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Those of You Born
1930 - 1979


TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!

First, we survived being born to mothers
Who 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-base 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 & 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 O.K.

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 Playstations, Nintendo's and X-boxes.
There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable,
No video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's,
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 these accidents.

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,
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 50 years
Have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility,
and we learned how to deal with it all.

If YOU are one of them?
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 ?
Original Post

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I DO remember being a kid growing up in SoCal and my parents telling me how sorry they felt for me because I would never be able to afford a house when I grew up.

They said that because of the outrageous price of $25K that they had to pay for a new house in the 1960's.

I guess the point is that even in the 1960's, people longed for the good old days.
I'm 45 and just cought the last bit of America. I can remember no microwaves, three channels, no/few remote's, the cops never wore vest's, they let me go countless, countless times driving under age some times w/a hunting rifle in the car, I would go out into the Florida swamps and not come back til' dark, I have had hundreds of stiches, broken arms, black eyes and dog bites, a guy hit me in his car while I was on my bicycle skipping school, skinned me up pretty good. He made me tell him where I lived, my ol' man THANKED HIM for bringing me home and told me I should have been in school. I could go on... We were definately part of the wild bunch. Good times!!...
That is all so true Dennis. What a great look back at life before cell phones.

Funny story, I was working at the fire station other day and happened to be showing a five or six year old one of our trucks (apparatus – for any firefighters out there). The fire truck was one of our standbys from the 70’s because our frontline apparatus was at the shop. The kid reaches up grabbing the window crank on the door and says, “What’s this?” He had never been around a vehicle that had hand crank windows. The world has definitely changed.

Garvino

P.S. I can remember the first remote control for our TV at my house as a kid. It was me. I use to lay on the floor in front of the TV and change the channel for my dad with my toes.
Last edited by garvino
All from my own memory banks:

Telephone party lines

Root Beer Kool-Aid

Family friend's color TV and visiting them Sunday night to watch Disney's Wonderful World of Color

Introduction of Shasta Soda

Howdy Dowdy...Sky King...Engineer Bill (KTLA)...cap guns...Whammo water/air rockets...Lionel trains...Lincoln Logs...Black Jack gum...Helms Bakery trucks...plastic models...crystal radio...Heathkit...3" reel to reel tape recorder...wooden play blocks...

Ah geeze, I'm soooo old.....

NOT Smiler
About 10 years ago I showed our babysitter a '45' record and asked if she had ever seen one and/or knew what it was. She had never seen one and didn't know what it was, but she guessed well. She didn't recognize the band name (Buddy Holly) but thought it looked like a list of songs and an artists name on the label, so she guessed that it was "an antique CD." Man I felt old.

I used to love Cheerios with a couple tablespoons of sugar. And how about riding/jumping our bicycles off a friend's roof and into the deep end of his swimming pool; that was 6th grade I think. Lucky we each made it to the pool and didn't crash into the pavement.
Ahh, and remember taking the big risks and playing your parents' records at 78rpm when they were out and getting busted because you forgot to reset the turntable to 45rpm? Elvis was always good in high speed, Hound Dog, Suspicious Minds, Jailhouse Rock - sure, you can do the same thing with software today, but it isn't half as much fun as watching the platter spinning like a top.

The generation before mine typically aren't impressed with whomever invented dead-man switches on lawnmowers, they often keep a bit of wire wrapped around them so that they don't have to hold the handle down while trying to start the machine.

In Scouts it wasn't unusual for the older scouts to take one of the new kids out into the forest blindfolded and tie him (loosely) to a tree so that by the time he got untied he was alone and had to find his way back to camp if he wanted to eat that day. Wedgies were also a right of passage - as was giving the new kids 'chocolate' on the bus ride to camp - it's an important life lesson to learn the difference between regular chocolate and ex lax! I can't remember, but I don't think I went back for a second year. Nowadays, it's almost to the point that if a kid sneezes, the leaders have to fill out reports.
quote:
I used to climb on top of the house with a bowl of cheerios laden with several heaps of sugar so I could eat breakfast with a cool view.


You ate sugar as a kid?? And you turned out all right? Can't be. You're lying.
Tell that to all the parents now that won't even let their kids drink fruit juice.
Will
quote:
Originally posted by #5754:
...Nowadays, it's almost to the point that if a kid sneezes, the leaders have to fill out reports.

It's getting to the point these days that if your kid sneezes in public Child Services will be looking to bring charges against you for neglect and put your kids in foster care!

(By the way, I refuse to grow up, and no one can make me! Razzer)

Michael
quote:
Originally posted by 4NHOTROD:
quote:
I used to climb on top of the house with a bowl of cheerios laden with several heaps of sugar so I could eat breakfast with a cool view.


You ate sugar as a kid?? And you turned out all right? Can't be. You're lying.
Tell that to all the parents now that won't even let their kids drink fruit juice.
Will


I am not sure I turned out OK...that might be a stretch
quote:

You ate sugar as a kid?? And you turned out all right? Can't be. You're lying.
Tell that to all the parents now that won't even let their kids drink fruit juice.
Will


My parents wouldn't buy sugar cereals for me, only healthy stuff. I think that made me turn out NOT ALL RIGHT.

Oh yeah, and they refused to have television until 1984, when I was around 15 or 16. I think that also screwed me up. :-)

- Robert
I remember the B&W TV when I was a kid, it took forever to warm up, you'd have to start it early so that you wouldn't miss the beginning of Gilligan's Island or The Adams Family.

My kids have grown up without cable or satellite though, we have an antenna and it gets ~15-20 channels and that's enough in my opinion - they don't complain, but if they did, I'm ready to point out that when we visit the in-laws and spend 20 minutes going through the 700 channels we always discover one of two things, A) There's nothing on worth watching or, B) There's a good show, but you've just missed the first 20 minutes.

As for sugar cereals, my parents grew up in a culture where breakfast consisted of things like smoked kippers or oatmeal with a 'healthy' dose of salt, thank goodness that wasn't part of my upbringing, I tried it once when we went back to visit relatives, but for me Cheerios or Shreddies were normal, but if there was ever Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, Frankenberry or BooBerry around, I was in heaven (often got in trouble with my brothers when they went for a bowl and mysteriously there were no marshmallow bits left in the box)
" Because we were always outside playing...that's why!"

I remember everyday after school playing Hockey .. whether it was on the frozen pond, the rink or on the street ... we played in the rain, the blistering Sun and the snow ... and never got sick .. now if Johnny get the sniffles hes on the way to the doctor. LOL
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