How did I ever survive beyond childhood?

[PILOON]

I recall one scary 'sport' we did for a short while.
Called ski-joring. The origin I believe was to have a horse pull you while on snow skiis. Well in our wisdom we substituted a friends car, problem was friend went kinda fast and often there was no snow on the street so we'd ride the snow banks.
All fine but in rural areas folks had mail boxes and subsequent collisions were painful.

Then was driving a car onto the frozen river. Great ice control and skid practice.
HOWEVER we got the cool idea of towing people on flying saucers* until the driver decided to play 'crack the whip' flinging or whipping the rider at a fantastic pace with one rider crashing into a shoreline tree.

*saucer was a metal dish designed to ride downhill in a very uncontrolled manner. Fore runner of crazy carpets.

But we are still alive!

 

[George2615]

Grew up on Peanut butter and jelly and canned spam. Got our raw milk, eggs, fruits and veggies straight from the farm. No additives or preservatives. Father bought a B&W TV back in the 50's, got a whole 3 channels with a lot of snow from a roof antenna that we had to go up on the roof and turn manually for the first year then he installed a rotor. Had a party line phone.
How did we survive.

 

[Bird]

a roof antenna that we had to go up on the roof and turn manually for the first year then he installed a rotor. Had a party line phone.

Our first antenna was on a long pole, so the antenna was above the roofline, but the bottom of the pole went all the way to the ground. It was attached to the eaves with a metal loop of some kind so we just had to go out on the front porch to turn it. We never had one of those rotors, but my paternal grandparents got one.

And once when my mother was talking to a friend on the party line phone, a neighbor down the road a ways came on the phone and asked her to hang because he had an emergency. Of course she hung up, but said she then wondered if someone was hurt and whether she might help so she picked up the phone and found he was telling a friend about the new calf he had that was born last night. She said she'd never hang up for him again.:laughing:

 

[oldballs]

Regarding George's 2615 canned Spam...... Without refrigeration (ice box) the Spam went bad. But little did I know it, so I ate some and became so sick from food poisoning that I vomited blood. When they finally got me to a doctor, he said that would be the closest to dying that I would ever come and still be alive.

 

[George2615]

We were not uncivilized and did have a fridge / freezer, and stove. Spam, Prem, and Armor brand Treet were all similar. I think my Mother had at least 30 recipes for cooking these into delicious meals. I don't think an unopened can had to be refrigerated until after it was opened. Of course once opened in our house there was never any left to refrigerate.

 

[pmhowe]

And I remember getting a couple gunny sacks (what's a gunny sack, Dad?), going down the gravel road near our house and collecting cans and bottles. We'd cash in the ones with deposit for a dime a poke and eat enough candy to make you pretty sick for the rest of the day. The ones without deposits and cans we'd throw in a retention pond and throw rocks all day until we sank all of them. Fire, glass, rocks, sharp metal.... ahhh, the good old days.

My older brother and I used to collect beer bottles. Cans weren't that frequent, and there was no money in them. A neighbor up the road made his own beer, and always needed bottles. He'd give us a nickel a bottle, which was good money for us. Sometimes we'd find a bottle that still had some beer in it. Of course, we drank it. I'm guessing a modern mom would have heart failure if she new. Maybe our mom would have, too.

 

[Deere Dude]

I remember climbing up a tree about 15' up, hanging onto a branch and going out about 8' from the trunk. Hanging under the branch, I swung my legs up and criss-crossed them over the branch. So, for about 2 seconds, I was hanging upside down by all 4s from the branch and then I heard CRACK!!! The branch snapped cleanly from the tree. No warning. No bending. I remember the THUD in my back when I hit the ground and I remember I could not move my chest to breath. Then it got dark. When I came to, I was breathing and my parents had arrived (this was a few houses over). Lots of neighbor kids looking worried. They put me on a cot and carried me home. I was back at it a couple days later. :laughing: To this day, I do not recall ever taking another shot like that. Just lights out! :drool:

Ouch!
That reminds me of playing on the rafters of my dads 100' pole barn when I was about 7-8. The barn was built with approx 10-12' sidewalls and the roof was used steel so it had all kinds of nail holes in it. The rafters were about 4 feet apart, if I remember correctly. I would go up into the rafters and step from one to another, as you can imagine. One day it snowed and I decided to go rafter climbing. There was snow powder on them from the holes in the steel and I stepped on one and I slipped. I fell backwards and landed on a hitch for a pull behind seeder. The hitch was about 2 1/2 -3 feet off the ground and I landed on that in the middle of my back. I bent over backwards like a pretzel. I got up and not a bruise or a bump. I did think to myself that wasn't a very good idea though. I never told my mom or dad, obviously. 58 years ago.

