When I was a kid, for several summers, my father put a cable between the big pecan tree in the middle of the back yard and the big hickory tree about 25 yds away at the edge of the woodlot on the farm. He attached a pulley that had a seat underneath it and a loop for one’s foot to reach out and stop one’s head from banging the tree. There was a bit of a rise to the hickory to slow the homemade zipline a bit, but it was on the rider to stop the collision.
As soon as he got it up and tested it himself (a big man at around 6’2″ and 240lbs) he called it good and set up rules. No single riders… meaning two people there… one to hold the rope and watch and the other to ride. And, no crazy antics like riding backward or without your “rear end” (my father came from genteel stock that didn’t say butt or ass) on the seat and your foot in the loop. Other than that… “have at it.”
This is a photo of my cousins over for a zipline party when I was about five or six. I’m the little cutie with her hand on her chin under my cousin…
[img[/img]
Anonymous
January 10, 2016 9:48 am
Most of what I did and enjoyed most as a child would be illegal or unavailable now.
I the name of safety.
But somehow I don’t see the world as a safer place for children today when compared to then.
Anonymous
January 10, 2016 10:11 am
I’m pretty sure my father would have been reported and all of us would have been put in DHS custody for both recreational activities and the work we had to do on the farm.
Maggie
January 10, 2016 10:11 am
Anonymous above was me…
Maggie
January 10, 2016 10:12 am
And me.
Olde Virginian
January 10, 2016 10:53 am
This image is offensive on several levels.
First of all, all of the children lack severely in melanin.
Secondly, white male privilege. See the symbolism of how all the males are lording it over the females. One valiant young lady is striving to rise to the top but clearly her head has hit the glass ceiling.
One of the individuals in a dress appears to be displaying physical evidence he/she is not transgendered. Statistically in a sample of that size, several of those individuals would be self-identifying with a disparity between anatomy and sartorial selection.
There is no wheelchair accessible ramp.
How did I survive my childhood in the 60s/70s oblivious to this human tragedy? No wonder our culture and standard of living is so vastly improved today when we are so better enlightened.
Olde Virginian
January 10, 2016 10:57 am
As for Maggie’s post: You are indeed a cutie there.
Where are the helmets and knee and elbow pads? Where is the handrail on that ladder?
It is a shocking image and you and your cousins look like lambs being led to slaughter. Some of you might have been bruised or skinned a knee. Or even broken a bone. Or even, gasp, died, which is unspeakable and never happens in real life.
Olde Virginian
January 10, 2016 11:01 am
The picture also seems inauthentic. My recollection of those days is that we boys wouldn’t be caught dead on the same playground equipment at the same time as g i r l s. Yech!
I should have remembered all I learned in kindergarten because I would go on to sleep with women and even get married to one as a foolish adult.
Maggie
January 10, 2016 11:04 am
That zipline was there most of my early childhood and there were plenty of falls at the getting off end, but never a broken bone or serious injury. I think it was all the raw milk.
underfire
January 10, 2016 11:19 am
And to replace the sense of accomplishment for a youngster in reaching the top for the first time………… trophies from school twice a term.
Suzanna
January 10, 2016 12:25 pm
We all have stories, “be home by 17:30 to wash for
supper at 1800. Sometimes my sweet Mom packed a
little “picnic” lunch. We roamed free along the lakefront
in a big city…down a very steep hill, and over a wall, and
across the tracks. Mostly, it was great. We learned about
everything. And no TV in the summers.
Tator
January 10, 2016 12:29 pm
Such good memories. We had “vines” we played on. We would scout out one growing on a tree over a creek or gully then cut the base and swing out over creek/gully until it eventually broke. We rode homemade coaster cars down hills with no brakes except our feet. And we were always barefoot in the summer.
As many have said, today our parents would get arrested….we had it made.
SSS
January 10, 2016 1:12 pm
After about age 6, totally unsupervised childhood. Sandlot baseball every Saturday morning. Rode my bike anywhere I wanted. Stuff like that. Then, there’s fishing. I’d get all excited when the first day of fishing season approached. Digging up earthworms in the farm land next to my house. Walking to the nearby Antietam Creek (yes, that Antietam of Civil War fame) way before daybreak. Freezing my butt off. And catching ……. nothing. Year after year after year. I hate fishing.
JIMSKI
January 10, 2016 1:22 pm
Be home when the streetlights come on.
Stupid strap on roller skates that weight 3 lbs each and could not roll downhill.
Baseball cards clothspinned to the frame into the spoke for authentic engine sound.
