Registered: Nov 2001
Location: Rio de los Brazos de Dios
Posts: 3878

oxsan
What Do Your Kids Do for Fun? - Two

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Registered: Oct 2001
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I should add that I remember the crawdad song being sung with "nigger" rather than "man" - not by my father, of course.

And yes, I've been on a snipe hunt. My ninth birthday at our lakehouse at Lake Texoma.

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Registered: Apr 2005
Location: wookin pa nub
Posts: 11105

I was actuallyt taught that song in first grade and it went "You get a line and I'll get a pole, honey. You get a line and I'll get a pole babe. You get a line and I'll get a pole and we'll go fishin' in the crawdad hole. Honey, baby mine."

It's amazing how many of the things in your two lists I did as a kid, but my kids have not done. Hell, I had forgotten that I had done most of them unti I read your post.

Thanks for that, oxsan.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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I may not be an old timer, but things were different in my day also. Kids today are pansies. Part of that I think is the parent's fault (mine) and the world we live in today. I'm a little over-protective, I think as a result of the child rape/murder cases we see on the news every other week. I'd be hesitant to let my son venture off into the woods or the swamp all day long without supervision, at least at 8 years old.

Annie-Over, Alley–Oop, Anti-Over - I used to play this, with a football. The way we'd play is we'd yell "annie annie over!" and throw the ball over the house. We'd then have to run to the other side of the house without getting pelted by the ball. I havn't seen this played since I was a kid, and had forgotten about it.

Kick the Can - this I believe is a very old game, I remember my grandmother telling me how she played it as a child. We played with a soccer ball rather than a can.

Fighting Wasp Nests - I used to wreak havok on bees and wasps. A can of WD-40 and a lighter can be a lot of fun, and I took my fair share of stings. My son got stung once and now he's petrified of bees. I don't think kids mess with wasp nests anymore, I don't ever even see kids in the woods or in the weeds nowadays.

Crawdad Fishing - I used to spend hours on my belly at the creek. We didn't use bacon, we just grabbed the bastards right out of the rocks. Last summer, me and some friends brough our kids camping and river tubing. We found a little pool of water that had thousands of crayfish, and tried to teach the kids (who had never even seen one, they called them baby lobsters) how to catch them. Well I caught a big son of a bitch and he got me on some of the soft skin on top of my finger, and I made the mistake of saying "ouch", that was it, they no longer had any interest in being anywhere near those pinchers.

Smear the Queer - many kids (boys) with a football. the queer is whomever has the ball, the objective is to tackle and hogpile the queer and steal the ball from him, thus becoming the new queer.

Pickle in the middle - everyone should know this one, 3 people with a football, 2 play catch while the "pickle", the kid in the middle, tries to intercept the ball.

Bike helmets - Never in my life did I ever wear a bike helmet, I don't think they existed when I was a kid. Nowadays you can hardly find anyone without one, kids and adults alike. Some people give me nasty looks when they see me and my son on a bike ride sans-helmet.

Snakes - On a recent bike ride with my son and one of his friends, I saw a garder snake go across the path ahead of us. I dropped my bike and dashed into the weeds and grabbed him. Not a real big one, maybe 3 ft, and he wasn't aggressive, but the kids wouldn't get near him. It took 5 minutes of convincing just to get them to pet his tail while i held his head.

Frogging - I remember times when me and my friends would spend the day in the swamp, and end up with a 5 gallon pail filled almost to the top with live frogs. I also remember our mothers' reactions when they saw us, soaked in mud and swamp sludge from head to toe, carrying a pail full of reptiles. I've seen only a handful of frogs in the last 10 years, something with development and pollution killing them off. I also havn't seen a salamander in probably 20 years. In the spring we'd catch tadpoles, sometimes we'd keep them in an aquarium until they became frogs.

Grasshoppers - this is one activity I can convince my son to do. We'll walk down the railroad tracks and catch grasshoppers a few times every summer, but he doesn't go out and do it on his own, or with his friends.

Tree forts - I had a 4 story tree house that reached 30ft or more into an old tree. Broke my ankle once falling out of it. I'd spend entire summers with my dad's hammer back in the woods, or scavenging for old plywood and 2x4's, or picking up nails at construction sites. I can't remember the last time i've even seen a tree house, or even seen a kid climbing a tree.

Sandlot ball / stick ball - during the summer we'd all go to the park and play ball. No coaches, no uniforms, just a pickup ballgame. Either that or we'd play in the middle of the street with broomsticks and whiffle balls.

Street hockey - street hockey games used to be commonplace, I havn't seen one in progress since I was a kid.

Fire - maybe it's a good thing that kids don't play with fire much anymore (or maybe they do), but we had some fun with punctured tennis balls soaked in WD-40 and some hockey sticks.

magnifying glasses - torchuring things, like ants and inch worms, with magnifying glasses

firecrackers - all of the good ones have been outlawed, and I wouldn't be very thrilled if my son had access to the kind of crap I did as a kid, but man did we have fun blowing shit up.

