chuck88GT

[MissBlondie]

haha those are pretty good, y'all make me feel like a baby here... I grew up in the 80s...

I hear ya cyberstang.... I went back home for turkey day this entire week and went nuts... I grew up in the country... My mom still has no internet, no caller id, and get this, my freakin cell phone doesn't work there... haha... I'm suprised she doesn't still have to call the operator to call someone... thank gawd I'm back with my cell phone and laptop... lol

[The Deuce]

Luckily I am old enough to remember all most or all of that stuff. The law to forbid riding in the back of a pickup truck in CA was a direct result of the death of a friend of mine. He was 13.

I could go back to the days before all the modern crap and lawsuits, etc. The only thing I would have to change is my job. No way I'd do tax returns by hand. Man that would suck.

BTW, Rev Clay is still the man when it comes to cams, even though he's gone.

[KiltedBanshees93GT]

I can empathize, if you ask me, the best thing about the old days was that Darwin was still at work in society. Taking chances, ok, taking the really bonehead chances, you stood a good chance of weeding yourself out of the gene pool,LOL.
Actually I had a similar thought at work the other day pondering "trip hazards" in the work place.
What happened to the days that if you were walking along with your head in the clouds and you tripped over something obvious, you would get up and go "wow, I'm an idiot, and should have been watching where I was going", as opposed to the new version "Wow, someone needs to protect me while I wander about not paying attention, I should be compensated"