Things I Used As A Kid that Are No More

[jiggs_casey]

Riding you're bike behind the mosquito truck, through the billowing cloud of DDT

OMG! lol I was just talking about this the other day! I grew up in Houston and I remember hearing that buzzing sound the trucks made. You could always hear them coming a couple of blocks out.

It was all good then but, if I EVER saw my son doing that, I would completely flip out...

 

[BogusOwnz]

stitch/wall ball

 

[AnonyBrew]

-- Playing "Kill the man w/ the ball"/"Smear the Qu##r" for hours at a time

lol, I remeber playing these. too funny

 

[olllllo]

How about news reels in the theaters of the closing months of WW2? Or walter Winchel on radio (tv was still in the laboratory stage). Tom Mixx? How about aluminum tax tokens at 3 for a penny. Or a snikers big bar, coke, coffee, or cigar for a nickle....

I live near the Tom Mixx ranch. It is home to my favorite restaurant, Los Dos Molinos.

 

[AnonyBrew]

* Being offered a sip of beer (usually Olympia or Rainier) at family backyard picnics as a kid (7 or 8) by uncles or neighbors just because they thought it was funny to see the bitter beer face I made

* The loud curfew siren that sounded every night around dusk. It seemed to last for 10 min.

* Being allowed to leave the house as a kid and go anywhere you wanted without the parents permission or knowledge of where you were going.

* Coke in bottles from that machine where you had to pull the bottle through a slot to dispense it. It opened like a chest freezer.

* Sling shots that were made to work and lasted for years. Good for killing birds, shooting out windows, or getting even with the class bully.

* Erector sets for building elaborate machines.

* Playing cards for hours on end. Mostly cribbage & rummy. Nobody I know plays cards anymore.

* Mellow Yellow soda pop.

* Various different varieties of cap guns with cool rings or bands of ammo.

* Also played alot with those green army men. I must have had a thousand of those things, and I remember having tanks that were spring loaded that you could shoot at them with.

* Star wars toys. I had a millenium falcon, an X fighter, and darth vader's ship (name escapes me at the moment)

* Making darts out of wooden pencils in school with tape & pins then shooting them all over the walls & leaving them there for the teachers to remove.

* Spit wads & straws for seeing how big of a spit wad ball you could make on the school ceiling above your desk before it gets noticed. Also for annoying the geeks in the front row.

* The old one piece wooden school desks that you could open the top & keep your stuff in and carve doodling in.

I could go on & on......

 

[AnonyBrew]

Visiting friends or family by spontaneously dropping by unannounced & staying for a few hours and feeling welcome. Nobody I know does this anymore and when I do it I can tell it annoys people.

 

[StrangeBlackCat]

Oh, but vinyl is still very much alive. I grew up on tapes and CDs, and I'm slowly but surely making the change to vinyl now. The sound is sooo much better.

Scrolled down to post just this. Vinyl is making a huge comeback. It's the only physical music media I purchase anymore. Long live the vinyl record.

 

[ChshreCat]

I work in the media services department at a college and we just had to buy a new turntable because vinyl is still alive. We got a newfangled one that connects to USB and everything. :rockin:

But we also have three (count'em, THREE) lazerdisc players. Haven't used them in a while, but just in case.

 

[Jakeedaman21]

Playing army in the backyard. Now if kids do it, parents are more likely to worry that the kids a psychopath. Or maybe I am... hmmm...

 

[Homercidal]

We played GUNS all the time when I was a kid. We'd run all over the neighborhood with plastic toy guns shooting each other one by one until there was only one guy left. Even had the guy who owned the house on the corner play with us. But we stopped playing with him when he started disputing the kills. "You can't possibly have killed me with that shot! It's impossible!"

Uh, dude, it's our game and our rules. If you can't play by the rules, you can't play at all. But he was pretty cool otherwise. He had a couple of swords he let us play with. (yeah, no danger there!)

 

[IrregularPulse]

It's funny that a lot of the stuff you older guys are talking about applied to me as well. Besides of course the things like the old school soda machines and stuff, but the neighborhood games with guns and being out at dark and riding my bike all over town and just being home at dark.

 

[jgln]

Scrolled down to post just this. Vinyl is making a huge comeback. It's the only physical music media I purchase anymore. Long live the vinyl record.

Yeah, that is what I hate about CDs, once they develop a bad spot and start to skip you are screwed. That is why I have started making backups.

 

[jgln]

We used to have dirt bomb fights (I think that is what we called them) and when I got a little older water balloon fights.

 

[StrangeBlackCat]

Yeah, that is what I hate about CDs, once they develop a bad spot and start to skip you are screwed. That is why I have started making backups.

Something about owning and playing vinyl just feels better than CDs. When I buy a jewel case with a bit of plastic in it I feel like I'm being ripped off, but I am more than happy to hand over $20 for a double LP.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

Black walnut fights. We'd choose up teams (usually about 5 each), grab a steel garbage can lid for a shield, and a pile of fallen black walnuts. Moms everywhere HATED black walnuts cuz the outer husk gets soft & turns black, staining everything it touches. The street was "no man's land," and we'd throw those things back & forth till we got tired, or till someone got nailed in the eye, then sit down on the curb with a glass of koolaid & be friends again; wondering how much we'd get yelled at when mom saw our stained hands & clothes. Regards, GF.

 

[kjung]

I don't know if this one has been mentioned yet (I'm not THAT bored that I'm going through 22+ pages to find out!) but yesterday I told my kid he was "jumping around like a pauper in a pay toilet!", one of my grandfather's favorite sayings when we were hyper little.....
Try explaining THAT to a kid that's never known life with out cd's, cell phones, video games, cable/satellite TV........................