BB Guns / slingshots - the songbirds and chipmunks ran in fear when they saw us coming. we'd come home with our pockets full of dead animals.

Bike ramps - building the ramps was half the fun, and scabs covering your entire knee caps and elboes often resulted in their use. One faceplant ended in the scabbing of my forehead, nose, and chin along with 2 fat lips. My son has never had more than a minor scrape.

Black eyes - is it even possible for a kid to get a black eye nowadays? I probably had at least one per summer, every summer.

Golf ball hunting - we'd spend entire days trudging through the woods, swamps, water hazards at the nearby golf course looking for golf balls. We didn't know why we wanted them or what to do with them, but the fun was in the hunting. I think I sold some at our garage sales, or we gave some to our fathers to use, but eventually we figured out we could hit a golf ball pretty damn far with an aluminum baseball bat and hit them all over the neighborhood, breaking a few windows and causing a few golf ball sized bruises.

Lemonade stands - we'd spend all day sitting in the sun at our lemonade stand, even though our street was secluded and the only traffic was from the residents. when our parents finally came home from work and bought some, the 50 cent profit per person made the whole day worth it.

Bows and arrows - we used to spend hours searching for the perfect branches for carving bows and arrows. we got pretty good at it, and crafted some fairly dangerous weapons using heavy gauge fishing line. the same for slingshots using a patch of leather from an old shoe (or in some cases from the shoes we were wearing at the time), and surgical tubing if we could get a parent to order some for us. Otherwise we used whatever we could find, like gobs of rubber bands.

Trains - we used to put coins, toys, carcasses, and anything else we wanted to see flattened or destroyed on the train tracks and wait for the train

Ice cream man - no matter what we were occupied with, when you hear that ice cream man bell every kid in the neighborhood made a mad dash for home to beg their parents for a dollar. I havn't heard an ice cream man bell in probably 20 years.

Well, now i'm just reminiscing, but things have changed considerably. Certainly much of it is circumstance, I was lucky to grow up on a dead end street with a dozen or more other kids my age, within walking or biking distance from may woods, creeks, swamps, fields, parks, train tracks, and a golf course. I feel my son is missing out because there are very few kids his age living near either myself or his mother.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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Lordy, Dingle. I put pennies on the train tracks all the time when I was a kid. I'd forgotten about that one as well.

And we had treehouses. One thing that always got me about the Boyles who lived behind us was that their parents had a contractor build their treehouse for them. I envied the treehouse, but I thought that was cheating just the same.

We had BB gun wars all over the neighborhood. It was cheating if you wore too many layers of clothes, but it was also cheating to bring a pellet gun. There was always some smartass who would bring one and pump it several times before shooting you with it. In later years some of those same friends of mine would go dove hunting and after a few beers start peppering each other with .20 gauge pellets from across the pasture.

we didn't see much hockey in Dallas of any kind until Norm Green got inappropriate with his office staff.

Well, we had the Dallas Blackhawks, a Chicago farm team, but that was just an excuse to drink overpriced warm beer and watch a fight over at Fair Park Colliseum.

Smear the Queer was also a little different in my world, and didn't really start until high school.

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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Vista, CA
Posts: 5270

We had elaborate war games with all the kids in the neighborhood. Other times, we'd make up our own variants of games (sit-down tag, the wandering game) or play old classics. Bloody Murder was a favorite. It had to be played late at night. One person was the murderer, and went out to hide. The others all started on "base" (invariably my folks' garage door) and after counting, had to go out individually and search for the murderer. Upon sighting him or her, they would scream "Bloody Murder!" and try to get back to the base without being caught. It scared the heck out of us fairly regularly, and my folks undoubtedly remember the series of loud slams as five or six kids successively barreled into the garage door at a good run at 10:00 pm. I remember they had some choice words on the subject.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: Ohraygun
Posts: 10794

We had treehouses and built forts, but what I remember best is playing 'Circus' whenever a hurricane would down trees, swinging from limb to limb and walking the tightrope. The time I remember in particular wasn't even in Florida, but in Boston after all the trees had been downed by a Nor'easter and the electricity was out. And cap gun wars were awesome.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

quote:

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Originally posted by Talarohk
We had elaborate war games with all the kids in the neighborhood. Other times, we'd make up our own variants of games (sit-down tag, the wandering game) or play old classics. Bloody Murder was a favorite.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

quote:

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Originally posted by Dingle
I may not be an old timer, but things were different in my day also. Kids today are pansies...

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

quote:

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Originally posted by Mugtoe
I should add that I remember the crawdad song being sung with "nigger" rather than "man" - not by my father, of course.

And yes, I've been on a snipe hunt. My ninth birthday at our lakehouse at Lake Texoma.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

I looked up wikipedia to see how they spelled that, and they have a bunch of different variations of eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

Ours was:

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe
Catch a Tiger by the toe
if he hollers, let him go

my mother said to pick this one
you dirty old dishrag you

(if you didn't like the result, you could continue)

Not because you're dirty
Not because you're clean
Just because you kissed a girl behind a Playboy magazine

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