THEN versus NOW

[Dreamstalker]

The 'Mini Boggan', for those who aren't quite as 'vintage' as I am, was basically a sheet of thin plastic (maybe 4 mm thick, if I remember correctly) with a rope handle on one end.

I had something similar (Krazy Karpet). We would also pour water down the chosen sled run and add a 'jump' at the bottom. Everyone was waiting for one of us to go flying over the fence one day...

Near 40-degree slope, ice, and sleds that were only steerable if you knew exactly how.

[Caffienated_Caramel]

Lawn Darts!!

Heheh did you try killing elks with those?

I remember Red Rover was still allowed on the playground and I remember playing hide and seek after dark in the streets.

[DeltaSierra]

Just remembered a new one - in my 6th grade we had a wilderness survival course that included gun maintenance and safety, and culminated with a trip to the local Fish and Game club to shoot shotguns, rifles, and handguns.

There was also a shooting elective offered in high school. This would be unheard of now.

[sms001]

There was also a shooting elective offered in high school. This would be unheard of now.

I grew up in too metro an area, but one of my (a few years older than me) coirkers says that during deer season it was not unheard of for students to bring a new rifle to school to show fellow hunters.

[ADeMartino]

When I was in high school (oh so many, many years ago....) we had a guy who wanted to bring a vintage flintlock to school. It was sort of a 'show and tell' kind of arrangement, though there really wasn't such a thing as 'show and tell' in high school. Half the school administration was up in arms (no pun intended) about it, because it was stated CLEARLY in the regulations that firearms weren't permitted on school property... In the end, saner heads finally did prevail because it was deemed to be of 'academic interest'. Nonetheless, the school took precautions - asking for the local police department to send an officer to the school on the appointed day and time to verify that the weapon was indeed not loaded. Your tax dollars at work, folks.

[JustaCashier]

Quoth JustaCashier Lawn Darts!!

Heheh did you try killing elks with those?

No, just each other. No elks around.

Mike

[Food Lady]

I wore my bike helmet, but I'd bike for miles all by myself, even to downtown. Hell, just going outdoors unsupervised. My parents would literally lock us outside and make us go play until dinnertime. Even when we moved out to the county and there were cougar sightings in the area, they'd be "Here's what you do if you see a mountain lion; now go play in the woods for a few hours."

Hubs had a similar childhood, except he wandered the deserts of SoCal instead of forests. Same idea of spending hours unsupervised, though.

Pretty much my childhood. I grew up in the outskirts of Riverside, CA: definitely mountain lion country. We had a mama lion in the neighborhood--and a couple of times in our yard--for years and years. We also had to watch out for rattlesnakes.

[AccountingDrone]

Pretty much my childhood. I grew up in the outskirts of Riverside, CA: definitely mountain lion country. We had a mama lion in the neighborhood--and a couple of times in our yard--for years and years. We also had to watch out for rattlesnakes.

Rob grew up in Kerman CA at what we jokingly refer to his Aunt and Uncle's Grape Ranch [200 acres in grapes, 50 acres he helped plant by hand ] which was along the river. He lived in an old travel camper beside the river instead of in the house with his mother and sister when he hit 10 years old. He said that he used to take a 22 revolver with him when he stepped out to pee in the middle of the night because of the feral dogs and coyotes. He and most of the other guys in school with him wore belt knives, took wood shop, and a couple guys with pickup trucks also had gun racks in them. He and his boy scout troop made money cutting down trees and selling the wood - so you had 14-18 year olds climbing and topping 100 foot eucalyptus trees, using 4' professional chainsaws, and doing all the normal lumberjack stuff. There was a class not just on shooting a bow, but shooting guns, and he and his friend Kurt made spare money working the gun club doing everything from running the machines for trap and skeet launching to sifting through the dirt to reclaim brass, shotgun shells and other metal for reloading and selling to scrap metal dealers.

[Hell, my dad taught me to shoot when I was 8 years old, the m-1 was damned near bigger than I was.]