Ahh, I used to collect those. You’d leave them on your jacket until the end of the season. These days some of the resorts still have tags like that, only they are attached with a plastic zip-tie thingy and look like a parking ticket, and not the metal hanger you needed plyers to cut-off, with the colorful fold-over sticker with the date printed on it. Today you’d probably get an odd look if your jacket had one, since more real skiers have a season pass, which is magnetic and you just leave in your pocket, unseen. The only evidence someone’s been to the slopes is the raccoon eyes and a big smile.
It is expensive, tho. A large barrier to entry for sure.
When I was in elementary school, you would be taken out of class and either forced to turn your shirt inside out or go home if you wore Simpsons merch. People forget, nowadays, the moral panic that parents had over Bart. My parents wouldn’t allow me to watch it, either, so I watched it on the small screen in their room when they weren’t paying attention. Eventually I convinced them to watch it with me, and they realized it wasn’t really so bad.
Steal This Book was our bible in middle school. Taping the side of a #10 brass washer so a payphone would think it was a dime? That was Stickin’ It To Ma Bell… !Viva la Revolutiòn!
Wait, you didn’t PAY for your book, did you?
(I was unpacking some old boxes and found the copy we passed around back in our Hippie Wannabe days… I think it was actually my friend Tom’s… hey! I stole Steal This Book!)
Me too! A camel seemed like such a good idea. We always had dogs, goats, chickens, ducks, geese, and guinea hens. And my grandparents lived just past our back field and kept a horse. What difference would the addition a camel make?
My passion as a kid was fishing. There was a decent creek and a few ponds nearby, but I really wanted to fish saltwater. We lived near Chesapeake Bay, so it’s not like we had to fly to the ocean from Omaha or something. But my father never liked fishing, and it never happened.
Thirty years later I found myself working in Houston, and deliberately increased my commute by moving close to Galveston Bay. Now I’m retired and fish three or four days every week.
Every one of the thick major catalogs (Sears, JCPenney, Montgomery Wards) had a page or two found somewhere in the hundreds of pages between the boys clothing and automotive tool sections that showed 70s era tweens all living the good life riding their mini bikes and go karts.
I don’t think I ever even asked for one, knowing full well that Mom would have immediately shut me down: too dangerous and too expensive.
I wonder if lawyers existed back then–there must have been thousands of tweens getting in accidents on their new Briggs-and-Stratton-powered toys.
I don’t even recall if they had helmets on in the pictures.
I definitey wanted a mini bike, but my parents rightly pointed out that they wouldn’t work for off road riding, and that’s all that was available on the farm. When I was a little older I saved and got a real trail bike, which worked very well on the farm. My dad even used it to herd cattle sometimes.
I never even tried for anything with an engine… my mom worried enough when I put a “leopard-skin” banana seat and Sting-Ray handlebars on my first two-wheeler.
Oh, and she felt the same about our homemade skateboards. This was the early 60s, so we didn’t know what to call them… “Sidewalk Surfers” was what we came up with. Yeah, they were just a board screwed onto the metal rollerskates you clipped onto your shoes. Probably went 2mph with those metal wheels.
When I was 9 or 10 I saw the minibike in the Sears catalogue and fell in love (circa 1968). I forget how I got the money to pay half, but I ended up with the minibike.
It really sucked. The centrifugal clutch sucked, it slipped. The chain sucked, the master link would break hourly. It was awkward to ride. IIRC I ended up selling it.
