Scattelogical ramblings and desultory humor - Almost May

Well, that's stupid! How are you supposed to dispose of them, I wonder!

I haven't had one burn out on me yet. I think they're terrific.

I have.....they did last longer than a regular but still not long enough for me.

That's surprising. I have not had any burn out in less than 7 years or so.

One burnt out in less than a year. It was not the curly one though - kinda cone type. I know I paid 5+ bucks for it.

LOL re: mercury.
When I was in Jr High (mid 1960's), the science teacher went around & put a drop of mercury on a piece of paper on each kid's desk - just so we could have fun watching it roll around!

The lead pipe in the game "Clue" used to be real lead.

I grew up in the same era that had air raid practice. The students ducked under the desks with their backs towards the windows. I guess they were more afraid of us getting broken glass in our faces than the danger of the fallout fom an atomic bomb.

I guess I have radioactive-mercury-lead poisoning in my system.

How did we ever survive? ...or did we???

Nancy (Who probably glows in the dark!)

Nancy:

I remember all those things, too.
And not even having seatbelts in the cars?
And playing kick the can in the street.
Heck, playing outdoors at all without adult supervision!

Take a rock or stick and draw the hopscotch squares.

When I was little I used to lay on the big area by the back window behind the backseat of our old pontiac. We got hit by a bus when I was laying up there once.... went flying off hit the back of the front seat and landed on the floor, thank God I wasn't hurt.

My sister, 2 cousins & I used to ride in the back of our station wagon.
That was our spot. My father decreed that's where we'd stay until we were too tall to be able sit with space between our heads and the roof of the car.
Once our heads touched the top, we were moved to the back seat.

Sherrie, you said, "Heck, playing outdoors at all without adult supervision!" What about just plain playing outdoors!

Oh, Nancy, more memories! In our station wagon, it was the "baby" between mom and dad, us three girls in the back seat, and the other two boys in the way back. One summer we took a 5-hour drive to Maine like this - with luggage! No fun!

Oh what a memory jog! Using a rock to draw hopscotch squares. I had forgotten all about that.

Good morning Does anyone remember th 5th grade MayPole? This was a big event in late May at East Hill School. All the grades and Mothers and Fathers came.
The rehearsals went on for a dayor two ahead of time.
The teacher haulled out the crank Victrola ( easier than plugging one in from inside a 100 yearold school house with few outlets)
There were picnic tables for cookies and lemonade and chairs for parents. There were only twenty sixth graders so there were lots of ribbons to braid.We would dance and weave in and out around the pole until it was covered with a braid of ribbon, flowers on top made a pretty sight.

Yeah! A rock on the sidewalk! That was classic! Every once in a while we would be given a piece of chalk. Man! That was like having GOLD! We could do everything with it! No waste, either. We'd use it right down to the last itty-bit of chalk dust.
We didn't call it hopscotch, though - in NYC, it was "Potsy"

We also played skully, ringaleveo, hide-and-seek, Simon Says, Mother May I, tag, redlight-greenlight, giant steps and jump-rope.

As soon as we came home from school, we'd change our clothes and would be out the door. We would play with all the other kids on the block until the mothers would start hollering from the doors, "It's time for dinner!"

We grew up more "solialized". Todays kids are either parked in front of the TV or the computer - or the DS, Game Boy, or whatever the current "hot" toy is these days.

Nancy -- lovin' the memories!

Dont forget the snow men, sticks for arms and what ever you could find for the nose and eyes. Everything was free. Ocassionally a carrot and your mittens would go on the end of the sticks.

We played all those and more, Nancy. Catch and kill, catch one - catch all, tv tag, freeze tag, belt, Red Rover, British Bulldog, ace-king-queen, stoop ball, punchball, stickball, and many others.

Love the memories, Nancy. We share the same games of our youth. Jumping in puddles was such a fun summer play time. Every game was free.

We 'called for' our friends by yelling in the alley. Our parents threw down change for the ice cream guy.

Yep, those too, Victor.
Fun, eh?

The only games I didn't like were any that involved something being thrown in my direction... like dodge ball. I HATED it! In school we had to play softball in our gym class... hated that too!
I had no desire to play ping-pong! As little & light-weight as that ball was... it was STILL coming at me!

LOL!

Nancy

Funny, Nancy, I was the same way after a cousin's husband was hit in the neck with a ball and had to wear a neck brace for a year. I'm still no good at catching things and hate when things are thrown my way - even frisbees or balls.

LOL! Yep! Mom would wrap the coins in a tissue & throw it out the window.

Poor ice cream man had to wait for us to decide what we wanted. My sister was easy, she always just wanted a Dixie Cup. Me... I'd try to figure out what was the BIGGEST thing I could get for my money.

Nancy

Hey Northeast!

As Pogo 'Possom used to say in the old Walt Kelley cartoon:

Friday the 13th comes on Tuesday this month!

Take care everybody!

