No shooting out lights for me. The boy across the street got a BB gun for Christmas, and used it to shoot out our Christmas lights that night. His dad and my dad had a talk, and the BB gun was handed over to Dad. "Son, you can borrow this, but shoot any lights, windows or people and your butt will be so sore you won't be riding your bike for a week. Then I'll hand you over to Mom."
Streetlights? Check That's simple stupidity; all you have to do (once) is learn to stand outside the expected range of the shower of glass fragments. Once - and only once - we disassembled several hundred Black Cat firecrackers and filled a plastic pill bottle with the slippery silver gunpowder. Seemed huge; must have been about two and a half or three inches tall and an inch and a half in diameter. We then braided a long fuse, using only a small number of the available fuses, and set it off in the street. This happened to be right under our formerly favorite streetlight target, which had been hardened against thugs like us. We weren't targeting the streetlight; it just happened to be a central location for mischief. A firecracker set off at night, when thrown for an air burst (another opportunity for learning) usually yielded a spherical silver flash about four or five inches across. Our cobbled-together device, being set on the concrete, produced a silver hemisphere of flash between three and four feet tall. And a LOUD report. My father came out of our house . . . and that was the end of that night's festivities.
We never disassembled smaller firecrackers to make larger ones, but to get an airburst we used a Wrist Rocket to get some altitude! One guy pulls the firecracker back, another guy lights it. Got some pretty good altitude, too. Pro Tip: The guy running the launcher should wear eye protection and have gloves on - we had one that was a super-rapid fuse that I barely got launched and it blew up about a foot from the slingshot. Had to wait a while to get my hearing back, some paper all over my arm...
I turned my Daisy B=B gun into a mortar. Used "Lady Finger" firecrackers, about 2" long and slightly narrower than the bore. 1.cock BB gun, 2. Hold "round" in muzzle, fuze out. 3. Light fuze. 4. Drop round down muzzle. 5. Align on target. 6. Pull trigger. 7. Observe fall of round. 8. Correct aim and fire for effect.
haha! a mortar! Nice! We used the 4 ft long end of an old pool vacuum and launched bottle rockets..from the back of an old Schwinn paper bike..Front man would light the rocket and drop it down the tube, rear man would aim...that's right, our very own mobile bazooka team. Thanks for bringing back that memory.
We used to epoxy close the end of a rocket engine and use green fuse in the nozzle to set if off. You would light the fuse, wait until it got even with the nozzle then throw it into the air where it would light off and fly every which way but loose until the ejection charge went off which exploded because it had no where to go.
Then we scored fireworks and glued them to the end of the engine and glue a basswood stick to the side (for guidance like a Bottle Rocket) and launched them using a piece of downspout. The pinnacle of this was when we got H100s and stepped up to a bigger engine. Those were awesome!
Pretty accurate except we lived 9 miles out of town, out in the Boonies. There weren't any street lights. And when we got 10 speeds finally our range increased greatly.
Some of the stuff I got into with my buddies was some sketchy shit for sure. I had 4 near death experiences. Two of them I was unconscious for in the 4-5 hour range. One I was completely paralyzed for 7 hours - my parents did finally, after 5 hours, throw in the towel and take me to the local hospital on this one.
Probably why I was half afraid to let my sons wonder too far when they were growing up - scared shit-less of what they might get into.
The Heel Toe Express yielded to bicycles of all kinds, my father made me one from spare parts, and we explored all over the place. Railroad trestles at night were a favorite. Riding to the beaches on Lake Michigan was another favorite. Sports of all kinds, especially football, were a mainstay. The Green Bay Packers were a huge part of the scene and I used to chase a classmate in his GB helmet and jersey with shoulder pads. We'd play for hours, even if it was only 3 or 4 of us. We used God's greatest gift, our imagination. My buddy was John Brockington, he had the jersey of course, and I was a Nebraska Corn Husker with an N markered on courtesy of my artist father.
Living in SoCal, we had a huge canyon behind our house. We would ride the trails and explore the flood control tunnels under the streets of San Diego. We would ride for miles, climbing up every once in a while to see if we could read a street sign to see where we were.
One time, we found a dead homeless guy who had made a living space in a wide spot where a couple of tunnels came together. Evidently he had ODed.