Climbing trees
The ravine.
The trestle over the Maumed river. Finally jumped off age 14. Total passage into the trestle club.
Breaking into the old waterworks building and walking the tanks. You could walk underground all the way to the river through a 6 foot discharge pipe.
Sledding at Fort Miegs.
How am I not dead?
EL Coyote
January 10, 2016 1:46 pm
Your definition of play does not match mine. I’m reminded of the time Stucky warned off AWD, for some reason, I have been the beneficiary of hulking heros. It’s why I’m alive today.
IndenturedServant
January 10, 2016 3:11 pm
I broke my ribs the first time on monkey bars like that. I don’t recall the pain of impact after the fall but it knocked ALL the air out of me. I mean ALL of the air. Every….last….molecule! I stood there for a few seconds trying to get a breath in but couldn’t do it. I couldn’t utter a sound, not even a pitiful squeak. I KNEW I was seriously hurt. As panic set in I began running for home as quickly as I could. I could see my house from the playground. According to Google Earth the distance I ran was 287 feet……straight home.
I have no idea what I was going to do at home……….I couldn’t talk……couldn’t breathe…….mom probably would have wigged out seeing me turn purple like that…….but it was all I could think to do. For the record, my mom passed out like bag of rags when she saw streams of blood squirting out of my eye with every heartbeat when I was blinded in one eye. My future was bleak! Just as I stepped foot in the yard, about to black out I suddenly took in one giant fucking breath and I knew instantly that I NEVER wanted to breathe again as my broken ribs began searching for a place to settle. HO LEE FUK it hurt! I spent the rest of that summer on the sidelines as an observer. Broken ribs suck!
Westcoaster
January 10, 2016 6:34 pm
Part of my childhood was in “lively Shively”, the West end of Louisville. We moved there when I was entering 3rd grade. Just a couple doors down from us was a family of about 5 latch-key kids ranging from 13 or 14 down to I’d say 5. I enjoyed hanging out with them, smoking cigs behind their garage, and watching Tarzan on their TV while the parents were at work.
One day I stopped by and they were in the process of building a tree house in the backyard. Unfortunately I was in just the right spot to get hit on the top of the head with a falling sawed-off 2 x 4; probably about 3 ft long. Took me out of action for about 15 minutes. Luckily I didn’t get hit by the protruding nail on the other end of the board!
Fun times in that neighborhood, My parents had no idea.
Country Girl
January 10, 2016 8:28 pm
I was raised in the country, acres and acres to roam, along with a pond and lots of creeks (or cricks). There were only two rules, be home by dark OR be close enough to home to hear two long, two short car horn sounds, which meant get home now, and if I didn’t hear that horn there was hell to pay.
When I was a kid, for several summers, my father put a cable between the big pecan tree in the middle of the back yard and the big hickory tree about 25 yds away at the edge of the woodlot on the farm. He attached a pulley that had a seat underneath it and a loop for one’s foot to reach out and stop one’s head from banging the tree. There was a bit of a rise to the hickory to slow the homemade zipline a bit, but it was on the rider to stop the collision.
As soon as he got it up and tested it himself (a big man at around 6’2″ and 240lbs) he called it good and set up rules. No single riders… meaning two people there… one to hold the rope and watch and the other to ride. And, no crazy antics like riding backward or without your “rear end” (my father came from genteel stock that didn’t say butt or ass) on the seat and your foot in the loop. Other than that… “have at it.”
This is a photo of my cousins over for a zipline party when I was about five or six. I’m the little cutie with her hand on her chin under my cousin…
[img
[/img]
Most of what I did and enjoyed most as a child would be illegal or unavailable now.
I the name of safety.
But somehow I don’t see the world as a safer place for children today when compared to then.
I’m pretty sure my father would have been reported and all of us would have been put in DHS custody for both recreational activities and the work we had to do on the farm.
Anonymous above was me…
And me.
This image is offensive on several levels.
First of all, all of the children lack severely in melanin.
Secondly, white male privilege. See the symbolism of how all the males are lording it over the females. One valiant young lady is striving to rise to the top but clearly her head has hit the glass ceiling.
One of the individuals in a dress appears to be displaying physical evidence he/she is not transgendered. Statistically in a sample of that size, several of those individuals would be self-identifying with a disparity between anatomy and sartorial selection.
There is no wheelchair accessible ramp.
How did I survive my childhood in the 60s/70s oblivious to this human tragedy? No wonder our culture and standard of living is so vastly improved today when we are so better enlightened.
