@edguyver14@Lynnerizer@mycya4me@yakkoTDI My Dad would whistle when it was time to come home. He could be heard for blocks. Sadly I didn’t inherit that from him, I can be heard a few feet away.
@blaineg@edguyver14@Lynnerizer@mycya4me@yakkoTDI There’s a guy on my block who lets his huge predatory cat roam all day. In the evening he hollers for him with this weird loud shrieky call - it sounds like he’s calling hogs!
@edguyver14@Lynnerizer@mycya4me@yakkoTDI our neighborhood moms put bells on the side of the houses and each family had a different ring pattern. Ours was ding ding - ding ding - ding ding. If we complained were were bored we were told there were plenty of chores we could do. We quickly made our exit.
Play outside until whichever happened first:
you collapsed
you got hungry
it got too dark to see
you needed a jar for the lightning bugs you caught
you got called in
you couldn’t stand any more mosquito bites
you got hurt in that silly game you were playing (we used to jump from the roof of an abandoned house onto the grass below)
@Lynnerizer@phendrick we’d jump out of trees or ride a home made skate board down a sidewalk hill jumping off on the street lawn with it carrying on into the street since it didn’t corner well. More than one driver of a passing car would yell at the neighborhood gang of 15 or so kids doing this.
@Kidsandliz@Lynnerizer@phendrick the ´skate board down a hill story’ reminds me of a friend from school. rode a bike down a neighborhood street over an improvised jump of some kind. front wheel came off mid-air. he came back to school with a bunch of scars and I think a broken something.
childhood in the 70’s was a lot more fun. and dangerous. on the plus side no ´active shooter’ drills. but I do recall ´air raid’ practice for if the Russian bombers were on the way.
@phendrick Biking around the block; we had a nice downslope on one street where we could go really fast!
Street tennis. Traffic was minimal and we could see it coming far enough away to be safe.
Diggy diggy hole, and make mountains and tunnels and waterfalls in the yard with tonka construction trucks and the garden hose. No moles ever caused such lawn apocalypse. This also involved our toy soldiers and military vehicles, and rarely, leftover fireworks (shhh! no telling!)
We had a 15’ round doughboy swimming pool for a few years; that was fun.
And an annual car vacation, we’d all pile into the station wagon and head to Mt Rainier, Timpanogas Caves, Little Reservoir in Fishlake National Forest, Eagle Valley, or other places for camping, fishing, hiking…
It was all glorious. I still miss that station wagon…
@blaineg@phendrick I remember the fairly long walk up a path to get to the caves, and a I think a mineral water spring you could drink from at the top. I was little always overprepared kid (backpack with snacks, canteen, flashlight, camping knife, etc) who got teased so much about it I chose not to bring anything else extra that day… my family stopped teasing me after that; it was a hot day.
@phendrick I wish. I’m of slight build and had to develop excellent technique to make up for my lack of brawn. To this day I look like a skinny-fat soy boy. Except for my cyclist thighs. They’re decent.
Pull weeds out of my father’s two massive vegetable gardens, and several flower beds, mow the lawn and weed whack. All as my friends headed down town to the basketball and tennis courts. Oh yeah, good times.
@detailer my mother had a big garden. We were unpaid weeding labor. Left me with a life long hate of gardening although I do like to see pretty gardens.
Depends on the part of kidhood we’re talking about, but generally, go to the lake, go to summer camp, and/or ride horses. I didn’t hate summer then the way I do now.
Getting locked outside and using the hose to drink water - we would chase each other through the house from the front door to the back door until we’d find the door locked.
@jokeshippopotam honestly this was probably the best thing. i learned to look outside at landscapes, rocks, vegetation, cities, highways, weather. oh yeah and still love big printed maps. what else could you do for 8-10 hours a day? maybe even talk with my parents or argue with them or listen to them arguing. no phones or video games. good times.
@jokeshippopotam@pmarin Every August we’d Wgo on vacation for the month - at first car camping then tent top trailer camping. Drove all over the USA. While the days in the car were sometimes really long getting places, the places we got to see were really interesting. And when we happened to study about something in school where we had been there I remember that as being really cool. I tried to duplicate that with my kid to the extent possible. We went to CA one spring break (and I called the teacher and told her we’d be a week late back - 4th grade) and drove across a plateau and saw a sand storm. My kid had just read about that in school. She was amazed. We also stayed (unplanned) on an Indian reservation (talking to a guy in the grocery store, he took up somewhere we could have stayed cheaply but it was closed so took us home and we stayed at his grandma’s house on the res. I hired him the next day to show us around the res). My kid was surprised there were actual American Indians still around. She thought it was just history and they were all dead.
Never was a pool kid but we’d ride bikes all over the neighborhood.
When I was a kid, summer was a time to take up most of the year here in Florida.
@yakkoTDI Isn’t it still?
@Kyeh Yes and I still ride my bicycle like I was a kid.
Summer was a time to get a summer job, or stay home and watch soap operas. Which one would you choose?
@hchavers Whichever ones my mom watched. Er, i mean, the job…?
It was a time for getting yelled at to get out of the house, and yelled at to come back in.
@edguyver14 OMG, that is what happened to me!
@edguyver14 @mycya4me Yelled at to come back in? Did your neighborhood not have street lights?
@yakkoTDI
@edguyver14 @mycya4me @yakkoTDI
My mom would ring a hand held bell so she wouldn’t have to yell out the front door. Pretty clever in my opinion.
@Lynnerizer Now that’s a class act!
@edguyver14 @Lynnerizer @mycya4me @yakkoTDI My Dad would whistle when it was time to come home. He could be heard for blocks. Sadly I didn’t inherit that from him, I can be heard a few feet away.
