Tocky on 26/8/2017 at 06:06

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We had a game we called "herding cans". Whenever we were just out walking with a group of friends we would start kicking cans from roadside ditches along the street. The farther we walked the more cans there were and the harder it was to keep them all going the same direction. It made an awful racket and was more fun than you would imagine. It also cleaned up the neighborhood.

I don't mean to make out like we were goody goody. Hardly. We also did things like waiting in the deep ditch where the streetlight cast a shadow to hide in and cars had to stop at a crossing. We would wait for the local sheriff to come along then throw a string of lit firecrackers on his hood and run in different directions only to meet back up at the cemetery. We also snuck up on him and scotched all his tires with bricks then cut doughnuts on our dirt bikes in front of him to get him to chase us and laughed when he couldn't move. Bad was always much more fun.

Nicker on 27/8/2017 at 14:59

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[video=youtube;Xe1a1wHxTyo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo[/video]

montag on 29/8/2017 at 02:41

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Growing up we also roamed our neighborhood at will, and most family's had "dinner bells". I still have ours, it's a huge cow-bell that you can hear for miles. No one had AC then, so in the summer we would sleep with all the windows and doors open, and even in the winter we never locked our doors. When we were bored with our neighborhood we would hop on a freight train to a place called Tri-County where there was a Mall. Malls back then were a bunch of separate stores grouped together, like a Mall now, but with outdoor walkways between them. Over time covered walkways popped up, and finally the giant sprawling horrors that are the modern Mall appeared. Also, those walkways (and everywhere else) were littered with can tabs. That's right you kids, drink cans had tabs that came off of the can! There was a cinema there that showed movies at midnight. They cleverly called that Midnite Movies, and you could smoke (anything) and bring in beer. There was a cop on duty always, but he would only get official if a fight broke out, and even then you had to really be an ass to get thrown out. I only remember one time when he actually went full policeman, and even then he let us off because he knew us, and knew we never really started any trouble. He called in a couple of other officers, and the other guys got hauled off by them. Oh, and those trains we would use to get around, they had conductors, and some of them carried guns! They hung out in the last car of all trains, and the story was that they would shoot you with shotguns loaded with salt. I never heard of anyone being shot by them, but I had seen them holding guns. They knew we were on the train, but they never seemed to care. I was born in 1965, so I was too young for the Vietnam and Korean wars and too old for the first Gulf War. My father had a small trucking company and we had one driver who was a really funny, and always joking around. He used to babysit me and my brothers when my parents would go out. I remember when he suddenly was not around anymore, he had been drafted into the Vietnam war. I remember when he came back a couple of years later, he didn't smile or laugh for years. Speaking of which, I'm so old I still have my Selective Service paperwork, when I was young, every male had to register for the draft. Speaking of war, while I was in primary school, we had drills in case of atomic war. We were trained to duck under our desks at school, 'cause of course that would save you from a nuclear bomb.

edit:I also remember being taught about paragraphs and such, but I have clearly forgotten all those rules of grammar.

st.patrick on 29/8/2017 at 15:51

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Chalk one up for Team East of Iron Curtain.
I remember getting a rotary phone sometime around '87 or so, and the first phone number our apartment had just 6 digits (and an extension if you wanted to call long distance), because there weren't that many phones in the country to warrant more until about a decade later. I remember the number to this day, 490 477.
Ice cream cost around a nickel, then they jacked up the prices to something like a dime. I had weekly allowance equivalent to one quarter in today's currency.
My dad used to send me out with a big jug to bring beer from a nearby pub when he had some friends visiting. I was maybe six or seven, and no eyebrows were raised ever.
Our first car had been made ten years before I was born, and it only had waist belts on the front seats. It overheated regularly on every sunny summer day. This made for some interesting (and long) road trips.
We used to leave our shoes in front of the doors of our apartment, and they wouldn't be stolen. Who'd steal a pair of crusty old shoes anyway?
Kids like me spent afternoons after school roaming the neighborhood on our rusty BMX bikes. If you haven't jammed a bit of cardboard (later plastic) to rattle on the wires in the rear rim, you weren't cool. Bike helmets were a thing worn by professional bike racers.
Milk was sold in plastic bags until maybe '94 or so. That was pretty much the only grocery item sold in plastic packaging. Most of the other stuff was wrapped in paper, or sold in glass or metal containers. Shops didn't sell plastic bags, and we carried a textile or string bag when we went shopping.
I didn't understand why my parents wouldn't let me participate in an evening walk with homemade paper lamps in early November. I had no idea what the Glorious October Revolution was about, or even why the walk was organized in November. I just wanted to make my own light, but I was told "maybe on another occasion".
For quite some time, I thought "communist" was an insult that meant something like dirty, sleazy, or insidious. I also understood that the word was not to be spoken outside family members.
I haven't felt particularly old until earlier this year, when my mother commented on my beard (of all things) getting some grey hairs. I thought they might be just pale blonde :(
I was born too late to explore the world, and too early to explore the galaxy, but perhaps at the right time to witness some tremendous changes around me. It's almost incomprehensible to me how much of mental distance there is in some regards between myself and "kids" who are just a decade younger.
Also, if you've been born post 2000, you're a kindergartener to me.

Medlar on 31/8/2017 at 00:10

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I'm so old I remember the first digital calculator some future geek bought to school and I was sat in front of a black and white tv when England won the football world cup. On the same tv watched Armstrong and Aldrin walk the moon. One of my chores was to pick up after the milk mans horse... I was free to roam the deepest darkest depths of Cornwall with little to no parental control. Coastal fishing trips for days at a time, hitch hiking "up country" and back... Happy days...