-----------------------------------------------------
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Click to visit the TBP Store for Great TBP Merchandise
Watch television.
Now, not watching television is considered “dangerous behavior.”
On Saturdays and every day in the summer I would leave the house after breakfast and roam throughout the area 1 1/2 to 2 miles from home. Going across the RR tracks was not allowed, crossing the major highway 1 1/2 miles south was not allowed. Sometimes I came home for lunch and sometimes my friends would eat lunch at my house. We had to be home for dinner. This started after I had finished 1st grade.
I cannot imagine a 7 y-o being allowed to roam 1/4 mile from home without adult supervision today.
Sometimes I’d wander into a tavern down on County Line Road and the guy would pour me some 7-Up.
Built homemade rockets from old 12 gauge shells. Not smart, but great fun.
Reminded me of carbide in a paint can. Yep, not smart, but a shit-load of fun.
Pistol made from galvanized water pipe, a marble, and a cherry bomb as the launcher.
lol. I was a free range kid. I ate dirt from time to time. I’d leave the house in the morning and Mom never knew where I was until I came home for dinner. I rode a bike without a helmet. We didn’t have seat belts in the car.
I got stitches from time to time without my parents being suspected of being abusive (knee and scalp come to mind).
I went small game hunting with a shotgun at 16. By myself.
Yes, we were all free range kids back in those days…we came home in time for dinner..
I feel sorry for kids who aren’t free range. It is essential for development. I think it was fear of the scolding was the only reason I even made it back by supper a lot of time.
Ken,
I think in a lot of cases we came home only because we were friggin hungry. Like most kids of the time I was miles from home and my mother never had the foggiest notion where I was. All that play left me plain hungry.
My mother said I would search for and chew on flyswatters.
That’s probably why I have great immune system for an old man.
Climb 35′ up into trees. Hop trains. Be an altar boy.
Boy scout
I made a “safety harness” out of a jump rope and wire cloths hanger when I was up about that high in the front tree. My parent’s really impressed me that all it would have done is cut me in half if I had to use it. I thought it was just to show willing I was paying attention to “being safe”.
did that once. tied a rope in the tree then to myself and jumped out. don’t remember hitting the bottom, probably blacked out, but I remember my mother running like a deer to get me down.
Iska, we did the same.
We had a Pinoak tree out front. In addition to dropping tons of acorns most of its branches grew perpendicular to the trunk, which made it as easy as climbing a ladder. In later years we could easily go up 35-40 feet.
I thought you were a chick?
Roaming around in the forest, when I was 5 years old, without any parent or adult around…Making gunpowder from scratch…
“Making gunpowder from scratch” 🤣 Definitely NOT. A particular situation where ya wanna “Keep Your Powder Dry” now, is it?
http://www.mman.us/blackpowderproduction1.htm
Read “Brave New World”, “Animal Farm”, and “1984”…… Along with other selections by such Rayciss Authors as Samuel Clemmons, (REALLY enjoyed “Pudd’nhead Wilson”, among others), J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and, Horror of Horrors, Dr. Seuss…..
Also, riding my bike or skateboard without being encased in Bubble-Wrap, being a Free-Range kid who didn’t come home ’til the streetlights came on in the summer, etc…..
Pudd’nhead Wilson is one that I missed until I was in my late-’50s … otherwise I read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer when I was 7 or 8 … read ‘Mad’ magazine since I was about 12 … read and loved Dr. Seuss …
“The Scarlet Letter” in high school was appropriate for understanding life.
“Brave New World, Animal Farm, 1984″… ALL GREAT!
It’s a Question of °’s. Seem to recall 451° IS the Temperature necessary for paper to spontaneously combust. Irrelevant to the MESSAGE, overall.
IMHO, The Most RELEVANT of the Genre. Right Now. LIVING IT OUT IN REAL TIME.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fahrenheit-451-novel-by-Bradbury
Played with Click Clacks (the original ones on string, not those half-assed plastic rod ones they came out with later).
