To those of us who survived the '50s, '60s and '70s

[dlbpharmd]

I remember visiting some of my mother's family who had outhouses. These people didn't even have running water in their homes until the early '80s.

[Cail]

Anyone else here own Lawn Darts?

Anyone else still got 'em?

[californiababy]

Some of the protections we have now are good. One of my friends blew his hand off with an M80 when we were little kids. I hate fireworks to this day.

[MsMary]

Who here actually had an Outhouse?

The only time I've used an outhouse has been when camping.

[lurch]

...Did someone say " Out House"? recalled as the " goobie"?

Yes, Grandparents had a cottage on the river. As was the fashion of the whole area of cottages,,outhouse marked the outer border of ones property. Apply the Lime as required. Count the seconds. If there were any that was a good goobie. If there were none,,oh oh.

And in there lays a story worth repeating. Since we're talking of simpler times,any recall the game of " sardines". In hide and seek,,everybody hides and one seeks. Sardines, is just the opposite. One hides and everybody seeks. When a seeker finds the one,,the seeker must hide with.
Perhaps the quick thinkers are already there. Raise your hands if you have put two and number two together already.

The neighbor of my grandparents ,,up there on cottage row,,did not visit his get away very often and therefore up keep was minimum. Now, on this weekend, my grandparents six daughters and all 20+ grandchildren and attending fathers where there at the cottage to enjoy the cool shade and cool river water. Having an aunt who was like a Major General in the Red Cross, dictated it would be an hour after supper, before we where allowed back into the river, so what to do?

A tight family game of sardines it was to be. One of the eldest cousins drew straw to be the first one to go hide. At that time, she was at that age, where other things were begining to call to her than being with family. I believe anyway, she sought revenge for being forced to be with the Family. Her mother was the Major General.

All of us shut our eyes, counted to 60,, then began looking for cousin Sandy. There was the accepted parameters of about 50 yds in any direction, and as i scouted around, over time, i noticed a body here then there missing from the search. Apparently some had been successful in locating her. The process of elimination( truelly an unfortunate choice of words, as you'll see soon) had it down to just one or two places left to look, for ,,by that time, just me and my sister, who happens to be the same age as me. The unthinkable occured to her and me at the same time. Maybe it was the choking and gasping we heard But , her and myself, knew where everybody else was hiding...in the neighbors goobie.

I was amazed at this realization for multitude of reasons. How could all those folks fit in such a small( two holer_) goobie? And , didn't they know the common knowledge fact that that goobie was ..filled to the brim?,,and not serviced with any lime , for months?

Now ,,some might not beaware of this little known phenomina,,but Twins can be psychic.....Anybody already there? ..let me help you. I discovered something about my sister,,and she discovered something about me. We both had a devilish side. At that instance of realizing where everyone was hiding,,I saw a secondary realization in her,,and she saw the same in me.
There were soooooooooo many places to look , that we hadn't thought of yet. Yes, just me and her, wandering around, " hey sis, did you look behind the tree? No , did you happen to look behind the rocking chair? No sister, but lets go check, just in case.." In our ears we heard anguish and torment, pleas for forgiveness, ; was that somebody puking?

I recall hiding behind my grandmothers flower bed. We peeked thru the petals and leaves and watched the neighbors goobie shake and tremble. Hidieous sounds of tortured cries placated out thru the halfmoon on the door. Sandy, our baby sitter who gave us what we later found out to be chocolate covered crickets,,and candied ants,,our babysitter cousin who introduced us to gag fake vomit and doggie doo..at our expense,,Sandy ,,we love you. You can't leave us. Put wax in your ears and be tied to the mast. Don't listen to the call of else. We love you sandy. Stay with Us, just awhile longer.

Well, time waits for no one. Soon, the half mooned door exploded open and bodys green and red , choking and gasping came out of the crap house like clowns out of a VW at the circus. As I recall,, that was the last " all family" game of sardines played. Some put me and sis on the eternal sh*t list ever since. But,,me and sis and Sandy,,to this day,,have a bit of a special knowing relationship,,, to this day....MEL

[drew]

My father, and my wife's mother and father all grew up with outhouses..in fact her grandmother used one right up until her death about 5 years ago, she was in her 90's.

My father remembers when they had an icebox, remebers the wood burning stove for cooking, and that there was no garbage collection, everyone just had a mini dump in their back yard!! And he's only in his 50's.

[dlbpharmd]

For some reason, food always tasted better when cooked on a wood burning stove.

[Worm of Despite]

Off topic, but that reminds me: during the blizzard that hit Georgia in 1993, my family had no power, and a friend of my dad's who was visiting the house got stuck with us. We had to cook our food in the fireplace. I didn't get sick, thankfully, but I recall my mom and my dad's friend throwing up through most of the night.

