when i was a kid facts about 50's 60's 70's

ive noticed a couple of post with slight referance to todays youth so i thought this bit of imfo would be good reading.
"the scary thing is its true as"

according to today's regulators & bureacrats, those of us who were kids in the 50's, 60's, 70's, & 80's probably shoudnt have survived.
our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was promptly chewed & licked.
we had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, or latches on doors or cabinets & it was fine to play with pots & pans.
when we rode our bikes, we wore no helmets, just flip flops & flourescent clackers on our wheels.
as children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
riding in the passenger seat was a very , very special treat.
we drank water from the garden hose & not from a bottle- tasted the same.
we ate dripping sandwiches, bread & butter pudding & drank fizzy pop with sugar in it,but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing.
we shared one drink with four friends,from one bottle or can & no one actaully died from this.
we would spend hours building go-carts out ofscraps & then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
after running into stinging nettles a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
we would leave home in the morning & play play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark, no one was able to reach us all day & no one minded.
we did not have playstations or x-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on tv, no videotape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no internet chat rooms. we had friends- we went outside & found them.
we played elastics & street rounders, & sometimes that ball really hurt.
we fell out of trees, got cut & broken bones & teeth, & there were no lawsuits. they were accidents. we learnt not to do the same thing again.
we had fights, punched each other hard & got black & blue- we learnt to get over it.
we walked to friends homes.
we made up games with sticks & tennis balls & ate live stuff, & although we were told it would happen, we did not have very many eyes poked out, nor did the live stuff live inside us forever.
we rode bikes in packs of 7 & wore our coats by only the hood.
our actions were our own . consequences were expected.
the idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. they actaully sided with the law . imagine that!
this generation has produced some of the best risk- takers & problem solvers & inventers, ever.
the past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation & new ideas.
we had freedom, failure, success & responsibility, & we learned how to deal with it all.
& you're one of them. congratulations!
please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as real kids, before lawyers & government regulated our lives, for our own good.
(if you aren't old enough, thought you might like to read about us).


p.s. lets see you send that by txt

wally this is why we like driving older vw's...lets get back to the basics..life was easier back then and a lot more fun...problem is we will never know what its like to live in our childrens world..cheers dsk steve

....goodness we're doing a lot of reminiscing lately.....did you remember all that and type it up??

Come on don't be an old fuddy duddy.....txt a little :thumb

You know its funny. I sit around at my grandparents house talking to them and they tell me endless storys of back in the 40's and 50's when they were growing up. Its amazing to sit there and listen and despite being bought up in the 90's i wish things were the way they were back when nan and pa were young. Lifes to easy these days and the day the playstation was invented was a sad day for all playgrounds and pushbikes. Sure i have one, like 90% of the population. Its still in ther box. Has plenty of dust on it too.

Technology is a good thing for sure, but come on, where is the fun. I go out in the shed for hours at a time playing with my beetle and before the beetle, my mini's. I have a late model statesman with all the mod cons, everything is automatic and electric to boot. I love my beetle thou. Old school is cool.

Winerot, what i wanna say is i understand what your saying and agree with you 100% of the way. :thumb

truly i have a mobile but i swear i do not know how to answer it
when it rings 🙁

there was 1 bad thing & if some ppl remember it was
the old school pants that stopped just short of your
kneecaps & itched like crazy.
yep the vw's still lives on & takes us back to future.

...then why have it then lol

Yep....there were lots of good things about the good old days.....things were more simple...families were at home together at night unless dad was working an afternoon or night shift....you weren't whizzing around all over the place in cars...dropping one kid off here, picking another kids up there....everyone eating at different times...food being microwaved....

It was so nice when they were a lot younger and not into the after school activities, jobs and parties....they were into imagination and exploration ... stories and cuddles....Oh well we can't hang on to them forever.....

I don't ever remember saying I was bored or that this is boring....well I would have been spoken to if I did maybe....so not game lol

Winerot you have hit the nail on the head,add another thing from my childhood was we were able to go down the local bushland and build cubby houses without fear of it being messed up overnight ,and being able to use our imagination whilst playing armies or thunderbirds or maybe even bush rangers:thumb:thumb

we used to build billy carts with fridge crates(wood back then)
& ballbearing wheels at the front pram wheels at the back & the
only one who could see was the kid steering, (six of us in at a time)
but he could only see straight ahead, a daily thing is to see it tip &
six kids splatter over the road, twenty minutes later were back at the
top doing it again. "thunderbirds" are go 😎

...or using old doors as surfboards playing Gidget :thumb

That's so true! I remember riding around the neighbourhood in packs, we'd be gone all day as long as we were home for lunch and dinner. The best thing is that I have fond memories of my childhood. My nephew never goes outside, plays video games all day, and never has any interaction with other kids apart from school. The poor boy's so timid he's afraid of their kitten. What are his childhood memories going to be like?

