# Childhood memories!



## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

Mhammer started a thread about Christopher Lee being dead at 93. What fond memories I have of staying up really late while the parents were out at the Legion on a Friday night. Back then I really didn't know if Vampires really existed. My brothers kept on insisting that it was true, that vampires really did exist and they could possibly live in the neighborhood that we lived in. 

I can remember when all the neighborhood kids would get together on a Friday night during summer break and we would play hide n' go seek late at night. I used to hide and then my mind would be reeling about the possibilities of meeting a vampire in real life. It scared the shit out of me. It was amazing that I am still alive with some of the crap my brothers used me as a guinea pig for. 

Some of my favorite shows were I love Lucy, Beverly Hillbillies, Leave it to Beaver and cartoons back then! Rocky and Bullwinkle with Dudley Dooright! So politically incorrect but we didn't know that then. 

Do you have any fond memories of growing up?


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## rhh7 (Mar 14, 2008)

Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula!


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

When we moved in '63 a friend of the folks daughter boarded her horse at our place and took riding lessons. We were the same age. She spent most of the summer at our place and we camped out a lot. TV was something you watched in the winter if you had time and wanted to watch the 1 channel. The closest neighbor kid was 6 miles away. The camp outs were on the lake and we were curious and willing. Skinny dipping lead to other things. It was never a problem taking one of the farm vehicles and go cruising logging roads. On occasion the logging roads would lead to the drive in. Roger Corman movies ruled. AM radio and vinyl were all there was. "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man? The Shadow knows." We'd sometimes hook the antenna of a 2 transistor radio to half a mile of barbed wire fence at night and listen to far away places like San Francisco and Rio on the skip. Another thing we'd do is go to the beach and bug the hell out of the Herbies. Around that time some cousins came up from Vancouver and brought some leafy green stuff to smoke. That with the occasional bottle of Apple Jack from Dad's stash made laying out under the stars listening to the radio interesting. It was a good time. '65 wasn't. Dad and one grandma died that summer and my girlfriend left town for a while. Came back a while later some lbs lighter.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

My Dad used to talk about the Shadow! It was some radio show or something like that!


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## Guest (Jun 12, 2015)

Remember rushing home from school at lunch time to watch the Flintstones?
I was into the music shows too. The Monkees, Partridge Family, Banana Splits etc.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

Rocky and Bullwinkle.

[video=youtube;kRW7pITY5Cg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRW7pITY5Cg[/video]


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Lola said:


> My Dad used to talk about the Shadow! It was some radio show or something like that!


Something like that. The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke.....all the good ones.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Robert1950 said:


> Rocky and Bullwinkle.
> 
> [video=youtube;kRW7pITY5Cg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRW7pITY5Cg[/video]


They had color tv back then? I'll be damned. Until the 70's tv was for city folk.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

tv in our house was a tricky thing. kids were not supposed to watch it much, so if you had free time you were always outside.. if the weather was bad, and my dad wasn't home, i would watch kung-fu cinema, or drag racing, or dr shock. he was a host who did horror movies like the ones mentioned earlier. but even, most of the time then i had my nose in a book, or building models. at night, in the summer, sometimes we could watch woder woman, or the hulk, or kolchek (doubt i spelt that right) the nite stalker. the only guaranteed tv time ever wee was disney on sunday nites

the best childhood memories i have were spent fishing, hunting, trapping, catching critters, building bikes , trying to see diane rago's tits. i never did, btw.


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## GWN! (Nov 2, 2014)

Electraglide said:


> Something like that. The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke.....all the good ones.


Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Lone Ranger, the Big Valley., The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin .Lots of western movies and TV shows when I was growing up. 

Anybody remember these two science fiction shows: The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

I remember coming home from public school in the winter and my mother would have Campbell's Alpha-bit soup ready for me. Just so good. There was always the 7 of us plus my mom was a foster mom to a host of kids. She was a June Cleaver clone. In the kitchen always dressed in heels, stockings and full makeup. I remember when she would kiss my dad goodbye, he always had a bright red smudge on his cheek. Her dresses had her initials embroidered on her left chest pocket. She would bake cakes, cookies, etc. We were never wanting for food. It made you hungry with the smell of fresh baked goods wafting in the air. My dad though at the time had 3 jobs to make ends meet. I don't know how the hell he did it. He was always in a shitty mood and it didn't take very much to make him so angry that we would steer clear of him. 


When it was summer we were rarely inside. Life was busy when you hadn't a worry in the world.

- - - Updated - - -



GWN! said:


> The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.


I remember those shows. The Outer Limits scared the bejesus out of me. Some of the episodes were bizarre to a young kid with an imagination.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Lola said:


> I remember coming home from public school in the winter and my mother would have Campbell's Alpha-bit soup ready for me. Just so good. There was always the 7 of us plus my mom was a foster mom to a host of kids. She was a June Cleaver clone. In the kitchen always dressed in heels, stockings and full makeup. I remember when she would kiss my dad goodbye, he always had a bright red smudge on his cheek. Her dresses had her initials embroidered on her left chest pocket. She would bake cakes, cookies, etc. We were never wanting for food. It made you hungry with the smell of fresh baked goods wafting in the air. My dad though at the time had 3 jobs to make ends meet. I don't know how the hell he did it. He was always in a shitty mood and it didn't take very much to make him so angry that we would steer clear of him.
> 
> 
> When it was summer we were rarely inside. Life was busy when you hadn't a worry in the world.
> ...


I remember coming home from school in winter to feeding animals and doing other ranch things. Mom was dressed more Ma Kettle than June Cleaver or Donna Reed. We raised and grew most of what we ate.....the milk was fresh, so was the butter. The vegetables in the vegetable soup came from the garden, the meat on the table came from what we raised. Once a month on Sunday there was Chinese food from Lotus Gardens and a Dilly Bar for each kid from DQ. We had the big house so relatives kinda just dropped in and stayed for a year or two and with the two boarders we usually sat around 20 for diner. We had a big, big house. For my 10th christmas I got a 22/410 over/under. The older bro got a 303 and the younger one got a 410. Our sister got another horse and a Barbie Doll....the first one. That gave us around 120 horses of various sizes. Did I ever wish that our soup came out of a can and that cereal came in a box like the city kids.....damned straight I did. But, boys and girls out there made their own entertainment. Gotta love the haylofts and swimming holes.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

My most memorable Christmas present was my bicycle. I had begged and begged to get a bike. I think I was 10 at the time. I saw a really girly girl bike in the Eatons catalogue. It was a beautiful turquoise with white walled tires and a bell with a little basket on the front handle bars. I think the bike at the time was $24.99. A lot of money back in the seventies. That was a way too expensive of a present. My dad got a used bike from one of the neighbors, took it apart and sprayed painted the bike to match the one in the catalogue that I saw. He even got a new bell for it. I had white handle grips like the one in the catalogue. That was the best Christmas morning ever. It meant freedom to me. I could bike to where ever I wanted to. I knew it wasn't the one in the catalogue but it fit the bill perfectly. I then got some Barbie trading cards and stuck them in the spokes with clothes pegs. You could here me coming a mile away. All my friends had bikes by then. We would pack some food a go to far off places exploring and having fun. A sense of freedom and independence prevailed! Yup, good times.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

I honestly think i suppressed most of mine, because i remember very little.

- getting a super nintendo, the first of anyone I knew to have one. I logged serious hours on super mario and donkey kong country. 
- getting my first CCM bike.
- bouncing off a parked car the night I learned how to ride without training wheels, neighbour rushed me home
- snippets of beavers through scouts
- getting a rental guitar and lessons, and then my first guitar
- bugs bunny, flinstones, jetsons, and finding out my mom watched them when she was a kid
- my little brother pulling my hair when we were kids - i didnt know my hair was long enough!


