Things growing up have fallen by the wayside

ArmchairMillionaire23 said:
I remember melting lead right on the kitchen stove in an old pot when I was a teenager. We found the lead in the corners of curtains as weights. We didn't have any casts to pour it into, though. I think we ended up just pouring it out in the back yard. :facepalm:
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Don't tell my wife, but I still do that today! I use lead/tin solder and melt it on a stainless steel spoon on the stove burner to tin 600 strand Litz wire.


Litz wire, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litz_wire
 
This thread reminded me of a game we were crazy about (scheduling tournaments and so on): tether ball.

You could really get whacked if you didn’t pay attention.
 
Dodgeball will always be my favorite.

"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!"
 
I'd go to each new construction house every day to pick up pop bottles on my way to the store. Two cents each! Usually had enough for a Pepsi and a couple of packs of baseball cards. Would sit outside and open the cards always hoping for a Mantle.
 
Coin operated candy machines with the pull knobs. Coin soda machines with the little door that opened and then you pulled the bottle out. Also coin operated cigarette machines out in public.

Returnable soda bottles that had a deposit already mentioned.

Counter seating at a soda fountain or lunch counter type place. Still some around, but not like it used to be where you were right in front of the cook and food prep.

Mini-bikes with an old lawnmower engine. Centrifugal clutch, one speed. Usually the old lawnmower engine was so worn out it limited the speed. Pulling friends around on skateboards behind those same mini-bikes, like water skiing but on the street.
 
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38Chevy454 said:
coin operated cigarette machines out in public.
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I remember that the cigarette machines were just inside the door of virtually every bar and restaurant.

There was a time when the normal price of a pack of cigarettes was 24 cents.
So the person who filled the vending machine used a razor blade to slit the cellophane wrapper around the pack and inserted a penny. That way you didn't have to pay extra for the convenience of using the machine.
 
Not sure this was universal, but we rarely had money for store-bought toys. I could create a toy out of almost anything. One of my all time favorites was something I found when I was in 3rd grade. It was a "digital" counter - probably from a manufacturing device or mail sorter, etc. It was all metal and had obviously been "torn" from the parent device. I believe it went from 0000 to 1000. I would sit in class and see how many counts I could put on it while the teacher droned on and on. Most of the guys in my class begged to use it and it made me very popular for several weeks. I still have the crazy thing some place.

When I was much younger, I was fascinated by my dads wad of keys on his key chain. So, I made my own wad of keys from the small keys provided with Crisco and Spam, etc. My mom knew to save them for me. (Heh, heh, I still have the key chain someplace.)
 
steelyman said:
This thread reminded me of a game we were crazy about (scheduling tournaments and so on): tether ball.

You could really get whacked if you didn’t pay attention.
Click to expand...

I played a lot of tether ball in camp. It was quite a bit of fun. One could also get hurt hitting the knot which secured the ball.
 
Dodgeball and tetherball both great.

We would play on small merry go round. Some big kid would come by and terrorize the young kids by spinning it way too fast. You had to hold on for dear life!

Sometimes a kid would fly off with a thud. Knock the wind out of you, maybe eat some dirt. Older kids found it funny. Younger kids accepted it.

No one sued, no weapons pulled.

Today's kids are safer for sure, but far less resilient.
 
Montecfo said:
Dodgeball and tetherball both great.

We would play on small merry go round. Some big kid would come by and terrorize the young kids by spinning it way too fast. You had to hold on for dear life!

Sometimes a kid would fly off with a thud. Knock the wind out of you, maybe eat some dirt. Older kids found it funny. Younger kids accepted it.

No one sued, no weapons pulled.

Today's kids are safer for sure, but far less resilient.
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Following one unfortunate incident, I made up my mind never to play dodge ball again - without a steel cup.:sick: YMMV
 
I loved playing tetherball. We also played hitting a ball against a wooden wall. It was a bigger ball than one used for wall ball. Also liked the metal rings that went around a pole that you swung yourself on going from one ring to another.
 
Koolau said:
Following one unfortunate incident, I made up my mind never to play dodge ball again - without a steel cup.:sick: YMMV
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When I played it, we called it "War Ball". That gives you some idea of our intensity :D.
 
My best friend as a kid, Christie, had a tetherball. I was taller and more muscular than Christie and the other kids our age (now taller and fatter, but that's another story). Anyway, I was bitterly envious of Christie because I wanted a tetherball more than life itself and despite my best efforts I could not persuade my parents to buy one.

So anyway, when we played with Christie's tetherball, often I'd give it a good, solid **SMACK** and it would hit her in the head, knocking her down in the dirt where she'd dissolve into tears and the game would be over at that point. >:D (Yes, I was a meanie and feel guilty about it now; despite this we were still best friends). She was a pretty good sport about it, and never asked me to stop doing that. Her mother was mostly mad because Christie and her clothes ended up dirty. :LOL: I improved my skills in applying bandaids to the scrapes and cuts that she got when falling.
 
