A few memories…

This one brings back a few…

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE  1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s !! 

   
First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank  
While they were pregnant.  
   
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.  

Then, after that trauma, we were  put to sleep on our tummies  in baby cribs
Covered   with bright colored
Lead-based paints.  

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets,  
And, when we rode our bikes,  
We had baseball caps,  
Not helmets, on our heads.  

As infants and children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes..  

Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.  

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.  

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this.  

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter, and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And we weren’t overweight. WHY?  

Because we were always outside playing…that’s why!  

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day …  And, we were OKAY.  

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of  scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned  To Solve the problem.  

We did not have Play Stations, Nintendos and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVDs, no surround-sound or
CDs, No cell phones,  No personal computers,  No Internet and No chat rooms.  

WE HAD FRIENDS  And we went outside and found them!  

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits  
From those accidents.

We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping-pong paddles, or just a bare hand, and no one would call child services to report abuse.  

We ate worms, and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.  

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, 22 rifles for our 12th, rode horses,
made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and  – although we were told it would happen – we did not put out very many eyes.  

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team.  Those who didn’t
had to learn to deal with disappointment.  Imagine that!!  

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of … They actually sided with the law! 

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and
Inventors ever.  The past 60 to 85 years have seen an explosion of innovation and new ideas. 

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.  

So, if YOU are one of those born between 1925-1955, CONGRATULATIONS!  

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good.  

While you are at it, forward it to your kids, so they will know how brave and lucky 
their parents were.  

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it ?  

h/t JP

Comments

A few memories… — 24 Comments

  1. Pretty well me and one of my brothers too…..’64 and ’67.

    The one born in ’69 is a more “modern” kid. But he grew up in his formative years in a town, we grew up in the country.

  2. I was lucky enough to be able to raise my children, born between 1964 and 1970, the same way I was raised. They all did pretty much everything listed above and all four turned out to be good people with good work ethics and good attitudes. I highly doubt the same can be said for today’s snowflakes.

  3. “You might want to share this with others…”

    Please don’t. This meme has been posted and passed around, ad infinatum, since at least the 90’s. And yes, I was born and raised during this time, (b-1954), and did all of that stuff. But it really is getting old.

  4. That describes my childhood including the Davy Crockett T shirts, coonskin cap and my long rifle, ‘Betsy’.

  5. B- That’s good! 🙂

    Vicki- Thank you!

    ROy- I know, but it was a political rant or this, so I went with this… sigh

    CP- LOL, figures! 🙂

  6. Hey Old NFO;

    I am glad you went with “This”, I am waiting to calm down before I post anything on politics, right now it would be a bunch of creative adjectives. Also growing up in the 70’s was the same way.

  7. Thanks Jim, for a reminder of days gone by.
    Yes, I did most of that.
    And yes, I am still here.
    A little worse for wear…

  8. Right on the money.
    Some of us used the stockyards in Cowcity and Exchange Ave.as a playground. Climbing on slow moving freight trains to ride the half mile from home up north to the “play area”.
    Today it’s been cleaned up to attract tourists. Then it was beer halls, gambling and “houses of ill repute”.
    Good times though.

  9. I’d be happy to be able to run. With or without scissors. The cane slows me down.

  10. Well, let’s see…

    My mother told me that she stopped drinking once she knew she was pregnant, and she never did smoke. My father didn’t smoke either.

    My family took aspirin for a headache, ate blue cheese dressing, and regularly ate tuna from a can. In my case, I ate Campbell’s Vegetable Beef soup from a can. Anyone could take one look at us and tell we didn’t have diabetes, although there was this one time…
    My grandmother was portly and tended towards diabetes, so each time we went to the doctor Mom would insist on a urine sample to be tested for sugar. One day the only thing Mom could find to carry the sample in was an empty cough syrup bottle, which she washed out and gave to me to fill. Our poor old family doctor tested the sample and came back into the examination room looking very concerned. The residual sugar content from the cough syrup must have sent the sugar in the urine sample into orbit.

    We were told, in no uncertain terms, that:
    You did not get into the medicine cabinet for any reason whatsoever.
    You did not look at Dad’s pistol, which he kept in his top dresser drawer. It was real, and it was loaded.
    You did not do stupid stuff, like eating any of the foreign substances kept under the sink.
    If you were in trouble and didn’t know what to do, you could always call the police. You would dial ‘O’ and tell the operator you wanted the police department.
    If the place caught on fire, you dialed ‘O’ and told the operator you needed the fire department; you gave your name and address, then you ran outside with the dogs and stayed there.
    If the barn caught on fire, you put all the horses in the pasture and the stallion in the paddock. You took the stallion last. Then you called the fire department.

    We did dumb stuff on bikes, and when one of us fell and commenced to leaking, a neighbor would clean you up, dry your tears, dust you off and stop you from leaking. All in a day’s work.

    Riding in the bed of the pickup truck was the best!

    You could always get a drink from someone’s garden hose if you asked first.

    I got a BB gun when I was six; a .22 single shot Ithaca M-49 when I was nine. I was taught the 4 rules of gun safety, and could practice and recite them.

    The coolest thing you could be was either a cop or a fireman.

  11. THIS—IS SPARTA!! (well, at least compared to most of today’s youth).

  12. Learning a lesson the hard way – Never, Ever Light a Fire on the Ground in an Old Barn – A 12 year old rabbit hunter learns a lesson. A silly story about dumb kids (me) in the 1950’s.

  13. RHT- LOL

    Old Texan- Ouch… That had to be one COLD walk home, and a lot of explanations too!

  14. My parents were kind of amazed that I grew up mostly in one piece due to the life lessons I learned from time to time.

  15. I was born a few years after that, but being adopted by a Mom and Dad that grew up in the Great Depression, adopting me when they were almost 40, I SO got all of those life lessons. I’m very grateful for that.

  16. We had our own short track in the back yard where we drove the cars we fixed because we weren’t old enough to have a license yet.

  17. Water from a hose? What is a hose? Isn’t that something ladies wear? zHow do you keep the water in it? When we wanted a drink we went over to the hand pump on top of the cistern and pumped till the glass was full! But yeah all my sibling were involved in all those actions. Raised my 4 kids the same way, first, 1959 to last 1964. Later on in their lives they took it to a bit more extreme with their actions. All have grown up to be well adjusted middle aged folks with good jobs/businesses, with lots of grand kids for me to spoil! A the GOOD OLE DAYS!

  18. even in the 70s and part of the 80s you could say things were that way. I was a kid in the late 70s and remember running around our neighborhood all hours of the day playing, and bike riding. We would go to my grandparents in Easley, SC. leave the house at sunup and not go back until sundown… things were so simple and life was fun then…