That canyon got filled in to build the 805 freeway back in the early 70's.
tree forts, sand dune bunkers, stolen cigs & chaw, bb guns, playboys (penthouse if you really scored) bmx bikes & turning anything and everything into a jump, occasional fireworks, a warm beer or 3, egg fights, sand bomb fights, very few real fights, camping in the back yard (and roaming around on bikes all night til somebody got really fukt up on a dark jump or a cop was sighted), n%&^%# knockin, fishn, tp'n the a-hole houses, never a dull moment, good times but paybacks are a bitch! haha!
Brings back many good memories. My limit was 10 miles, which was distance to grandma and grandpa's farm. But under today's commie system, my parents would have been jailed and me given to the state for what was allowed. That's a sad state of affairs for us now. Got cut open climbing over a closed junk yard fence and tangled up in barb wire looking for parts. Had to ride bike back home and you could follow me from the blood trail. Dad took one look , put me in in bed of truck, wasn't allowed to bleed in vehicle or house, and to doctor. Took 20 stitches to fix it up and have worn that scar on my leg with pride for decades. My dad for years laughed about how long it took him to get all the blood out of the truck bed, dam I miss him so much, tough but fair.....
Salt Peter, sugar, a little mixing, and a match would yield a visit from the fire department. It was a cheap thrill. That, and some calcium carbide would turn a crawfish hole into a small cannon.
And that was before we joined the Boy Scout Troop 108. The Ogre Patrol was the best and the baddest.We were the country boys in the Troop. Camping was an every day thing.
BB-gun fights. Somehow, we never managed to shoot an eye out, though. No abandoned hard rock mines but we had limestone caves, some of which were trying to cave in.
After all that, we all lived long enough to reach the age we all got cars/or and motorcycles, and the fun really began.
Bikes were your freedom. Be home when the streetlights came on was the rule. No cell phones or helicopter parenting, but mom and dad usually knew where you were at. You told them where you were going. The moms usually had the neighborhood surveillance/communications network well organized. If you fucked up, mom knew it/heard about it. Dad then found out soon after. Bikes, go-carts, skateboards, fireworks, bb guns, were commonplace. Usually nobody got hurt...much. a good time was had by all, we learned to look out for each other and stay safe. Yes, we sometimes weren't where we said we were. And maybe we found some trouble here or there, but we were able to take the lessons from it.the folks that frequent this site are largely represented by the photo in one way or another. Sadly, we may well be the last generation that had the privilege of growing up before the establishment of the nanny state.
I grew up on a farm. Just before dusk I had to get the chickens back in the coop and feed the pigs. Because I lived on the farm I did have a mini-bike and later a dirt bike.
The 8 mile ride on BMX bikes to the town dump, waiting for the harbor to freeze over then going out on the ice to steal the batteries out of the channel marker lights, jumping off of seawalls into the water, later, jumping off of bridges into the water, going with someone's father to see the 'mafia' in Haymarket in Boston to buy fireworks, buying and selling houses with other paperboys in a futures market, someone's mom hanging out the window relaying your mom yelling it's time for supper because you're 4 streets over. The one kid who steals his older brother's butterfly knife and stabs himself.in the leg showing off.
You would not believe the shit we did as kids in the 50's. I literally ate at least one meal and two snacks a day from what I could find. I had no money but I knew where the gardens were and which companies threw out food. One do-nut shop near me used to throw out an entire lot of do-nuts if they didn't look just right. Grocery stores back then would throw out produce that had aged and keep it in a bin for the pig farms to pick up, but it looked as good as Walmart's normal produce. I knew where every fruit tree was and where the wild berries grew. I drank water directly from the lakes and streams.
Never locked our bikes in those days. That all changed about 3 years later, thanks to President Johnson's 'Great Society Movement.' Moving to Arizona, we were stunned to see a grade school where kids just hopped off their bikes and headed into school. NOTHING was locked; bicycles, Razors, skateboards, nothing.
Yep. B&W TV one channel. Spent days swimming, cycling, exploring bush with 3 brothers and assorted neighbour kids. Walked to school. Explored old houses, accidently broke water mains, collecting old rabbit traps, throwing bricks at bullets we found, messing about with building dams on creeks etc
Cousin Kent kept us hoping. Emptying .22 shells and hitting it with a match cost me my eyebrows but they grew back. Try taping a BB to the primer of a shotgun shell, stand on concrete and throw straight up as high as you can. Don’t forget to hit the deck fast.
if the weather was ok the schoolbus would drop me off at the pond after school. I stashed a fishing rod under a log with an old entrenching tool to get worms. one bobber, one hook, if I lost them or the worms ran out it was the end of fishing...unless you could climb a tree and get someone elses snagged bobber and hook.
the lights came on, I went home. if I had any fish, I'd clean em and my mom would cook 'em. not much food to go around, with 2 sisters and my dad doing long-haul and no way to send money home that didn't take half the check. we ate good when he was home, the rest of the time not so much. so my mom was happy for me bringing the fish home. I think I was 6 when this started. I got a bike when they drained the pond and I found it in the mud. my dad had just enough to get new tires and grease the heck out of the moving parts.
the 70's were great. a kid with a fishing pole and some fish walking down the road alone didn't get stopped by the cops back then.