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Lola said:


> I had begged and begged to get a bike. I think I was 10 at the time. I saw a really girly girl bike in the Eatons catalogue. It was a beautiful turquoise with white walled tires and a bell with a little basket on the front handle bars. I think the bike at the time was $24.99. A lot of money back in the seventies. That was a way too expensive of a present. My dad got a used bike from one of the neighbors, took it apart and sprayed painted the bike to match the one in the catalogue that I saw. He even got a new bell for it. I had white handle grips like the one in the catalogue.


I have a story similar to yours. I too wanted a bike but we had very little money. However, my Dad was very handy and got all the parts together; most of them were used but I think he had to buy the tires, rims, spokes and hubs. Since he knew how to spoke a wheel he painted the frame and assembled the bike. That was a great summer. Like you said, freedom for a 10 year old or maybe I was a little younger.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

GWN! said:


> Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Lone Ranger, the Big Valley., *The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin *.Lots of western movies and TV shows when I was growing up.
> 
> Anybody remember these two science fiction shows: The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.


Yoooooo Rinty!

Don't forget The Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy, Bat Masterson, Davy Crockett, and Roy Rogers.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Skateboards came to Ottawa in 1964-65. We called them "skurfboards" (skating and surfing). They were always flat, noticeably smaller than today's version, and were frequently cobbled together with metal wheels from roller skates. The cool ones might have nylon wheels with ball-bearings, and have a rat-fink painted on them or some other Ed "Big Daddy" Roth image.

In Ottawa, the hip places to skurf were Parliament Hill and over by the National Arts Centre, although police would confiscate your board if they caught you. Even in the suburbs, or so the story went. When we'd skate near our homes, we'd generally post a guard at each end of the block we were on. If they saw a patrol car coming, they'd call out "Cheez it, it's the fuzz!", and we'd toss the board over the nearest hedge so the police wouldn't see it and confiscate it.

One of my best friends at the time, a guy whose dad later went on to become mayor of Ottawa, had a really nice skateboard, with nylon wheels. When we'd come back from religious services, he'd sneak behind his garage, get the board, and we'd take turns skurfing down the hill near his home, on our bellys, in our good suits. We'd come in with dirt and dust all over us, except for a nice long clean oval down the front of our white shirts. "What have you boys been up to?" "Nuthin'".

There was a brief period at that time, when the Queensway in the west end of Ottawa (as it was defined then) had been constructed, and freshly paved, but not yet open to traffic. That stretch went for maybe a mile and a bit. For Ottawans, it would have gone from around Island Park Drive to Preston St. I never did it, but rumour had it that some kids had hopped the fence and gone skurfing. Just imagine, six lanes of pure virgin blacktop. No curbs, no pedestrians, no traffic, no cops, no potholes. Pure velvet.

When we saw the T.A.M.I. Show ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.A.M.I._Show ) and Jan and Dean flipped open a guitar case to reveal a skateboard, and sang "Sidewalk Surfin'", it was pure revolution to us.

[video=youtube;1V07pcXEaIM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V07pcXEaIM[/video]


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## johnnyshaka (Nov 2, 2014)

Summer started off the exact same way for as long as I can remember. The morning after school finished for the year we piled into the Datsun station wagon (IIRC, it was an '80 or '81 model and red in colour...good times!), hitched up the utility trailer full of everything you need for a month at the cottage (that didn't fit in the trunk of the Datsun) and off we went on a LONG six hour drive.

Are we there yet?

During those road trips was when I learned about Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Trini Lopez, Ricthie Valens, and The Beach Boys as my dad would collect various "Greatest Hits" cassettes at gas stations along the way. The other highlight during the drive was stopping for lunch at the same roadside diner in a small town in Quebec...Montcerf, IIRC...and having a club sandwich, fries, and a Pepsi. Oh how I've taken club sandwiches made with fresh turkey (not sliced sandwich meat crap) for granted over the years.

Upon arrival that first stretch after getting out of that damn backseat was heaven. But running down to see how much beach we had was probably the most exciting time during the first afternoon at the cottage. Lots of beach or not, it didn't take long for mom to have our bathing suits out for us to change into so we could burn off all that pent up energy while my parents unpacked and got us setup for the month.

Oddly enough, a lot of my fondest memories come from some of the food we'd eat while we were there. Mom would often make Banic (sometimes with wild blueberries we'd pick from the fields across the highway) and we'd cook it on the end of a tree branch that we would get to use our pocket knives to clean. Sitting around the fire pit eating Banic...wow. Sometimes we'd put a hotdog on the end of the stick first and then wrap it with Banic and that was pretty good, too. My other favorite was fried potatoes. Dad had a huge cast iron frying pan with a really long handle and would cook what seemed to be WAY too many potatoes but at the end of the night they were all gone...SO GOOD!

So many great memories from our time spent there.

My last trip there was the summer of '91. I was well into my teen years and summers were about working and trying to get laid and spending a month with your parents at a cottage in the middle of nowhere really put a damper on both of those endeavours. My parents would still go on their own but only for a couple of weeks instead of a month.

This summer I'm packing up my family and heading to Ottawa for nearly 3 weeks to visit family and friends and if everything works out we just may make the trek up to the cottage for a few days. Hopefully my kids will get to experience some of what my brother and I did while spending summers up there.


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## fretboard (May 31, 2006)

Tuesday night at 8 - Happy Days & Laverne and Shirley.

The thrill and excitement of Battle of the Network Stars.

All Six Million Dollars of Steve Austin - although, if we're being honest here, I much preferred to spend my time in the wonder and glory that was Wonder Woman...

Soap, Barney Miller, All In The Family, M*A*S*H.

Underdog or the Laff-A-lympics (see Battle of the Network Stars above) would have been my cartoons of choice - but in typical Canadian fashion, most Saturday mornings were spent at the rink so prime cartoon time didn't really exist.


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## ed2000 (Feb 16, 2007)

Late 1957 my parents bought a new Eatons TV...first show I watched was The Three Stooges....never tired of their antics and to this day will go out of my way to catch an episode. Also loved watching Zorro, Cisco Kid + Pancho, Rifleman, Wanted Dead or Alive and Bonanza.
We played with toy guns outside and made up creative ways to die after being shot.(none of us grew up weird)


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

fretboard said:


> Tuesday night at 8 - Happy Days & Laverne and Shirley.
> 
> The thrill and excitement of Battle of the Network Stars.
> 
> ...


I was pleasantly surprised to see the fellow who played Wojohowicz on _Barney Miller _had a brief role on the 2nd to last episode of _Mad Men _(one of the vets at the Legion Hall if you watched it).


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

my favorite thing about summer was waking up at 6 am, and it was already climbing past 80°F. the birds would be chirping outside my window, and cicadas singing in the mimosa tree from next door's yard. i forgot to mention in the other post about tv. for a brief period, between school and dinner, was ultra man, johny socko and his giant robot, and space giants.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

My childhood (8-13) years in the summer were spent waking up early (5 am) to go fishing or picking beer bottles so I could make enough money to go to the Saturday Matinee show at our little home town theatre ($ 0.50). There was a lot of drinking in cars back then and the beer bottles would be thrown out of the cars. They were worth $ 0.02 each back then. We usually made about $1.25 for a couple hours in the morning.

All the fishing was stream fishing for brook (speckled) trout and they were very plentiful then. It would be nothing for me and my friend to come home with over 100 between us.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

This has turned out to be a real great thread. What a mosaic of memories! I find myself sitting reading about everyone's childhood memories and laughing my ass off or something I read invokes a memory within me. Oh ya, I remember that!


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

My random childhood memory involves reading a Yeats poem that essentially said I'll never be able to truly remember my childhood.


