70’s kid. Grew up in a farming community. At age 8, if you were judged responsible you were given a Bowie Barlow pocket knife. That you were allowed to carry in school. At 16, you drove a pickup truck with a gun rack. To school. Normally a Winchester 94, and a pump shotgun in it.
We had them in our small town, but not "out in the country". Lived on our bikes in the summer, not uncommon to be in the next town over, but had to make sure you were back when the streetlights on our street came on. Kids today will never experience the freedom we had as kids growing up...Sad...
We had a CRT TV set that use to, every now and then, would broadcast to the parents “It’s 10pm do you know where your children are?” Quite often, they didn't know...
yeah. the 1960's where great. hey, if your bone or bones are not sticking out, blood is not gushing out and all of your "parts' SEEM IN THE RIGHT PLACE. you fine, walk it off. worse comes to worse, you got the red hellfire shit put on you. GOD, that seem worse than the thing that hurt you in the first place ! it was a life that kids in the past 20-30 years will never know or understand. sunscreen ? helmets ? WTF are they ? spend the whole day in the woods and if there was a creek there, your day was full. only coming home when sun started to set. and as you got older, you get a old beater of a "ride" and work on it to get it to run. Dad even trusted you with "his tools". figuring out how to change a clutch and putting it all back together again, yeah. todays kids have no idea what they are missing. looking back it easy to understand why kids today don't have clue about most things. they never got the chances that we had.
It was a great wide open world. Nothing was off limits, (within moral Christian terms, 98% or so, but you where free, so rebellion was a very low priority, until "Authority" in some ugly demonistic form attempted to rule over your actions because it thought itself superior, that is, even as kids, we knew in a heartbeat who was good who was bad, seriously, cause "Authority" stuck out big time, it was in a word unacceptable, yet good authority was well, good, cause we held ourselves accountable, pretty much most did, a bast majority did, and authority had ways to help you be a healthy adult, say for instance the BoyScouts, 4H, YMCA camps, you refined your sense of Prudence, learned sense of self in the larger world and cooperation, love too, but learned to fight when it was a moral and a duty imperative.), we had Prudence in abundance, the simple moral accountability for your actions, it never entered our minds to blame other on our actions, you took your lumps like a man, and woman, it was a beautiful free world. Key word: Was. That is no accident and it is not moral, nor is prudence, nor one's consent in particular, one's Sovereign nature under God, to even be thought about or practiced, what horrors! It is worse, it is called the victim stance, and it is a very strong one, thats a horror right there.
I am never forgetful of the savings grace and prudence that time gave me. I am not alone by no means either. I know that, regardless of the matrix they created.
Yeah, just turned 71. The ridiculous shenanigans of childhood that were just standard operating procedure back then versus the Sit still and poke buttons lifestyle of most kids today ??? When was the last time you saw a few kids on bicycles? Playing football in a front yard? We used to climb young pine trees, get a few feet from the top,throw our feet out to one side and ride it down. I quit that when one snapped while I was still quite a ways up. Ramps,bicycles, who flies the farthest? Bored? I never knew what the word meant.
Do boys still rough house and wrassel? Make your own go karts with roller skates and go down steep hills? Make boats and forts out whatever you can find? Float on a lake with an old mattress you found? Go target shooting with a .22 with your friends? Blow up plastic models with fire crackers? I'll take that over cell phones anyday.
yup ! work one day to get a box of 22 shells and the next day you got to goof with your rifle. by yourself too ! worked like mad loading hay or whatever, cleaning out your uncle's barn and then you got AMMO ! bolt action, tube fed was the way to go. nothing was safe from us. the one rule was don't shoot yourself ! at the time, it seem like a great trade. then you figured out how little they spent on a box of 22, not so much. started off with a old single shot Winchester. I still have it. it was made in a time when they didn't put numbers on everything.
We used to shoot arrows as straight up as we could, then panic when we lost sight of them, running in all directions. We would shoot 22's up and wait to see if we could hear them when they fell back. Never did. Other kids I knew would have bb gun fights, no one lost an eye but there were some near misses.
Early seventies, hand me down bike (one speed...) with a coaster brake (the younger set may have to look that one up). Coming into the barnyard way too fast, not enough brake or traction on the gravel to stop so low side it under the electric fence. No helmet, no pads, no regrets.