Best adolescent urban tech: fill an expended C02 cartridge with safety match heads. Aim said future missile down range. Watch it disappear, maybe to be recovered BLOCKS away. SsssssVAP! A sound you never forget. Never did the math on internal pressure, but never had one detonate. The velocity must have been nearly trans-sonic.
Found a stash of Playboys and looked at every page.
ReplyDeleteUsually in a newly framed house under construction
DeleteI am reading that...and ...I did them all...sure brings back memories
ReplyDeleteNo shooting out lights for me. The boy across the street got a BB gun for Christmas, and used it to shoot out our Christmas lights that night. His dad and my dad had a talk, and the BB gun was handed over to Dad. "Son, you can borrow this, but shoot any lights, windows or people and your butt will be so sore you won't be riding your bike for a week. Then I'll hand you over to Mom."
ReplyDeleteStreetlights? Check
ReplyDeleteThat's simple stupidity; all you have to do (once) is learn to stand outside the expected range of the shower of glass fragments.
Once - and only once - we disassembled several hundred Black Cat firecrackers and filled a plastic pill bottle with the slippery silver gunpowder. Seemed huge; must have been about two and a half or three inches tall and an inch and a half in diameter. We then braided a long fuse, using only a small number of the available fuses, and set it off in the street. This happened to be right under our formerly favorite streetlight target, which had been hardened against thugs like us. We weren't targeting the streetlight; it just happened to be a central location for mischief.
A firecracker set off at night, when thrown for an air burst (another opportunity for learning) usually yielded a spherical silver flash about four or five inches across. Our cobbled-together device, being set on the concrete, produced a silver hemisphere of flash between three and four feet tall.
And a LOUD report. My father came out of our house . . . and that was the end of that night's festivities.
We never disassembled smaller firecrackers to make larger ones, but to get an airburst we used a Wrist Rocket to get some altitude! One guy pulls the firecracker back, another guy lights it. Got some pretty good altitude, too.
DeletePro Tip:
The guy running the launcher should wear eye protection and have gloves on - we had one that was a super-rapid fuse that I barely got launched and it blew up about a foot from the slingshot. Had to wait a while to get my hearing back, some paper all over my arm...
I turned my Daisy B=B gun into a mortar. Used "Lady Finger" firecrackers, about 2" long and slightly narrower than the bore. 1.cock BB gun, 2. Hold "round" in muzzle, fuze out. 3. Light fuze. 4. Drop round down muzzle. 5. Align on target. 6. Pull trigger. 7. Observe fall of round. 8. Correct aim and fire for effect.
Deletehaha! a mortar! Nice! We used the 4 ft long end of an old pool vacuum and launched bottle rockets..from the back of an old Schwinn paper bike..Front man would light the rocket and drop it down the tube, rear man would aim...that's right, our very own mobile bazooka team. Thanks for bringing back that memory.
DeleteWe used to epoxy close the end of a rocket engine and use green fuse in the nozzle to set if off. You would light the fuse, wait until it got even with the nozzle then throw it into the air where it would light off and fly every which way but loose until the ejection charge went off which exploded because it had no where to go.
DeleteThen we scored fireworks and glued them to the end of the engine and glue a basswood stick to the side (for guidance like a Bottle Rocket) and launched them using a piece of downspout. The pinnacle of this was when we got H100s and stepped up to a bigger engine. Those were awesome!
Pretty accurate except we lived 9 miles out of town, out in the Boonies. There weren't any street lights.
ReplyDeleteAnd when we got 10 speeds finally our range increased greatly.
Except for the Oujia board, you described my childhood.
ReplyDeleteOh, yesh - I also had to do Collections for the Paper Route. Can't forget that!!
Pretty much exactly right. At least on Long Island in the 1970s.
ReplyDeleteMom wasn't fooled, she just knew how children learn.
ReplyDeleteBeen there, did that!
ReplyDeleteAnd got the Tshirt!