Rode on the deck above the back seat, occasionally falling onto the back seat if the car stopped quickly.
Went everywhere alone on my bike beginning when I was 8 or so.
Was a free-thinker that questioned everything.
Played Jarts with the original, go through your foot kind. Still have a set.
“Click Clacks (the original ones on string, not those half-assed plastic rod ones they came out with later).”
my First. Constant refinement until ‘authenticity’ was achieved. At the Apogee of my R&D? Got to the point that the cows would NO LONGER Run. No matter WHAT. Suppose they knew that it was pointless. 🤣 They WERE goin’ Down! at that point anyhow.
There WAS however a little prick in the ‘Neighborhood’. Think ‘Damien’ or whatever his name was. In Prison for didlin’ little kids currently. NEEDS ‘Company’.
SORE Ass for a week? Worth it to see him layin’ there. i was 11, maybe 12.
Ride a bike without dressing like a hockey goalie. Play in the swamps out back . Jump on brushpiles to flush rabits for my 10 year old brother with a 12 ga. as tall as he was.
Grew up in the Arizona desert. We had BB Gun fights. Had bow and arrow fights – got shot an inch above the right eye, bled a lot. Climbed 50-foot-tall tamarisk trees, crawled out on limbs (3 of us) and sawed ourselves off. Had cherry bomb and firecracker fights. Hunted rattlesnakes with a large stick for a club – sometimes if you missed a head strike, they would chase us … really, really hard to outrun a pissed off Mohave … in the summertime we only wore cutoff jeans, no shirt and always barefoot. There was no such thing as bicycle helmets or seat belts. Much more, but everything we did was considered normal. We didn’t have TV’s. So, we were always outdoors. We never got into trouble for the things we did.
“sawed ourselves off”
(laughing)
Most people dont know how fast a pissed off snake can move…
They can move at lightning speed … when you’re barefoot it’s a tough scramble. When I got older dad would let me borrow his .20 gauge Winchester pump. One head shot – game over. Think Arizona has about 12 species of rattlers. Damned things are everywhere … I hunted them for years, killed hundreds and hundreds. Never had one bit of remorse. When you see what they do to a dog or a horse, or a child, you’ll hate them as much as I. Am retired now and in the Inland Pacific Northwest where we don’t have any damned rattlers, scorpions, black widows, centipedes, Gila monsters. Too much snow and harsh winters and cannot survive.
There was an incident at Camp Pendleton where some of the Marines — during maneuvers/training exercises before going to Vietnam – were too impatient to put up their tents one night — so they decided to sleep in an old WW2 bunker … and, come morning, their bodies were found with literally more than 100 rattler bites apiece … grotesque …
On what used to be the edge of town where we raised our family was Rattlesnake Hill; rocky and south facing-a nice warm place for rattlers when it got chilly. Now it has a neighborhood of houses covering the entire slope. Not sure I’d want to let our little ones play out back in their sandbox in that location.
… or, as Byron and I discovered, how fast a cornered rat can run …
Ride bike all day through the neighborhood, without a helmet.
For a while we would ride down this big hill, put our 1 foot in the forks to make it flip, and do a summersault letting the bike go. Nobody got hurt. I don’t even know if bike helmets existed yet. Maybe they did.
Rode bikes w/out helmets; used a bow and arrow; used a BB gun; carried various knives (folding and straight); swam in quarries and rivers; Jumped trains (was and is still dangerous and illegal); crawled through storm sewers; smoked cigs and pipes; all those activities were unsupervised; the list goes on.
Yeah, I jumped trains ,too. They were a convenient transport home from HS. 15 or 16 does that count? Made bombs from powder from fireworks.
Parents were both chainsmokers and loved their highballs after work. Camels, Kools, bourbon and gin were stored on the bottom shelf of a lower kitchen cabinet. Was told that was for the adults, dont’ touch. We didn’t, at least very often.
Walked alone to elementary school in the snow, rode bike to elementary school alone, etc
Up hill both ways?