HI IRISH!!, Dial the "Way Back" to the late 40's and ON!! ... I was born in '45.. 19!!!....45 that is just to set the record straight! As I recall back around '49-'50 or so I was pushin' 5 year old.. 2 doors over, my aunt had rented her 'old house" (she built a new one!!) and this time rented it to this Airline pilot and his family. 3 boys.. Graham (named after dad) but we called him "Pumpy" because his extennded fmily gave him that nick name because he was a "Pompus Ass!!" then there was Garland ... a year or so younger and the caboose was "Guyan" better knowns "Boxer!!" How he got the nick...???? There was a Mulberry tree in the front yard next to the fence! We used the fence s a ladder to et to the Big Fork in the tree about 5 feet AGL... That was our Stage for all our fantasies!! Like fuselage of a airplane that we payed paratroopers from!!! Oh did I mention Pumpy's dad had a "21inch TV .. one of those as they called a Console model like real furnature!!!!! We watched B&W TV from Western's to Outer Space shows!!!! We put on our "Captain Video Goggels that we got of a Cereal Box".. made all kinds of airplane noises and Jumped from he fork of the tree to the ground and lived!!! "That" is just the tip of the ice berg!!!! Meet me at the BAR!!! for more!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Funny how that goes??? Blue Skyz, skybill
It was the 1970s for me! Dad would drop me and my other brother off in the Everglades near Tamiami trail! He left us on Friday afternoon and would pick us up on Sunday afternoon! We would usually bring a small alligator or two to show mom! Sence we lived on a lake......she would say just put them in the lake! LOL! No phones, no one or store with 30 miles and we had a blast back then!
The streetlight was the Bat Signal calling us home. My mom STILL doesn't know just how far we strayed from the neighborhood on our bikes. Dad BUILT the ramp that launched his helmetless children into the air on Stingrays and Ross Barracudas as he took Polaroids and Mom screamed. Neither Mom nor Dad knew about the boat my friend and I built and took out onto the bay in 25MPH winds. ...DAMN, that was stupid... Riding in the bed of a pickup trumped the back of a station wagon any day!
...And the playgrounds of the 80's couldn't hold a CANDLE to the ones that preceded them in the 50's and 60's!!! Thinking back, I think those structures were DESIGNED to cull the weak from the herd!!!
born in 1970. I'd get dropped off by the schoolbus at the lake, not at my house. I had a fishing pole stashed, and old entrenching tool to dig for worms, and a bucket. if I came home with fish my mom cleaned them and cooked them.
at 5 years old I went down Zion Hill Road in salem,NH on my bigwheel. hit a rock most of the way down at top speed, flipped, and walked the bigwheel home with a big dent in that front plastic tire. swapped out the tire later with someone that got an actual bike and didn't need the bigwheel, an did it myself with tools no one kept locked up. no one knew where I was, and so long as I came home and didn't die everything was fine. my mom STILL doesn't know.
Orphan, adopted into a very broken home. 70's kid, graduated HS in 86'. Ft Jackson, 1988. Nuremberg, Iraq, Ft Polk.
Married, divorced, four great kids.
My kids are in their 20's, and I raised them, as a single father, on a farm-chores and school and sports. They're great kids, better than me in most all the ways that matter.
I think many of us blame the kids, as if they had any damn thing to do with how they were raised.
We men are responsible-women will do what we let them, nothing more. Fight if you have to-it's worth it. If they helicopter the kids, we're supposed to be the ATCs. Kids need freedom and risk and danger-it's how they develop the fortitude and independence life demands. You, as their father, are absolutely responsible for providing it to them-just make it survivable, and character-building.
I raised three boys and one girl-I told my ex-herself an only child-"fish swim, birds fly, and boys wrestle". The only rule was "no necks"-other than that, have at it.
And, as far as the 70's went-I was left on streetcorners to be picked up later; nothing like "guidance" or "parenting" occured with any regularity. You had to fight most weeks, or get jumped. Parenting, such as it was, occured when sober, if sober. I could mix highballs by the time I was 8.
And yet, for the time and the place, my parents gave me what they had to give; they just never had much to start with. Hurt people hurt other people, often (especially) their loved ones. The strongest try to break the cycle..
And about the 70's/80's-we drank 2 liter bottles of coke with the big box of pizza, and EVERYONE smoked. At the table. I had my 1st beer at 11, and was on every drug I could get by 13. High school was on-your-own; no grade checks, no nothing. Thank god for my drill sergeants-the first grown men who actually cared about my future.