ReplyDeleteDid it have a picture of a Firebird Trans Am on it ?
DeleteGuess nobody else grew up around abandoned hardrock mines?
ReplyDeletefor me it was going to a muddy swamp a few miles away-but my mom knew where i was
ReplyDeleteSome of the stuff I got into with my buddies was some sketchy shit for sure. I had 4 near death experiences. Two of them I was unconscious for in the 4-5 hour range. One I was completely paralyzed for 7 hours - my parents did finally, after 5 hours, throw in the towel and take me to the local hospital on this one.
ReplyDeleteProbably why I was half afraid to let my sons wonder too far when they were growing up - scared shit-less of what they might get into.
NO wonder I might be a little off kilter.
Oh, hell yeah!
ReplyDeleteThe Heel Toe Express yielded to bicycles of all kinds, my father made me one from spare parts, and we explored all over the place. Railroad trestles at night were a favorite. Riding to the beaches on Lake Michigan was another favorite. Sports of all kinds, especially football, were a mainstay. The Green Bay Packers were a huge part of the scene and I used to chase a classmate in his GB helmet and jersey with shoulder pads. We'd play for hours, even if it was only 3 or 4 of us. We used God's greatest gift, our imagination. My buddy was John Brockington, he had the jersey of course, and I was a Nebraska Corn Husker with an N markered on courtesy of my artist father.
Great times!
Living in SoCal, we had a huge canyon behind our house. We would ride the trails and explore the flood control tunnels under the streets of San Diego. We would ride for miles, climbing up every once in a while to see if we could read a street sign to see where we were.
ReplyDeleteOne time, we found a dead homeless guy who had made a living space in a wide spot where a couple of tunnels came together. Evidently he had ODed.
That canyon got filled in to build the 805 freeway back in the early 70's.
tree forts, sand dune bunkers, stolen cigs & chaw, bb guns, playboys (penthouse if you really scored) bmx bikes & turning anything and everything into a jump, occasional fireworks, a warm beer or 3, egg fights, sand bomb fights, very few real fights, camping in the back yard (and roaming around on bikes all night til somebody got really fukt up on a dark jump or a cop was sighted), n%&^%# knockin, fishn, tp'n the a-hole houses, never a dull moment, good times but paybacks are a bitch! haha!
ReplyDeleteYou forgot to mention running behind in the fog put out by the DDT truck. I guess it's a good thing we don't lay eggs.
ReplyDeleteDon’t forget the molotovs under the bridge
ReplyDeleteps. "Fuck Ya We Did!! "
Deleteps ps couple those bikes on the left weren’t available yet
DeleteThose and much, much more.
ReplyDeleteBrings back many good memories. My limit was 10 miles, which was distance to grandma and grandpa's farm. But under today's commie system, my parents would have been jailed and me given to the state for what was allowed. That's a sad state of affairs for us now.
ReplyDeleteGot cut open climbing over a closed junk yard fence and tangled up in barb wire looking for parts. Had to ride bike back home and you could follow me from the blood trail. Dad took one look , put me in in bed of truck, wasn't allowed to bleed in vehicle or house, and to doctor. Took 20 stitches to fix it up and have worn that scar on my leg with pride for decades. My dad for years laughed about how long it took him to get all the blood out of the truck bed, dam I miss him so much, tough but fair.....
Salt Peter, sugar, a little mixing, and a match would yield a visit from the fire department. It was a cheap thrill. That, and some calcium carbide would turn a crawfish hole into a small cannon.
ReplyDeleteAnd that was before we joined the Boy Scout Troop 108. The Ogre Patrol was the best and the baddest.We were the country boys in the Troop. Camping was an every day thing.
ReplyDeleteBB-gun fights. Somehow, we never managed to shoot an eye out, though. No abandoned hard rock mines but we had limestone caves, some of which were trying to cave in.
ReplyDeleteAfter all that, we all lived long enough to reach the age we all got cars/or and motorcycles, and the fun really began.
Caught one on the lip that came through a pine tree...Coincidentally(?) that was the last time I participated in a BB-gun fight.
DeleteBikes were your freedom. Be home when the streetlights came on was the rule. No cell phones or helicopter parenting, but mom and dad usually knew where you were at. You told them where you were going. The moms usually had the neighborhood surveillance/communications network well organized. If you fucked up, mom knew it/heard about it. Dad then found out soon after.
