Not that we're old....

[Romulus111VADT]

I use to dearly love the weekly ice cream truck that came by our house. Mom would send me after her favorite toffee ice cream and I got to get my favorite ice cream at the time for getting my mom her ice cream.

Every so often, we have an ice cream truck that comes by my house today and oh the memories....

We also would have a Santa come by our house every Christmas on a fire engine. He would toss candy canes to all the kids.

A true dentist nightmare scenario, but God it was good!

[TacitBlue]

Its really sad, if someone dressed as santa today gave candy to kids, he would get thrown in jail.

[Romulus111VADT]

Its really sad, if someone dressed as santa today gave candy to kids, he would get thrown in jail.

Your probably right on that. Or he'd get sued if a candy cane just happened to hit a kid.  ::)

It was such a treat to see him coming down through our sub-division. We could hear the fire engine siren blast as he entered the area and at the start of each block before the fire engine would start down the block. Kids on each block would run after the truck on either side of the road on the sidewalks and scoff up as many candy canes as they could get.  ;D

Heck, today, they'd probably get into trouble for disturbing the peace with the siren alone.  ::)

[raz]

I'm a couple years younger than most of you guys commenting here, as I'm only 19, but I was fortunate enough to grow up in pretty much the same way.  I remember in my early years (up to about eight) the Circus Train would make a brief stop at our little old town on it's way to Milwaukee.  I was simply in awe at the brightly colored wagons and train cars.  Then, I can't remember the year exactly, they changed the route to go through the larger cities.  What a shame...

[mosquito633]

hehe,, My cuts a bruises came from experimentation with push bikes and slides.. oh and cardboard boxes on the side of a hill!!!!! im only 18 but ahhhhhhhhhh great times

i went cardboard boxing down a hiill once and smacked into a tree at the bottom( i just wana say turning is impossible!!)

lol

cheers

[Paz]

[mosquito633]

hahahaha are you sure ur mother never knew????


mothers know everything dont forget!!!!..... My mum always has some telepathic way of knowing if ive been causing mischief!


hehehehehehe the memories, and new memories are created every day

lol as im just a youngin

[Hagar]

It seems to me from reading this thread and considering the different age groups represented here that most kids still get to be kids with all the experimental daredevil stuff going on,

I'm sure children haven't changed but the circumstances have, at least in my country. I still live in the area where I grew up but now it's very rare to see young children out on their own, either playing with their friends or walking to & from school as we used to do. I walked unaccompanied to school from the age of 5 & thought nothing of it. Most children nowadays are driven to & from the school gates by car, even if they live within walking distance. (My parents never had a car.) The children's playgrounds with old-fashioned swings, roundabouts & climbing frames that I used to love are a thing of the past. The ones that survive are surrounded by security fencing & no child would be allowed to play there without a parent being present. The swings are made of some light flexible stuff so nobody gets hurt & the area below them seems to be of soft matting, not the concrete I was always grazing my knees & elbows on. (Not that I'm suggesting this is a bad thing.) No parent today would allow a young child anywhere near a public park. This is all mainly due to the fear of them being attacked by some pervert. There were a few funny folk around in my day but we all knew who they were & steered clear of them. I had never heard the word paedophile nor had any idea of what it meant. It's easy to criticise the parents but if I had young children I would probably feel the same way myself.

What I regret is that these children no longer know the innocent freedom we knew in my young days from the age of 6 or 7. I'm not talking about teenagers. During the school holidays my Mum would pack us a few sandwiches in a brown paper bag & a bottle of drink. Then we would be free to roam wherever we wished, usually on our trusty bikes. Nobody knew where we were although there were plenty of options around here. We could usually be found on the beach, up on the Downs (the local hills) or anywhere in between getting up to all sorts of mischief. Providing we were home in time for tea nobody asked where we were going or made any sort of conditions except "Be careful". Today a young child would not be allowed out on a bike on the road outside their front gate, let alone on the main road, as it's too dangerous. I wouldn't risk riding a bike myself these days. That's what I feel that young children today are missing out on.