 

[Homercidal]

Yeah, that is what I hate about CDs, once they develop a bad spot and start to skip you are screwed. That is why I have started making backups.

At least with CDs you have the option to make backups. With vinyl, unless you are meticulous, you soon start to get pops and hissing. Once you get a scratch or it warps you are done. No backup for you!

I still have an LP of E.T. with an image of E.T. on one side and an image of the bike flying over the moon on the other. I remember having a "portable" record player with the turntable that flipped down in the front and detachable speakers. I wore out The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack on that thing!

And I also miss Dr. Demento and Buffalo Dick!

 

[StrangeBlackCat]

At least with CDs you have the option to make backups. With vinyl, unless you are meticulous, you soon start to get pops and hissing. Once you get a scratch or it warps you are done. No backup for you!

Thanks to the internet it's not that hard to find good quality rips of just about every album ever produced. If I buy an album on vinyl I see nothing morally wrong with downloading a FLAC version of the same album for archival purposes.

Records are fairly robust anymore, if you take good care of them I would expect them to last at least as long as a CD. CDs are easily scratched as well.

 

[jgln]

Thanks to the internet it's not that hard to find good quality rips of just about every album ever produced. If I buy an album on vinyl I see nothing morally wrong with downloading a FLAC version of the same album for archival purposes.

Records are fairly robust anymore, if you take good care of them I would expect them to last at least as long as a CD. CDs are easily scratched as well.

Even though the CD "covers" these days don't compare to a full size album I still like to have the album cover to go with the CD. They also sometimes come with words and other pictures and stuff which in nicer than a copied CD with P-Touch labels. I was able to find the CDs I wanted with all that for $12 new so not as cheap as over the internet but nice. Copies are great for the car because they usually go through more abuse. Not easy to take CD in and out of cover while you drive.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

At least with CDs you have the option to make backups. With vinyl, unless you are meticulous, you soon start to get pops and hissing. Once you get a scratch or it warps you are done. No backup for you!

I still have an LP of E.T. with an image of E.T. on one side and an image of the bike flying over the moon on the other. I remember having a "portable" record player with the turntable that flipped down in the front and detachable speakers. I wore out The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack on that thing!

And I also miss Dr. Demento and Buffalo Dick!

Thanks to the internet it's not that hard to find good quality rips of just about every album ever produced. If I buy an album on vinyl I see nothing morally wrong with downloading a FLAC version of the same album for archival purposes.

Records are fairly robust anymore, if you take good care of them I would expect them to last at least as long as a CD. CDs are easily scratched as well.

Lots of todays DJ Grade turntables are USB compatible for MP3 recording direct to a HDD. Best part of that is, no digital copyright/protection flags.

 

[dschof]

I rescued a game of Lawn Darts from my in-laws. We just played over the summer. Everyone was laughing about the sharp tips flying through the air...
We played some Croquet too!

 

[KuntyBrew]

microfiche
dewy decimal system
reel to real
building forts
Oregon Trail
Roman Candle Wars
pay phones only costing 25 cents and at every gas station
not knowing what a Walmart, Kmart, shopko pamida was

look what i found today
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30907784&l=cbe411a2ae&id=1410602546

 

[Bills Brew]

drive in theaters
back seat of the car at drive in theaters
Dog-N-Suds
Car Hops
Car windows that you had to crank to open
George of the Jungle
Sea Hunt
Chemistry sets
Full size chocolate bars on Halloween
Pez
Fizzies
Returnable Beer Bottles
Black & White TV
AM Radio Music - No such thing as FM
The Cubs in Last Place
Vince Lombardi
Full size Electric Trains
Plastic seat covers
Getting whacked in school by the principal and then getting whacked when at home
The teachers had authority and respect
Being taught how to diagram sentences
High schools that taught Latin

 

[Shooter]

Full size Electric Trains

Full size?!!? Man, your train set ROCKED!!!

FYI, did you hear they're cancelling latin?

 

[flyboy]

Slide rule.

I still use a slide rule when I go flying. Never once had a battery die in one.

 

[Mermaid]

video arcades (I'm not talking a couple of first person shooters and a Dance Dance Revolution game - I'm talking about Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pac Man, and Donkey Kong!)

Good Humor ice cream trucks with the jingley bells

and what Bills Brew said.. AM Radio!

I remember listening to WLS and WCFL AM when I was a kid. I also have very fond memories of listening to the Cubs games on the radio while I was swimming in our above ground swimming pool in the back yard. Ahhhh nostalgia.

 

[alaskanmoosehunter]

The best outdoor game ever!

+ 1 on Lawn Darts!

Try finding that game in the stores now. Nothing like kids chucking heavy, large steel darts toward each other.

 

[ChshreCat]

I still use a slide rule when I go flying. Never once had a battery die in one.

Reminds me of one of our math instructors complaining about the electronic workstations we're putting in classrooms when all he wants is a chalkboard... "If that thing breaks, your class stops. If you break your chalk, you've doubled your productivity!"

 

[Homercidal]

I found Lawn Darts in my seldom-seen bottom drawer of this and thats. But I don't have the plastic rings to toss them into. I guess I'm screwed.

 

[Hang Glider]

I found Lawn Darts in my seldom-seen bottom drawer of this and thats. But I don't have the plastic rings to toss them into. I guess I'm screwed.

Hula-Hoop?