Wore only a pair of shorts during the summer, shirtless and shoeless (male here), unless we were going somewhere then we put on a shirt.
threw an old mattress on the ground and jumped off the garage roof onto it
leaned way out of the back window of the station wagon so we could watch the road speed by
stared at the picture of the indian on the TV set forever on Saturday morning because there was no programming before 6am
played with authentic looking hatchets and rifles that shot hard plastic bullets and occasionally with hand grenades that our Dads brought home from the war and swore were duds
never had anything happen to us that everyone is trying to protect their children from today
Was that Raid on Bungeling Bay? Did you have to fly an aircraft out of a hanger at the beginning? I still have my 64…with a disk drive, neener neener neener. 
- got milk in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers, and cream on the top
- had a party line phone, with our own personal ring
- shopped around for gas that was less than 25 cents a gallon
- learned to drive on an old three on the tree in the back field of my employer
Raced home after school to watch The Magic Garden. Paula and Carol were great, and I adored the Giggle Patch. No drugs were harmed in the making of this children’s show.
I babysat, starting when I was almost 10 and my oldest sister had a baby. By the age of 12, I was known as someone you could trust your infant with for several hours. And that summer, I was responsible for the care of my other sister’s 9 month old for 8 hours every day. I don’t know a single 12 year old today that I would trust as a sitter.
Big families were “normal”, and were the result of the parents having sex. My parents had 9 kids, and very few of my friends were from 1 or 2 child families. We all felt terrible for the kids who were “onlies”. Couples who wanted children but were not blessed naturally actually adopted kids in a process that usually involved their church. And nobody knew who was adopted unless the kid told you.
A giant pot of fresh from the farm corn was supper on occasion.
The dog had as much freedom as any of the kids. No leashes, no licenses, no electronic collars. If you owned a dog, you taught it not to be mean.
We slept outside whenever we could. Mom would let us put the tent up in the yard, OR we would just grab a pillow and sleeping bag and crash on the porch.
We walked everywhere.
We went into the woods to pick berries, and eat them right from the bush! You had to blow the little bugs off them first, but…YUM!
Walked to and from the public pool. By the time you walked home, you were exhausted and hot all over again.
Slept over at each other’s houses.
As kids, we cooked! I was a good baker before I even got to high school. We also “experimented” with foods and beverages, mixing whatever struck us into one bowl, then actually tasting it!
Fun times, the 1970s…
we made black powder from saltpetre and powdered sulfur we bought at the drugstore. The powdered charcoal came from the bottom of the bag stored under the bar-b-que.
From the same drugstore we bought, by the pound, powdered asbestos which when mixed with water, made a kind of modeling compound usually used to fashion ashtrays which were proudly presented to the parents.
cough cough
In my day everybody would drink and drive. Didn’t even think much about it. Get some beer, load the back of a pickup up with fellow teenagers and whip around town raisin’ hell. The parents got drunk and jumped behind the wheel of their cars too. Party all night in a bar and drive home trashed. Don’t know how we all survived.
Heh, in my day:
- The score of sporting events was not more or less continually on the screen. You had to say, “just until they show the score” when Mom or the wife wanted you to flip back to what you were watching.
IN my day we had TVs that went “BUZZZZZZZ” when the overlay score of the game came up on the screen or the end of a Popiel ad had the phone number displayed on the screen.
Why the hell did TVs do that?!
… the milk was delivered a couple times a week. The milkman would leave it on the front step.
…the garbage men would get the cans from the side yard through the gate.
… my grandfather gave my brother and I haircuts because he had experience shearing sheep.
There were TV’s that had difficulty with sharp transitions between colors as the electron beam painted the screen from side-to-side. These made a subtle little noise you’d never notice most of the time (like when the picture showed a dark house on a light background).
But when you had text on the screen (like that phone # or game score), there were lots of black-to-white transitions, and the noises all accumulated into a buzz.
I googled images for it. It didn’t look familiar. I remember it was a side view of a plane and buildings.
We had a TV that would leave a little dot of light onscreen for a couple of minutes after you turned the set off.