[Spitty42]

I wish i grew upo in the years you guys are talking about, i ahve alwsys envied peolpe who did, except those in N.Z., casue that would have sucked.

But yes yuo are all my heros's lol. I believe the youth of today are being brought up the wrong way with pussy television and playstation.
It reminds of an amuseing and shocking anecdote, where we askeed this kid to get out in the sunshine because he spent his summer holidays playing Grand theft auto 8 times, and he replied " it does not compute" but hey thats a funny answer yes but he was dead seroius!!

Luckily i was brought up in a very old fashioned manner and played wiht go acrts and fell out of trees breaking my arm.Yes mossie being 18 is great. Hill sides on boxes was  always fun but on your stomache was better, it gave you grass stains and other such misfortuness but it was all part of the fun hahaha.

I have friends who sat inside in their youth and didnt touch a tree and wouldnt have a clue how to climb one. I feel i ahve been bi**hing and im sorry but i enjoyed my youth even though it was in an age of computers!

Thanx

[mosquito633]

Hahahahahah spitty are u nuts!
on your belly, thats just crazy like with all those hidden rocks and other such bumps.  But mud is the real think to slide on with your belly
unless of course theres a stick there......good old mud slides.....*sigh*.Im gona go outside and create one right now..sure its 11pm but it'll be worth it
lol

cheers

[Spitty42]

Yea can i come over and play on it? i was never concerned woith too much pain in my youth and i ahve certainly i lower tolerance now so lets get started hahah

Cheers

[mosquito633]

sure but bring a spade and some peppermint slice.And be sure to bike over.  Which brings me to a point.  Todays teenage youth only seem to wana drive cars!  Wats wrong with walking or a good old chopper bike??

Here in NZ we have an add campaign going to promote people getting active
its called 30minutes a day..
its basically inspiring kids to get out and be active for at least 30mins a day

is there anything like that anywhere else??

[Spitty42]

Lol yea speaking of which, i know somebody who cant be botthered catching a bus casue it is too far to walk hahaha, yea lol.

[beaky]

You've hit a nerve, there, fly2e...  aside from some storm clouds in the household, and getting picked on a lot, my suburban  childhood was pretty bucolic, and yes, full of peril... it's amazing that I never even broke a bone as a kid: tree climbing, extreme sledding, bicycle stunts, firecrackers, fire, wild animals, rock-throwing, and those crazy go-carts!!... hell, we used to play on the RR tracks!! And all that model glue... whew!!  But we had a lot of fun. I usually got at least one of the toys I wanted every Xmas, but  there were no PCs, no video games, etc... we watched plenty of TV on Saturday morning, but there were only 7 channels, and good ol' Dad didn't get a color TV until I was... what? Ten? He actually borrowed one first to see if it was worth it... And I got 25 cents a week allowance until I was about 12!! Mind you, you could get sick on $1 worth of candy back then, but...  We often had to use our imagination, and I think it did me a lot of good. It's sad what's gone, like getting wonderful homemade treats from the neighbors on Halloween; things like that. One of the things I miss the most was the daily sight of beautiful mid-to-late sixties automobiles (they were new then); I still think that period was the apex of industrial design in the USA.  Thanks for reminding me of how good I had it.  ;D
Another thought: if only I'd known what those Hot Wheels and GI Joes would be worth today, I'd have taken better care of them...

[Hagar]

See what I mean? You're no different to what I was. The spirit's still there but you got out of the habit of enjoying yourselves.

Here in NZ we have an add campaign going to promote people getting active
its called 30minutes a day..
its basically inspiring kids to get out and be active for at least 30mins a day

is there anything like that anywhere else??

This sounds a good start but it doesn't go far enough. 30 minutes is nothing. It would probably have taken us longer than that just deciding on what to do & where to do it.  Then we had to get to wherever it was we decided to go.

I fondly remember playing floodlight cricket on summer evenings after it got dark. We used a street lamp at the top of my road as the floodlight & the wicket.