Can't forget hide and seek just as it got dark, then catching lightning bugs. Tennis ball cannons and bb guns.
Not what ya think. You take a willow branch about 3/4" diameter and 4' long . Take all the branches off and point the small end and or cut a couple barbs into the pointed end. Stab a pasture Apple on the end and with a long arcing motion throw the apple off the end of the branch. After some practice and the right branch you can toss apples 100 yards. Apple whipping !
Yeah! Lighting bugs and bb guns. Not a chipmunk/squirrel dared showing up whenever it heard kids coming. Great memory thread!! Another big one was actually going trick or treating. No fun frolics, no trunk or treats, just going door to door with costumes and masks on while it was dark outside without parents! And, if we were lucky, there wouldn't be snow on the ground up here!
A roll of paper caps and a hammer! A shotgun shell primer shot out of a Wrist Rocket against cement was always good for something whistling by your ear! See where I am going with this? Gary
You must have been my neighbor growing up. Or... maybe all of us young fellas did this stuff as kids?
Did that at the old farm every fall. You were top dawg if you could get em down into the treeline (just about 100 yards)
Made me remember, woods across the street from our house was on a hill, at the top of the hill they cut a dead end road in to build some houses. They dug the first basement and must have run out of money so it set unattended for several years, that was a great play area, we called that the hole (pretty original huh) everybody in the neighbor knew where we were headed when we said lets go to the hole.
Funny thing is for the most part we all lived to tell about it. Made some spectacular fireworks- not a ton of boom but lots of flash- strong enough to turn a mailbox inside out ( don't ask) If ya dipped them in hot wax - made fishing real short work- no bait or poles needed . Years ago when the younguns could go trick or treating after dark rig up all kinds of ghosts that would rise as they approached the door and Talking pumpkins (walkie talkies on different channels so I could here what they would say and answer)- absolutely priceless not only the kids expressions but the parents as well. sometimes I would be out by the edge of the drive and ask the parents the names- course then the pumpkin or ghosts would greet them by name
Our trees were spruce and fir trees about 1 to 2 feet across the base. Mom despaired of ever getting the gum out of our clothes. We would be up 50 to 60 feet in the trees. My brother and neighbours especially. I could get up about 20 feet but had a real hard time getting down. Maybe where my fear of heights comes from? I don't ever remembering anyone falling out of them. A fall out of one them would have been really bad. I don't even think we thought about it. We had alders bordering the property but it was hard to get started up them as the lower branches were so brittle. My grandfather made a sailor's rope ladder for my brother. It was 20 feet long and didn't reach the lower branches of his favorite tree so Dad had to hammer in climbing steps up to the rope ladder.
We lived on a busy road and at night we would tie a pocketbook to a line on a fishing pole and We'd leave the pocket book on the side of the road. People would stop their car and get out to pick up the pocket book and then we would real them in. A lot times they would scream or yell and leave. I remember a tractor trailer driver who turned around his rig and drove back. He laughed like hell when we pulled the pocketbook away. He said it was the second time this had happened.
And how about when new tires used to be wrapped with paper? More than one kid would wrap a roll of toilet paper around a worn tire and leave it in a ditch along the road!
Paper? My first tires were made out of stone! The newer ones made out of wood were an real improvement! Gary
Tractor wheels just steel no rubber on the smaller AC, was a crank start - magneto and gravity fed fuel- Big red one ( don't remember brand) had electric start for the pony motor which then started the diesel.
Laying coins (when we had them) or small pebbles on the track just to see the train turn them to flat or dust. Looking for the occasional hobo hitching a ride on the trains. Hitching the trains when we were bold enough. Hitching the back of vehicles to get dragged along over the snow covered roads.