This grumpy old man agrees with it all.
I to have a nephew who is 12 years old, he spends all day at his playstation,.
We took him out one day and we were in a deli, he wanted an icecream so I gave him $5 and told him to ask for one, he didnt know what to do.
After prompting from me he asked and the girl handed him one then he went to walk away, I told him he had to pay for it, so he handed the $5 and again went to walk away, he didnt even know that it was only $1.50 and that he would get change????

At 12 , even 10, we were kicked out of the house on summer holidays at 9.00am, given some money for lunch and told not to come back till 5.00pm.

Some of the adventures we had were amazing, I honestly think that those times made you the type of person you are today.

Cheers
Dave

winerot wrote:our baby cots were covered with brightly coloured lead-based paint which was promptly chewed & licked.

Just tastes crap without the lead...

as children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

sometimes even in the footwells or three to a bucket seat

we drank water from the garden hose & not from a bottle- tasted the same.

sometimes even from the local creek!

we fell out of trees, got cut & broken bones & teeth, & there were no lawsuits. they were accidents. we learnt not to do the same thing again.

well i'm sure many didn't learn. when the plaster comes off you go back up again.

we had fights, punched each other hard & got black & blue- we learnt to get over it.

and did it again next week

I spent hours playing with lego, and i don't mean the freakin harry potter and starwars stuff. back then you had to make up your own themes.

I also spent hours playing cars. back then you had to make your own engine noises too. I was famous for my GT falcon one. Rotaries just hurt my throat...😀

when you said, "I'm bored mum", she tell you to go ride your bike or play cricket, or read a book. I wonder if kids know what books are today. seems to me like most people just wait for the movie to come out. 🙁

As a kid, the only guy i knew with a mobile phone was a local bloke who had an older style radio phone in his work ute. Going by what he said, it was much more reliable than mobiles today. His ute was a bay single cab. Thought it was kind of cool back then too. 🙂

Weren't billy carts tops. one year, every holidays, may brother and I went out in the morning and raced. then it broke. my dad has no idea about tools so we had to teach ourselves. The cart was terrible. I still remember a friend from church making us some 'axles'. we were so impressed. until then we'd held the wheels in with a few nails. needless to say, they didn't stay on.

pete wood wrote:I spent hours playing with lego, and i don't mean the freakin harry potter and starwars stuff. back then you had to make up your own themes.

How many of the little one dot pieces did you swallow? The only way to get those bastards off was to use your teeth!

totally, man! mmmm, drooly lego :puke

I had meccano, it was great.
The things you would build with that stuff, used to take days and days just to build a bridge or something like that,
I think that is the problem today, they dont know how to wait for things, they want them straight away.

Just my grump again.

Cheers
Dave

I sure as hell won't be getting my kids an x box or playstation. I would hope that I can instill in them the value of doing something yourself for entertainment and that most entertainment should teach you a skill or a lesson.

I'm glad my folks kept some toys and crap from when I was a kid so I can pass these on to Jack and Millie.

I can't wait until the first time either of them decide to modify or construct something for a means of play.

hey i just remembered making your own bow & arrows, slingshots
or if you are lucky a slug gun yehh or the best of all the once a year
CRACKER NIGHT, unfortunately with todays society of ruthlessness
& sadism its understandable why they are now banned.
cracker night many a burnt hand , blown letterbox, ringing ear, singed hair
loved it.
i have a 13 yr old son i wont let him have a lighter glad he doesnt know what i got up too at his age.

Ah the good old days! Funny really but easy to see why i'm into dubs.
Looking at my folks old pics from the 60's and 70's for hours as a kid and seeing their cars. A Ghia , heaps of bugs , p1800's volvo , the list goes on , all cool cars. My Dad also collected a dinky toy of every car he has ever had aswell. All boxed and were kept out of my reach!
When the snow came we had a beetle bonnet which me , my brother and my Dad would use as a sledge , it was awesome.
Ripping my new racer pushbike apart the weekend i had it and turning it into an off road bike and painting it black. Then having my Dad chase me down the road as he wasnt too happy about the mods, LOL
Some many nice thoughts and maybe the best was seeing my first car sitting in the drive. A badly hand painted white 69 bug! Owned it / thrashed it for 3 years and swapped it for a manx!

All good times

Dan:thumb

HotRodMatt wrote:I sure as hell won't be getting my kids an x box or playstation. I would hope that I can instill in them the value of doing something yourself for entertainment and that most entertainment should teach you a skill or a lesson.

I'm glad my folks kept some toys and crap from when I was a kid so I can pass these on to Jack and Millie.

I can't wait until the first time either of them decide to modify or construct something for a means of play.