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## marcos (Jan 13, 2009)

mhammer said:


> Skateboards came to Ottawa in 1964-65. We called them "skurfboards" (skating and surfing). They were always flat, noticeably smaller than today's version, and were frequently cobbled together with metal wheels from roller skates. The cool ones might have nylon wheels with ball-bearings, and have a rat-fink painted on them or some other Ed "Big Daddy" Roth image.
> 
> In Ottawa, the hip places to skurf were Parliament Hill and over by the National Arts Centre, although police would confiscate your board if they caught you. Even in the suburbs, or so the story went. When we'd skate near our homes, we'd generally post a guard at each end of the block we were on. If they saw a patrol car coming, they'd call out "Cheez it, it's the fuzz!", and we'd toss the board over the nearest hedge so the police wouldn't see it and confiscate it.
> 
> ...


I remember going down to the NAC hill to skurf also Mark. They had gangs called the Squirrels and the Yoahawks if i remember well. 
Those where the days.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Ah yes, the Yohawks and the Squirrels; roughly equivalent to the Mods and the Rockers, respectively. I remember some nights when I wasn't allowed to go over to my friend's house because my parents had heard there were rumours of a "rumble" somewhere in the city between the Squirrels and Yohawks. The hill by the NAC was actually nicknamed Yohawk Hill.


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## ed2000 (Feb 16, 2007)

Back in the early 60's before I played guitar, my friends and I were joking about starting a musical combo and calling it 'Eddie and the Screamers'. Couple of years later there was a Freddie and the Dreamers.
In 57 the last steam engines stopped running on the nearby tracks...too bad.
Everything changed for me watching The Ed Sullivan Show back in 1964. I went from a nerd to a self taught musical nerd. That same year I got turned on to cars. A brand new Pontiac Bonneville with dual hollywood exhausts and a 55 Ford with glass packs really got me going when they drove up and down my street.

In the late 50's to early 60's I walked 20 minutes to school in the AM, came home for lunch at noon and walked back for 1:30 and dismissal at 3:30. Very few overweight kids back then.


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## leftysg (Mar 29, 2008)

One of my fave animated kids tv shows from the 60's with awesome theme music...Jonny Quest. The episode with the Yeti in the monastery...or the mummy...or the pteranodon..or the one eyed electric energy monster...or the loup garou. Can you tell I was a fan of Jonny, Hadji, Bandit, Dr. Quest and Race?

[video=youtube_share;L0kg_tzQvf4]http://youtu.be/L0kg_tzQvf4[/video]


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

You might think that you know me somewhat but after these stories you may have a completely different perspective of the real. I have just glazed over my childhood! Now comes the truth! LMAO!!

Am I allowed to be very candid?


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Lola said:


> You might think that you know me somewhat but after these stories you may have a completely different perspective of the real. I have just glazed over my childhood! Now comes the truth! LMAO!!
> 
> Am I allowed to be very candid?


Your choice.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

It's nothing weird or whatever! Just those juvenile pranks about who could fart the loudest and/or the longest ! We were all like this once!


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

i'm like that right now


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

cheezyridr said:


> i'm like that right now


And, now we're old enough to light them.


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

Four pages in and the kids are farting......

I remember coming home to watch the Guess Who in B&W..... but that was on our new 19" colour TV from Sears...... which we watched at the other end of the rec room....


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## leftysg (Mar 29, 2008)

Riding on my lime green CCM Mustang with the banana seat and one metre sissy bar...trading hockey cards "gottem, gottem, don't gottem" ( did anyone actually use the checklist cards?), brain freeze from DQ Mister Misties, Hostess King Dongs, Twinkies and glass bottle milk delivered to the door by the milk truck, listening on my transistor to Ernie Harwell call nighttime Tiger radio games, grilled cheese sandwiches with fries and a coke from the food bar at Kresge's and Woolworth's. Have I enough to start a Springsteen song yet?


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

leftysg said:


> Riding on my lime green CCM Mustang with the banana seat and one metre sissy bar...trading hockey cards "gottem, gottem, don't gottem" ( did anyone actually use the checklist cards?), brain freeze from DQ Mister Misties, Hostess King Dongs, Twinkies and glass bottle milk delivered to the door by the milk truck, listening on my transistor to Ernie Harwell call nighttime Tiger radio games, grilled cheese sandwiches with fries and a coke from the food bar at Kresge's and Woolworth's. Have I enough to start a Springsteen song yet?


Throw in your girlfriend getting pregnant and you might.


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## Disbeat (Jul 30, 2011)

Wow... No wonder fish numbers are so low nowadays, talk about greedy.

Fishing back home in New Brunswick is also one of my earliest memories, we only kept what was sensible to eat for that day though.



Steadfastly said:


> All the fishing was stream fishing for brook (speckled) trout and they were very plentiful then. It would be nothing for me and my friend to come home with over 100 between us.


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## J-75 (Jul 29, 2010)

We got the first TV on the street - a 17" Admiral console with a built-in record player - colour TV was still 15 years away. 
My friends came in to watch it. There were 3 channels, 6, (CBLT) was Toronto, 4, (WBEN) Buffalo, and 2 (WGR) Buffalo. A few years later Toronto got a second station, channel 9.
The Canadian stations had boring programming. Buffalo had Howdy Doody, cartoons, westerns, all the good stuff.
Programming ended around 1:00 a.m., followed by a 'test pattern'.

I remember watching Elvis's TV debut on the Dorsey brothers show. He rocked the world that night - the rest was history. I bought his early singles as each of them were released: 'Hound Dog', 'Don't be Cruel', etc. I bought 78's, which were the popular format - 45's were kinda new, and required that 'thingy' to plug the hole. In retrospect, the 78's broke very easily, and were an old, noisy format. 45's were made out of a new, durable material called 'vinyl'.

The 'White Bucks' shoe fad - yah, I had 'em. Never mind Blue Suede, but, 'Ah, Ah, honey, don't step on my White Suede shoes'.

I remember a couple of road trips to Florida with my folks, Interstate 75 didn't exist, so the route took you through the underbelly of The South.
I remember seeing roadside chain gangs, wearing stripes, breaking rock, overseen by "the man" with their aviator sunglasses and shotguns over their shoulders.
I remember segregated washrooms - "men", "women", and "coloureds".
I remember segregated roadside rest stops - "whites only".

American Bandstand after school - saw all the stars lip-sync in black & white. Back then, there was very little distinction between "Rock 'n Roll" and "Country & Western", so you'd be surprised who you saw on "Bandstand", or heard on popular radio. "Doo-***" harmonies emerged in the 50's, evolved and ruled into the early 60's, only to get snuffed out by the doofus 'ya, ya, ya' reset by the 'invasion' (I could never figure out what that trade was about).
I was in a school band (weren't we all?) - we did mostly Ronnie Hawkins' early tunes.
We used to see him perform at various local dances. One day, our band leader told us we had to learn some of these new, "surf" tunes.
We played stuff you could dance to - we played at rock 'n roll dances.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Drive Ins. Kids these days don't know about drive ins. Dad liked old cars, old motorcycles, Playboy and drive ins. I have foggy memories of playing on the swings in front of the screen in Richmond in the early 50's. Better memories of playing with other kids on the swings at the Skyway in Vernon in the late 50's. And in the 60's and on, fogging the windows of the car and figuring out why there were so many kids at the swings in the 50's. And sweating things out for a while after the drive in.
girl "She's late"
boy "Who's late"
girl "My friend is late"
boy "Donna's coming over?"
girl "NO!!! MY FRIEND IS LATE!!!"
boy "oh, that friend. how late?"
Girl "A week"
boy (slowly doing the math) "That would have been when we went to Motorpshyco."
girl "My brothers are looking for you."
a week later
girl "My friend got here last night."
boy "Cool. Wanna go to the drive in Friday? It's a triple bill. Wild Angels is on. We can take the bike if you want."
girl "Ok. Go get those things this time."