This is such a great topic it should have a thread of its own.
We played all those street games and thought nothing of long walks along the gorges on the Cornell campus, alone.Knew not to talk to strangers.
We would go into Willard Strait Hall (student union)and steal dinner trays(metal in the 40's) and slide down Library slope until our wool leggings chaffed our legs so bad we could hardly walk home.
I believe the absence of TV and computer games developed a more creative generation.
Post WW2 not much to buy so we made our own amuzments.

There was a thread a couple of years ago called A Walk Down Memory Lane. I remember that Pirl was on it, and maybe some others from NE. It was a great thread.

I'm not that old and I never stayed inside. We lived on a lake so in the summer we were "in" it and in the winter we were "on" it. After a big rain storm we'd float things down the water in the street rushing toward the sewer grate.We also used draw on the sidewalks with stones, heck, we didn't even have sidewalks...I guess we used to draw on our driveway and only right in front of the garage because the rest of it was gravel.lol

This message was edited May 13, 2008 2:57 PM
oops...forgot to preview it first...had a couple spelling errors

This message was edited May 13, 2008 2:59 PM

flowerjen: How refreshing!

You know all these years Ive just remembered what a horrible childhood I had. Not sure if it really was that horrible, if if it was just the fashionable thing to do! Im sure I must have played some times at least. Why can't I remember?

I'm not that old either, and I remember spending every summer outside from dawn till mom rang the dinner bell. I never wore shoes. I was proud of myself when my feet would toughen up so I couldn't feel it when I walked across the gravel driveway, then through the pricker bushes. The entire town was my playground. We used the street to play and learn to ride bikes. The woods were for playing "doctor" in. What fun!

My mom had a big triangle she ring to call us for dinner.

Ours was a cow bell.

JoAnn... you brought back some more memories.
My sister went to Cornell, an as undergrad & at the Veterinary College. I visited her many times.
I climed McGraw Tower and loved listening to the chimes.(best appreciated when you weren't right under them!) http://www.chimes.cornell.edu/sounds.html

There's a live cam at Cornell -
http://www.cornell.edu/visiting/ithaca/live_views.cfm

You can switch the views from Ho Plaza, right outside The Strait (there's also a "Hi Mom!" setting as well) to McGraw Tower.
There's also a Feeder Watch cam at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology where you can see the birds stuff their bellies.
http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/News/feederCam/index.html

I loved visiting Ithaca!

Nancy

My mom would have my dad call out "Arla" when it was dinner time. Such fun memories!

Sapsucker woods is where I went on a "Campfire Girls"
field trip. That's before the lab was built, it must have been 1948.
There was an old woman who lived in a kreasote house on the road. she was a professor of Orn. and could call chickadees to eat fromher hand and sit on her chil and yake sunflower seeds from her mouth.
I was so impressed with that outing, I have loved birding ever since.
We never know how important it is to introduce children to the out doors. Never know what kind of impression it leaves ,even when the kids are scrappy and fighting.
Our leader was a Cornell Student studying child behavior in the Home Ec school, now the college of human resources.

O.K. I finally remembered something fun. Y'all grew up in the city.

I grew up in a rural area. We had a farm with cows and a pond. One time my brothers and I built a raft so that we could navigate across the pond. The pond had frogs. It also had leaches. I was my job to pull the leaches off my brothers. Yuk.

Finally, someone planted cat fish in the pond. the cat fish ate the leaches. So then we could actually swim in the pond without getting blood suckers on us.

I remember playing in the barn.
The barnyard was on a lower level so the horse stalls were on the first floor. There was a manure shoot from behind the horses, we used to slide down it onto the manure pile. Then to clean off we would jump into the water tin tank where the cowes drank.
Of course it made my grandmother mad, but not as mad as when we put chickens in the wringer washer on the summer porch.

Rats, gloria...you just stirred up another memory. We used to sneak a swim in the North fork of the KY river...I only had boys for neighbors. They bet me I wouldn't go into the water and stay under for 10 seconds. Ha, I stayed under for at least 30 and came out covered in leaches.

That's when I started throwing pawpaws at them whenever they walked past my house.

I am going to be grossed out for the rest of the day with that leech memory

Our hay was on the second level, the cows down below. The hay was hoisted up off the wagon with a hay fork rigged up to the ridge of the barn. You lodge the forks into the hay and then hit the horses on the rump to go forward and that causes the fork to lift the load of hay up onto the upper level.

It was fun to play tarzan or trapese on the rigging when it was not being used to hoist up the loads of hay.

Wooooaw I remember playing on the hay rigging. It was on a track that carried hay from the center of the barn to the top where there was a trip to send it to either side of the barn'We used to hold onto the trip rope on oen side and run as fast as we could and swing across the center cross the trip and momentum would carry us to the other side.
Nice theory--- I had the rope firmly in my grip-- ran fast and jumped and swung to the middle but it wasn't enough momentum to carry me across the trip so I got stuck in the middle 20 feet above the barn floor. I hung on as long as I could and then dropped to the floor, my sister ran for my grandfather I did end up w/ sprained ankle.
We were terrors.

Past life regression on Oprah today.

Sorry - no hay memories here.

No hay in New York City I guess.

I can tell, Victor, you would have enjoyed swinging from the barn rigging if you had been there! And catching turtles in the pond.