So-did I try to raise my kids like I was raised?
Hell no. I tried to give them better.
How will they raise their kids?
Probably different than I raised them. I probably screwed up far more than I'll ever know. Parenting, after all, equals guilt. That children love us in spite of ourselves fills me with humility.
So- no generation gets the credit, or the blame, for itself. Their parents do. You get the credit (or the blame) for your children.
So don't blame or belittle the damn kids-they're doing what they can with what we gave them. They're no different than we'd be, were we born when they were.
Stay humble, brethren, and help the kids, and encourage them. Be a part of the solution, not the problem. "OK Boomer" didn't spring out of nowhere. They will be what we encourage in them; greatness and toughness never die-they just go dormant from time to time.
Remember- Far greater men than we are yet to be born. May we live to help guide their path.
So if you're gonna knock the kids, ask-"Who raised them (or didn't?)"
Not to be argumentative, but the 60s and the 70s were the same. Absolutely WONDERFUL!!!!
ReplyDeleteTrue, three good decades.
DeleteIrish
and the 50’s! born in ‘51. no limits on my travels even then. home by 6pm for dinner or catch hell!
DeleteStrangely enough those were the greatest decades for popular music.
Delete70’s kid.
DeleteGrew up in a farming community. At age 8, if you were judged responsible you were given a Bowie Barlow pocket knife. That you were allowed to carry in school.
At 16, you drove a pickup truck with a gun rack. To school.
Normally a Winchester 94, and a pump shotgun in it.
fjf0351
Yep, be home when the streetlights come on.
ReplyDeleteWow, you. Had street lights!
DeleteWe had them in our small town, but not "out in the country". Lived on our bikes in the summer, not uncommon to be in the next town over, but had to make sure you were back when the streetlights on our street came on. Kids today will never experience the freedom we had as kids growing up...Sad...
DeleteWe had a CRT TV set that use to, every now and then, would broadcast to the parents “It’s 10pm do you know where your children are?”
DeleteQuite often, they didn't know...
Merry Christmas!!!
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in the 80's? You're still youngsters. Try the 60's.
ReplyDeleteThe 60s through the 80s were NOT for pussies.
ReplyDeleteUs 60s and 70s kids were hell of a lot tougher by far, 80 kids were starting to get helicopter parents and the safety nazis were getting spooled up.
ReplyDeleteyeah. the 1960's where great. hey, if your bone or bones are not sticking out, blood is not gushing out and all of your "parts' SEEM IN THE RIGHT PLACE. you fine, walk it off. worse comes to worse, you got the red hellfire shit put on you.
ReplyDeleteGOD, that seem worse than the thing that hurt you in the first place ! it was a life that kids in the past 20-30 years will never know or understand. sunscreen ? helmets ? WTF are they ? spend the whole day in the woods and if there was a creek there, your day was full. only coming home when sun started to set.
and as you got older, you get a old beater of a "ride" and work on it to get it to run. Dad even trusted you with "his tools". figuring out how to change a clutch and putting it all back together again, yeah. todays kids have no idea what they are missing. looking back it easy to understand why kids today don't have clue about most things.
they never got the chances that we had.
It was a great wide open world. Nothing was off limits, (within moral Christian terms, 98% or so, but you where free, so rebellion was a very low priority, until "Authority" in some ugly demonistic form attempted to rule over your actions because it thought itself superior, that is, even as kids, we knew in a heartbeat who was good who was bad, seriously, cause "Authority" stuck out big time, it was in a word unacceptable, yet good authority was well, good, cause we held ourselves accountable, pretty much most did, a bast majority did, and authority had ways to help you be a healthy adult, say for instance the BoyScouts, 4H, YMCA camps, you refined your sense of Prudence, learned sense of self in the larger world and cooperation, love too, but learned to fight when it was a moral and a duty imperative.), we had Prudence in abundance, the simple moral accountability for your actions, it never entered our minds to blame other on our actions, you took your lumps like a man, and woman, it was a beautiful free world. Key word: Was.
ReplyDeleteThat is no accident and it is not moral, nor is prudence, nor one's consent in particular, one's Sovereign nature under God, to even be thought about or practiced, what horrors! It is worse, it is called the victim stance, and it is a very strong one, thats a horror right there.
I am never forgetful of the savings grace and prudence that time gave me. I am not alone by no means either. I know that, regardless of the matrix they created.
