Crazy Things Boomer Kids Did in the Past

One of the 50s thing was playing outside. When I was 9, on summer vacation, I left my house at about 8 AM, around noon, my mom yelled and I had lunch, staying home only long enough to eat. Same thing for supper. When the streetlights came on around 9 PM , I wondered home. My parents had absolutely no ideas where I was during that more than 12 hours. Today's '"helicopter" parents would have freaked out. I don't know why that didn't register with my parents. It's not like things weren't happening. I had a 16 year old cousin, who just vanished. They found his car, and that's all.
 

The thing I remembered as a child is not only we spent most of the day outside, but if I was out of eyesight of mom then there was always some other parent of a friend keeping an eye on me. Also what I remember if I ever got out of line or was ever disrespectful and my mom wasn't around and it was in front of another parent they would handle it by confronting me about my behavior. Now they would never hit me or anything like that, but definitely they would let me know of my wrong doings and my mom would certainly hear about it. Nowadays if another parent does that the kids throw a fit and say they are going to sue them and stuff like that.
 
I started leaving home on my own at age two. I would walk out of my parents five acres around a bend in the road to a house set way back in the trees. They had a Collie dog.

My mother would be embarrassed when the Collie owner called and she had to go get me, so they got me an Irish Setter for my third birthday.

I still have fond memories of that Collie. There's nothing like a nap on a sunny day on top of a collie.

Kind of like this. Oh yeah.
 
As a teenager I would walk one mile every morning around 8:00 AM to the beach and walk back in the afternoon in time to watch the soap, Another World. After supper, I had to help clean up and wash dishes and then my brother would pick me up and we'd go back to the beach where all our friends were hanging out around the pier. This went on from about spring break to Labor Day. Where were my parents? They both worked and didn't have any idea where or what we were doing.
 
I grew up in a small town where everybody knew everybody and their business....my mother was the Principal of the Elementary school...so it was expected that her daughters were prim and proper at all times...well the older one was...but the one with the long braids you could tell she was a hand full...they just did not understand that I got bored easy and had to find fun in the oddest places....there was a rope in the balcony of the church when you pulled on it the ladder would come down...when the church was quiet I would coax my friends to come up there with me...there were statues and old stuff....that was fun....swimming in the canal was also fun....boy I gave those gossips food for talk...
 
I always told my mom where I was going. I'd say I was going over to play with Gail but what she didn't know was where Gail and I went the rest of the day. Sometimes we ended up in the next town over but I always was home on time for lunch and supper.

As a teen we spent hours on the phone in the evening even playing records for one another by holding the phone to the speaker on the record player.. Our phone was in the hallway and my mom didn't always know I was on.
The problem was that it was a party line. Since the two parties lived down the street my mom always found out because they complained to her about not getting through.
I heard about it the next day after I came home from school and she wasn't happy about it.
 
Okay a few crazy things...

Talk about "latchkey parents". My best friend's mother worked during the day and at 14 we used to go to his house and steal her Marlboros and smoke them. We also once skipped school and hung out all day at a 7-11 because he knew the lady who was the manager. It was boring but we felt so adult! My mother didn't work but she had no idea.

In my pre-school days I would stay out with my friends all day. We made "forts" in empty lots where houses had not yet been built. We swam in the canal behind our houses even though it could have been polluted and had lots of jellyfish.

I also remember traveling with my parents from FL to NC twice a year to visit relatives. When I was very young I used to lay in the parcel shelf in the car (in the picture) to take a nap. :oops: We had a Buick so that parcel shelf was huge!


parcel shelf.jpeg
 
dseag2 said:
In my pre-school days I would stay out with my friends all day. We made "forts" in empty lots where houses had not yet been built. We swam in the canal behind our houses even though it could have been polluted and had lots of jellyfish.
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Jellyfish in a canal? Calif has a bunch of canals, especially in the south, and I have never heard about any jellyfish sightings. Doesn't mean there's no jellyfish in some canal here somewhere, but ...wow... that's very unusual.

Isn't it?

Oh, wait. Maybe it has to do with the gulf? (it's kind of blowin' my mind)
 
A child's life, back in the '40's and 50's, when I was growing up, was far different than what most youngsters do and face today. But, then, much the same can probably be said about Every generation. At the rate things are changing, those living a hundred years from now will probably think today's kids are living in the Dark Ages.
 
Murrmurr said:
Jellyfish in a canal? Calif has a bunch of canals, especially in the south, and I have never heard about any jellyfish sightings. Doesn't mean there's no jellyfish in some canal here somewhere, but ...wow... that's very unusual.

Isn't it?