ReplyDeleteBikes, go-carts, skateboards, fireworks, bb guns, were commonplace. Usually nobody got hurt...much. a good time was had by all, we learned to look out for each other and stay safe. Yes, we sometimes weren't where we said we were. And maybe we found some trouble here or there, but we were able to take the lessons from it.the folks that frequent this site are largely represented by the photo in one way or another. Sadly, we may well be the last generation that had the privilege of growing up before the establishment of the nanny state.
I grew up on a farm. Just before dusk I had to get the chickens back in the coop and feed the pigs. Because I lived on the farm I did have a mini-bike and later a dirt bike.
ReplyDeleteHell ya we did it!!
ReplyDeleteIn the sixties we were lucky if our parents remembered our names, never mind where we were all day. Wish i could go back.
ReplyDeleteIf the cops brought you home before dark, your parents probably weren't even there...
DeleteIt was wrist rockets and rat hunting at the Lowry bridge. Camping out on the river and carp fishing all night long.
ReplyDeleteWhat a time to be alive
And in the mean time all the big brothers in the neihgborhood were getting killed in Viet Nam.
ReplyDeleteNo it was actually North Korea. I guess that makes me really old.
DeleteThe 8 mile ride on BMX bikes to the town dump, waiting for the harbor to freeze over then going out on the ice to steal the batteries out of the channel marker lights, jumping off of seawalls into the water, later, jumping off of bridges into the water, going with someone's father to see the 'mafia' in Haymarket in Boston to buy fireworks, buying and selling houses with other paperboys in a futures market, someone's mom hanging out the window relaying your mom yelling it's time for supper because you're 4 streets over. The one kid who steals his older brother's butterfly knife and stabs himself.in the leg showing off.
ReplyDeleteYou would not believe the shit we did as kids in the 50's. I literally ate at least one meal and two snacks a day from what I could find. I had no money but I knew where the gardens were and which companies threw out food. One do-nut shop near me used to throw out an entire lot of do-nuts if they didn't look just right. Grocery stores back then would throw out produce that had aged and keep it in a bin for the pig farms to pick up, but it looked as good as Walmart's normal produce. I knew where every fruit tree was and where the wild berries grew. I drank water directly from the lakes and streams.
ReplyDeleteNever locked our bikes in those days. That all changed about 3 years later, thanks to President Johnson's 'Great Society Movement.' Moving to Arizona, we were stunned to see a grade school where kids just hopped off their bikes and headed into school. NOTHING was locked; bicycles, Razors, skateboards, nothing.
ReplyDeletedefinitely things changed after Johnson's welfare state
DeleteI had a black Ross Snapper with the yellow mag wheels.. The bike second in from the left. Good memories....
ReplyDeleteYep. B&W TV one channel. Spent days swimming, cycling, exploring bush with 3 brothers and assorted neighbour kids. Walked to school. Explored old houses, accidently broke water mains, collecting old rabbit traps, throwing bricks at bullets we found, messing about with building dams on creeks etc
ReplyDeleteThat was only half of it. Inremeber making sugar and sodium nitrate rockets and deconstructing fireworks to build more interesting items. Good times
ReplyDeleteCousin Kent kept us hoping. Emptying .22 shells and hitting it with a match cost me my eyebrows but they grew back. Try taping a BB to the primer of a shotgun shell, stand on concrete and throw straight up as high as you can.
ReplyDeleteDon’t forget to hit the deck fast.
if the weather was ok the schoolbus would drop me off at the pond after school. I stashed a fishing rod under a log with an old entrenching tool to get worms. one bobber, one hook, if I lost them or the worms ran out it was the end of fishing...unless you could climb a tree and get someone elses snagged bobber and hook.
ReplyDeletethe lights came on, I went home. if I had any fish, I'd clean em and my mom would cook 'em. not much food to go around, with 2 sisters and my dad doing long-haul and no way to send money home that didn't take half the check. we ate good when he was home, the rest of the time not so much. so my mom was happy for me bringing the fish home. I think I was 6 when this started. I got a bike when they drained the pond and I found it in the mud. my dad had just enough to get new tires and grease the heck out of the moving parts.
the 70's were great. a kid with a fishing pole and some fish walking down the road alone didn't get stopped by the cops back then.
Best adolescent urban tech: fill an expended C02 cartridge with safety match heads. Aim said future missile down range. Watch it disappear, maybe to be recovered BLOCKS away. SsssssVAP! A sound you never forget. Never did the math on internal pressure, but never had one detonate. The velocity must have been nearly trans-sonic.
ReplyDelete