COULD I survive it?
ReplyDeleteOh, HELL YES!
I DID survive it. And here I am, over 70 solar orbits later, hale, hearty, and healthy.
Toxic Deplorable B Woodman
Yeah, just turned 71. The ridiculous shenanigans of childhood that were just standard operating procedure back then versus the Sit still and poke buttons lifestyle of most kids today ??? When was the last time you saw a few kids on bicycles? Playing football in a front yard? We used to climb young pine trees, get a few feet from the top,throw our feet out to one side and ride it down. I quit that when one snapped while I was still quite a ways up. Ramps,bicycles, who flies the farthest? Bored? I never knew what the word meant.
ReplyDeleteWe used to jump the little kids with our bicycles to see how many you could jump
DeleteDo boys still rough house and wrassel? Make your own go karts with roller skates and go down steep hills? Make boats and forts out whatever you can find? Float on a lake with an old mattress you found? Go target shooting with a .22 with your friends? Blow up plastic models with fire crackers? I'll take that over cell phones anyday.
ReplyDeleteSo much freedom has been taken away.
ReplyDeleteThe eighties? Nah, kids were already being pussified by their parents by then. The sixties was where it's at.
ReplyDeleteyup ! work one day to get a box of 22 shells and the next day you got to goof with your rifle. by yourself too !
Deleteworked like mad loading hay or whatever, cleaning out your uncle's barn and then you got AMMO !
bolt action, tube fed was the way to go. nothing was safe from us. the one rule was don't shoot yourself !
at the time, it seem like a great trade. then you figured out how little they spent on a box of 22, not so much.
started off with a old single shot Winchester. I still have it. it was made in a time when they didn't put numbers on everything.
Single shot Stevens here. I think that a box of .22 was something like $.35 back then.
DeleteWe used to shoot arrows as straight up as we could, then panic when we lost sight of them, running in all directions. We would shoot 22's up and wait to see if we could hear them when they fell back. Never did. Other kids I knew would have bb gun fights, no one lost an eye but there were some near misses.
ReplyDeleteEarly seventies, hand me down bike (one speed...) with a coaster brake (the younger set may have to look that one up). Coming into the barnyard way too fast, not enough brake or traction on the gravel to stop so low side it under the electric fence. No helmet, no pads, no regrets.
ReplyDeleteKids today would only whine and cry at the stuff we used to do as kids in the 60's. 70's and 80's.
ReplyDeleteThe late 70's & early 80's were great times! I'm just wonder if that was because I was young?
ReplyDeleteAutumn would bring apple-whips and huge welts.
ReplyDeleteRoman Candle wars were always fun.
I was born in 55. 80s kids were the last of a decades long tradition of semi feral childhood.
ReplyDeleteHI IRISH!!,
ReplyDeleteDial the "Way Back" to the late 40's and ON!! ... I was born in '45.. 19!!!....45 that is just to set the record straight! As I recall back around '49-'50 or so I was pushin' 5 year old.. 2 doors over, my aunt had rented her 'old house" (she built a new one!!) and this time rented it to this Airline pilot and his family. 3 boys.. Graham (named after dad) but we called him "Pumpy" because his extennded fmily gave him that nick name because he was a "Pompus Ass!!" then there was Garland ... a year or so younger and the caboose was "Guyan" better knowns "Boxer!!" How he got the nick...????
There was a Mulberry tree in the front yard next to the fence! We used the fence s a ladder to et to the Big Fork in the tree about 5 feet AGL... That was our Stage for all our fantasies!! Like fuselage of a airplane that we payed paratroopers from!!! Oh did I mention Pumpy's dad had a "21inch TV .. one of those as they called a Console model like real furnature!!!!! We watched B&W TV from Western's to Outer Space shows!!!! We put on our "Captain Video Goggels that we got of a Cereal Box".. made all kinds of airplane noises and Jumped from he fork of the tree to the ground and lived!!!
"That" is just the tip of the ice berg!!!! Meet me at the BAR!!! for more!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Funny how that goes???
Blue Skyz,
skybill
It was the 1970s for me! Dad would drop me and my other brother off in the Everglades near Tamiami trail! He left us on Friday afternoon and would pick us up on Sunday afternoon! We would usually bring a small alligator or two to show mom! Sence we lived on a lake......she would say just put them in the lake! LOL! No phones, no one or store with 30 miles and we had a blast back then!