@blaineg @edguyver14 @Lynnerizer @mycya4me @yakkoTDI There’s a guy on my block who lets his huge predatory cat roam all day. In the evening he hollers for him with this weird loud shrieky call - it sounds like he’s calling hogs!
@edguyver14 @Lynnerizer @mycya4me @yakkoTDI our neighborhood moms put bells on the side of the houses and each family had a different ring pattern. Ours was ding ding - ding ding - ding ding. If we complained were were bored we were told there were plenty of chores we could do. We quickly made our exit.
Play outside until whichever happened first:
you collapsed
you got hungry
it got too dark to see
you needed a jar for the lightning bugs you caught
you got called in
you couldn’t stand any more mosquito bites
you got hurt in that silly game you were playing (we used to jump from the roof of an abandoned house onto the grass below)
@phendrick or the eventual injury
@phendrick
YES, spot on! Well, except for the roof jumping but we did have ancient broken down chicken coop that we’d sometimes hang out in.
@phendrick I still want to play outside, but nobody else seems up for it.
What happened?
@blaineg Maturity is a two (at least)- edged sword.
@phendrick I’ve got Nerf swords, anyone wanna play?
@phendrick
@Lynnerizer @phendrick we’d jump out of trees or ride a home made skate board down a sidewalk hill jumping off on the street lawn with it carrying on into the street since it didn’t corner well. More than one driver of a passing car would yell at the neighborhood gang of 15 or so kids doing this.
@Kidsandliz @Lynnerizer @phendrick the ´skate board down a hill story’ reminds me of a friend from school. rode a bike down a neighborhood street over an improvised jump of some kind. front wheel came off mid-air. he came back to school with a bunch of scars and I think a broken something.
childhood in the 70’s was a lot more fun. and dangerous. on the plus side no ´active shooter’ drills. but I do recall ´air raid’ practice for if the Russian bombers were on the way.
@Kidsandliz @Lynnerizer @pmarin
Air raid drills – yeah, seems I still tend to have my head down somewhere around my ass.
@phendrick Biking around the block; we had a nice downslope on one street where we could go really fast!
Street tennis. Traffic was minimal and we could see it coming far enough away to be safe.
Diggy diggy hole, and make mountains and tunnels and waterfalls in the yard with tonka construction trucks and the garden hose. No moles ever caused such lawn apocalypse. This also involved our toy soldiers and military vehicles, and rarely, leftover fireworks (shhh! no telling!)
We had a 15’ round doughboy swimming pool for a few years; that was fun.
And an annual car vacation, we’d all pile into the station wagon and head to Mt Rainier, Timpanogas Caves, Little Reservoir in Fishlake National Forest, Eagle Valley, or other places for camping, fishing, hiking…
It was all glorious. I still miss that station wagon…
@duodec @phendrick I haven’t been to Timpanogos Cave since I was a teen.
I’d never thought of it as a vacation destination, I’m kind of local.
@blaineg @phendrick I remember the fairly long walk up a path to get to the caves, and a I think a mineral water spring you could drink from at the top. I was little always overprepared kid (backpack with snacks, canteen, flashlight, camping knife, etc) who got teased so much about it I chose not to bring anything else extra that day… my family stopped teasing me after that; it was a hot day.
Cut, haul and stack firewood. I promise I have split by hand more firewood than any 5 people you know. We had to put up about 12 cord every summer.
@tweezak I bet you built some amazing shoulders.
@tweezak i have a firewood job for you want…
@phendrick I wish. I’m of slight build and had to develop excellent technique to make up for my lack of brawn. To this day I look like a skinny-fat soy boy. Except for my cyclist thighs. They’re decent.
All of the above.
@ircon96 I was looking for this option.
Pull weeds out of my father’s two massive vegetable gardens, and several flower beds, mow the lawn and weed whack. All as my friends headed down town to the basketball and tennis courts. Oh yeah, good times.
@detailer my mother had a big garden. We were unpaid weeding labor. Left me with a life long hate of gardening although I do like to see pretty gardens.
Depends on the part of kidhood we’re talking about, but generally, go to the lake, go to summer camp, and/or ride horses. I didn’t hate summer then the way I do now.
Walk to the coal mines, uphill both directions in the snow.
@OnionSoup You forgot the headwinds both ways.
@OnionSoup
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-04-27
@OnionSoup Summer snow? Winters must have been truly awful, but at least the coal mine was sheltered.
@OnionSoup @phendrick and barefoot
Getting locked outside and using the hose to drink water - we would chase each other through the house from the front door to the back door until we’d find the door locked.
Going on family road trips, It was a time to explore and relax
@jokeshippopotam honestly this was probably the best thing. i learned to look outside at landscapes, rocks, vegetation, cities, highways, weather. oh yeah and still love big printed maps. what else could you do for 8-10 hours a day? maybe even talk with my parents or argue with them or listen to them arguing. no phones or video games. good times.
@jokeshippopotam @pmarin Every August we’d Wgo on vacation for the month - at first car camping then tent top trailer camping. Drove all over the USA. While the days in the car were sometimes really long getting places, the places we got to see were really interesting. And when we happened to study about something in school where we had been there I remember that as being really cool. I tried to duplicate that with my kid to the extent possible. We went to CA one spring break (and I called the teacher and told her we’d be a week late back - 4th grade) and drove across a plateau and saw a sand storm. My kid had just read about that in school. She was amazed. We also stayed (unplanned) on an Indian reservation (talking to a guy in the grocery store, he took up somewhere we could have stayed cheaply but it was closed so took us home and we stayed at his grandma’s house on the res. I hired him the next day to show us around the res). My kid was surprised there were actual American Indians still around. She thought it was just history and they were all dead.