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They're like giant incense sticks with no scent. I don't remember what they were 'supposed' to do, maybe keep bugs away, but we always wrote in the air with the lit end.
They're like giant incense sticks with no scent. I don't remember what they were 'supposed' to do, maybe keep bugs away, but we always wrote in the air with the lit end.
Muchisimas gracias It was starting to drive me crazy. For a split second I thought sparklers, but you had already mentioned them. I dismissed a candy since it wouldn't be lit.
I just searched lit punks to keep bugs away and got this:
that was a fantastic read, thank you! boy oh boy, I can sympathize with your fear, at your father holding you over Hoover Dam.
My mother had married a wack job, he hated me, and used to chase me around the coffee table, calling me a wap and ****(Italian slang) ..I was maybe 3....anyway, he drove truck....and we went with him...she pack sandwhiches....and remember we drove and drove for hours...we stopped and he carried me over to a very long very high metal bridge...before I knew it, I was hanging over the side, upside down and my mother was hitting him, begging him to bring me back, I remember fearing that he would drop me, b/c she was hitting him....to this day, I fear heights so badly, that I get sick to my stomach....
There is both good and bad in everyhing...I had parents that shouldn't have been parents, but then, I also had all my friends parents and a family in the neighborhood who took me in sort of, not legally but I was always there, so they served as parents to me...plus b/c I was a fatherless child, in a time when most kids had fathers, my friends parents took pity on me, and took me everywhere with them, so I was very lucky in that respect.
Yikes! That sounds even worse than my Hoover Dam experience. I will quickly say that my Dad was a good man and very decent father, he just had a funny way of showing it. I believe it had much to do with him also growing up on the farm and the youngest of a big family striving to stand out and even survive in a tough and sometimes unforgiving environment; he saw so many farming accidents and weak livestock die well before their time he just felt you really had to pay attention in life. It was my mom we used to really fear (she also came from poor and tough farming stock from Wyoming)- she came after us with a belt often- granted we were little hellions and probably needed it.
You were lucky to have had that neighborhood support. I'm sure that still exists but certainly in my time it was very common for all of us kids to be scattered all over town in other homes, being fed, having another family take you in if not for days, always for a few hours. My mom just expected a few extra mouths to feed nearly every day.
They're like giant incense sticks with no scent. I don't remember what they were 'supposed' to do, maybe keep bugs away, but we always wrote in the air with the lit end.
They were meant to be used to light other fireworks so you didn't have to light a match or use a lighter every time. They were considered a safer way to light a firecracker than an open flame. Once lit those punks would last quite a while & you could light a lot of stuff with them.
That's what I kind of thought, after I posted....use them to light up your firecrackers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by winrunner
Muchisimas gracias It was starting to drive me crazy. For a split second I thought sparklers, but you had already mentioned them. I dismissed a candy since it wouldn't be lit.
I just searched lit punks to keep bugs away and got this:
About the "lit punks" every time I've ever seen them, they function as a means to light other fireworks...don't know if that's another intended purpose or just incidental but I didn't even know they repelled bugs! The punk burns a long time with a smolder, so you can use it to light a whole bunch of actual fireworks one at a time, like using one candle to light many.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Uncle Bully
You know you still don't have to worry much about your children being abducted nowadays. It really is a rare thing, and it did actually happen sometimes back in the good ol days too. My neighborhood growing up was similar to your description...I remember there was a rumor of a guy in the neighborhood we were supposed to watch out for(the man in the blue van we called him - no confirmed sightings but many unconfirmed) but we were taught from a young age how to respond to strangers so nobody really worried. I live in a similar neighborhood now as well and I let my older child(7) run around the neighborhood with kids and come back at dusk and I don't really worry about abduction. It could happen, I'm not completely blind to the danger, but I don't think it's any more likely now than it was when I was growing up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cremebrulee
you may be right, due to technology, we probably hear about it more.
It's true, if you look up violent crime stats, that it's not more dangerous now than it was during our childhoods, for many of us here depending on your age. In fact in the area where I grew up and in the national averages, it was considerably MORE dangerous during my childhood in the 80's than it is now.
Yet I wandered northern Virginia without a parent, without a cell phone, without supervision, often alone as a girl age 8-12. I used to go out into the woods that are part of the wetlands surrounding the Potomac river and wander for hours following some creek, no one would know where I was for a whole day, and I'd come rushing home just as it got dark, occasionally without my shoes. When I was younger than that, I'd walk a couple blocks from my Grandparents' barber shop in Quantico Town (a scuzzy sort of run down place back then, maybe still) to the corner market and buy candy with the pocket change Grandpa gave me. For some reason he always had a pocket loaded with change...now that I'm grown, thinking back, he probably did it on purpose to give to me. My grandma recently passed of cancer (it was time...she was in terrible pain for months) and I remember her making a cake every Christmas to celebrate Jesus' Birthday. Not that she was intensely religious, but she was intensely sentimental. And she made really good cake.
My great grandma died when I was 5...I remember her reading "Brer Rabbit" stories (which were horribly racist but I was too little to know) to me while I ate her butterscotch candies. She kept falling asleep and I kept waking her up to finish the story. At her funeral, I played with the rocks in the landscaping...she was cremated, I remember seeing an urn, but not understanding much about the connection between it and my Gran Gran. I still have her glasses, and when I look at them, I can see her face.
I remember experimenting like a mad scientist with fire, magnets and electricity, and destroying any mechanical or electronic toys to get the parts, and collecting bits of junk I found like springs and bolts and washers from the roadside, because one day I was "going to make an invention." The only thing I ever built with my junk collection was one time I took apart a little solar powered fan, those little individual sized ones that barely blow any air at all, and I used the solar panels and a little motor from a train set, and other bits and parts to create a small solar powered car. It could not be controlled though, it would only zip along until it hit a shady spot and then stop. I think I was about 7 or 8 when I did that.
When I was 9, my parents were fighting constantly. My little brother was born into a family on the brink of divorce. My Mom was depressed all the time and did what I do to escape...sleep. Lots and lots of sleeping. So I learned how to change diapers and make bottles and go without sleep myself. A few years later after the divorce, when I was 13, she had my other brother with her foreign lover (a man who never intended to stay with her, but she loved him) and I went and lived with her and took care of that baby, too, leaving my first brother in the hands of my Dad and his new wife.
They're like giant incense sticks with no scent. I don't remember what they were 'supposed' to do, maybe keep bugs away, but we always wrote in the air with the lit end.
That's what I kind of thought, after I posted....use them to light up your firecrackers.
Although we did have those candy cigarettes. Wouldn't have put it past some of my friends to try actually lighting 'em.
They still sell them on the boardwalk here (as well as bubble gum cigars, wax lips/mustaches, the tiny little bottles with the colored sugar liquid in them, and Turkish Taffy). I am surprised every time I see the candy cigarettes, that people would still buy them.
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