Peakah's Provocations...

Going on dirt roads with my cousins and learning to drive a VW! Frequently forgetting to push the clutch to park. We had so much fun in that little car.

Hanging out w/ my best friend Julie with intentions of baking cakes with our Easy Bake Ovens...only to discover it was impossible to make them when we would eat all the batter (raw egg included)first.

Great stuff Joshua!

I guess since I wasn't alive before Atari, or at least can't remember times before Atari, I can't contribute. Oh well.

Peaks, that was awesome! How about riding my bike in Los Angeles 2 miles to my cousins house and being gone all day without my mom or dad freaking out! No way my kids are doing this now!! Man thanks for that!

Spending days on end arranging spare wood and junk to build a fort.

Seeing what you could get stuck in a tree by throwing it was a good idea.

Being completely uninterested in a baseball game and swinging at gnats, while playing right field.

The biggest argument was who was going to be Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.

Shooting, blowing up, and burning GI Joes or any other hard plastic thing that would look "cool" when it was destroyed.

Video games only used a joystick and one button to play.

Playing cards in bicycle wheels.

Taking an hour to set up a battle with action figures, then 30sec to knock them all down in the battle to end all battles.

Works for me! Nice to see something (even if it's been tried before) so refreshing from someone trying not to post! ;-D Hope the job's treating you well. If I get started I won't be able to stop - too old to write down too many memories.

linda: ahhh, yes... learning to drive stick... poor poor vehicle... I never realized that you could make a truck 'Hop' with a little clutch mismanagement!

Cathy: that gave me gas just thinking about it... I remember my little sister's easy bake oven, a great precursor to microwave cooking!

fmragtops: oh come on, there's gotta be something nostalgic happening down there in tha big easy...

dianne: it's amazing we were able to even procreate before the days of the pc eh?

Ssssteve: yeah man, I remember racking up miles in the hundreds on my bike during the summers when I would head out to one of the finger lakes of upstate ny... only to have to turn around as soon as I got there in order to get home before dark... those roads out there didn't have street lights.

DPT: man I can relate and remember each of those... thanks for the pertinent additions.

chrys: my chronic writers block has me cutting and pasting emails... yeah I know, LAME. *shrug* sometimes it's just what is needed to get the ole writing juices flowing again... oh, are you too old to write down too many memories cuz ya can't remember them?! *grin* You aren't foolin me none!

Glad to “Read from you again” I really hope your job is going well!!

Remember when the TV screen went to out it was time for bed.
Remember shows like Rat-Patrol, Combat, ZOOM, and Sesame Street.
When you played army, or cowboys and Indians, you used the entire block.
When your Teacher could swat a kids but, and the rest of the kids shut up.
When you could tell your mom I am going to your friend’s house to play and you could be gone all day.
When Jerry Lewis, Tim Conway, Don Knots, made you laugh until your side hurt. And bad language was never used.
And water balloons gave way to Surgical Rubber tubing. Now that was a super soaker.

That was fun;
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team. TRUE
Class Field Trips with soggy sandwiches. TRUE
Kool-Aid was the drink of the summer. TRUE and it still is
Work meant taking out the garbage or doing the dishes. TRUE
Nobody was prettier than Mom. TRUE


Nate

Good stuff, Peakah, good stuff!

Lots of good memories there.

Re: Saturday morning cartoons - I loved the days of Looney Tunes and Hannah Barbara - I don't like the cartoons they have these days, they're either too weird or too serious

Oh yeah, and back then playing "army" and "cowboys and indians" wasn't considered politically incorrect. It was just good ol' fun!

And remember sitting at the kids table when company came for dinner and you wondered when you would get to graduate to the dining room?

And of course, Mom was the best cook in the world.

Sunday dinner with the family... The whole family.

Actually playing outside all day during the summer... And we didn't care if it was 100 degrees. We still played baseball, threw Frisbees, or rode bikes until it was dark.

By the way, like you said, the garden hose was the sweetest tasting water in the world.

You knew the people on your street (and even on other streets), and trusted them. Block parties brought the neighborhood together.

Most important, I felt safe wherever I went, and knew I'd get my ass beaten if I did something I shouldn't. Of course that didn't stop me, but I knew it could happen.