As for Maggie’s post: You are indeed a cutie there.
Where are the helmets and knee and elbow pads? Where is the handrail on that ladder?
It is a shocking image and you and your cousins look like lambs being led to slaughter. Some of you might have been bruised or skinned a knee. Or even broken a bone. Or even, gasp, died, which is unspeakable and never happens in real life.
The picture also seems inauthentic. My recollection of those days is that we boys wouldn’t be caught dead on the same playground equipment at the same time as g i r l s. Yech!
I should have remembered all I learned in kindergarten because I would go on to sleep with women and even get married to one as a foolish adult.
That zipline was there most of my early childhood and there were plenty of falls at the getting off end, but never a broken bone or serious injury. I think it was all the raw milk.
And to replace the sense of accomplishment for a youngster in reaching the top for the first time………… trophies from school twice a term.
We all have stories, “be home by 17:30 to wash for
supper at 1800. Sometimes my sweet Mom packed a
little “picnic” lunch. We roamed free along the lakefront
in a big city…down a very steep hill, and over a wall, and
across the tracks. Mostly, it was great. We learned about
everything. And no TV in the summers.
Such good memories. We had “vines” we played on. We would scout out one growing on a tree over a creek or gully then cut the base and swing out over creek/gully until it eventually broke. We rode homemade coaster cars down hills with no brakes except our feet. And we were always barefoot in the summer.
As many have said, today our parents would get arrested….we had it made.
After about age 6, totally unsupervised childhood. Sandlot baseball every Saturday morning. Rode my bike anywhere I wanted. Stuff like that. Then, there’s fishing. I’d get all excited when the first day of fishing season approached. Digging up earthworms in the farm land next to my house. Walking to the nearby Antietam Creek (yes, that Antietam of Civil War fame) way before daybreak. Freezing my butt off. And catching ……. nothing. Year after year after year. I hate fishing.
Be home when the streetlights come on.
Stupid strap on roller skates that weight 3 lbs each and could not roll downhill.
Baseball cards clothspinned to the frame into the spoke for authentic engine sound.
Climbing trees
The ravine.
The trestle over the Maumed river. Finally jumped off age 14. Total passage into the trestle club.
Breaking into the old waterworks building and walking the tanks. You could walk underground all the way to the river through a 6 foot discharge pipe.
Sledding at Fort Miegs.
How am I not dead?
Your definition of play does not match mine. I’m reminded of the time Stucky warned off AWD, for some reason, I have been the beneficiary of hulking heros. It’s why I’m alive today.
I broke my ribs the first time on monkey bars like that. I don’t recall the pain of impact after the fall but it knocked ALL the air out of me. I mean ALL of the air. Every….last….molecule! I stood there for a few seconds trying to get a breath in but couldn’t do it. I couldn’t utter a sound, not even a pitiful squeak. I KNEW I was seriously hurt. As panic set in I began running for home as quickly as I could. I could see my house from the playground. According to Google Earth the distance I ran was 287 feet……straight home.
I have no idea what I was going to do at home……….I couldn’t talk……couldn’t breathe…….mom probably would have wigged out seeing me turn purple like that…….but it was all I could think to do. For the record, my mom passed out like bag of rags when she saw streams of blood squirting out of my eye with every heartbeat when I was blinded in one eye. My future was bleak! Just as I stepped foot in the yard, about to black out I suddenly took in one giant fucking breath and I knew instantly that I NEVER wanted to breathe again as my broken ribs began searching for a place to settle. HO LEE FUK it hurt! I spent the rest of that summer on the sidelines as an observer. Broken ribs suck!
Part of my childhood was in “lively Shively”, the West end of Louisville. We moved there when I was entering 3rd grade. Just a couple doors down from us was a family of about 5 latch-key kids ranging from 13 or 14 down to I’d say 5. I enjoyed hanging out with them, smoking cigs behind their garage, and watching Tarzan on their TV while the parents were at work.
One day I stopped by and they were in the process of building a tree house in the backyard. Unfortunately I was in just the right spot to get hit on the top of the head with a falling sawed-off 2 x 4; probably about 3 ft long. Took me out of action for about 15 minutes. Luckily I didn’t get hit by the protruding nail on the other end of the board!
Fun times in that neighborhood, My parents had no idea.
I was raised in the country, acres and acres to roam, along with a pond and lots of creeks (or cricks). There were only two rules, be home by dark OR be close enough to home to hear two long, two short car horn sounds, which meant get home now, and if I didn’t hear that horn there was hell to pay.