Drag races at the quarter mile, submarine races at the lookout. Doing mainers and catching air on Suicide Hill in cars. Burger, fries and gravy and a chocolate shake along the way.
When Dad was alive he took a Thames van for a test drive. This would have been about 1960 or so. He loaded the family in the van and off we went touring B.C.. We came back 4 or 5 days later. No problem. He bought the van. He used to do that....just load up the family and off we'd go. I remember one time he brought home an army Duece and a Half from work and we went heavy duty 6 wheel driving for the week end.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

cheezyridr said:


> i'm like that right now


I just called into work at 10:30 Saturday morning. This just sucks. I will regale you with my stories later today. I composed everything on my phone. While reading them I started to cry I was laughing so hard.!


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Lola said:


> I just called into work at 10:30 Saturday morning. This just sucks. I will regale you with my stories later today. I composed everything on my phone. While reading them I started to cry I was laughing so hard.!


Moral of the story, don't answer the phone. And don't pull anyone's finger.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

[video=dailymotion;xrhhzn]http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xrhhzn_6-million-dollar-man-meets-bigfoot_shortfilms[/video]


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

My mind reels with childhood memories. We grew up somewhat impoverished but with great tradition, good clean habits, and great fun. I am conflicted about a couple of things that are of no real consequence here, except to say that I wish I had done a few things differently as a child.

I wasn't allowed to sleep in. Period. No exceptions. Instead, I delivered morning newspapers six days a week for years, except in the summer when I would fish, explore, build stuff, read, and help out around the house. Mum was great with kids (she was a life long volunteer for the Girl Guides, as a leader, writer, trainer, and lecturer, even travelled the world a little for them), and Dad was too (he was my Scouter, choir master, mentor), so the house abounded with creativity and opportunity.

Outdoorsmanship, camping, hiking, sailing, canoeing, fishing, were my chief concerns until I hit my teens, and even long after. Lego and books filled my rainy days, but Dad was careful to make sure I had carpentry skills (we built everything from shelves and canoe gunwales to a cottage), music understanding (he was, among other things, an amateur composer), and a general toughness. Mum made sure I could cook, sew, and get domestic chores done both at home and in the field, made me respect women, showed me art and history in a way that my Dad wasn't interested in showing me, even as he lived it. I learned way more about parenting from Mum than from Dad, and I was already prepared to care for my little sister when she was born.

Throughout all this, everything was made either interesting or fun, with an undercurrent of "you better learn this or life will be very hard on you". I guess having lived through the depression and a world war made them that way.

Specific memories? Singing, a lot, while in the car, while boating, at church, at home. Funny songs, serious songs, reverent and irreverent songs (sometimes parodies of church hymns). Fishing, though once I was old enough to take the boat on my own, I did a lot more on my own. TV didn't figure large in my upbringing, but Saturday morning cartoons were a favourite. Mum didn't like the portrayal of violence in cartoons, but Dad didn't much mind and always knew the music in the Loony Toons cartoons, which amused me. Those cartoons are educational on a level far greater than what came after. We also watched the Leafs, and they weren't cartoonish in those days.

Freedom was probably the biggest asset to my upbringing. I was allowed to disappear for entire days, even rough camp overnight (on the Bruce Peninsula), get my food from the bush and lake, and as long as I was home at an appointed time, I wasn't in trouble. This freedom was bought with good behaviour, respect, and self discipline. If I got out of line, my Mum's angelic ways turned decidedly un-angellic (though I almost never witnessed that), and the old man turned from stand-offish mentor to in your face army officer (he was a vet still in the militia). Punishment could be swift and harsh, but thankfully I figured out how to avoid it.

Sorry to ramble.

Peace, Mooh.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Not a ramble, Mooh. It sounds like you have very good parents. Too bad there are a lot less like your Mom and Dad around today.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Mooh said:


> My mind reels with childhood memories. We grew up somewhat impoverished but with great tradition, good clean habits, and great fun. I am conflicted about a couple of things that are of no real consequence here, except to say that I wish I had done a few things differently as a child.
> 
> I wasn't allowed to sleep in. Period. No exceptions. Instead, I delivered morning newspapers six days a week for years, except in the summer when I would fish, explore, build stuff, read, and help out around the house. Mum was great with kids (she was a life long volunteer for the Girl Guides, as a leader, writer, trainer, and lecturer, even travelled the world a little for them), and Dad was too (he was my Scouter, choir master, mentor), so the house abounded with creativity and opportunity.
> 
> ...


Singing in the car. The grand daughters do that but a lot of their songs are not the same as 99 Bottles or, "Down by the river in a little bitty pool...." I taught them that, among other songs. They do a lot of their singing along with the radio.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

Electraglide said:


> Moral of the story, don't answer the phone. And don't pull anyone's finger.


My boss texts me! Don't ya love technology! Big brother is definitely watching!


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

leftysg said:


> One of my fave animated kids tv shows from the 60's with awesome theme music...Jonny Quest. The episode withopening gYeti in the monastery...or the mummy...or the pteranodon..or the one eyed electric energy monster...or the loup garou. Can you tell I was a fan of Jonny, Hadji, Bandit, Dr. Quest and Race?
> 
> [video=youtube_share;L0kg_tzQvf4]http://youtu.be/L0kg_tzQvf4[/video]


If you have a chance, watch Mike Tyson Mysteries on Netflix. It's an animated short series. Very funny, but way out there. The opening sequence of each episode is pure Jonny Quest, but that's pretty much where the resemblance ends. It gets weird after that...but funny.


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2015)

[video=youtube;oBMEB8fiUlI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMEB8fiUlI[/video]


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## leftysg (Mar 29, 2008)

Yeah I can see the similarities but somehow I can't picture this series on prime time 1960s Sunday night along with wonderful World of Disney and Daktari ...lol.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

Does anyone remember this cartoon character? I didn't know about the older black and white cartoons the Felix series!

[video=youtube;amGbBFsiuzc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amGbBFsiuzc[/video]


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## J-75 (Jul 29, 2010)

Lola said:


> Does anyone remember this cartoon character? I didn't know about the older black and white cartoons the Felix series!
> 
> [video=youtube;amGbBFsiuzc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amGbBFsiuzc[/video]


Yep - Felix was my favourite cartoon and comic book.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

[video=youtube;diMlmSbEiFo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diMlmSbEiFo[/video]


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Lola said:


> Does anyone remember this cartoon character? I didn't know about the older black and white cartoons the Felix series!
> 
> [video=youtube;amGbBFsiuzc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amGbBFsiuzc[/video]


Of course. I told you I had some years on you.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

My dad, standing in the backyard, at night, in the middle of January, watering the ice rink.


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## rhh7 (Mar 14, 2008)

My Dad was a country doctor. This was just after the end of WWII, and no one had any cash, but they had pride. When my Dad made housecalls, they paid him with whatever they had of value. Many a time I rode home in the front seat of the car, holding a live chicken or duck, or a dozen eggs, or a Nazi pistol, or a Japanese flag. We had a milk cow in the back yard, a large vegetable garden, and live chickens, ducks, and guineas. Everything was fresh, whatever was cooking in the pot for supper, had been pecking in the yard that morning. I actually learned to read before I ever saw a television set. The reason I rode with my Dad on housecalls, was to read him the newspaper headlines as we traveled. Electricity was very fragile, so we had a kerosene lantern in every room of the house. We had a galvanized sink in the kitchen, with a hand crank to pump the water.


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## DrHook (Oct 28, 2013)

Not that I'm *cough* old or anything....

Pulling the little cardboard tab on a glass bottle of milk
Divco milk trucks
1930's cars being wrecked by the dozens at stock car races
Watching the first episode of Star Trek on it's debut
Don Messers Jubilee, Ian and Sylvia's tv show, Razzle Dazzle.
Using the rifle range at school, and being a cadet at assemly on rememberence day in school (doubt they'd let the rifle in these days)
The Hell Drivers
Nehru shirts

and what Canucklehead kid could forget....

The Forest Rangers!
[video=youtube;NTDt-YYp5Lk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTDt-YYp5Lk[/video]

OMG we only had THREE tv channels and we survived!!! Take that kids of today! (ok the French station didn't count cuz I didn't speak French)


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Lola said:


> Does anyone remember this cartoon character? I didn't know about the older black and white cartoons the Felix series!
> 
> [video=youtube;amGbBFsiuzc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amGbBFsiuzc[/video]


Remember? Absolutely.

