[csa]

On another thread, a few of us kind of hijacked that thread remembering things we did as children. Let's have fun memories of the things we used to do!

I used to "borrow" a few cards from my mother's deck, and some clothes pins (the old wooden ones). Bend the cards around the fender brace on front & back wheels, & secure the card with the clothes pins. The more cards you used, the louder your "motorcycle" sounded! Was great until my mom tried to play solitaire, with several cards missing!

We also used to stomp on tin cans, so that they would fit around the soles of our shoes, then pretend we were riding horses, & clomp around.

Your turn!

[ChrisPlatt]

Playing cards were more durable, but we used baseball cards.
They were more plentiful and didn't have to be "borrowed".

I also remember burning holes in them, the player's eyes especially, with a magnifying glass.

Such fun!

Chris

[Unregistered User 8]

If I close my eyes and listen very carefully, I can hear you clomping around Carol !! My brother is 5 years older than me, so when he was about 10 and realised that the world can hurt, he convinced me ( as big brothers can ) to be his " crash test dummy. " From billy carts with no brakes, to jumping out of trees, he would get me to go 1st. If I survived, he would go next. I must remember to take him out of my will !!

[paulh]

Yup, did the playing card "motorcycle" trick. My parents got tired of buying new decks of cards and suggested I cut the "cards" from old cereal boxes. They worked, but I didn't get as many miles out of those cereal boxes

Did anyone else (guys, mostly) safety-pin a towel around your neck, so it became a "cape"? We were all running around with our capes, play/fighting as Superman, Batman, etc. I was always Captain America, with my garbage-can lid "shield".

[WPRESTO]

We did the same thing with cards and clothes pins.

Cap guns were common back then, but we wanted something louder, so we used to smack a full roll of caps on the sidewalk with a hammer, and tried it with two, three, and four rolls (two stacks of two rolls side by side). If you hit them right, nearly all would go off with a satisfying bang, a slight back-push on the hammer, and a starburst black powder burn on the sidewalk.

We tried flying kites in the street, but with inland wind and big maple trees all down the street only rarely did one get properly air born (a lot of Charlie Brown frustration). However I had a sort of kite-plane, It was made of some very thin, light, stiff cellophane-like material and was mirror-silver bright. The wings were held by a stiff metal rod around which they could spin (hard to describe the wing shape, but if you looked at them from the tip toward the plane's fuselage, they'd be S-shaped with the support rod dead center). The plane came with a very short wooden fishing-pole-like device that had a very simple winding reel for a very thin string. If there were any sort of steady breeze, holding the plane up would get the wings spinning vigorously, let out the string and up it would go, no running. Very simple and much easier to fly than any kite I had as a kid.

[arnold]

I remember choosing a pew in church that was in the sun. That way I could put my magnifying glass to good use. After I set the hymn book on fire, my mother was not so insistent that I go to Sunday school. I managed to get my loyal sister to recover the magnifying glass from the minister a while later.

[WPRESTO]

Need I say more than: magnifying glass and ants? Barry, in Peter Pan, remarked on the "beautiful cruel children," too young and innocent to understand how wicked they could beet.

[arnold]

Need I say more than: magnifying glass and ants? Barry, in Peter Pan, remarked on the "beautiful cruel children," too young and innocent to understand how wicked they could beet.

Yes, I cringe at some of my memories.

[ChrisPlatt]

I was obsessed with fireworks, and finding novel uses for them.
Though illegal in New York City they were commonly available.
IIRC the biggest dealer in my neighborhood was a boy my age,
the son of a NYPD officer who had probably confiscated them.

The adult men on my block always staged a fireworks display on the night of July 4th.
The climax of the show always included a metal garbage can filled with fireworks.
For weeks afterward I spent my time searching for "duds",
then risking life and limb trying to put them to good use.

By the end of July though I'd have to resort to the usual summer pastimes,
riding bikes, playing catch, scully and other street games.
We'd have to stop when several times a day a car would drive down our street.
More often than not it was a police car on patrol. Everyone else was at work!

I was pretty popular as we had an above-ground swimming pool in our backyard...

Chris

[robtcorl]

I was obsessed with fireworks, and finding novel uses for them.

I'm talking 1950's, small town, for my childhood.
We made our own fireworks from saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur.

Our spending money came from collected soda pop bottles, I think deposit on them was 2 cents.
Another source was loose change found in a couch or chair.

Mornings before school we played left-handed baseball.
If you were right handed you had to field, throw, and bat left handed, vice versa if left handed.
I got pretty good at batting, but threw the ball like a girl, no offense to our lady members

We had BB guns, and none of us ever shot our eye out, but tin cans hated us.

[WPRESTO]

I had a friend for a few years, Todd, who was a rascal. Soda delivery trucks were open affairs with wood cases of green-glass Coke bottle stacked on each side. He'd walk along when when was making a delivery, and quick as possible snatch several bottles and toss them into the tall weeds of an adjacent vacant lot (winters into the snow), and keep walking. If nothing happened, he'd eventually turn around, walk back past the truck and snatch a few more the same way. After the truck left, he'd collect the soda and drink, then take the empties, and if he had five (his goal number), turn them in for two cents each, which would be a dime to purchase yet another.

[timb64]

Damming streams,building dens from construction materials on building sites(completely unsecured in the UK in the early '70s),starting bonfires and incinerating everything from old paint tins to aerosols it's suprising I made it to adulthood(hate to think of the carcinogens I accidentally inhaled)!

[gaweidert]

When we were kids, we had a small grove of maple trees in our yard. There were at the edge of an overgrown area and had a lot of suckers growing up from the base of the tree. We discovered that if we got on the suckers we could bend them and travel from tree to tree. So one day a bunch of us are out there swinging from tree to tree doing our best Tarzan yells. My mother comes out see what all the ruckus is all about. She stands there watching us for a few minutes and then says, "You'll never convince me we aren't descended from apes." and goes back in the house. Miss you mom.

Playing Tarzan, belly whoppers, climbing trees my father was about to cut down so we could ride them down. Great days.

Going down a slide and landing on my butt and cracking my back. Never told my parents as they had enough to worry about. I was 9 or 10. Told my parents that I didn't want to play baseball that summer ( I didn't tell that that I could not run because of the pain. ) Thought about it this morning while shoveling some heart attack snow and my lower back started it's old long familiar aching. Happened about 55 years ago. I have just dealt with ever since.

TV's that took 5 minutes to warm up. Radios were quicker. My old Panasonic AM/FM radio I got when I was 15 is still going strong a half century later and sitting on top of our refrigerator.

Maybe we need to get out some rocking chairs.

[paulh]

Maybe we need to get out some rocking chairs.

You got that right!

I also used to sit on the curb with a hammer and rolls of caps. I never did recover my hearing...

I used to keep a small spiral notebook with morse code symbols - my secret-spy book - lol. We used to pass "secret" notes in grade school that way.

[robtcorl]

Almost forgot about pea shooters.
We never went anywhere without 'em.