Here I go, you're all gonna call me a weirdo now. We don't even own a telly, so no X box or that at my house. We just watch DVDs on the computer.

As for great toys. My daughter eleanor is already into the big lego. But even better than that, she has this little ride in car. it's great. it has a screwdriver and spanner in the boot and you can pull the engine apart (sadly it's a V6 not a boxer) and the bumpers come off. It's got a great big bug catcher scoop on it.

So it's not all bad...check it out

[Edited on 20/5/2005 by pete wood]

I grew up late 70's early 80's but it was in a small country town, so this was all relevant. Hey we would find 1 and 2 cent pieces and get one or two lollies with it. Mecanno, Lego 'blocks' and plastic farm animals was all I had other than books. My clothes were nearly all made by my mum from patterns from Family Circle magazine. My parents grew all our vegies using info from Grass Roots Mag.

Old Holdens and Falcons with muffler leaks spewing lead fumes out the pipe was common in the town. My favourite chores were chopping wood and mowing the lawns. I hated having to do the dishes 3 nights a week, and cleaning up the dog poop was not much fun at all. I got $1 a week and that was a paper note then. For extra money I would have to do things like clean the gutters or turn sods in the garden.

the safetycrats have seized the day

I remember when I was a kid we lived near a big grass hill that we would ride an old car bonnet down to the bottom which was about 200mts to the bottom. Sometimes we wouldn't make it to the bottom and end up with some nice grass burns, and stains on the cloths for mum to clean. The VW dub bonnets where great just like riding a sled. We would play for hours. Big cardboard boxes use to be just as good. The hill also had caves where we use to go play as well.

We also use catch tadpoles in the drain out the front of our house and keep them in an ice-cream container and watch them turn into frogs.

Heaps of fond memories of the past.

[Edited on 20-5-2005 by rose]

hey it's not the kids that are the problem, it's the way they're brought up!
give a child a playstation and they'll sit inside playing games all day. the situation isn't helped by you old fogeys either ya know...

what do you mean old fogeys I don't concider being in your 30's as being old fogeys

:kiss
.:sandrine

[Edited on 20-5-2005 by rose]

i am 50 and still have some of the scars of youthfull exploits such as the scars on my legs from billycart accidents and when occasionaly when i notice them i cant help but smile as memories of those days come flooding back

Winerots post is the best I've seen for ages.
Imagine being able to have a hill trolley, make canoes out of corrugatedn iron. Go and play in the bush, make bows and arrows, gings and all that fun stuff.
I still remember it all. I have even got grandkids older than 13 so I have to be able to text!!!
W

[Edited on 20-5-2005 by Warrenm]

Too true!
You can remember these things and despair that these times have passed, but there is something you can do about it! I still encourage my children and their friends (and their parents!) to do the same things I did when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's. Have you ever climed a tree with your kids, played marble's or helped them make a go cart! Too many parents today are "too busy with work" and then spend their lesure time at the club or pub on friday and sat night. The kids never get quality love/bonding time with their Mom and Dad. Its our fault this has happened! When I was growing up, our family was a single income household, my father was the breadwinner and my mother was a homemaker she had no job she was there for us 24 seven. We had a very modest house (dump) on the beach and the family car was a very secondhand Volksie. This was not uncommon and was sort of the norm in our area ( it's now become millionaire's row) I could not have asked for a better childhood upbringing. We had very little money! but so did all my friends familys, the funny thing about it was, we were all very happy, and no one looked down their nose at us. It was ok to be "average" I think this ithe problem today, we have become insanely preoccupied with one upmanship, if you dont have a 4 bedroom mansion with a BMW and a Mercede's in the garage your viewed upon by your peer's as some sort of underachieving looser, its just not good enough to have the modest house with one TV and a secondhand car in the drive, its become totally out of control and ourselve's and the children are the loosers. We have forgotten whats really important in life. Do you really need a TV or a X box automatic coffee machines and all that junk if we did not have all these material things, you wouldn't need to work as much to keep up with it all. There was never a truer saying than "the best thing's in life are free". Go down the bech and just sit there with a thermous, and watch a sunrise, if you have kids take them too, if you live in the bush, take a dawn walk. Just sit and reflect on the path your life has taken so far, and how you can make it better. We need to start DEPROGRAMING our minds and start to remeber that its OK to be modest. If your friends judge your by your possesions are they really a true friend? Once we realise these things and are happy with less, it will free up more of your time to spend guiding your children and giving you more de stressing time! More time with the kids doing things that don't cost anything, buy them a cricket bat, a netball, frisby, and old fashioned spinning top, jumping jacks, mechano set, footy whatever. get em back outside. Talk to them for more than five minutes. I could go on and on, I spose the crux of it all is " we are all the masters of our own destiny" Its up to us to do something about it!
Rob....