Damn right
https://www.etsy.com/listing/156257123/vintage-black-rubber-galoshes-with-metal
6/7 years old. built fireplaces out of bricks and melted lead in coffee cans. Lived in trees building tree forts. 10/11 years old .collected mercury from old thermostats, etc. I remember having about a yogurt cup full. Played with it. I can tell you where there is a very contaminated apt.
Griff?
EVERYTHING I did as a child would be considered dangerous today. Most of the commenters have mentioned all the really dangerous stuff we did on the edge of a 1000-acre pine forest with no fences anywhere to be found. We found an abandoned house with no possible road access deep in that pine forest that still had electric service connected.
Tennis-ball mortar cannons, back when tennis balls came in metal cans. Strap two together with one as a barrel extension, poke a small hole in the bottom, add plenty of Ronsonol lighter fluid, load the tennis ball, ignite the vapor, and FOOMP! tennis ball mortar!
Cherry Bombs and M-80 “firecrackers” were always being set off in the boys turlets in middle and high school.
Going to school.
Dirt clod fights. Riding my three speed, banana seat bicycle to the various adjacent villages (Germany) from our village.
Everything I did. Everything I was allowed to do.
I was free and I was free to learn from my mistakes.
The only worthwhile version
Do they allow those at Greek weddings?
Getting off the DoD school bus in the afternoon, and stopping by the local Gastaus for a beer and pretzel…in the 7th grade. :0
Wow – beats my 9th grade venturing to the British and Chaudiere Hotels for beers. You could only buy quarts, no pints, and they were only $1.20 or something back then.
Who drinks beer for the flavor and not the effect?
Besides me, of course….
I brew a really “Malty” American Amber that’s about 6.5%. Not too “Hoppy”, so in MY opinion it’s really tasty……
Don’t like to think about the calories though. Or the fit of my 501’s……
Drank water from the garden hose; best water around!
Still is if you live in the country and get your water from a well.
No helmets. Guns. Knives. Fireworks. Walking to school alone. Mowing. Monkey bars. No seatbelts.
Everything.
Most everything from sun up to sun down, otherwise, I plead th 5th.
1. Hung by my ankles from a trapeze bar I set 40′ up in a tree; built and operated an “elevator” in said tree comprised of a clothesline pulley secured up in the tree, swing seat on one end and a few tires filled with bricks on the other end as counterweight.
2. Used a dart instead of a lure on the end of a rod and reel line and practiced casting it into trees, objects, etc.
3. Did “junglemouths” (fire-breathing). You place lighter fluid into your mouth, hold it under your tongue, take a deep breath and spray it out forcefully across a lit lighter held maybe 6-8″ away from your face. Some of us stupid kids also lit off ladyfinger firecrackers – while holding them between our teeth.
4. Jumping bicycles over lots of things, including other kids and open road cut trenches.
5. Lots and lots of downhill skiing stunts – but that was more into my early teens.
We went everywhere alone (except any Colored areas), 10s of miles from home on our bikes for example, without fear. White people were not criminally inclined esp towards children; the reactions of the ordinary citizens and police would have been very severe. We “played” constantly with homemade and store bought weapons of every kind; we wandered miles into woods hunting, and swimming in streams.
I did something, often, whereby I was told I would grow hair on my knuckles, or worse, go blind.
Sorry, I can’t be more specific.
QOTD – Do you shave your knuckles and wear thick glasses?
No and no, but my right arm is twice as big as my left arm. Weird, I know,
Blowing up GIJoes with M80’s, driving cars around in a cornfield as a preteen, playing in a junkyard and dragging each other behind 4-wheelers in the winter.
A friend lived along side the Hwy 101 freeway (4 lanes in each direction), had a back door gate leading onto the shoulder, and late at night we all decided to run across and back across the freeway. I can tell you those cars come pretty fast at 75 MPH, even from 1/2 mile away. It’s hard to judge distance at night.