About once a day you’d hear someone drive by with a loose lugnut rattling around in their hubcap.
Kids would be glued to window of whichever side of the car the service station attendant was checking the tire pressure of.
On some dirt roads a truck would periodically spray an dilute oil mix to keep the dust down.
If there was a problem with our TV, my dad would take some of the vacuum tubes to store to have them tested.
This one really takes me back. We did this exactly.
As a matter of fact, let’s really bring the ghetto to this thread!;
Running down the street being pushed in grocery carts ‘borrowed’ from the grocery store.
Bringing ice water to the basketball court for the boys.
Breaking up cardboard boxes so the boys can breakdance, and also learning a few of the easier moves myself (the dolphin, some pop-lockin)
Watching the boys do back flips on the old mattresses
Making ‘julips’ and selling them for a quarter
Trying like hell to cut the government cheese in the brown box thin enough to make a good grill cheese sandwich, because it was not as good if it was too thick
Turning the tv with a set of pliers.
Lighting the oven with a piece of rolled up paper lit from the stove top
Putting cocoa butter on our necks and foreheads to sooth the burns from the hot comb.
One of the things that seems so dangerous to me now, that I can’t imagine anyone allowing their kids to do to day is the way we handled the hot curling irons. They were big, heavy irons, made of…well, iron, I guess…very heavy medal, and we would heat it to hell on the stove top and then take it off and spin it madly to cool if off.
They were made with a rubber handle and the hot curlers would spin freely. I can’t believe we never had the damn things fly out of our hands to sizzle the eyeballs of the person whose head we were curling. I found this, which looks pretty much like them, except the rubber tips were always pulled off.
(posting for work, so excuse me if I repeated others; I had to skim the thread.)
Looking at back at my list, I see I spent a lot of time looking at or catering to boys.
They still have this in my area (Rochester, NY) on certain days. Or at least they did. I haven’t been there in awhile.
Had to wait until we got home to call someone
Had to make sure we were in front of the tv on time to catch our show, or that was it, until off season reruns. No youtube or torrents or DVRs. Unless you went through the trouble of programming your VCR, and who did that?
Were allowed to ride in a car without booster seats before age seven.
I can’t think of many things we did that people aren’t still doing now.
Ah…
Building go-karts and riding them in suburban streets.
Hunting butterflies - I remember feeling the shock of the sense of Profound Importance when a mate and I discovered a whole new species of butterfly. Well, we’d never seen it before, so that meant no-one else had, right?
Chasing penny turtles in the local creek.
Thinking sunburn was unbelievably cool because your back got completely covered in blisters which burst and left the back of your shirt all wet, and you had big strips of broken blister skin hanging off you.
Taking for granted that you could stay for dinner or sleep at the house of any mate you happened to end up at.
Getting caught up in the cycle of schoolyard Crazes - one month (usually August) it would be yo-yos and everyone had to have one and show off their tricks, the next it would be marbles, then games played with a long loop of elastic… at the time, not realising the cyclic nature of these things meant that the Universe seemed to be constantly providing us with new and unbelievably cool things forever!
Violent schoolyard games - there were games where one person would sit on another’s shoulders daring other kids to do the same and take us on in battles that were won by pushing the other kid off his “mount”. The hefty kids finally came into their own here - they were the best kids to have on the bottom because of the low centre of gravity. Other violent games involved pelting each other as hard as possible with tennis balls, and so on. Any violent games that are left now have the spontaneous fun organised out of them.
Corporal punishment at school - I remember getting caned for some trivial misdemeanour. Christ it hurt, but there was no way you could ever let anyone see that it did, including the teacher.
My brother had one of his favorite toys rust due to this, although my parents were secretly delighted. It was a megaphone my aunt had given him. Never, ever give a hyperactive grade-school kid a megaphone!
Didn’t do the hanging out the station wagon window more than once. Dad hit the brakes and nearly sent us to the pavement saying, “Now you know why I nagged you not to do that.” Child Abuse by today’s wimp standards.