I can really relate to this thread. These days you have we arrange a 'play date' for kids. We have to ask if they are allergic to anything / everything. When I was a kid were only allergic to bee stings. We have generation of wimps on our hands. We used to go and play all day. come home scraped up and filthy but we made our own fun. My kids go outside for 10 minutes then they get bored. too much TV / computer these days.

i can totally relate to this thread, and im only 25!
when i was growing up in bass hill (south west of sydney... it used to be a good family area back then) all the kids would walk home together after school, we would have lunch at my place, because all my friends parents were at work and my mum loved to feed us anyways... and then go outside to ride a bike/rollerskate/look for bugs in the pool/play hide and seek... whatever.
we roamed the neighbourhood all weekend, going up to the new estates being built and exploring the houses, looking for strange creatures...
night times we would go to the next door neighbours house and sit on their balcony and watch the movies with no sound on the screen of the drive in... we would just make our own scripts 😀
on sunday afternoons we would take our bikes or rollerskates to the top of the loading ramp at the plaza and ride down it with no brakes!!! one of us broke an arm, and i scabbed my knees numerous times, but we still kept doing it!
on lucky weekends, we would get to go to lake gillawarna or the bankstown crest and go exploring all day, we would make up adventure stories and pretend to be strange animals in the jungle...

look what ONE generation gap has done to society... kids are becoming so antisocial, they dont have imagination, creativity or basic skills anymore.
it makes me really sad actually 🙁

[Edited on 21/5/2005 by Starbug]

I can relate to this thread i grew up in ryde 15ks out of sydney we would ride our pushies to windsor for a swim 35m (60ks) each way or ride to lane cove river for a swim 6 of us on pushies and my dog following run all the way no leads, no muzzles. This is why we moved my wife is from a country town Gloucester, we are both in our 40s, we moved to Bargo to give the boys a chance to experience the freedoms that we had.At age 11 and 7 they have been able to disappear on thier bikes and return for meals without fear although th bikes now have different uses. It does scare the daylights out of my wife tosee the oldest now 17 doing a backward somersault 20 feet in the air with bike betweeen his legs or yongest 14 doing a 360 mid air and in some cases these are jumps that have been made by them and thier mates. What im trying to say is that we can still give our kids some basics, older cars (VW) that we can still work on and an outdoor oriented lifestyle we enjoy 4wd trips as well we hope they can look back in the future as we can and enjoy those memories

I have 9 grandkids aged from 6 to 19 (then eldest has already had a Beetle) and they have nearly all been taught to climb trees, girls include, help paint fences, hold a hmmer properly etc and probably countless things we accepted as normal. They are not scared of dogs, horses etc and most have been camping.
Unfortunately they can't just go off and play near the river or the bush but vevn though they all use computers they would rather be outside kicking a ball or playing cricket etc.
They nearly all like cars ,like their parents, but some are too young to understand the difference between "good" cars and the normal run.

it gives me a sense of hope for this generation when there are parents out there giving their kids a good active outdoors-y and practical upbringing. The rest of them will just become little obese hermits with heart problems... thats their own fault.

i spent alot of time with my dad in the workshop when i was a kid, helping him build stuff... i know about power tools and im not afraid to use them!!! 😀

I agree, the life in the child of my age sux. I hear about how my dad and mum grew up, and i thought it was mad. Running around outdoors, not totally consumed and lost in excessive amounts of school work (cause parents and teachers expect more from students these days).

I used to build billy carts, ride bikes, play with friends, but as soon as highschool hit, finding time was always hard. People used to also have bigger blocks to play on (land) rather than small houses. My dad grew on a banana plantation, and with that amount of land, they could do anything on it. And cause he lived in Coffs Harbour, they could just go down to the beach for a swim in the arvo.

Seriously, if i was given the opportunity to life on a nice big block where computers, game consoles and all that garbo was gone, i would take it.

They are even saying that today's generations are beginning to become less social as well, due to the lack of mixing and interacting with others. (being to pre occupied on their games and machines).

What my parents used to do as well, was to have time restrictions on the computer games (like 1 hr a day, ONLY on week ends). Then we would play and explore outside. But i haven't played a computer game in ages actually, cause im nearly always stuck in the house doing assignments and school work. (DAM YOU YEAR 12, DAM YOU TO HELL).

so yeah, just an opinion from a kid of today.😉

thats a good point chris we have young casuals in our shop
that still go to school over the last five years plus seeing what
our two get for homework (1 in yr 8 & 1 in yr 10) the stress for them
has dramatically increased over the years.
our 13 yr old has homework that i would have expected in yr 12 when
i was at school & some homework that i could not comprehend,
to be a teenager now "no thanks"

And they wonder why so many teenages today go to drugs, alcoholism and into depression. Perhaps, even suicide.🙁

[Edited on 22/5/2005 by mynameischris88]