things we dont do anymore

[ruralgirl]

............

It was a sure sign you knew how to handle a draught horse when you could re-position the outhouses in one go!!

Loved your outhouse story, Peter! When my folks bought our farm (I was 5), the old house had no electricity or indoor plumbing, so we too had what we called "The Stinky House". Thank goodness, my folks didn't dawdle getting the place updated.

I wonder how many of us in here know from experience how much talent it does indeed take to perform precise maneuvers from the rear end of a draft or driving horse!

 

[Bob Denman]

...I wonder how many of us in here know from experience how much talent it does indeed take to perform precise maneuvers from the rear end of a draft or driving horse!

:shocked: I can't even perform precise maneuvers when I'm IN the outhouse... pps:

 

[ruralgirl]

:shocked: I can't even perform precise maneuvers when I'm IN the outhouse... pps:

:roflblack::roflblack:

 

[Bob Denman]

:shocked:

 

[asp125]

Back in the day when Evel Knievel was big, and us kids had our banana seat bicycles, we would try to emulate our two wheeled hero.

It started with wooden ramps ... progressed to ramps jumping over fire logs placed in a row. We would increase the number of logs till someone crashed. One day somebody in our group had the idea of laying kids down instead of logs. Needless to say one of our parents caught us trying this and grounded a bunch of us. :yikes:

Choppers were also in vogue, and somebody *cough cough* had the hairbrained idea to saw apart the fork on our 3 speeds and extend them with thin walled electrical conduit. :yikes: Anyone who's seen 1" conduit and how it bends ... well... you can guess the results. Let's say test rides would have ended up on Youtube, if we had Youtube back then.

On a serious note of things we don't do anymore, as a society:
Eat dinner as a family at the table more than once a week, if that.
Have sit down quality conversations uninterrupted by text messages and other digital distractions
Have skinny kids, not chubby ones OD-ing on fast food and sugar.

 

[PrairieSpyder]

Loved your outhouse story, Peter! When my folks bought our farm (I was 5), the old house had no electricity or indoor plumbing, so we too had what we called "The Stinky House". Thank goodness, my folks didn't dawdle getting the place updated.

I wonder how many of us in here know from experience how much talent it does indeed take to perform precise maneuvers from the rear end of a draft or driving horse!

I enjoy you and Peter's outhouse stories. It's not my experience, but something I always admired about my mom. She and her sister were raised by their grandma, but she didn't really have anything (Great Depression) so they lived with various aunts, uncles and cousins. She said at one place the kids were really happy that there was a water well right in the yard so they wouldn't have to haul water from the creek. They also rode to town in a mule-drawn wagon.

 

[DJFaninTN]

taking back glass Coke bottles to the grocery store to get the deposit back.

praying you'd get a whipping from your Mom and not your Dad.

candy cigars and cigarettes

made to get lawn mowing jobs in the summer when I was a young as 8 years old.

having a paper route and having to go and collect the money and turn it in to the paper company before you got paid.

having to use hand shears to cut the grass along the sidewalks and walk ways. no such thing as a weed eater.

i can remember lots of us guys having rifles & shotguns in our vehicles at school. most were in plain site or the back window.

 

[ARtraveler]

"Cannibal Sandwiches": I've got to try that! :thumbup:

Make sure you have your shots these days. Cooties are hiding in the meat. :yikes::yikes: And yes, I had a few of those. :thumbup:

Some interesting stuff here that brings back the memories. :yes:

 

[JimVonBaden]

Back in the day when Evel Knievel was big, and us kids had our banana seat bicycles, we would try to emulate our two wheeled hero.

It started with wooden ramps ... progressed to ramps jumping over fire logs placed in a row. We would increase the number of logs till someone crashed. One day somebody in our group had the idea of laying kids down instead of logs. Needless to say one of our parents caught us trying this and grounded a bunch of us. :yikes:

Choppers were also in vogue, and somebody *cough cough* had the hairbrained idea to saw apart the fork on our 3 speeds and extend them with thin walled electrical conduit. :yikes: Anyone who's seen 1" conduit and how it bends ... well... you can guess the results. Let's say test rides would have ended up on Youtube, if we had Youtube back then.

Benn there, still have the scars to prove it.

On a serious note of things we don't do anymore, as a society:
Eat dinner as a family at the table more than once a week, if that.
Have sit down quality conversations uninterrupted by text messages and other digital distractions
Have skinny kids, not chubby ones OD-ing on fast food and sugar.

I think these are still completely possible, but the parents have to actually act like parents for this to happen. I know several households that adhere to these rules.

That said, as a society we are failing our kids.

