remembering the good ol days

[crappieseeker]

The post Fishing as a youngster by David Waters had a few things in the replies that brought back memories. Somebody mentioned kids not having as much fun these days as we had growing up, with all their toys and games and things. Alot of us had very little when we were growing up, but made the best of it and definately had the most fun. Sometimes I see the toys today and wish we had them back them, but I would have never had all the great memories if we had the things then that children have now. Kids dont have to go out and play and find people to play with these days, they have everything they need to entertain them right at home. I would like to know some of the things everyone done as entertainment and things they played with as toys when they were young, just to see the different ways of life. As for me, we couldnt afford little cars and trucks to play with, we found old bricks and chiseled them with rocks to the shapes of what we called cars and trucks and pushed them in the dirt. We took empty milk jugs and filled them with dirt and water and made cow patties. we played hop scotch in the road. We swam in the snake infested creek. We piled up the leaves and jumped in them before they got burned. We had a blast looking for the hen nest so we could collect the eggs. We sat around the porch or table at night and just told stories or talked with our parents about their past and how they had it even harder than we did. We didnt have bb guns, we made the stick sling shots out of rubber bands and got pretty good with them. Played cowboys and indians in the mountain. I sometimes dream of how I wish I could go back to those days when we didnt have a care, we had so much fun. We thought we had it rough, but now I realize how much fun we actually had. You see how kids are today, they have everything and still are not happy. Man how times have changed. Share some of the little things that you remember, some of it may just bring back some memories that others have gorgotten over the years. I can read them and atleast go back in time for a little while before I have to face todays reality

[crappieken]

crappieseeker - I was in grade school in the 40's and high school in the early 50's. Most of my summer days were spent out roaming the hills at Lick Creek which was about 3 miles from my home. This creek had deep pools for wading and catching minnows. We all had BB guns and used to play army until one day one of the kids had his glass lens shattered by a BB. After several calls to parents by his dad the wars came to an end. When I wasn't out at Lick Creek I was riding my bike with my fishing pole across the handlebars heading out to one of the strip pits or the park lagoon to fish for bullheads, bluegill, and carp. I also spent a lot of time along the banks of the Illinois River playing Tarzan on the vines that grew on the trees. Our evenings were spent on the street corner playing kick the can or throwing pebbles up at the street light to watch the acrobatic maneuvers of the bats. I could go on and on, but these are some of the fond memories I have of the 40's and 50's.

[crappieseeker]

crappieken, I remember many days of kick the can and the bat thing. My older cousin finally got lucky enough when we got a little older to get a bb gun and somehow we ended up with a couple more over a few years. We went away from the sling shots. Our version of war didnt use bb's. We packed the guns with those little purple hedge berries and shot each other with them. They were enough to hurt, but not enough to cause major damage unless you got hit in the eye, which never happened. Thanks for your memories.

[Roberta]

Last Saturday night, we got together for a potluck supper with a group of naturalists and volunteers at the home of the naturalist who runs one of the nature centers near here. He has three small children and many of the other volunteers brought theirs as well.
At no time did anyone clamor about "nothing to do". These kids, ranging in age from toddler to early teen, played like fools out in the wooded property at the hosts' home. They played with the old dog, they played "fort" in the play house, they ran around like whirling dervishes, but they were having a ball. Later, a bunch of them headed to the basement to get a game of pretend restaurant going. Then, when the host broke out his banjo (and my husband joined in with a guitar) for a sing-a-long, the kids all grabbed various instruments and made noise. They were sincere in their efforts to add to the music and no one yelled at them. It was great, but it takes a great parent who doesn't use toys and technology to raise his kids. - Roberta

[crappieseeker]

Roberta, I wish I had been there, you would have mistaken me for one of those kids lol

[izzysfishin]

It's funny I can't remember were I put my car keys half the time, but memories from 40 some odd years ago are fresh in mind. Like seeker and ken, we made a game or played with pretty much anything we could find or came across. I'm the youngest of 13 so as you can imagine we didn't have alot of money for toys. I spent most of my time runnin from 5 older brothers. I love our family reunions, I got half a head and 50 pounds on all of them. Ahhh paybacks are sweet LOL.

[sac-a-lait]

I grew up in the 70's and while we had toys, My sister and I (as well as our mother I'm sure) enjoyed being outside playing "FORT" (the boys would attack the girls fort and so forth) in the woods or just riding our bikes all over the place. We grew up in Pensacola and while we got to go to the beach, our parents wern't outdoor types. My sister and I would play board games alot together and we even invented our own game using Monopoly money called Bank (guess we were dreaming of having some money). Each person's closet would serve as the bank and I would visit her bank and she would visit mine. We always enjoyed swimming and got to go play with our 4 cousins every Sunday. i can rememebr falling asleep during every trip back home on Sunday night. They lived in the coutry or we thought they did, just outside Pensacola. Out there it was the boyz vs. the girls. We would have dirt clod fights and get this we would actually have tree cutting down contests, boys vs. girls with saws. They raised chickens and dogs and horses and bees and all of those things provided entertainment for all day. But swimming was the thing for all of us. Just recently my sister was talking about how many hours we spent in the water as children. While I don't have kids, she has 2, 10 & 7 and on a recent family trip back to Pensacola I watched her kids "invent" games to play at the pool at the condo. It made me think back to when we were young and how good of a job I thought she was doing because her kids arn't dependent on TV and McDonalds to survive or even think.

My Uncle always invited me Bass/Bream fishing with he and his wife when I was a kid. That formed my love for fishing. While I never really caught any Bass I did ok on the Bream and can remember not being able to sleep the night before ANY fishing trip. I just lost that within the last 10 years. If I knew I was going fishing, I would be up ALL night tossing and turning thinking about the days fishing that lay ahead. I'm serious when I say that just within the last 10 years or so (since I Now had my own boat, car, life, etc) I'm able to sleep the night before a big trip.

[crappieseeker]

sac-a-lait, I grew up in the 70's also, but I still stay up all night before my fishing trips. I cant seem to shake the tossing and turning thing while I got fishing on my mind. We swam alot also, dont know if you swam at the beach or where, but we swam in a creek that ran out from the head of the mountain. Sometimes deer would swim up the creek and freak out when they saw us lol. We were so countryfied. I think Tennessee is pretty southern and country right here in Winchester, but people here tell me I sound country. I grew up in Alabama by the way. A small community called Big Coon, right across the mountain from an even smaller community called little coon. The church I went to when I did go was named Roaches Cove and it was right across the other little mountain on the other side. Oh how I loved them days.

[rango]

all the boys back then carried slingshots. finding a perfect set of prongs was a never ending quest in our roaming the woods. dogwood seemed to be the favorite of everyone cause of the way dogwood grew and branched. you could cut out the center stem and pull the limbs up to the perfect fork, skin the bark off and let it dry and you got a good set of prongs. finding the perfect rubber for the bands was a treasure hunt to. bicycle innertubes seemed to work the best cause it was thin and elastic. someone got hold of some round surgical tubing and made a heck of a strong slingshot out of it. the pouch was usually made out of the tounge of a wore out pair of brogans. bb guns was treasured amongst us boys. I cut grass all summer and did odd jobs for 25 cent an hour to buy me one of the daisy pumps. It was expensive at $9.95 if i remember right. the one you pumped once to cock it. it was a deadly gun, responsible for the demise of many a brown thrasher and robin. bbs was hard to come by. we would gather up for shooting matches and would have to dig into the bank wed shoot into to retrieve the bbs to shoot again. we eat a lot of game and fish back then. all we could bring home momma would cook. she had an old jc higgins single shot 22 rifle shed send me and my brother into the woods to kill whatever we could. shed give us 5 cartridges and wed have to bring home 5 critters, usually squirrels. whatever we brought back had to total 5. cartridges and or critters. if wed kill just 2 squirrels, then we had to give momma 3 bullets back. no excuses. shed get her leather strop out and work us over with it, so we learned to get real close before wed shoot. that would save our asses. we used to hop the freight trains when they hit the long grades going up the side of the mtns. the trains would go so slow you could almost walk faster than the trains run so they wasnt no trouble to hop. and get in the coal cars and throw big chunks of coal out and go back with wagons and sacks, pick it up and haul it off and sell it for a few cents. we dint get much, with coal selling just a few dollars a ton. a lot of folks used coal back then to heat with. a book could be wrote on the experiences we had on them freights... we made our own entertainment and i imagine when todays kids get our age, they will be talking about how tough it was to beat the playstation games and computer crashes instead of making slingshots, hopin slow freights or hunting critters with a single shot jc higgins.

[crappieseeker]

rango, I remember train hopping well, although we didnt do it for coal. We use to hop them as they were starting to pick up speed and see who would stay on the longest before jumping off. Even though we didnt ever get close to full speed sometimes it would be going pretty good, I dont know how we didnt get hurt. We even played chicken while the train was just beginning to move. We crawled under the moving cars to the other side between the wheels, how we ever made it out alive I will never know. This was after we moved out from the country into town, although our town would be country to most folks. My wife calls me Huck Fin lol