When I was younger, I would watch a show called Crusader Rabbit. It was essentially the predecessor to Rocky & Bullwinkle, with the small rodent protagonist, his much larger goofier sidekick, and oiodles of really bad puns, and occasional political and pop-culture jabs. Over the years, I was beginning to doubt my memory, because I never heard any mention of it anywhere. Then, somewhere in the early 80's, there was a feature article on Randy Newman in Rolling Stone. And there, in the corner of a photo of him at home was a TV set. And on the screen was Crusader Rabbit.

Now, through the magic of Youtube, YOU can enjoy it.

[video=youtube;vY8z1SxgBws]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY8z1SxgBws[/video]


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2015)

[video=youtube;010aaw1Ajo0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=010aaw1Ajo0[/video]


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## ed2000 (Feb 16, 2007)

I really enjoyed this TV series!
[video=youtube;8dDa1ErSJXw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dDa1ErSJXw[/video]

and most of you know this series....
[video=youtube;wPsofhzu9f0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPsofhzu9f0[/video]

[video=youtube;tUfaJ32Hp40]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUfaJ32Hp40[/video]


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2015)

[video=youtube;62-NgcB7424]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62-NgcB7424[/video]


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Like Peter and Gordon _needed _a pair of Super Reverbs to amplify their guitars.

Absolute favourite Dick Van **** segment: Little Ritchie comes home from school, and after a bit asks his mom, Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) "What's sex?". Laura gets all flustered by this surprise question, and starts in with a clumsy "Well, when a man and a lady love each other very much, they get married and....". After stumbling a bit, she finally asks him "Why do you want to know?", to which he responds "Well I have to fill out this form from school, and beside where you're supposed to put your name it says 'Sex' ", which leads to her breathing a huge visible sigh of relief.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

laristotle said:


> [video=youtube;010aaw1Ajo0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=010aaw1Ajo0[/video]


"You alright, Baba Looey?" "S'awright, Queeekdraw".

There was a time when Hanna-Barbera ruled the airwaves between3:30 and 5:00 on weekdays, and on Saturday mornings.

We never got "the American channels", growing up in Ottawa, so when we would travel to Toronto, and I would get to see Captain Kangaroo, it was special, largely for this...

[video=youtube;SSpPyTNSlTU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSpPyTNSlTU[/video]

and this....

[video=youtube;DLMw_hoQoUw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLMw_hoQoUw[/video]


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

And of course, how could any Canadian child forget Friday nights and _Don Messer's Jubilee_, with everybody's favourite drunk uncle, Charlie Chamberlain, and the Jeff Healey of his era, Fred McKenna. And is it just me, or does one of the fiddlers have a 5E3 Deluxe behind him?

[video=youtube;r2JeUuGZz-Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2JeUuGZz-Q[/video]


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Tommy Hunter. My grandmother loved him like a son, which their respective ages and place of birth would support...kind of weird. Since she stayed with us for a few weeks every year, we got used to watching her shows. Having her around so much was a great link to our past.

Peace, Mooh.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Friday nights on CBC had a lot of family viewing music shows. The Tommy Hunter show evolved out of "Country Hoedown" with Gordie Tapp, who later went on to a role on "Hee-Haw" and countless TV ads aimed at seniors. Looking at the episode guide to CH here, it reads like "multi-cultural TV" before there even was such a thing: http://www.tvarchive.ca/database/16687/country_hoedown/episode_guide/

I was an inveterate watcher of a half-hour CBC afternoon music show that went by a variety of names, including "Let's Go", "Music Hop", and "Where It's At". Monday was from Halifax, Tuesday from Montreal, Wednesday from Toronto, Thursday from Winnipeg, and Friday from Vancouver. Each show had a different host and local performers covering the hits of the day. Thursday's show from Winnipeg featured a house band with this guy with a goofy smile playing guitar, perched atop a high stool. Turned out to be Lenny Breau. The other house band was Chad Allen and the Expressions, that turned into the Guess Who. Friday's show from Vancouver featured the Collectors, that turned into Chilliwack.

[video=youtube;2yS97_eVuXg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yS97_eVuXg[/video]

Here's the Guess Who covering the Small Faces' "Tin Soldier" on Let's Go.

[video=youtube;k1ldVqXkLS8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ldVqXkLS8&amp;index=4&amp;list=PLNP1deKvkRuRuWB_ iQRvCSGJJgVIc9cVk[/video]


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

mhammer said:


> and this....
> 
> [video=youtube;DLMw_hoQoUw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLMw_hoQoUw[/video]


ho-lee-sheeet!!!!!! YOU are that ONE guy!!!!

so many times when someone has said to me something like "so how do ya like that?" i've responded, well that's just tom - tee - riffic!!! and draw a blank every single time. no kidding, i think you and me are the only 2 people in north america who saw that cartoon.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

[video=youtube;p0B1ufyXOds]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0B1ufyXOds[/video]


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

cheezyridr said:


> ho-lee-sheeet!!!!!! YOU are that ONE guy!!!!
> 
> so many times when someone has said to me something like "so how do ya like that?" i've responded, well that's just tom - tee - riffic!!! and draw a blank every single time. no kidding, i think you and me are the only 2 people in north america who saw that cartoon.


There had to be more than just the two of us, or else how could this band have used this name?

[video=youtube;CEn6UGDmT6U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEn6UGDmT6U[/video]


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2015)

Superman turned me off the first time I seen him 'dodge a gun'
thrown at him after having the 'shot' bullets bounce off his chest. lol.


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

cheezyridr said:


> ho-lee-sheeet!!!!!! YOU are that ONE guy!!!!
> 
> so many times when someone has said to me something like "so how do ya like that?" i've responded, well that's just tom - tee - riffic!!! and *draw a blank every single time*. no kidding, i think you and me are the only 2 people in north america who saw that cartoon.


...I'd have got it...


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

More pie. A lot more pie.

[video=youtube;sIRmqMRSXAs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIRmqMRSXAs[/video]


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## J-75 (Jul 29, 2010)

Anybody remember a country music show, in black & white, coming from Hamilton? I can't remember the name, or who was in the (local) band. It was maybe on Saturday afternoons(?)


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

J-75 said:


> Anybody remember a country music show, in black & white, coming from Hamilton? I can't remember the name, or who was in the (local) band. It was maybe on Saturday afternoons(?)


Tiny Talent Time?


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2015)

Ha . Boys with accordions and little girls twirling batons and such.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

Did your parents ever let you go to the convenience store by yourself? Mine did when I was around I guess 8. I would walk in with a quarter and the bag of stuff I came out with was incredible. Enough sugar to make a diabetic collapse. lol I used to love those wax lips! Those little candies that were like 5/1 cent Mojos. I loved those. Lolas were a big hit during the summer. I think they were a quarter IIRC! Cherry Lolas were my favorite. Or remember, Pixie sticks? And the powered sugar that you dipped your black licorice straw into. Good times.


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## Guest (Jun 21, 2015)

Lola's were my vice. Not fully frozen, just crystallized enough to suck the juice.


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

There were 4 things to do with spare time when I was a kid:

- go play war in the bush (those rotting Redwoods made for nice, heavy, pulpy ammo that made a mark when you got hit, kind of like paintball)
- get together a scrub baseball or touch football game in the cleared field
- walk 10 miles down the tracks across the river into New Westminster to see a couple of movies
- on a rainy day, go to the corner store, buy a big bag o' candy and play board games all afternoon

Even a modest allowance after chores were done would buy a lot of pennie and 3 for a penny candy. Popsicles (the old double ones) were .06, jaw-breakers 3 for .01, Twizzlers were .01 each, pop was .10, and so on, so you can see that a dollar went a long way. Good times, good times...


