Cavechat.org

ps: 1958 for me


TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE

1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking .

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

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem .

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms.........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no

lawsuits from these accidents

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,

made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.



We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
HOW TO

DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And YOU are one of them!


CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
and while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!




PS -The big type is because your eyes are shot at your age.

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE

1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us....

Funny - that first point may be true, but it also increased the chance the kid grew up to be a smoker and possibly an alcoholic. Anything more than an occasional drink or ANY smoking by a pregnant mother is, and was then, irresponsible (in my humble opinion). Plus if you're dumb enough to smoke around kids, you need a good slap in the head...

But everything else on your list - and the sentiments behind it - I agree with totally. No joke! ...and I'm a 70's child...

NZcaver wrote:

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE

1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us....

Funny - that first point may be true, but it also increased the chance the kid grew up to be a smoker and possibly an alcoholic. Anything more than an occasional drink or ANY smoking by a pregnant mother is, and was then, irresponsible (in my humble opinion). Plus if you're dumb enough to smoke around kids, you need a good slap in the head...

Actually the opposite was true in my family. Both parents smoked (and died young). My mother was Italian, and accepted wine as a part of life.
You may not be aware of this, but in the 50's, wine was considered a *good thing* for pregnant women. One of my grandfathers was a barkeeper--I remember many trips to the bar as a tiny kid. (Not drinking. Fed candy bars). None of the 5 of us smoke. Nor are any of us alcoholic.

I find more people my age who grew up with smoke and drink as forbidden fruits tend to overdo both than those of us who had wine and beer from a young age, at home. We just saw the waste of money of smoking, so no one got hooked on that vice.

I agree with the list. Heh heh so true, although neither my father nor mother smoke or drink and so I chose not to as well. Life was good when you could learn lessons the hard way. Heh heh it sure helped me remember

Teresa wrote:Actually the opposite was true in my family...

I find more people my age who grew up with smoke and drink as forbidden fruits tend to overdo both than those of us who had wine and beer from a young age, at home. We just saw the waste of money of smoking, so no one got hooked on that vice.

Interesting observation. Mine may be a different generation to yours, but I knew a lot of kids who grew up to be smokers - just like their parents. Regardless, I think your "forbidden fruit" comment about alcohol is right on the mark. I was highly amused to find it's actually illegal in the US to give your own (minor) kids a taste of beer or wine in your own home! Imagine that! How ridiculous. I probably tasted my first drop before I even started school, and as an adult I'm only an occasional light drinker at most.

Of course my real vice is caving. And you don't easily get introduced to that at a young age if you had a sheltered upbringing, and/or spent all that free time watching TV or being on-line (like all us keyboard cavers are right now...)

Of course my real vice is caving. And you don't easily get introduced to that at a young age if you had a sheltered upbringing, and/or spent all that free time watching TV or being on-line (like all us keyboard cavers are right now...)

Amen Brother

I remember my buddies and I sneaking mercury out of the science lab and having a grand time playing with it at home. Nowadays, a drop of mercury spills and the building is shut down and hazmat is called in.

And our mommies painted us with Mercurochrome and iodine, and we didn't die either.

I rollerskated without pads. Got nasty infections in my always skinned knees. Now I can crawl on chert, without much pain at all.

I had my 11 yr old niece over a couple of weeks ago. The kid was inseparable from her (older brother's) cell phone. Tried to call her mom at 11:30 p.m. to 'check in.' My sister was sensibly asleep.

Man, when I got to go with my aunt at her age, I didn't WANT my mom to know where I was or what I was doing.

WHEW!! I guess I made it too.. born in '66.

I do think the childs world was safer back then for some reason.. maybe because our parents were more involved in our lives. TV was usually pretty boring, and never turned on during the day.

There were far less choices of what to do then too. I think that helped keep me out of trouble for the most part. The toys we had left much more to the imagination, rather than having your activities spelled out to you on a video game.

I think we can probably thank parental government and overly litigious lawyers for ruining a lot of the childhood experiences.

I'd give anything to return to that simple life now - except I still want wheels and some folding money


..and maybe a computer too.

I recall reading something similar to that list a while back... been wanting to find it again because a lot of it is so true. One of them sticks out of my mind is that you could fall off the front porch (or out of a tree you were climbing) of your best friend's house and their mommas would simply patch you up themselves or just send you home to yours WITHOUT worry about pending lawsuits.

Some of the health issues mentioned are based on ignorance than anything else. We know more now about the effects of alcohol and tobacco than we did "way back when."

But yeah I remember having to share a bottle of soda with a buddy of mine... as long as we wiped the top off each time (with dirty shirt-sleeves or the bottoms of our (dirty) t-shirts)... didn't want to switch cooties with your buds ya know... we didn't think nothing of it... He had a nickle, a dime and a couple of pennies and I had oh, mebbe 30 cents and thus we had enough to get a cold drink, and maybe enough left over for a couple pieces of bubble gum... way back when.
The good ole' AMERICAN days...

Oh, yeah, well, when I was a kid, we were so poor... We couldn't afford clothes. I remember the day my daddy bought me a hat so I could look out the window.

At the moment, my 4yo son's favorite toy is a cardboard box he sits on and slides down the hill in the backyard. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

heh heh Rock On Scott!

ya know, I suspect at least 90% of the above was true in my case. One incident sticks out in my memories:

A buddy of mine lived right behind a large complex of greenhouses around which grew many weed including one with a stiff 5-6 ft stalk, and a weighty root that grew to a point which when dried... made a really nifty spear after honing them on the sidewalk. We played cowboys and indians a lot, and guess what? We all wanted to be the indians. (they had spears!) I remember one summers day when somebody's aim was a little better than normal, Kyle was hopping around with a spear sticking out of his leg that would not come out of it's own volition. A mother pulled it out, patched it up, and sent us on our way, with admonitions of "being more careful" (of course we did not tell her the truth)(no doubt it didn't matter, she was a mother, she already knew...)

The thing I liked about this was the evocation of a far simpler time, when things happened, got taken care of, and we all moved on.

tom

When I was in 1-2 grade, we had rock fights out on the dirt road in front of our house. We used to square off like in dodge ball but instead of throwing balls, we threw rocks at each other. It was great fun.

The mention of the spear reminded me of spear grass we used to throw at each other in Texas. You'll pull the blade out of the stalk, lick it (for some reason) and then throw it and it would stick in the clothes of the person you were throwing it at.

Scott, I often joke with my daughter that in my day we didn't have iPods and computers for fun. If we wanted to listen to music we had to memorize a song and hum it as we walked. And all we had to play with was a stick and box and our imagination.

back in my day we didnt have sunglasses.. we just squinted a lot.