Unthinkable now but it happened several times in my public, non-religious elementary school:
When it rained, sometimes they showed Johnny Appleseed in the cafeteria. The main song has lyrics that go like this: The Lord is good to me/And so I thank the Lord/for giving me the things I need/the something something and the apple trees/The Lord is good to meeeeeeee.
Boy - that brings back memories of going blackberry picking in Pennsylvania.
Giant, thorny bushes that towered over your head with winding paths through them from years of pickers working their way through them.
I remember the admonishments to “watch out for snakes” but there’s no significant venomous snake problem in Pennsylvania.
The snakes don’t care about blackberries but they love the rodents that love the berries.
The sun and the rain
At several of the public, non-religious primary schools I went to in Australia (mid-90s) they made us recite the “school prayer” at assemblies. I didn’t know the words and couldn’t figure out how everyone else did since nobody ever bothered to teach us. It took me about a decade to realise oh hey, that was the Lord’s Prayer. Oh, and at one of the schools a lady would come in every now and then and involve us in Jesus-related activities. I was atheist and ethnic and thought God was for white people, but her visits were always a welcome break from routine. They didn’t try that shit in Vancouver, they just played classical music at us in an attempt to make us smarter.
For millennia, men and boys swam naked. Bathing suits were a 19th century invention, and were used for recreational swimming in mixed company. They were not otherwise considered necessary in all-male situations, like YMCAs, men’s clubs, and high school gym glasses. So, it was a gradual change of the “default” when swimming.
I still see relics of this in locker rooms today. Men over 40 are comfortable to walk around naked, while those 25 and under are nervously struggling to pull up their underwear while keeping a towel wrapped around their waists. It’s a role reversal: the younger ones are uptight, while their elders aren’t.
Everyone has already mentioned helmets, but I had to share this:
I grew up in the 1980s, and rode my bike every day. My parents were relatively over-protective. I remember watching the news with them one night, a few weeks before my 9th birthday. There was a story about how kids should wear helmets while bike riding, and my mom mentioned off hand that that was one of my big presents. A helmet. I was mortified, and willing to never ride my bike again if it meant not being seen in public with a helmet on.
My birthday came. I opened my presents. No helmet. I was so relieved I almost cried. My mom was quite pleased with her little joke.
Also, when we went on long trips, I didn’t have to wear a seatbelt, as long as I was lying down. Somehow sitting up without a seatbelt was what made it dangerous.
Hey! My parents had the same rule. I wonder why.
They still sell these (I’ve see them at fairs in CA), but thinking about them makes me nostalgic and makes me want to go buy some and play with them.
Ours was you didn’t have to wear it if you were in the back seat, unless it was a long trip on the highway.
elelle, dear, I hate to disappoint you, but rocketry is nothing like it was back in the 70s.
It’s far BETTER. Those that shot off little rockets back in the 60s and 70s? Well, now we’re captains of industry and control the free market. And we still like our toys! And our toys have grown bigger right along with us. Remember A engines? B? C? For Og’s sake, remember the gigantic D engines? Well, now we’re up to M and beyond. You can now buy software that will track your rocket to sub-orbital altitudes. And those huge engines breathe dragon fire.
And no, the laws haven’t changed since the 70s at least.
Watch a TV show called Master Blasters sometime. And turn the volume up!
That happened routinely when you were growing up, but is unthinkable today?
We used to grab out .22 rifles (and the occasional shotgun), pick up a couple of boxes of bullets/shells we had bought ourselves at K-Mart, and go down to the river for a little bit of shooting at whatever – old appliances that had been dumped, dragonflies, etc. It was no big deal to see four or five 15-year-olds walking down the street in our suburban neighborhood carrying rifles. These days we would probably have the cops called on us before we made it thirty feet.
RR
:eek: Can I come to your house for Easter?!? 
Remember wood burning kits? My dad had one- it was so cool! Plug in the tool, watch the tip heat up until it glowed red, and then “draw” on wooden stuff by setting it to smolder… I think we only touched the hot part a few dozen times…
Most of my experiences parallel all of yours.