[dlbpharmd]

Why? Were you unable to cook the food properly?

[duchess of malfi]

Some of my aunts and uncles down in West Viginia did have outhouses (and one got water from a spring house, so no running water at all) when I went to visit them as a kid.

And some of those who did have flush toilets had no septic/sewer. The toilet would flush and the untreated waste would be piped right into the nearest stream.

So you would be sitting in the beautiful yard of the house of one of my aunts (they were avid gardeners, and had lovely yards with the beautiful mountain stream running right through the middle) -- and you'd see some poop and tp floating on down the creek...

[Worm of Despite]

Why? Were you unable to cook the food properly?

I didn't cook it. It's strange; I ate the same thing, didn't bother me, but they got sick. Eh, it was 1993. Lots of strange things during that year.

[[Syl]]

Man, I grew up in the sticks in Nevada. Some of the things we did to keep ourselves entertained (before we discovered alcohol, drugs, or sex... my small town, Fernley, once had the nation's highest teen pregnancy rate)...

I walked the railroad tracks all the time. Skipping one rail, two... seeing how long you could walk on the rail. Literally miles of this, every day, especially in the summer. I never heard of anyone getting hit (maybe because it's the open desert?), though I did once find half of a cat... and then several yards later found the other half.

Fun with sheds. Going through my friend Dave's shed we found two items of interest. Kerosene and an old doorknob. Dave decided to put the kerosene in the doorknob, then light it. Looked like a little lamp. Cool... for about a minute, anyway. Did I mention it was a metal doorknob? Well, since it's burning Dave's hand, he goes to throw it out the open door. His aim was fine, but since the doorknob spun in mid-air... flaming kerosene all over the kitchen. Floor, counters, cabinets. We just quickly put it all out with an old army blanket. The scorch marks were so faint, I don't think Dave's dad ever noticed.

We never played bombardment, but we did have Butts Up. Kind of like raquetball, but if you didn't catch the ball after touching it or if went between your legs, you had to stand up facing the wall, and the person who picked up the ball after that got to throw it at you as hard as they could. We also played Smear the Queer. One guy has the ball and everybody else lynches him until he drops it.

Rock fights. Heh, we had those all the time, though dirt clod fights were usually more fun. I even remember having a cow patty fight once. One thing about Nevada, there are irrigation ditches everywhere. One day, my best friend Dan (whose wedding I went to last year) and I were on opposite sides of this big empty ditch. He had a cache of dirt clods and rocks and had me pinned down under the lip. I have nothing, but out of the corner of my eye I see an empty six-pack of Bud. I stand up with two bottles in each hand. The look of fear and amazement comes over Dan's face. I throw my bottles, he throws the rocks he has in his hand, we both duck... and see the bottles break in mid-air.

When we were older we took to fighting with staffs (staves?) we carved ourselves. We tried inventing our own martial arts. We raced three-wheelers.

Not a whole lot of playgrounds, but there were always construction sites which were more fun anyway. We'd make slides out of the dirt faces of bulldozed hills or big pieces of sheet metal.

When we went hiking in the mountains, we'd dare eachother how far to go into abandoned mines.

And my parents complained when I wanted to 'waste my time sitting inside watching TV' or "playing that damned Nintendo."

[Vector]

Thanks Sylvanus,

Again an excellent example of how laxer restrictions, though less safe, still fostered imagination.

I feel sorry for my kids growing up in this world where everything is so protected. Even though they are more likely to survive, physically, are they going to be better people also ? I doubt it.

[CovenantJr]

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it

Is this not normal? All those things apply to me...

[Worm of Despite]

Thanks Sylvanus,

Again an excellent example of how laxer restrictions, though less safe, still fostered imagination.

I feel sorry for my kids growing up in this world where everything is so protected. Even though they are more likely to survive, physically, are they going to be better people also ? I doubt it.

I'm sure 30 years from now my generation will be saying something similar about the young'uns. Personally, I think the next generation will turn out just fine and possibly be responsible for some major social and technological advances. Or maybe we'll all start eating dirt pies again.

[Vector]

[quote="Lord Foul]I'm sure 30 years from now my generation will be saying something similar about the young'uns. Personally, I think the next generation will turn out just fine and possibly be responsible for some major social and technological advances. Or maybe we'll all start eating dirt pies again.[/quote]

See, you are part of the next generation, and already you are deluding yourself, groveler...

[High Lord Tolkien]

And my parents complained when I wanted to 'waste my time sitting inside watching TV' or "playing that damned Nintendo."