Oh, wait. Maybe it has to do with the gulf? (it's kind of blowin' my mind)
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We lived on a canal off the Gulf of Mexico, so not that unusual. We used to put the jellyfish on the sea wall and watch them melt under the sun. Sadistic I guess!
 
Back in the later 60's when I was a teen, I would spend quite a bit of time at my friends house and especially up in there bedroom playing records and dancing and smoking cigarettes and blowing the smoke out the bedroom window like we were actually getting away with something. Thinking back on it we thought we were getting away with it, but I am pretty sure all our parents knew we smoked. Pretty much everyone was doing it so they really didn't say anything.
 
Oh yeah, I can relate to most of the “crazy things” listed, even though their chronology was spread over several decades! I’ve even owned an “exploding car,” the Ford Pinto, and also the Chevy Corvair, Nader’s “Unsafe at Any Speed” vehicle. Somehow, I survived, and never once worried about an “active shooter” in school, all doors of which were always open. I think I’ll take my “Boomer” hazards over those dangers and temptations today…
 
When I lived in Ithaca, N.Y., at age 5 years, I'd leave the apartment and wander around all day without any supervision. My favorite playing place was a deep gorge nearby. when my mother eventually found out she nearly fainted from fright.
 
Murrmurr said:
My oldest brother was fascinated with chemistry.

He made bombs!
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I don't know how we survived our older brothers. Mine used to play mumblety peg with my bare foot.

Here's one I can scarcely believe now. We had a jar of mercury. We would take it out and stick our fingers in it to watch the mercury snap back and then make little balls of it and roll them across the floor.
 
Della said:
I don't know how we survived our older brothers. Mine used to play mumblety peg with my bare foot.

Here's one I can scarcely believe now. We had a jar of mercury. We would take it out and stick our fingers in it to watch the mercury snap back and then make little balls of it and roll them across the floor.
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Me and Grant (oldest bro) used to play with mercury too! He was totally into chemistry and physics and I was in awe of him; followed him everywhere and had to be there for every "experiment". He grew up to be a research scientist (now retired) and actually got paid to play with fire and do experiments.
 
Well, in the middle of Massachusetts we didn't have canals or jelly fish, but we had ants to satisfy our sadistic needs. Yeah, we cremated them with a magnifier.
BTW, my cousin's dog, Brownie, was buried behind the garage. For us kids that was a sacred place. If you stood over his grave, you HAD to tell the truth. Even though we weren't sure exactly where old Brownie was buried.
 
My neighbor friend and I would see how high we could free fall. Jump off the granary to the ground or from some really high heights inside the barn to the hay bales below. No wonder I have back problems now!

Also, at 10 yrs old, my friends older brother showed me how to drive a large Honda motorcycle by myself. Once it stopped, I had to bail off the thing as I could not steady it up by myself! I would drive it around the fields. A bit reckless, but at the same time I think it gave me a bit of self confidence to try things I thought were not possible.

I loved going to our neighbor's house!

Oh yeah, my cousin and I would shoot arrows straight up into the sky. A different form of Russian Roulette I guess with better odds.
 
slide.jpg
Back in the post-war era, the recreational parks in the UK had a section where children played on various swings and slides. Today's health & safety fanatics would freak out if they were around back then.

The high slide, seen in the photo, was popular with all the kids. One practice that young boys liked to do was to polish the slide. They did this by using the waxed wrapping, used to retain freshness in sliced bread, it was common place back then.

One boy would sit on the waxed wrapping and slide down, the next boy was the polisher, he slid down polishing the wax previously left. After about ten minutes of this kind of alternation the slide would shine like a mirror.

One sunny Saturday, we boys had the slide producing very high down speeds, we were having a whale of a time, that is, until a young mother turned up with her five-year-old son. The little lad climbed the staircase, at the top he and his mother exchanged smiles and waves. He then sat on the slide and went down so fast that he was almost on his back.

At the end of the slide the kid's speed was so fast that he was airborne for the distance between the end of the slide and the shrubbery that he subsequently wound up in. Mother ran to retrieve her boy, then angrily turned around to remonstrate with us older boys, only to find the park completely empty. Wicked lot that we were, we reminisced that time and again.
 
Della said:
I started leaving home on my own at age two. I would walk out of my parents five acres around a bend in the road to a house set way back in the trees. They had a Collie dog.

My mother would be embarrassed when the Collie owner called and she had to go get me, so they got me an Irish Setter for my third birthday.

I still have fond memories of that Collie. There's nothing like a nap on a sunny day on top of a collie.

Kind of like this. Oh yeah.
Click to expand...
OMGoodness! That video is just TOO cute! Beautiful dog and cutest kitten❣️ I remember when we lived in our cousins' house, they had a collie named Rex. Think Lassie, that's how he looked.
 

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