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## ed2000 (Feb 16, 2007)

Houses (in Scarborough) used to have the tiny doors in the walls to accept the glass bottles from the milk deliveryman. Those little hatches were great for when you forgot your key. Both my parents worked and I was unattended from 8 on(ohhh! the terrible child neglect - throw the book at them.)
There was daily bread and milk delivery as well as weekend beer delivery to your door.
I was sent to the store in the very early 60's to buy a loaf of bread. My Mother, by mistake, gave me a subway token to pay for bread. The cost was 10c and the subway token was not enough.
The variety stores used to keep newspaper boxes outside and I took one home. I was too young to understand you needed to buy them and I thought they were free.

Anyone remember the strap! Ahh, good old times when teachers were allowed to whack some sense into students.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

We had horses a block away...


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

bluzfish said:


> There were 4 things to do with spare time when I was a kid:
> 
> - go play war in the bush (those rotting Redwoods made for nice, heavy, pulpy ammo that made a mark when you got hit, kind of like paintball)
> - get together a scrub baseball or touch football game in the cleared field
> ...


You could go to the corner store and buy smokes for your dad without a note. "Yes Sir, they're for my dad" Still had enough left over from a dollar to buy candy and pop. Would that be the rail bridge next to the Pattullo Bridge?


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

Electraglide said:


> You could go to the corner store and buy smokes for your dad without a note. "Yes Sir, they're for my dad" Still had enough left over from a dollar to buy candy and pop. Would that be the rail bridge next to the Pattullo Bridge?


That's the bridge. I only did the rail bridge crossing once. Looking down at the dark river below the rail ties as I crossed, the journey seemed endless and quite dangerous so I used the regular bridge after that. You'd just leave the tracks at the base of the bridge, climb up the embankment and there you were.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

ed2000 said:


> Houses (in Scarborough) used to have the tiny doors in the walls to accept the glass bottles from the milk deliveryman.
> 
> Anyone remember the strap! Ahh, good old times when teachers were allowed to whack some sense into students.


My parents house had that cubby hole built in for the milk man! That was before I was even a twinkle in my dad's eye. It was built in the back of the house though. I remember the milkman coming to the front door with milk. Your word was a good as cash back then. There was one time my dad didn't leave enough money to pay the milk man and my mother almost cried, she was so embarrassed. The milk man said he would get what was owing the next time. When my dad got home my mom gave him proper shit. That was a stretch for her because she hardly raised her voice towards my father. The father was the man of the house and his word was final. You didn't question his reasoning or logic. It was disrespectful and besides you were likely to get a licking with a branch off of one of the back yard trees. 

When I was in public school girls did not get the strap. I don't know how we were punished back then not that I was an angel or anything. I remember though detentions in high school. What a waste of time. I had plenty of detentions in high school. I was a rebel back then. I remember grade 10 was just when I started smoking hash. Pot wasn't that big back then. It was Blonde Lebanese, Temple Balls, Green Morrocan and just plain black hash. We would go down into the ravine across from the school and do bottle tokes. We would come back and sit in class and just giggle. We had science class one afternoon and we were dissecting frogs. I sat their and refused to cut open a frog and immediately sent to the principles office. They phoned my parents and all hell broke loose.  Yup,those were some happy days.


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

I remember skimming the cream off the top of the milk in the bottles for Dad's coffee...


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

Playing in the dirt.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

My Mom god bless her! When I was very young my mother would accompany me on Halloween. She would tell me to tell the people at the door that she just got home from work and this is why I was out a bit later then the rest of the kids on the block! Well don't ya know! They would feel so sorry for me and they would give me extra candy.

Christmas was an event unto itself! My mom would allow me to take the day off of school, which was a treat in itself. She would then dress me up in my finest and we would go downtown Toronto to the old Eaton's store. The windows of the store facing out onto the street were something beyond my wildest imagination. All the Christmas characters in the window display were animated. Everything sparkled. I can remember how happy looking at those windows made me. We would have lunch at the cafeteria in the basement of Eatons. Then it was off to have pictures done with me sitting on Santa's lap. Then it was a ride on Santa's magical train. It meandered throughout the 5th floor(the toy floor) of the store which of course was the most exciting part of this whole trip with my Mom. I got to look at everything that I saw and made notes about in the Eaton's catalogue. My brothers of course would sit there and look at the catalogue turning the pages to the woman models wearing the bras and panties that Eaton's would sell! My childhood really sucked but there were a few highlights like the previously mentioned paragraph. 

What were your birthdays like! Did you have parties? Did you have anything special that you did with your parent(s)?


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Lola said:


> My Mom god bless her! When I was very young my mother would accompany me on Halloween. She would tell me to tell the people at the door that she just got home from work and this is why I was out a bit later then the rest of the kids on the block! Well don't ya know! They would feel so sorry for me and they would give me extra candy.
> 
> Christmas was an event unto itself! My mom would allow me to take the day off of school, which was a treat in itself. She would then dress me up in my finest and we would go downtown Toronto to the old Eaton's store. The windows of the store facing out onto the street were something beyond my wildest imagination. All the Christmas characters in the window display were animated. Everything sparkled. I can remember how happy looking at those windows made me. We would have lunch at the cafeteria in the basement of Eatons. Then it was off to have pictures done with me sitting on Santa's lap. Then it was a ride on Santa's magical train. It meandered throughout the 5th floor(the toy floor) of the store which of course was the most exciting part of this whole trip with my Mom. I got to look at everything that I saw and made notes about in the Eaton's catalogue. My brothers of course would sit there and look at the catalogue turning the pages to the woman models wearing the bras and panties that Eaton's would sell! My childhood really sucked but there were a few highlights like the previously mentioned paragraph.
> 
> What were your birthdays like! Did you have parties? Did you have anything special that you did with your parent(s)?


I was my dad's birthday present. Our birthdays are Dec 23. I didn't have an actual birthday party until I was 13. I think I've probably had 6 or 7 birthday parties in my life. As far as presents go, Xmas for me was the biggy. If I got a belt for my birthday I knew I'd get a pair of pants for xmas. Xmas was the time for toys. Xmas eve we went to church, mom sang in the choir. About 2 in the morning the cooking started. Xmas day we got to sleep in until 6:30 then the chores started. When those were finished we opened presents. People started to arrive around noon and dinner was about 4 or so. Usually 25 to 30 people. There was the younger kids table, the older kids table and the adults table. Dinner was usually done by about 6:30 then it was chores again. During the day the kids would go tobogganing. Off the front porch, down the stairs, across the lawn and down the hill to the creek. The jump at the bottom got you a fair bit of air. 
As far as the strap goes the girls got it also but usually once on the palm of the hand. Boys got more.


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## silvertonebetty (Jan 4, 2015)

trading lunches at school to get some cinnamon roles. and heres on my mom tels me about. i was 4 and manage to find out how to use the hose on the oil truck. sprayed the front yard and my brother with $800 work of furnace oil 

proud boogie owner


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

i remember christmas. the insanity of our christmas tree... the care and precision devoted to it's decoration was beyond obsessive. it's not an overstatement. we had a stunning tree every year though. no kiddin, people used to come over just to look. but doing it was a nitemare. on so many levels. the only reason we do a tree these days is because the kids do it. i have to consciously not think about all the stuff i see that would never fly if my dad was there. 
we had so many kids in the house, that by 10 am, the floor was waist deep in wrapping paper. (waist deep to a short 5 yr old) 
my brothers and sisters used to send me down as a scout on christmas before my folks woke up. i would go down, see what was under the tree, and sneak back up to report as much as i could remember to the others. i can't explain it, but sneaking down those stairs, when i got the first glimpse of the tree and all the stuff under it. the tree glowing in the living room as dawn came in the window. as a little kid, the impact was huge. it takes your breath away. i would almost forget to avoid the creaky boards. it made remembering everything easy, because the image was burned into my mind. i just had to describe what i saw.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

Playing in the mud, in road side ditches.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

The house in the B.X. in Vernon was a big, old farm house. Originally there was a lot of acres of farm and there was a large bell to call in the farmhands etc.. This bell was in a belfry outside the window of the upstairs toilet. As kids we would sometimes wait until someone had settled down on the toilet and then ring the bell and run.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Childhood memory...