 

[MossRoad]

My older brother and I used to collect beer bottles. Cans weren't that frequent, and there was no money in them. A neighbor up the road made his own beer, and always needed bottles. He'd give us a nickel a bottle, which was good money for us. Sometimes we'd find a bottle that still had some beer in it. Of course, we drank it. I'm guessing a modern mom would have heart failure if she new. Maybe our mom would have, too.

Hahahhaa. One time a friend of mine and I were out sledding around 3:00pm. We were at the top of the hill and a city pickup truck pulled up at a stop sign at the bottom of the hill (we sledded down a hill and across a street, then down another hill and out onto a frozen lake). There was a city garage about a mile away, so city trucks weren't unusual, but why did he stop? We hid in our snow fort and watched a guy get out of the passenger side door, dig a hole in the snow under the stop sign and put a brown paper bag in the hole. Then he covered it up and they left. Of course, as soon as they were around the curve, we hopped onto our sleds, slid down there and dug up the bag. There was a six-pack of Busch Beer. Being teenage boys, we drank it as fast as we could, put the empties back in the bag and buried it right in the same place and got the heck out of there. I've always felt guilty about that, but then again, we saved them from drinking Busch beer.

 

[MossRoad]

Ouch!
That reminds me of playing on the rafters of my dads 100' pole barn when I was about 7-8. The barn was built with approx 10-12' sidewalls and the roof was used steel so it had all kinds of nail holes in it. The rafters were about 4 feet apart, if I remember correctly. I would go up into the rafters and step from one to another, as you can imagine. One day it snowed and I decided to go rafter climbing. There was snow powder on them from the holes in the steel and I stepped on one and I slipped. I fell backwards and landed on a hitch for a pull behind seeder. The hitch was about 2 1/2 -3 feet off the ground and I landed on that in the middle of my back. I bent over backwards like a pretzel. I got up and not a bruise or a bump. I did think to myself that wasn't a very good idea though. I never told my mom or dad, obviously. 58 years ago.

OUCH!!! Lucky you weren't paralyzed or hit your head. :confused2:

Put and take trout season used to open at midnight on the first Saturday in May. One year I got out there about 10:00pm to beat the crowds that show up before sunrise and all these old dudes would chase me out of the honey hole every year. I got the prime spot on the bank this year and was holding it for me and my friend. About 10 seconds after midnight I ease my way towards the edge of the creek, slip on the wet clay bank, feet go out in front of me. There's that brief moment in time when you are no longer going up but not yet going down. It seems to last forever. So there I am, full waders, on my back, feet out in front of me, about 4' over the water thinking this won't be so bad. I landed my right butt cheek on a 4" beaver chewed stump, bounced up and fell in the honey hole, making a huge splash. I got up screaming in pain. But I was lucky to have not hit the back of my neck or head on that stump, got knocked out and drowned! Anyhow, I recovered and new I scared all the fish, so what the heck? I marched around that honey hole back and forth, back and forth and chased all the fish downstream a couple hundred yards. Then I went and waited for my friend. Shortly before dawn, my friend shows up, and, of course, all the old dudes come out of the woodwork and tell us to get out of their hole. I winked at my buddy and said "follow me". We went downstream to where I chased all the fish and limited out in quick time. We walked back up past the old dudes with 10 trout each on our strings. They had maybe a couple between the 5-6 of them. :laughing: when I got home I checked and I had a 4" circle black bruise on my butt cheek and could hardly sit down for a couple days, but man, was it worth it. :thumbsup:

 

[Gunny]

Yeah, the dangers of our childhoods, by today's standards, I should have died before my 13th birthday. If we didn't have any assigned chores for the day, my brother and I would often leave the house before Mom woke up and stay gone all day either fishing, hunting or exploring or swimming in the river. Lots of times it was past dark when we strolled back to eat cold supper leftovers. In season, we'd each pick two gallon buckets of blackberries, then walk two miles down the railroad tracks to town and sell them. That would hook us up with enough money to buy enough 22 shells to shoot for a week, a 16 ounce soft drink and two cigars for the long long walk back home.

Today, our parents would probably have been busted for child abuse. When we had milk cows, I had to get up before first light to milk them, then go back to clean up for school and eat breakfast. If the sows were farrowing, I'd have to to my homework down at the barn under a drop light while I kept an eye on them so Dad could get some sleep (he worked a city job for awhile, then finished up college to get his degree). We'd have to split firewood and stack it in the basement close to the furnace.
When the tobacco had to be hoed out, that was our job. One day we wanted to go fishing instead, so I broke the handle of my hoe around a tree and went fishing. Dad never said a word, but the next night he presented me a new hoe with a steel pipe welded in place of the handle. One day of that bad boy out in the hot sun and I promised that I'd never break another hoe handle.

When I was around twelve or thirteen, I also got to do most of the plowing. A young kid on a tractor, alone, 3/4 of a mile from the house!

The list of abuses just goes on and on, but now when I look back at growing up, I really miss those good old days.