In the summer sneaking onto the high school roof above the small diving pool (with diving board 1/2 in the way and jumping in from 3 stories high… You needed to commit before actually being close enough to see at the edge because the pool wasn’t directly next to the building.
Filling large balloons up (say making a 4-6 balloon pyramid) with propane, and throwing lit firecrackers at them. Similar to an atomic bomb fire blast as the flame ball rises into the air.
Something to do while backpacking in the Sierra…Hiking up very steep mountains and then running straight down. There was no stopping until you hit the bottom. Every step found air until the next far down the hill.
Riding cardboard down steep dried grass hills toboggan style.
LEAD TOY SOLDIER MOLD CASTING MACHINE HOME FOUNDRY
and some molds
The shut-off valve broke one day after school… hot lead poured off of the edge of the machine until the lead was exhausted. Furtively, I waited, hoping and praying that mom wouldn’t come into the living room. She didn’t that evening. When the lead was cooled, I tried to pry it from the brand-new carpeting. It wouldn’t budge. That danged new fangled nylon (or whatever it was) was tough stuff. I covered the sizable scab of lead with a magazine. Yeah, that “bought” me the night, next day, not so much.
I used to hold my face over the colander type “safety cover” to be able to smell the odd odors from the cooking dust and what other contaminates had rested in the pot while not in use.
I learned how to soot-up the molds as a release agent, I learned how to pour slugs inside the empty spools of sewing thread to make fishing sinkers. I learned how to make lead “squeezable” gaskets for all kinds of pressure fittings. I made new battery posts, easily soldered on a car battery because it was so common for older batteries to have corroded or abused posts with hammers, etc. Yes, even bullets and slugs. BBs were easy to make by dropping small drops of molten lead into water and then rolling between parallel steel plates.
I burned the piss outta myself a few times, and other mistakes were made, such as it would not melt a nickel nor even a penny, much to my surprise and consternation. But I also learned a lot about the library and the Dewey Decimal system and how to find books about metallurgy, including that lead will damage your brain.
Mom got me a small lead soldier set when I was about 10-burnt skin was a fast way to learn the right way to do things. That was around the time Ike was in his 2nd term.
Walk around West Baltimore.
Come to think of it, it was pretty dangerous at the time.
Play Evel KNEVEL on my bicycle and jump not 5 or 6 but 7 neighborhood kids….cleared em’ by a mile!.
Climbing a tree high enough that I could see over my house. Granted it was only one story.🤣
Hitchhiking, making my own gunpowder and attempting to make fireworks, BB gun battles, fireworks fights that involved shooting bottle rockets, smoke bombs and firecrackers at each other, riding mini bikes in a sand quarry, getting stupidity high and riding on top of a buddy’s work van All the usual kid to teenager stuff before the wannies ruined everything.
Tried to make gunpowder. Never successful. That was probably a good thing.
Dad built a zip line from the pecan tree behind the house to the hickory tree by the chicken house about 100 feet away. You had to sit in the seat and put one foot out to cushion your stop at the hickory tree or you might hit it head on.
It was awesome.
I’m the one chewing on my knuckles.
Mighty sturdy ladder.
Played in creeks, climbed big hills, rode bicycle to town to eat at Taco Bell in grammer school in the late 60s. One taco was 25 cents.
Rode a 10 speed bicycle more than 10 miles away from home in junior high.
Mini bike and dirt bike riding
Walked to school
On a serious note, I was in 7th grade, level 6 class out of 6 levels ( I was in class with the dregs), kids who had behavioral or slow learning problems. Those kids were undisciplined and sometimes violent. My problem was neither, I just didn’t care about shit, period. Same in 8th grade.
Looking back, I honestly don’t know how I survived junior high .
If you were like Stucky you jacked off a lot.
Just bout everything. Swam in farm ponds, strip pits and local creeks. Had dirt clod fights, BB gun fights, fist fights and stick fights. Climbed trees, went into old coal mine tunnels and generally raised hell while having an absolutely wonderful childhood..
Also played with M-80’s and cherry bombs because at that time they were still legal in this state.
There was always a shady operator fireworks stand somewhere nearby who would sell cherry bombs and M-80s to kids. My favorite was the cherry bomb, as it could still explode under water.
Used CO2 cartridges, add gun powder and shotgun primer; then tape it to an arrow ….etc.
Mowed grass in sneakers with the old push mowers. Saw a few (others) toes lost.
Reloaded my own shotgun shells.
Everything … from sticking silverware into electrical outlets to being outside without adult supervision upwards of 10 hours a day … no helmets or safety gear while riding a bicycle — or a motorcycle — or, for anything, really … playing in mud and dirt and in ditches filled with slime and dirty water … shooting arrows up into the air and upwards of 3 yards down … making sewer wine (put the fixings into a mason jar — put a lid on it — lift sewer grate — die string onto mason jar and onto bottom of sewer grate — replace sewer grate — retrieve about 2 months later … in winter, waiting for cars to stop at STOP signs and then grabbing onto their bumpers for a ride on the snow & ice … playing ‘hockey’ with a baseball bat for a hockey stick — without any bodily protection … sniffing leaded gasoline … stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down … using 4-10 pound cans of gun powder to blow up a tree house … selling .22 longs and 12 gauge shotgun shells in 7th grade … running away to my buddy’s house and sleeping out in his garage … playing Superman — i.e., donning a ‘cape’ and jumping off of a roof or out of a tree … did all sorts of off-the-cuff experiments with my Gilbert chemistry set (including adding things like gasoline and/or alcohol to some experiments) … had access to lots of cherry bombs, M-80s and such … started smoking Canadian cigarettes at 14 (they were so strong you could feel your lungs being coated with the tar – but, hey, they were only 16¢ a pack) …
I’ll continue another time …
At age 10 in 1963, mom dropped me off at the Paramount in downtown Jackson MS in july to watch a Saturday matinee. Can’t remember the movie, but she got a flat tire coming to get me.
After 15 minutes, took the matter into my hands. Followed the nearby RR tracks north to Meadowbrook Rd., turned right and was back home on E. Northside Dr. 20-25 minutes later.
Mom was apoplectic.
Do that today, and you’re either dead or sold into white pedophile slavery.
walked to school
I read books. History books.
Bottle rocket battles.
Climbing to the top of a crane.
Damned risky stuff was ok by me.
Basically everything kids did everyday in the 70s would be considered dangerous today.
Lot’s of things, but the statute of limitations has not run out for some of them.
Took Meillyn Rand roller skating one Saturday afternoon when we were 7th graders; luckily, never did that again.
Please. More like what Didn’t i do.
Made spears and threw them at each other. That ended badly. My brother got speared almost all the way through his leg.
Heh heh, like everyone here, it was dangerous as soon as I opened my eyes, jumping down the stairs for breakfast, loading up on Cap’n Crunch or Quisp cereal, Carnation Instant breakfast and Lincoln Orange Juice then blasting out the door to go play on parked heavy equipment, chase frogs, snakes (copperheads once in a while), jump bicycles and climb trees. At 11 years old, I would go to a frozen lake, alone, in the middle of a Massachusetts winter, a mile from my house with no supervision to practice my skating and hockey skills. One Christmas I got a model dragster and we’d run around the neighborhood with a can of Nitromethane for fuel. Nobody got burnt. When blizzards hit I’d go X-C skiing out in the woods alone or have snowball fights until we got frostbite. Fireworks, slingshots and Jarts in the summer, you know, the good stuff.
I actually think I would have been more dangerous to stay inside because mom would have probably strangled me. I distinctly remember getting locked out of the house for a couple of hours on a snow day when it was 2 degrees outside. Probably for my own safety with the added benefit of keeping mom out of jail.
I’m so glad I grew up (sort of) before technology took over.
Dad was a pretty fair hockey player and a really good skater-his stories about learning those skills with all the immigrant kids on frozen New Bedford ponds were awesome.
Play in the front yard.