 

[no chrome]

i can remember playing my entire childhood without wearing shoes.
we ran around barefoot 24/7/365 and i only had to get stitches on my feet 1 time.
i can still remember playing tackle football on our dirt road and none us wore shoes.
i remember when there were a lot more open spaces and a lot less fences than there are now and we rode our mini bikes all through the woods.:thumbup:
those open spaces are now strip malls and apartment projects

 

[Bob Denman]

Make sure you have your shots these days. Cooties are hiding in the meat. :yikes::yikes: And yes, I had a few of those. :thumbup:

:shocked:

 

[R FUN]

Yes, talk about dirt poor, we also never had a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out. No sewer and water, had outhouse in the middle of a big city and a horse drawn wagon would come around and shovel them out [ called honey wagons]. Went hunting rabbits on sunday yes we needed meat, but had to get home in time to sit in front of the radio to listen to programs like Lassie, Our miss Brooks, Boston Blacky, or Dragnet and listen for the progress of the war. No there was no T.V.s back then and everything was rationed. Needed coupons or ration stamps for nearly everything if you could even afford anything
YES , THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS!.
Roger

 

[PrairieSpyder]

This topic makes me really appreciate how my parents made it through the Great Depression and WWII. :bowdown:

They built the American dream so we could live in it.

 

[gkamer]

My paint brush experience

One time when I was about 5, I was out in front of our apartment in Brooklyn. I found a trash can at the curb with some old paint cans and paint brushes. The brushes still had wet paint in the bristles. I don't know why, but I took a paint brush and threw it straight up in the air. It came down squarely on top of my head leaving a nice big wet patch of paint in my hair.

I went upstairs and my mother grabbed a can of turpentine out of the closest and commenced to give me a shampoo. That stuff burned my little 5 year old hide like molten steel, but it got the paint out. I don't remember why my mother thought it necessary to keep a can of turpentine in the closet but when you have 2 five year old and a four year old boys in the house it was probably a logical precaution.

 

[OJ UK]

No different in England...

I suppose I was lucky as my family was considered to be comfortably off, but only by those who didn't know how many hours a week my father had to work!
There was little time for comfort in his life as a master butcher with his own shop. Monday morning started at 3:30am for a 40 mile drive in an old van
up to Smithfield Market in London to hand pick the meat he was going to sell (Rationing didn't end in England 'til '52 for food and '54 for fuel.). He'd be back to unload around a ton of mainly scotch beef and get the shop ready for a 9:00am start. He started work in his father's butcher shop full time when he was 12 years old.
Yeah, I had plenty of raw ground steak in my childhood with or without the bread and onions! My favourites were lambs or calves "sweetbreads"* chopped and fried with egg and also, fried with scrambled eggs, sheeps' brains were a real treat! His sausages were also extremely tasty.....There was also pork brawn which was good!
Here's a recipe: https://www.cooked.com/uk/Adrian-Ri...Meat/Charcuterie/Classic-jellied-brawn-recipe
This was his shop in the mid 50s.
When I reached 7 years old I walked to the train station every day by myself, except Sundays, to catch the train to school and yes, there was school on Saturday mornings! Sunday morning walked to church for yep, you guessed it, Sunday school! There was a lot of school in my childhood. Well it got me from under my parents feet and they thought that was a good thing....

*sweetbreads = testicles

 

[Trbayth]

:shocked:


View attachment 141327

Yeah not sure I'd attempt that today. Funny how we have "progress" and science has advanced yet we wouldn't attempt something we did in the old days. /shrug

 

[Samson]

3 channels on the black and white tv, the rotary phone, the huge ice chest in the garage with deer meat we harvested to last the whole year as well as Koho Salmon, no a/c as this was a huge luxury, hitching a ride on the trains as they rolled by so we didn't have to walk 4 miles into town.

Those were the days.

 

[kngfsh27]

Going down to the neighborhood market to get my dad a six-pack of Hamm's beer and a pack of White Owl cigars. This all came to a halt when I decided to stop at the old railroad depot to have a beer and smoke a cigar when I was ten years old.

 

[Chupaca]

"Cannibal Sandwiches": I've got to try that! :thumbup:

They call that steak Tartar in the finer restaraunts....:roflblack:

 

[ARtraveler]

Going down to the neighborhood market to get my dad a six-pack of Hamm's beer and a pack of White Owl cigars. This all came to a halt when I decided to stop at the old railroad depot to have a beer and smoke a cigar when I was ten years old.

Did you get a little green around the gills from the White Owl? :roflblack::roflblack: I have to admit to trying it when I was about 12 or so. An occasional Harvester, White Owl or Roi Tan. I always knew I would eventually turn green, but did it anyway. :yes::yes: