Thread: How True is This

Originally Posted by Barry_White

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy fruit tingles and some crackers to blow up frogs with.

Those were the days alright. We'd scour home unit bin rooms for bottles, cash them in and buy a load of thunders, skyrockets, and roman candles before heading to the local park for some war games. My old lady wouldn't be too happy if I came home with burn holes in my clothes though.

Another good prank we used to pull was cutting up bicycle inner tubes and slipping them over car exhaust pipes whilst the owners were doing shopping. Half of them would get out and look under their hoods to see why their car had all of a sudden started 'farting'.

Originally Posted by Barry_White

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and cubby houses and played in creek beds with matchbox cars.

On blisteringly hot days we sat for hours in the middle of the area's only bitumen road, popping tar bubbles...

Catching blue-tongue lizards to sell at the pet-shop... 'cos we used to put our crackers inside the old soft drink bottles.

The eternal struggle with those damned kite-eating trees. Especially the ones which couldn't tell the difference between a kite and a model airplane.

Watching the look on my sister's face when she realised that the long tail of the blue-tongue she was dragging backwards out of it's 'ole wasn't, in fact, attached to a blue-tongue...

Now I'm feeling all misty-eyed and soppy. [sigh]

Baz, you sound like one of those blokes off that show "Grumpy old men"

Originally Posted by Harry72

Baz, you sound like one of those blokes off that show "Grumpy old men"

Thats me too, I'm a grumpy old man and proud opf it.

That was an interesting read, Baz. I think I've seen it somewhere before?

I was thinking recently about when we collected bottles as kids and cashed them in. I used to sneak into Westfield Plaza at Hornsby (Sydney) when it was under construction and every now and then you'd find a "treasure" of five big Coke bottles for which I think we got ten cents each.

Then we'd sneak onto a train and go into Sydney and sit under the bridge eating chips.

We built mountain roads for our toy cars on dirt piles at construction sites without "No Trespassing" signs. Nobody shooed us away.

Our war games were conducted between said dirt piles at convenient distances. Our weapons of choice were dirt clods, sometimes containing a pebble or two. Nobody complained about injuries.

We bought all ingredients for DIY explosives at grocers and chemists.

We bought, and used, spray paint even though we were under 18 years old.

Joe

And who would have worn a bike helmet even if they had existed?
Shanghais were fun too, nowadays a proscribed weapon!

Climbing windmills when we were 3 years old! (so I'm told)
Crawling through the bulls pen (so I'm told)
Smashed a bucket full of eggs mum had collected when she had to run off to answer the exchange (so I'm told) (actually there are pics of that one)
Playing in the local creek when it flooded
survived many scout camps playing games at night in the bush, running through spiders etc.
Rock climbing (free style of course) (we new not of fear and danger)

The really big problem with this anecdote is that portions of it are just flat out wrong.

Try buying any soft drink these days with sugar in it.

And that's just a start.


All of this over regulation and general nastiness bought to you buy all these so called survivors ( ) now running the government and all the corporations that are heck bent on making a buck at the expense of everyone else.


I am not saying I disagree with this nice little list, it's just that nowadays the personal responsibilities that used to keep everything in check are going or gone, and not just at the family level.


(At least it's not as bad as that here. Yet... )

Originally Posted by Rossluck

Then we'd sneak onto a train and go into Sydney and sit under the bridge eating chips.

Yeh you'd never waste your money on a ticket. If the station had gates, you'd just walk the tracks and jump a fence. You could open the train doors and hang out for a bit of fresh air as well. I used to catch the local buses by just standing on the rear bumper bar and hanging onto a window handle that they had in the middle.
One night about 25 years ago, I climbed up the ladder between the train tracks on the Harbour Bridge, over those prongs (no barbed wire and security in those days), across over the road and up to the top. What a buzz, and there was graffiti up there, so it was a bit of a sport back then. Costs you a couple of hundred bucks to do it today.
I recall that they used to have that South East pylon set up as a museum.

Playing in the local tip, usually throwing bits of glass or rocks at each other. Skipping broken glass across the creek. Getting free ginger beers off the diggers after the Anzac Day march, even smaller suburbs had marches.

Dropping ha'penny bungers into old beer bottles with a marble squeezed onto the top, or penny bungers in milk bottles. Ah Cracker Night, took us about an hour to blow up our whole stash.

Stickjaw at fetes,

Now the other side.

We are the people who brought in the laws to stop what we liked as kids because we became over protective.

We are the lawyers who sue any one for any thing.

We are the people who run to the lawyers if the neighbour blinks wrong.

We are the politicians who ban every thing.

We had fun but we prevented later generations enjoying it too.

Soft drinks are about 30% sugar. They make a sugar syrup and then mix that with the drink flavour to get the soft drink. I can't drink coke anymore as it just seems like sugar syrup to me all thick and sticky.

Anyway good one Bazza. Those were good times. Have to say it is a bit of a Baby Boomer thing though came through free and easy then decided it was too dangerous for anyone else.

Actually the dynamic is more complex than that. Some Baby Boomers miss the freedom and want to return to a more liberal society, eek I can't say that they have stolen the word liberal, it is like saying gay. Liberal used to mean a moderate conservative one prepared to look at new ideas and ways of doing things but just wasn't prepared for getting rid of the accepted ways just for the sake of it.

Liberal used to be all about individual freedom. Which is I suppose what I dislike so much about so many politicians who base their whole philosophy on the notion that people are stupid meaning they need politicians to look after them.

So during the Baby Boomers generation we had this increase in the governments grip on our lives. We also had the increase in individual freedoms that led to the end of communism for instance, in fact the liberalising of the markets here in Australia have really improved our freedom. Think about the Union Power of the 70's compared to now. Used to be the unions way or no way. There are other examples of improving freedom.

Unfortunately the Lawyers and Accountants have taken too much of a hold. The activism of the Courts has led to this and then it was pushed along by Lawyers who realised that the more they got people and the system to believe in the right to sue the more work and money for Lawyers. Pain in the proverbial. For instance should your father die and you don't like the way he has drawn up the will you can contest it in court. After he is dead and has no way to defend his position. In fact suppose the will is legally drawn up by the book how can a court say that it is not legally binding? It is like saying the court that ruled off on that one was not acting legally but we are. Or we didn't like the law in the past so we are going to reinterprete it!

Sheeze I can go on like a squeeky gate at times.

Studley

It looks like all the "A" class students who looked down on all the "B" & "C" class students who never did anything in those days are coming to the fore now telling how they have put all the protection into place and getting even for all the things they weren't allowed to do.

Just a couple of things I and my brother used to get up to. During the school holidays we would be gone from dawn until dusk. Some of the things we used to get up to in Sydney were walk the freight train lines that ran all over the western suburbs and duck into a culvert when a freight train came.

Then we would walk all the storm water canals that also ran all over the western suburbs.

Ride down the sides of grass banks on sheets of corrugated iron and rip our trousers.

Ride our push bikes from Summer Hill to Parramatta along Parramatta Road.

Play in all the air raid shelters that were built in all the public parks just after the 2nd world war.