Hahahaha.....!

"Butts up" sounds familiar.
I think we played something similar, I'll have to ask my older brother (my family's childhood guru).
And you reminded me about our rail walking contests too.

[Worm of Despite]

[quote="Lord Foul]I'm sure 30 years from now my generation will be saying something similar about the young'uns. Personally, I think the next generation will turn out just fine and possibly be responsible for some major social and technological advances. Or maybe we'll all start eating dirt pies again.

See, you are part of the next generation, and already you are deluding yourself, groveler... [/quote]

Well, If you guys had grown up around video games and all these new-fangled contraptions, you'd be caught up in 'em too. Heck, isn't posting on the Internet "beaming entertainment" into your eyes, eh? Nah, none of you guys ever watch television, either? You people are true Arcadian rustics, let me tell you! Philosopher-shepherds, yes! Not being sanctimonious at all!

[Encryptic]

Heh....I was born in '79, so I just *barely* qualify to post in this thread, I suppose.

Syl: Are you sure you're not one of my multiple personalities? Your childhood sounds eerily familiar, including the small town in BFE with nothing to do...

I played my fair share of Nintendo in my day, but we still got up to plenty of stuff outside.

- Playing Butts Up with my friends who lived across the street, using their garage door. Of course, we used to wing the ball as hard as we could at the poor sap who touched the garage door last....

- Digging a massive hole for a fort in the vacant lot next door to my parents house. At the zenith of our hole-digging stage, we had a huge hole about 5 feet deep and 10 feet long by 5 feet wide, before we hit granite that pretty much halted our excavation efforts. We even had a "bridge" of earth over the center of the hole for a while that held up pretty well until I decided to shelter under it one afternoon when it started raining. Another kid decided to walk across the bridge.....Needless to say, I ran inside the house absolutely covered in mud and jumped in the shower with all my clothes on....

- Catching crawdads in the pond near the bus stop. We usually let them go afterwards, but one time we gathered up a bunch of them and boiled them for dinner. They actually were pretty good and tasted almost exactly like lobster (not surprisingly...)

- Riding in a wagon down a really steep dirt slope behind my parent's house. Looking back on it, I'm still amazed we didn't wipe out bigtime, considering how steep that hill was. Think "San Francisco" and you'll have a good idea of how steep it was....

- Rollerblading down a steep street near my parent's house and playing roller hockey on a side street.

- Climbing the hills behind my parent's house up to a rock formation we used to call "Cave Rock" because there were two huge rocks that leaned against each other and formed a cramped little tunnel.

- Trespassing on construction sites and stealing lumber and whatnot for fort-building materials (Yes, I was a little punk on occasion in my youth)

- Building dirt ramps to jump our bikes off of. I'm still amazed that I wasn't killed much less seriously injured when my brother and one of our friends decided to dig a hole in front of the ramp (without my knowledge), then told me to go off the ramp on my bike. According to them, I went ass-over-teakettle and landed on my stomach in the middle of the vacant lot we were in. I was stunned for a moment but after I recovered, I was perfectly fine....

[[Syl]]

Heh, well it all depends on who's the primary personality, eh? Sounds pretty similar indeed.

For instance, a friend and I found my mom's boyfriend's pellet gun. We hunted crawdads with it... until it rusted.

Oooh, riding on handle bars. One time I'm riding Dan on my bike. He's reading my copy of the Belgariad, carrying it with him, so I tell him be very careful not to drop it. On the way to my house there was a small shortcut down a dirt hill. I tell Dan to hang on. He does, but the book slips out of his hand. He leans forward to catch it... and falls off the handle bars. Lands face down spread eagle in front of me. I try to miss him, but his legs are already on both sides of the front wheel. Think maybe I can make it over his leg... nope. Bike goes down and I think it took us at least five minutes to untangle ourselves. Nevermind the time I tried steering with my feet... though I did once manage to make it all the way up a 40 degree hill that covered three blocks without hands.

I still have many pale scars on arms, elbows, and knees from various bike, three-wheeler, dirt bike, and rollerblade wrecks (why is it you never wreck when you're wearing protective gear?)

Hmm, used to have a 22 single shot I got for Christmas when I was ten. One day I walk into my room to find my brother and his friend sitting there, and my brother's friend has the rifle. He points it at me and shoots. I see a flame come down the barrel at me, and I'm sure I'm dead. A second later I realize nothing had happened. After I soundly beat my brother and his friend, I found out they removed the slug and most of the powder from the shell. A few weeks later it was broken when my mom changed her mind at the last minute and used it as a club on the side of her boyfriend's truck. *shrug*