Most liked posts in thread: Let me tell you, when I was a kid...

Well yeah, didn't everyone? I only had to do that when the Lambo wouldn't start.

 

My story isn't nearly as dramatic. In the 6th grade I was assigned the winter job of getting to school a half hour early to get the pot bellied, coal stove going. (for real) Also the term 'school bus' wasn't in the dictionary yet!
:biggrin5:

 

Well in the old days I had to ride the damn school bus 20 miles to get to school and that was in California in the 50s.

 

I grew up listening to my dad tell stories about how he walked six miles, barefoot, to school. Uphill both ways.
When we finally went to England to visit my grandparents, I saw that he lived in town, six blocks from his school!

 

When I was a kid, 2 bits was a piece of magic. It could get me a hair cut in a real barber shop. Waiting my turn listening to the old guys talking cow/calf, feeders and stockers and most important, rainfall, was an education in itself.
Also, that 2 bits could gain admittance to a Saturday matinee double feature with cartoon and newsreel, a box of popcorn and a soda.

 

When I was a youngin, I would get up for school with my dad and ride into the Army base real early.... We would eat breakfast in the base canteen... I would have to wait until school started which was in a cold Quonset hut until they got the heater going... The class was quite small... Maybe 8 other Army brats.... Bussac France 1959.... My dad's first tour of duty for 3 years..... Second tour of duty was back to France again, that time it was three years in Poitiers France... My sister was born in the Châteauroux, France Air force base. Then my Dad was stationed in Seoul South Korea, we couldn't go with him then. So mom, my sister and I when to live in Denmark with my grandparents for three years. Went to a Danish school then... Then back to the US in my early teenage years... We did an awful lot of traveling during my early years when my dad was in the Army... I was very fortunate to have experienced it all growing up...

The strangest part.... Many years later, when I finally got married.... Turns out my wife was born at the Châteauroux air base as well, in the same time period as when my sister was born... Weird....:crazy:

 

I actually enjoyed walking to and from school with my friends when I was a kid in Pittsburgh. It was about two miles, with a lot of hills, but it was also a bonding experience. We had fun.

When it snowed, which it did a lot, on the walk home we would ambush drivers with snowballs at the bottom of one particular hill, knowing that if they stopped, they wouldn't get up the next hill. Most drivers were cool about it -- it's just some snowballs. We could outrun the ones that stopped. :wink:

Seems like most parents these days are just too paranoid to let their kids walk to school, even if it five blocks away. The same dangers existed when I was a kid, but there wasn't 24-hour news networks and the internet to blow the dangers out of proportion, like there is today. Too bad, because their kids are missing out on some good times -- and much needed exercise.

CD

 

In the first grade I aspired to be a crossing guard. You got to wear a cool white canvas Sam Browne belt with a badge. Back then they trusted first and second graders to stop traffic for kids to cross in front of the school. Never made the cut though.

 

I had completely forgotten about that, but we had the same thing when I lived in South Jersey. It was the "Safety Patrol," and the kids were called "Safeties." When we moved away from there, it was the last time I ever saw that practice.

CD

 

As for hardships, I remember moving to Port Arthur, Texas. The schools had NO air conditioning, and I grew up in the North. My first year there, the eighth grade, I thought I was going to die. 95 degrees and 90-percent humidity. That was pure hell on earth.

Even now, when I work down along the Gulf coast, I pull my cameras out of the air-conditioned car, and have to wait five minutes for the lenses to un-fog, and I bring lots of shirts -- about three for each day I'm down there.

CD

 

Safety Patrol. That's it. Thanks for reminding me.
As for AC, the only AC I remember before I went in service was at the movie theater. And we sure a heck didn't have it in Basic Training at Lackland AFB outside San Antonio. It was right toasty there too. Never went to a school with AC. Now, if the AC goes out, they cancel school.

 

My two kids would agree with you. They were military brats for 16 and 14 years respectively. They even have the "Challenge Coins" to prove it.

 

WHAT...I'm still a kid

 

That's the MINI in you...

 

Future inmate #4509245.

CD

 

What's it like to ride a fairy? Or a buss? :biggrin5:

CD

 

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo"]Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen - YouTube[/ame]

 

I've hear riding this buss can be electrifying.