Pickles by Brian Crane for April 24, 2022

“Too soon old, too late smart”?

If you want to know my grandparents’ dangerous lives were in their childhoods, they lived through the 1918 influenza pandemic: father’s parents were early teenagers whereas mother’s parents were roughly toddlers; stepmother’s parents were born years after it was over.

In the 50’s we had concrete playgrounds. I still have a sensitive spot on my elbow from falling off the teeter totter onto it. I wonder how many landed on their head before they switched to sand or dirt.

And NOBOBY wore helmets when they rode their bike!

My brother and I found an old boat and took it down to the stream , we got in trouble that time!

Haha

Playing on farm equipment, building tunnels in the haymow, catching minnows and tadpoles in the crick, making a hut and a tree house out of scrap wood, making a snow fort … good times.

You do what you can, with what you achieve

Each generation has it’s own hill to climb ;-)

I think Earl means maturity. Not age in numbers. In Earl’s time it was important to mature as soon as you could – or else.

I’m in my late sixties. When I was in kindergarten, the playground equipment was set up on a pavement lot. Child safety was not a big concern in the late ’50’s.

When I worked for the testing company in the early eighties, we did extensive testing of playground surfaces (rubber mats, foam, sand, etc). We used all kinds of de-celerometers and such to measure fall impact from various heights with likelihood of concussion and broken bones. Turns out about the safest surface was 10 inches of mulch (or more). It’s cheap and easy to do, even for homeowners with backyard swing sets.

My younger cousins and I used to follow the cow herd on foot when we moved the herd from the salt grass pasture up to my uncle’s house to work them. The older boys got to ride horses. The bulls weren’t ever a problem, but once in a while we’d get charged by a cow with calf. We were armed with big sticks, and would just dance out of the way and give them a whack. We all loved that stuff. By age 12, I rode a horse for the move. It was a blast. Took about half a day to move them 3 miles.

My playground had monkey bars, they taught us how to fall 6 feet, banging off pipes, and survive. Swings with cast iron seats, if they hit you in the head, take it clean off. Mom used to send us down to play in the tar pits. We had it rough. But, we were happy then.

This is true! We never wore helmets, knee pads, etc….we lived and learned…unlike the generation of today….they don’t even play outside anymore…too busy on the Xbox, cell or hanging out at the malls….I blame the parents…..

BOO HISS

Cute

We played in huge abandoned artillery bunkers. Pitch black. Occasional encounters with roaming gangs of feral girls. Used slingshots to fire ricin-filled spiky castor beans at each other. Or used quarter dynamite stick fireworks to see which trees could resist being split in two by them. Then there was riding bikes behind the DDT mosquito fogging truck.

I recall red hot metal slides.

if Yogi Berra were alive to read this, he’d be rolling over in his grave

When I was a kid ,my friends and I would spend the day out in the woods with tools ( saws ,axes, hammers, nails ,etc.) building tree houses and forts. All my parents said was be home for dinner. No one ever got hurt and we had a lot of fun.

When I was a kid we had to walk 5 miles to school, up hill, both ways, in the snow year round. We had to kill our own food, drag it home, skin it and clean it before we could cook it and eat it, with our bare hands no less. We worked the fields 26 hours a day seven days a week, even while going to school.

It is a wonder some of us survived the stupid stuff we did, and yes, I jumped off a bridge like the others. We were using a thick hemp rope like on ships, but you still had to leave go to hit the water. Never did that again.

Good ole Earl!

Yeah……… sure……. right……..uh huh…….. ok…….

Loved this…reminded me of a story our friend told his young children about walking miles to school through winter blizzards, hands warmed by baked potatoes in his pocket that he ate for lunch without butter, when the teacher made them kneel on raw rice kernels if they misbehaved. He was born and raised in New Orleans. still makes me ROFLOL

When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s we were allowed to go and enjoy being a kid with no adult supervision. When I was 12, 5 of us rode our bikes 27 miles around a local lake, I walked everywhere, took shortcuts thru woods except during deer hunting season. Our 4 kids were raised the same, we allowed them freedom to be a kid. Now days, kids are scheduled for every sport or activity and parents are always nearby. I can’t remember how many years its been since I saw a group of kids by themselves, playing a pick up game of Baseball or Football. Kids aren’t allowed to go off by themselves and play unstructured games anymore.

Stifle, old man … you know nothing. Now, I have to go study my text book written by someone called Professor Emeritus.

The truly wonderful wisdom and humor of our elders. I love that!

And he had to walk to and from school…uphill both ways…

When polio was raging, it was common to see long lines of families waiting for the vaccines even though they knew the risks of the very early polio vaccines. You know, back when people cared about not only their families but other people as well, and weren’t just a bunch of crybabies and drama queens? Yeah, in those days.

Do you commonly see cases of polio these days? Or how about smallpox? No? Oh…

You’re welcome!

- from all of us who got vaccinated.

Im 74 and wouldnt trade it for today! Played outside all day till dinner. Got hurt lots of times.No big deal…Hitch hiked sometimes. Rode my bike for miles..Loved all of it. Miss those great days.

a nice case of “Survivor bias”

Lucky are the kids nowadays who live near an empty lot, and if it’s filled with trees, Heaven!

When I was 6 the swings in the playground had thick wooden seats with big metal corners. I was walking across the playground one day and didn’t see the kid on the swing because he was so high up. He came down and I caught the metal corner on the head. It knocked me out. A mother was there and brought me around . I told her I could walk home because it was only a half block. I passed out in the street on the way and a neighbor saw me out there and brought me in. I had a concussion with a 106 fever and spent the night throwing up. The doctor said to throw me into a bath with a lot of ice. I spent the next two hours hallucinating badly until the fever broke. Yes, I remember the old playgrounds

Sorry Grandpa, it doesn’t work that way. Are you the watched pot that doesn’t boil?

Gotta love Earl.

(I also played on the railroad tracks and with Daddy’s John Deere tractor. He didn’t worry about it at first because he didn’t think I could get it to crank. I showed him!

Good times.

I also swam in the gravel lakes and Escambia River with the gators, moccasins, gars, and other interesting critters.

Achieving adulthood is a wonder indeed.

And that’s in dog years!

Yet you was feisty as a kid Grandpa.

I think Earl meant when he started out doing those things, he was a child.

Monkey bars no longer allowed. Too dangerous.