Oh, good one. I got many a belt myself. 
It’s actually more hygienic than wearing swimsuits. The boys need to shower before going in the pool and couldn’t be trusted not to let moldy suits sit in lockers for weeks. They simply didn’t care about modesty for boys back then. Girls were supposed to be delicate and modest, boys were needed to be toughened up. I’m sure girls got to wear suits. Besides it was good practice for the army. After turning 18 boys also got free check-ups from Uncle Sam at the local draft board. According to my father this involved being hearded around buck naked like cattle from station to station (inlcuding things like eye exams and the physiatrist) for a day.
I don’t have kids - but plenty of neices and nephews. I guess I’d be a bit nervous about seeing them set out independently at age 12. But my father had done this when he was young, and he prepared me for it with camping and canoe trips starting at age 8. He died of cancer when I was in my twenties, and I sure look back fondly on the trips he and I took together.
There are dangers when kids are out of range of adult protection. We tend to lose track of the fact that there are dangers when kids are overprotected (which seems to be a bit more common now). I’m glad my parents let me have these adventures. I think more parents should follow this path.
From the age of eight on, I would go to the library after supper, sneak into the adults’s room and read adult books until the library closed at 9 p.m. Then I would walk home alone in the dark.
You’re so right, Annie.
Reading books in a library is ABSOLUTELY UNTHINKABLE today.
Speaking of smoking… long winter car rides with closed windows and the parents smoking. If you were lucky, they opened a window to let a bit of a draft in.
I hated this when I was a kid.
Now, it’s illegal.
I knitted one of those for my husband’s grandmother a few years ago.
I had to get some EEGs as a kid, and I had to be asleep for them. My parents had to keep me awake for 24 hours beforehand. At the hospital, they gave me chloral hydrate, which didn’t work, so they gave me another one. Still didn’t work. What they didn’t realize was the reason I couldn’t sleep was that the technician who was watching the machine was smoking the whole time and I was suffocating in there!
Remembered another activity that would be frowned on today. When I was 9 or 10 we “adopted” an old man who lived in the neighborhood. We’d spend hours at his little house, helping him with housework, drinking kool-aid and listening to the radio with him. His name was Harm (short for what – I don’t know) and he always seemed glad to see us.
Many years later I freaked out when my kids came home from playing one day and said they’d been invited into a neighbor guy’s house.
That is truly awesome.
Are you kidding? You can’t READ the books in there. If you want to read books, go to the lib–oh. Right.
We had a mosquito problem in my neighborhood due to a landfill directly behind my house. It used to be a beautiful pond, but 3 kids drowned and they filled it in with garbage. I mean actual garbage trucks would dump their loads for weeks, then they would cover with dirt and start dumping garbage again. About twice a week a truck would come through the neighborhood spraying this thick mist of mosquito repellant. So thick you couldn’t see the house across the street. It probably wasn’t good stuff they were spraying because this was mid 1950s. Our parents used to let us run behind the truck and play in the spray.
Disc jockeys occasionally playing 1940s and sometimes even 1930s music on AM radio, broadcasting to a demographic of people then old, now dead.
My aunt had one of those, but it was made out of a mink skin. It had beady little eyes – well, yeah, they were actual beads, but still. And teeth. I always thought it was creepy. When she came to visit we had to be sure we put the stole out of reach of the cat, who wanted dearly to beat the crap out of it.
The best mix of the 30’s, the 40’s, and today!
That’s . . . I can’t even begin to think up a justification for that.
Idaho is one of them. At least one local store has a sign they put at the end of the lane so you know not to take your evil, evil booze (well, beer or wine, booze is at the state store) through that line. Because you know that swiping a bottle of wine over the scanner will cause said underaged cashier to go wild and break it open and become an instant alcoholic. Or something like that. (Though not the bit of it I’m in, Idaho overall is Mormon enough I’m surprised they allow alcohol sales at grocery stores at all! Not dissing Mormons. But I know alcohol is a huge no-no.) (Side note: the liquor store in my town closes at 7 PM. Even on Saturdays. WTF???)
I once knew a couple of kids who’d go buy cigarettes with a note from their parents saying it was okay. This was illegal, but apparently the store in question didn’t care because they did it all the time. Sometimes the cigarettes were for their parents, believe it or not!
My friend in high school had a “hit list” of people he didn’t like. He made it up as a joke, but I’m sure it would get him expelled today, if not arrested.
I won’t quote, since we’re on the subject of kids swiping booze at the checkout – anyway, in Illinois, there’s one supermarket I go to where NONE of the checkout people are 21 (legal drinking age in IL). Whenever it’s my turn the call is a loud “twennyone!”, and then you wait a minute or two for someone to come over from the customer service desk. If you’re lucky the photo/liquor counter is open where the biddies will even swipe their store cards for you if you don’t have one.
Remember when the local radio station would high a geeky kid from high school to do the late-night show? They were paid peanuts and all though they were going to be the next big thing.
Now some guy in New York does the late-night AM stuff for the whole country.