Thanks Peakah. This topic brought back some very good memories and a lot of smiles.

Spending the night at my grandmother's with one or more cousins and turning off the lights to tell ghost stories.
Spend-the-nite parties that had little or nothing to do with sleeping!
Midnight horror films at the movie theatre.
Bunches of great memories!

Waaaaa!
I want to go back!!!

Thanks for sharing this, Peak.
Definitely brings back the old memories.

You are RIGHT (as usual) Josh ;-)

Too old to be able to correct time with a re-run or "start over" - - too many memories of all measure - - too much happiness that can't be had or shared again (people seem to die [older - more dead people]) - - too much pain that memory should bury.

Several lists like this and they all do the same thing. Ouch! Dang I'm Old!

Morgan Freeman and Ritan Moreno were my favorite actors...on Electric Company.

Convincing my friend's dog to chase us over all the fences on our block for a game of "wolf."

Creating homemade perfume with roses, honeysuckles, and pool water.

Swinging as high as I could while belting out "Why Can't We Be Friends," "Big Bad Leroy Brown," "These Boots Were Made for Walking," and "My Baby Does the Hanky Panky."

WOW!!! THIS WAS AWESOME!!!

Coveting those comic books until the covers came off.

Flipping through Hot Stuff, Yogi, Casper, moving up to Marvel at Marvel and laugh at D/C. Imagining being transformed by a radioactive spider bite or gamma rays or cosmic bombardment. Planning how you will use those powers for childhood satisfaction and the good of mankind.

Reading the ads in the back, for X-Ray specs and homemade hovercraft plans.

Building your own haunted house, using sheets, inner tubes, balloons, spaghetti, jello and anything else you can cobble together.

Candlepin bowling with friends and classmates.

Lording over ants with a magnifying glass.

Finding a praying mantis, or a Venus flytrap, then trying to coax them into predatory showmanship.

Trying to nurse an injured bird or squirrel or mouse, to your mother's dismay.

Playing with mom's household cleaner chemistry set.

Triumphantly tromping through marshes and swampland, filtering tadpoles through brittle reeds and black clay, squishing between small toes.

Grandma's Jean Nate and Grandpa's Aqua Velva. Rummaging through boxes of old pictures and board games like Parchese, Monopoly and Yatzee.

Ribbon candy and the smell of Taster's choice, in those little freeze dried nuggets.

The tick-tock-tick-tock of the Granfather's clock, followed by the hour chimes.

Old tools, with old manuals. People in the manuals, in cartoon depiction, dressed up in Leave it to Beaver style, with ties, greased hair, oxfords and chinos. Little spots of mold on the musty smelling pages, aged for decades in basement silence.

Old pets long dead and gone. The fact that they put up with your childish antics. Saying goodbye to those pets; Not knowing why they had to leave so soon.

Great contributions! I knew this post would work well, particularly on a site where basically nothing has been posted all summer!

Oh and chrys, yeah, they're gearing up to make me a General Manager within the next 30 days! Wooo hooo!

Now, to find blogging time in my new office, that is the next challenge!

Oh-oh, looks like my conservative stalwart is going soft! I was getting all nostalgic for some good old-fashioned political debate so I google your site (which I've heard about but never actually visited before) and I see you've gone all touchy feely! Must be all that liberal influence in your life! ::wink:: Well, we've got another year before things start to get really interesting with the next big election. I'm still hoping McCain gets his chance to lay out his vision, but whomever the candidates are promise me we'll hash them out again. I never know the difference between what I really believe and what just sounds good on TV until I try and explain it to you.

Good post though. Ah, the days of playing Space Invaders and Frogger and Donkey Kong. I remember when our TV remote control had to be connected to the TV with a long cord. Or having serious discussions about what would happen if we jumped off the roof with an umberella - luckily we decided against it! lol Sleeping outside on the trampoline watching for falling stars and satellites and trying to scare each other with stories of alligators in the swimming pool. Growing up has its perks, but sometimes just being a kid was a good thing. (And don't worry, I'm not going to ask what you were doing with Wonder Woman underoos. hehe)