Hanging out at the beach with my cousin, going around to grownups at the beach and asking "Sir, are you done with that bottle?". Once you had 5 pop bottles, you'd run back to the snack bar and exchange them for the 2-cent deposit each to buy a popsicle or fudgsicle, which we'd split.

Canadian children's writer Ken Roberts has a terrific book called Pop Bottles ( https://books.google.ca/books/about/Pop_Bottles.html?id=tgs0GfQIyIAC ), in which some neighbourhood kids discover a huge stash of bottles in an abandoned house, and are faced with how to cash them in. One corner store has a lousy selection of candy, but the proprietor isn't very picky about where the bottles came from, when giving credit for returns. The other corner store has a much better selection, but the owner is very picky about "Did you buy that pop here?". A great nostalgic read. If you have any kids in the 8-11 age range, Ken Roberts has some terrific books for them.


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## ed2000 (Feb 16, 2007)

Early 60's..we had air rifles that only made popping sounds..no BB's. I think you could put oil in and have it emit puffs of smoke. It was great fun to have make-believe gun battles. We decided to aim our rifles at the delivery truck. Wow, did that truck driver run fast...directly toward us. Yep, he was angry.
In the late 50's Zellers sold 'Made in Japan' toy cars and buses, made of tin, with faces painted in the windows.
My Christmas present was an authentic looking long barreled pistol. It had 6 bullets and a spinning cylinder.

Back in the day they sold huge firecrackers, 2 -3" long(maybe larger). We would empty the powder into a steel tube, plug one end and have the wick exposed and insert a large glass marble into the firing end. Wow, great fun in my Scarborough neighbourhood! Never hurt anyone...good, clean fun.

Who can forget road hockey or road baseball?....Car.....
We even tried bicycle hockey...once. Darn hockey stick went into the spokes.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

[video=youtube;GPhZsauluXM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPhZsauluXM[/video]


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## Guest (Jun 24, 2015)

I grew up in scarberia as well. 2 minutes from the bluffs.
We used to scale down the cliffs to go swimming in the lake.
Sometimes ride our bikes down and dare each other to go as
far as possible without using brakes. No takers (we weren't stupid).


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

i remember being about 12. me and my 2 best buds, (who were bros) snuck out of the house at 3 am. there was a machine shop down the street that was huge. 4 stories. it was an old building, and the place where it was, and it's design created an area we felt needed exploring. so we did. the shop ran 24/7. it was full of people being busy doing stuff. there were lots of people who weren't doing anything.
we wandered all over that place. the building on the outside looked like any other nondescript brick building. but it had a courtyard in the center of it you could only get to from inside the building. in the very center of it was a banana tree! we would never have know that if we weren't intrepid trespassers.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

laristotle said:


> I grew up in scarberia as well. 2 minutes from the bluffs.
> We used to scale down the cliffs to go swimming in the lake.
> Sometimes ride our bikes down and dare each other to go as
> far as possible without using brakes. No takers (we weren't stupid).


Not quite as dangerous, but our thing was swinging up as high as we could and jumping from the swing at the highest point. It helped that there was a big sand pit in front of the swings.

Jeez, remember when parks had swings?

In winter, we'd construct a jump out of snow on our favorite toboggan hill, and go down the hill standing up on our toboggan, in surfboard fashion, with the intent of successfully clearing the jump and landing standing up. We also used to grab a stick, put a snowball on the end, roll the snowball end in dirt, and try to club each other as we went down the hill towards the jump, two at a time.

No stupid bikes tricks, because I didn't have a bike (or learn to ride one) until I was 19.


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## Lincoln (Jun 2, 2008)

mhammer said:


> [video=youtube;GPhZsauluXM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPhZsauluXM[/video]


my brother had one of those guns. I remember it well.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

Do you remember playing marbles at school? I remember alleys nicknamed smokies, puries, boulders. I remember getting a shoe box and cutting little rectangle doorways on the bottom lip of an upside down shoebox. Above each little doorway was a number. If you got your marble in that hole you would win whatever it said above the hole! Public school gambling at it's finest! Hoping at recess to win big or prized marbles like the ones mentioned above! I can remember some kids reneging. That made me mad. You would shoot all your alleys at one kid's venue and you would get nothing in return. Little bastards!


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Lola said:


> Do you remember playing marbles at school? I remember alleys nicknamed smokies, puries, boulders. I remember getting a shoe box and cutting little rectangle doorways on the bottom lip of an upside down shoebox. Above each little doorway was a number. If you got your marble in that hole you would win whatever it said above the hole! Public school gambling at it's finest! Hoping at recess to win big or prized marbles like the ones mentioned above! I can remember some kids reneging. That made me mad. You would shoot all your alleys at one kid's venue and you would get nothing in return. Little bastards!


Plain and simple when I was in grade school and playing marbles.....no steelies allowed and you had to knock Cobs out three times on the 3' circle.....Girls Did Not Play Marbles. Yup, playground was rough but those were the rules. And a purple Crown Royal bag was the only marble bag to have.


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## bluzfish (Mar 12, 2011)

Lola said:


> Do you remember playing marbles at school? I remember alleys nicknamed smokies, puries, boulders. I remember getting a shoe box and cutting little rectangle doorways on the bottom lip of an upside down shoebox. Above each little doorway was a number. If you got your marble in that hole you would win whatever it said above the hole! Public school gambling at it's finest! Hoping at recess to win big or prized marbles like the ones mentioned above! I can remember some kids reneging. That made me mad. You would shoot all your alleys at one kid's venue and you would get nothing in return. Little bastards!


Ha, ha, I remember that kid. I also remember, having been fleeced, paying the recess meathead a share of whatever he could collect off the little bastard - just like real a bookie's hired thug. The intimidation would usually be enough even if no one ever got more than some pushing and shoving, but they would eventually come to payment terms.

There were also cobs, king cobs, crystal cobs and steelies. With regular size marbles, you could set up 5 in a V shape, 4 in a vertical row or six in a horizontal row on the ground between your legs and shout "FOUR ALLEYS! FOUR ALLEYS!" or whatever number and type you were setting up to attract attention. Some guys would cheat and make a subtle rise in front of the marbles to deflect the shots but when discovered would be dealt with as above.


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## Guitar101 (Jan 19, 2011)

You guys must have been rich to be able to afford marbles. We collected chestnuts from the big tree on a property near us and would put a hole through the chestnut. We would then put a string through the hole. Taking turns, one kid would hang his chestnut on the string while his opponent tried to break his chestnut with his chestnut. Eventually, one would break and the other kid won the game. Funny, but in later years, I became a bit of chest nut myself. Not sure if there's a correlation.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Lola said:


> Do you remember playing marbles at school? I remember alleys nicknamed smokies, puries, boulders. I remember getting a shoe box and cutting little rectangle doorways on the bottom lip of an upside down shoebox. Above each little doorway was a number. If you got your marble in that hole you would win whatever it said above the hole! Public school gambling at it's finest! Hoping at recess to win big or prized marbles like the ones mentioned above! I can remember some kids reneging. That made me mad. You would shoot all your alleys at one kid's venue and you would get nothing in return. Little bastards!


Marbles were best played at the end of winter, when the snow was wet enough to make funnel-shaped holes in it, and it was warm enough to be on your knees outside during recess. Don't forget the cat's eyes!

The other form of gambling was played with sports cards of various types; whatever was in season at the time - baseball, hockey, football. The two principle games were "closies" (who could get closest to the wall with their card, flinging it like a throwing star), and "knock-downs" (which involved leaning one or more cards up against the school wall and flinging cards at it to knock it down).