Fur coats!!! My mom had a couple, my grandma had some as well and wore them on a regular basis for dressy occasions. Nowadays, I would never dream of buying or even wearing one. My parents wedding picture has Grandma with her mink stole wrapped stylishly around her shoulders. Grandma tried to pawn hers off on me, but I would never wear them.
Heh. My mom is the opposite of a fashion plate and in the midst of Pop getting rid of all his mom’s stuff, my mom speaks up that she wants Gma’s fur stole??!
Of course she’s never worn it and is planning on offering it to a friend who wears vintage clothing. I told her she better feel out how the woman feels about fur first.
When I was 13 (1983) I got my first job with a paper route. The area manager recruited me the same way he did all the carriers. He drove his beat up car through neighborhoods, found kids walking the streets, would pull up next to them and say “Hey kid, do you live around here? Do you want to make some extra money?”
I don’t think think that method would be advised these days.
Heh- I felt the same way, until I visited Chicago one December. Holy crap!!! The wind cuts right through most coats, even my leather jacket it seemed like. Now I understand why all those women were wearing ankle-length mink…
I would wear a stole or cape- in a heartbeat. I almost bid on a vintage white Christian Dior mink coat (full length) at my kids’ school fundraiser but it was much too big, and I was afraid the alterations might wreck it. It was a $20,000 coat that went for just over $1500… :eek:
In 1976, my parents and I took a cross-country trip in our motorhome. We were gone a month. Our motorhome was a full-size one, but it had one of those cab-over bed compartments above the drivers’ area, with a window looking out forward. That was my hangout for most of the trip. I spent most of my time up there with my books and comics, reading, napping, looking out the window. There was no ladder (well, there was, but it wasn’t deployed while we were moving)–you climbed up by means of the dining bench. So here we were, my dad, my extremely overprotective mother, and me, hurtling down the interstate, with me scampering in and out of the overhead compartment like a monkey whenever I felt like it. Good times. 
My parents never made a big deal about alcohol, either. You’d swear they were both raging alkies by the fact that they had (still have, actually) a real 60s-style bar in their house, complete with bar sink, mirror, and shelves. There were always a lot of liquor bottles around our house, mostly for entertaining (they were in the Masons/Eastern Star–I don’t recall them drinking much themselves, ever). Once when I expressed interest, my mom let me try a little taste of anything that looked good to me. I tried it, shrugged, didn’t think it was anything special, and never even tried to sneak any.
They smoked, too, like chimneys. In the car. I hated it, but what could I do? No seat belts, ever. My mom still doesn’t like to wear them out of sheer stubbornness, but she does. I rode in the back of pickup trucks, too, but not often. Even back then my mother wasn’t a fan of that. I, of course, thought it was a huge treat on the rare occasions when I got to do it.
And even my overprotective mother (who wouldn’t let me ride my bike outside our immediate home vicinity) didn’t have a problem with my disappearing for the day to play in the field near our house. The only thing she insisted on was that I didn’t crawl under the mysterious culvert that led out to the main two-lane road near our house. All the other kids did, but I wasn’t allowed to. I remember resenting it, but I never did it. She also wasn’t wild about the fact that one of my favorite playmates was the Mexican kid from up the street (Mom has always been a bit of a bigot), but she never stopped me from playing with him. She did get mad when she caught me playing with the two black children of a service technician working at a neighbor’s house though. Naturally I couldn’t see what the big deal was. I’m so glad that didn’t rub off on me, because I sure got a dose of it from Mom during my formative years.
Oh, and my dad spanked me with a belt sometimes when I got in trouble. Of course I hated it and it hurt, but there weren’t any lasting mental scars. I knew he loved me and he’s a great dad. That was just accepted back then.
I forgot about the smoking…
My parents did not smoke but my grandparents and uncles did. I remember many Christmases where at least 4 adults were sitting at Christmas dinner, smoking at the same time to the point where us kids would put our faces under the table so we could breathe.
My mom had a dead fox that she wore on top of her coat for special occassions. It creeped me the hell out. It’s mouth had been made into a clip that fastened onto the tail. And the legs just kind of dangled.