W2R said:
My best friend as a kid, Christie, had a tetherball. I was taller and more muscular than Christie and the other kids our age (now taller and fatter, but that's another story). Anyway, I was bitterly envious of Christie because I wanted a tetherball more than life itself and despite my best efforts I could not persuade my parents to buy one.

So anyway, when we played with Christie's tetherball, often I'd give it a good, solid **SMACK** and it would hit her in the head, knocking her down in the dirt where she'd dissolve into tears and the game would be over at that point. >:D (Yes, I was a meanie and feel guilty about it now; despite this we were still best friends). She was a pretty good sport about it, and never asked me to stop doing that. Her mother was mostly mad because Christie and her clothes ended up dirty. :LOL: I improved my skills in applying bandaids to the scrapes and cuts that she got when falling.
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No worries. I've got you beat on injuring girls. I stuck a dart in my big sister's best friend's leg. (I swear it was an accident.) A couple of years later, I hit the girl next door in the forehead with one of those bow-and-arrow-with-the-suction-cup-on-the-end-arrows (suction cup, unfortunately, removed.) Another accident.

I won't go into the BB gun fights with my male friends. Another thing that's pretty much long gone now - BB guns, that is, not the friends.:LOL:
 
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My brother shot me in the leg with a bb gun once- but only once cause he got in a lot of trouble for that. We played in the sugar cane fields (and ditches) every day till we heard my dad's whistle. The only instructions were to not go so far that we couldn't hear him. He was loud though, so we could go pretty far.

We shot snakes and frogs and birds from our pirogue in the bayou, and played endless games of croquet at my grandparents house. The shed where the game was stored (my grandad's toolshed) smelled like used motor-oil. There was always a pan of it in there somewhere.

My grandad always had enough change in his pocket for a treat if the ice cream truck came by his house. He lived in a city. We lived too far in the country for ice cream trucks at my parents house.

We got our milk delivered but it was in cartons, not bottles. I loved catching fireflies at night in our yard. Some time in my teenage years, they all disappeared. Probably pesticides the cane farmers used. I was delighted to discover that there are still plenty of fireflies where I now live in Alabama! I love to sit outside and watch them in the spring. Makes me feel 8 years old again.
 
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Koolau said:
Not sure this was universal, but we rarely had money for store-bought toys. I could create a toy out of almost anything.
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Made all our toys exclusively DIY:
* Merry-go-round out of thorns, wood stick and goat poop!
* Gun that shot little cardboard pieces out of some empty match boxes and rubber band
* Slingshot out of Y-shaped wood harvested from a tree branch and old bicycle tube
* Noise maker using piece of plastic, stone and thread
etc.
 
ugeauxgirl said:
My brother shot me in the leg with a bb gun once- but only once cause he got in a lot of trouble for that. We played in the sugar cane fields (and ditches) every day till we heard my dad's whistle. The only instructions were to not go so far that we couldn't hear him. He was loud though, so we could go pretty far.

We shot snakes and frogs and birds from our pirogue in the bayou, and played endless games of croquet at my grandparents house. The shed where the game was stored (my grandad's toolshed) smelled like used motor-oil. There was always a pan of it in there somewhere.

My grandad always had enough change in his pocket for a treat if the ice cream truck came by his house. He lived in a city. We lived too far in the country for ice cream trucks at my parents house.

We got our milk delivered but it was in cartons, not bottles. I loved catching fireflies at night in our yard. Some time in my teenage years, they all disappeared. Probably pesticides the cane farmers used. I was delighted to discover that there are still plenty of fireflies where I now live in Alabama! I love to sit outside and watch them in the spring. Makes me feel 8 years old again.
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Fireflies. One of the things I really miss in the Islands.

Sounds like you had an ideal childhood. (I still have a BB in my leg - self inflicted with a CO2 powered pistol! Pockets were never intended to be holsters.)
 
Probably already mentioned. Pinball machines from the 70's
Kingpin was my favorite.
 
ownyourfuture said:
Probably already mentioned. Pinball machines from the 70's
Kingpin was my favorite.
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Ohh man I remember them. Lol

Vent windows on vehicles. The small windows purpose I think was to act like an air conditioner. Adjust the opening and direction and let it blow. We would go to Seattle and Spokane in the summers and all the way the windows were down and the small vent windows open. Couldn't hear when we got there and or two weeks after we got back home.
 
braumeister said:
I remember that the cigarette machines were just inside the door of virtually every bar and restaurant.

There was a time when the normal price of a pack of cigarettes was 24 cents.
So the person who filled the vending machine used a razor blade to slit the cellophane wrapper around the pack and inserted a penny. That way you didn't have to pay extra for the convenience of using the machine.
Click to expand...


We used to go to country kitchen, and my mom would give me a few quarters to buy her a pack of Old Gold's or some brand like that. She would give me extra change to get a gumball in the machine right next to the cigarette vending machine.

She often recalls the story how she was at a fourth of july party while pregnant with me and decided not to drink at the party because she felt the labor coming on. I was born the next day.
 
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