And of course, the classic childhood line - applicable both to cards, as well as comics - was "Got it, got it, got it, need it, got it...". Right up there with "Car!".

Incidentally, that chestnut game sounds kinda fun.


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## Guest (Jun 29, 2015)

Chestnuts.
Reminds me of 'clackers'. Those glass balls on strings (later to be made 
of plastic because the glass would shatter). I bruised my knuckles a few times.










Hockey/baseball cards. No thought of collectable value back then. 
Also clipping them to the front forks of your bicycle for that 'frap' of a harley sound.


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## toby2 (Dec 2, 2006)

We would watch Channel 29 Buffalo on the weekends . Horror movies and wrestling . During the week it was channel 7 - Rocketship 7 with Promo the Robot and Dave Thomas - afternoon Commander Tom would show Superman and Little Rascals


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## leftysg (Mar 29, 2008)

Ha ha...I remember the clacker fad. They erupted it seemed overnight so much so that they were banned within weeks, if I recall because kids were breaking wrist bones when the clackers ricocheted. There were some kids that could get those going for at least a minute. We used to have recess contests.
Another hockey card game was "toss and cover". We'd stand back from a wall and throw cards. If your toss covered a card, you kept the bottom card. A good way to get rid of your doubles or Habs...JK ; )
TV show hosts I remember watching in Windsor were Sir Graves Ghastly and The Ghoul...and Robin "the bird" Seymour on Swingin' Time.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I remember my kid sister had clackers. Her teacher confiscated them, and when my sister was walking by her classroom at the end of the day, and spied her teacher playing with *her* clackers, she was enraged and burst into the room yelling at her teacher. Clackers were an express-lane to a migraine.

Table hockey. Not that crap type where you could move the players back and forth, and they would always stick or get jammed at the wrong time. Nope, the one where all the players did was spin around in one spot...dependably. You could play them with the tiny puck they came with, but it was a far superior game - and much much faster - if you played with a marble.

My cousin also had an "electric football game". It was a weird contraption where you lined up all your players on a metal surface that formed the "field". They had either small magnets or just pieces of steel on the bottom. You'd set your players up at the line of scrimmage, turn the game on, the field would vibrate, and eventually the players would fall over, signifying the end of the play. The yardage gained would depend on how you lined your players up. Naturally, there was no passing game.

Happily, ALL the quarterbacks emerged unscathed.


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## toby2 (Dec 2, 2006)

lawn darts , air hockey , zx81 loaded with 1K memory


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

toby2 said:


> lawn darts , air hockey , *zx81 loaded with 1K memory*


I have a pair of those in the basement...but the "deluxe" version, with 16k. Yowza!!


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## ed2000 (Feb 16, 2007)

Also clipping them to the front forks of your bicycle for that 'frap' of a harley sound.[/QUOTE]

We used cigarette packages with (wooden)clothesline pegs. 8 made a V8 engine.

--packages of margarine with the red blob of food colouring?!!


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Lola said:


> Do you remember playing marbles at school? I remember alleys nicknamed smokies, puries, boulders. I remember getting a shoe box and cutting little rectangle doorways on the bottom lip of an upside down shoebox. Above each little doorway was a number. If you got your marble in that hole you would win whatever it said above the hole! Public school gambling at it's finest! Hoping at recess to win big or prized marbles like the ones mentioned above! I can remember some kids reneging. That made me mad. You would shoot all your alleys at one kid's venue and you would get nothing in return.


This was a big thing in the spring for us in elementary school. We called it playing "alleys" back in NB where I grew up.

We played two types of "alleys"; one was where you would throw your alley along the ground and your competitor would try and hit it with his alley. You would keep going like this until someone hit the other alley with his alley. Whoever won got to keep his competitors' alley.

The second game was with a tin can with a hole in the top. The object was to try and drop an alley through the hole in the can. For each alley dropped through the hole, you would win a the number of alleys the owner of the can specified but it was usually around 3-5. The owner of the can got to keep all the alleys that missed. The cans I made had holes just big enough for the alleys to go through. I kept many more alleys than I had to give away.


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

Steadfastly said:


> This was a big thing in the spring for us in elementary school. We called it playing "alleys" back in NB where I grew up.
> 
> We played two types of "alleys"; one was where you would throw your alley along the ground and your competitor would try and hit it with his alley. You would keep going like this until someone hit the other alley with his alley. Whoever won got to keep his competitors' alley.
> 
> The second game was with a tin can with a hole in the top. The object was to try and drop an alley through the hole in the can. For each alley dropped through the hole, you would win a the number of alleys the owner of the can specified but it was usually around 3-5. The owner of the can got to keep all the alleys that missed. The cans I made had holes just big enough for the alleys to go through. I kept many more alleys than I had to give away.


Great story. Thanks for your wonderful contribution!


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Guitar101 said:


> You guys must have been rich to be able to afford marbles. We collected chestnuts from the big tree on a property near us and would put a hole through the chestnut. We would then put a string through the hole. Taking turns, one kid would hang his chestnut on the string while his opponent tried to break his chestnut with his chestnut. Eventually, one would break and the other kid won the game. Funny, but in later years, I became a bit of chest nut myself. Not sure if there's a correlation.


Conkers . We would also remove the lead from a pencil, hollow out a chestnut and use it as a bowl for the pencil stem and ''borrow'' some tobbacco from the old man and smoke it up.


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## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

"We used to dream of living in a corridor!"


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## Lola (Nov 16, 2014)

Electraglide said:


> Conkers . We would also remove the lead from a pencil, hollow out a chestnut and use it as a bowl for the pencil stem and ''borrow'' some tobbacco from the old man and smoke it up.


Ya I've heard of that word "conkers" before in reference to marbles!

I used to make my pipes in high school art class. I would make clay pipes, let them air dry and then steal a mesh screen from science class and voila, a pipe was created. We used to go into the ravine beside my high school, get high and then come back to class. Those were the "good old days"! Just so much fun!!


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

zontar said:


> "We used to dream of living in a corridor!"


Luxury. Pure luxury.


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## Xelebes (Mar 9, 2015)

My childhood of memory spans from 1989 to 1997. The best childhood memories were when I lived in a small mennonite village in Saskatchewan. Of course, living in such a community does build up a thirst for dancing.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

zontar said:


> "We used to dream of living in a corridor!"


Pythonaholic.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Lola said:


> Ya I've heard of that word "conkers" before in reference to marbles!
> 
> I used to make my pipes in high school art class. I would make clay pipes, let them air dry and then steal a mesh screen from science class and voila, a pipe was created. We used to go into the ravine beside my high school, get high and then come back to class. Those were the "good old days"! Just so much fun!!


You young kids and your getting high. We're talking grade 2 and three. By the time high school came along it was getting drunk and high on whatever was available. The Vet's kid was really popular. Homeroom in the morning, leave and sometimes back in time for homeroom in the afternoon and the leave.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Since everyone hunted back in NB where I grew up, bullets were easily accessible. Here is a few things we did with them.

1) We would take them and put them on the train tracks and hit them with a hammer of a rock and "shoot" them off into the woods. I found one on the sidewalk one day and did it on the sidewalk and shot it into the grass bank beside me.

2) Light a fire and throw some .22 shells in and then run like crazy before they started going off.

3) Take them apart and use the powder to make little bombs we would stick in the earth to see how big a bang we could make.

4) Throw them in the stove (coal stove) and listen to them go off and sometimes rattle the covers on the top of the stove.

Hey, we only had two TV channels! We had to do something to amuse ourselves.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Steadfastly said:


> Since everyone hunted back in NB where I grew up, bullets were easily accessible. Here is a few things we did with them.
> 
> 1) We would take them and put them on the train tracks and hit them with a hammer of a rock and "shoot" them off into the woods. I found one on the sidewalk one day and did it on the sidewalk and shot it into the grass bank beside me.
> 
> ...


Used to put black powder in tobacco cans and go fishing at times.


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