ReplyDeleteSheeeeeit, not enough space here
ReplyDeleteThe streetlight was the Bat Signal calling us home. My mom STILL doesn't know just how far we strayed from the neighborhood on our bikes. Dad BUILT the ramp that launched his helmetless children into the air on Stingrays and Ross Barracudas as he took Polaroids and Mom screamed. Neither Mom nor Dad knew about the boat my friend and I built and took out onto the bay in 25MPH winds. ...DAMN, that was stupid... Riding in the bed of a pickup trumped the back of a station wagon any day!
ReplyDelete...And the playgrounds of the 80's couldn't hold a CANDLE to the ones that preceded them in the 50's and 60's!!! Thinking back, I think those structures were DESIGNED to cull the weak from the herd!!!
born in 1970. I'd get dropped off by the schoolbus at the lake, not at my house. I had a fishing pole stashed, and old entrenching tool to dig for worms, and a bucket. if I came home with fish my mom cleaned them and cooked them.
ReplyDeleteat 5 years old I went down Zion Hill Road in salem,NH on my bigwheel. hit a rock most of the way down at top speed, flipped, and walked the bigwheel home with a big dent in that front plastic tire. swapped out the tire later with someone that got an actual bike and didn't need the bigwheel, an did it myself with tools no one kept locked up. no one knew where I was, and so long as I came home and didn't die everything was fine. my mom STILL doesn't know.
All that freedom didn’t make you rebellious it made you action oriented and creative. Good times
ReplyDeleteTry taking your first deer-hunting rifle (somewhere age 8-12) to school for Show&Tell today ...
ReplyDeleteI'm willing to bet most readers of this blog had their childhood in the 50s and 60s, just like myself.
ReplyDeleteYou'd better be close to home when the sun went down, 'cause you'd get tanned if you came home late!
We survived and thrived. When The Balloon Goes up we'll still be here...
Orphan, adopted into a very broken home. 70's kid, graduated HS in 86'. Ft Jackson, 1988. Nuremberg, Iraq, Ft Polk.
ReplyDeleteMarried, divorced, four great kids.
My kids are in their 20's, and I raised them, as a single father, on a farm-chores and school and sports. They're great kids, better than me in most all the ways that matter.
I think many of us blame the kids, as if they had any damn thing to do with how they were raised.
We men are responsible-women will do what we let them, nothing more. Fight if you have to-it's worth it. If they helicopter the kids, we're supposed to be the ATCs. Kids need freedom and risk and danger-it's how they develop the fortitude and independence life demands. You, as their father, are absolutely responsible for providing it to them-just make it survivable, and character-building.
I raised three boys and one girl-I told my ex-herself an only child-"fish swim, birds fly, and boys wrestle". The only rule was "no necks"-other than that, have at it.
And, as far as the 70's went-I was left on streetcorners to be picked up later; nothing like "guidance" or "parenting" occured with any regularity. You had to fight most weeks, or get jumped. Parenting, such as it was, occured when sober, if sober.
I could mix highballs by the time I was 8.
And yet, for the time and the place, my parents gave me what they had to give; they just never had much to start with.
Hurt people hurt other people, often (especially) their loved ones. The strongest try to break the cycle..
And about the 70's/80's-we drank 2 liter bottles of coke with the big box of pizza, and EVERYONE smoked. At the table. I had my 1st beer at 11, and was on every drug I could get by 13. High school was on-your-own; no grade checks, no nothing. Thank god for my drill sergeants-the first grown men who actually cared about my future.
So-did I try to raise my kids like I was raised?
Hell no. I tried to give them better.
How will they raise their kids?
Probably different than I raised them.
I probably screwed up far more than I'll ever know. Parenting, after all, equals guilt. That children love us in spite of ourselves fills me with humility.
So- no generation gets the credit, or the blame, for itself. Their parents do. You get the credit (or the blame) for your children.
So don't blame or belittle the damn kids-they're doing what they can with what we gave them. They're no different than we'd be, were we born when they were.
Stay humble, brethren, and help the kids, and encourage them. Be a part of the solution, not the problem. "OK Boomer" didn't spring out of nowhere. They will be what we encourage in them; greatness and toughness never die-they just go dormant from time to time.
Remember- Far greater men than we are yet to be born. May we live to help guide their path.
So if you're gonna knock the kids, ask-"Who raised them (or didn't?)"