Fun as a kid using junk.

[timoc]

Now come on you weird and wonderful people, tell Tim all about the fun that you had as a kid with stuff only fit for the dump.
I was about 10 years old when a lady from up our street was chucking out an old metal bathtub similar to the ones pictured below.
I dragged it into our yard and fitted a metal hoop on either side of the tub, then out of some scrap timber in our shed, I made a pair of oars.
The look of envy on the faces of lots of kids on the canal towpath was magic, as I rowed along the canal with a big grin.
Kids from ajoining streets all wanted to be my mates, just to have a go on my bathtub Queen Mary.

 

[Ruth n Jersey]

My mom did a lot of sewing when I was growing up. She also had a rag bag. One day I found quite a large piece of very silky, soft fabric. It was very tight weave. I guess she didn't want it because it was was a horrible color and had some flaws.

I played all summer with that fabric. I made a cape out of it, another time I tied both ends together and made a hammock and tied it between two trees.

But the most fun was getting it wet in my kiddie pool and quickly capturing air to make a bubble. My girlfriend and I would then swim underneath and come up in the bubble of air and sit there until it deflated.

We did that all summer long.

 

[Jace]

Well, it's not as elaborate..as Tim or Ruth's..just a plain, old worn-down rubber
"heel" of a shoe..to play Hop-scotch..on the chalked form on the cement in front of our house..for hours.... girlfriends and I.
What fun..and good exercise!

And, there was a technique to throwing the heel, that it landed on the flat part, as it seemed "to stick" to where it landed.

 

[jujube]

One of my daughter's favorite activities as a small girl was to arrange pieces of lathing strips into "rooms", which could be a house or a school or a store and then move empty Coke bottles around, pretending they were people/students/shoppers. She could do that for hours.

Now, mind you, she had toys galore but would rather play with junk.

I think young'uns today have too many toys that do the thinking for them, instead of "just stuff" that they have to use their imagination on.

Big cardboard boxes were my passion as a child.

 

[Pappy]

Living in the country, we had our own dump which many in the families used. I loved going through the dump and finding things for my clubhouse. Lots of usable items if one used their imagination.

 

[Alligatorob]

In our neighborhood we had monthly trash pickup, you could pile any junk or yard waste on the curb. The day before pickup my friends and I ranged far and wide collecting treasures.

Parents were pretty tolerant until we discovered the trash at the local hospital. Brought home lots of things that would be incinerated as biohazard today. When the parents found that stash we were banned from trash collecting. Didn't stop us entirely, but slowed things down a bit.

A little older I enjoyed climbing through trash dumps, that was before today's secure sanitary landfills.

 

[horseless carriage]

It was quite common for kids to build their own bicycles. They would find the frame then cannibalise whatever could be found from scrap bikes and buy smaller items like pedals and brake calipers. My friend and I put together an old tandem, we got it going but did it give us a scare. Tandems can go much faster than a solo bicycle, for that reason they have drum brakes at the centre of the wheels. We couldn't find any drum brake wheels so we fitted bicycle wheels and screwed on caliper brakes. These work by gripping the side edge of the wheel.

We got that tandem up to such a speed that when I applied the brakes the speed ripped the calipers straight out. Luckily I had the sense to use my foot as a brake. Placing it behind the front forks I could press down on the tyre, it worked, but I didn't dare let my Dad know how the ridge in the sole of my shoe appeared.

 

[Lewkat]

We'd stomp on tin cans until they caught onto our shoes and stomped around on them until they fell off. Wrecked many a shoe that way.

 

[horseless carriage]

The night watchman was still a common sight when I was a kid. They would usually be at some unfinished road works. To keep warm they had a brazier that burned anything that was to hand, scrap pallets mainly.

Those braziers inspired us kids, we would make a smaller version using the large tin cans that industrial kitchens had. A length of wire served as a handle and a quick spin got the flame burning bright. We would be out playing on the coldest of winter nights.