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I know these are not necessarily 'child protective services' issues, but this thread has brought up some very funny memories! Thanks!
We also used to thaw the turkey on the kitchen counter for like a week before Thanksgiving. No one ever got sick.
We also ate raw chop meat (on rye bread with salt and pepper and a slice of raw onion).
My parents had a wooden board as a paddle. As kids, we had many spankings with that darn thing. One day when my father was swinging it at my brother he missed and hit the leg of the table. The board broke! That was the last time we were hit with anything. I think it made them realize there were hitting too hard. 1975 or so?
Our parents also dropped us off at a local school ground to "play" in the playground while the adults in the family went out to eat on a Sunday morning. I wouldn't have minded it so much but we live in Michigan, and it was winter and very cold. The adults in the family were being cheap and that way they didn't have to buy us kids breakfast.
Our High School also had a "smoking area" for students. We would gather outside for our smokes and drugs were sold out there daily. Between classes, lunch, before and after school...there was always someone hanging out there...selling something. This went on my entire 4 years of high school. I graduated in 1981, so surprisingly not very long ago.
Times certainly have changed.
Hahahah!! we got the 'pancake turner' (AKA spatula) from my mother. If she'd run to go get it for a spanking, we'd run around the house screaming and laughing because we thought it was hiliarious.
Daddy, on the other hand, had a huge gold ring, and every now and then, he'd thump you on the head with it, like a knuckle knock. When I got old enough, I told him I was going to leave a note somewhere saying that if I died of a brain tumor it was because he clunked me in the head with that ring. (I have that ring now, since he has shed his mortal coil.)
When my brother and I were 11 or 12 years old each of us were given the chance to ride our bikes to the family summer home 50 miles away by our parents. My brother made his ride and two years later I was allowed to do the same. I remember when my brother was a freshman in high school he rode to Nashua NH about 60 miles on his new 12 speed road bike. My parents received a call from the Nashua police as they thought my brother had skipped school that day, but it was a holiday recognized by MA only. The officer was surprised to hear my parents let him ride that far. The police were going to hold him until my parents picked him up, but my dad said let him go then my brother road home. I think these types of freedoms and mild risk taking that our parents allowed us helped to shape us, we both have been successful entrepreneurs.
You're going to hate this, but I brought my kid to a bar regularly when she was little. My husband's friend and his brother owned a pub that also served food, and they alone had ten kids between them. Much of our social life and that of all our friends centered around that bar. On Sunday afternoons, there were many kids in the bar in the seating area, and they'd all get french fries and hot dogs or grilled cheese sandwiches. Then the mothers would take the kids home and the guys would stay and drink and watch football and lose their paychecks to the bookies. Good times. Not everyone's husband was an actual alkie or a compulsive gambler like mine, but that was a normal way to spend a Sunday afternoon for a certain segment of society. It's not the way I grew up, but it is the way many people I got to know had, and it was the way life was when I was married and my daughter was small.
A guy I know who is about 70 was talking recently about how when he was ten or twelve his father sent him down to the corner bar with a bucket to get it filled with beer.
My own parents neither drank nor smoked. I think that what they did that probably wouldn't be acceptable today was let us walk home alone at night from school events. My parents were religious, so if our play or concert fell on the same night as prayer meeting or choir practice, we had to find our own way there and home. I was too shy or embarrassed sometimes to ask a friend's parents for a ride again, so I would just walk home in the dark. There was one narrow street that went through the woods, and I would run as fast as I could through that part in my long concert-band skirt, carrying my flute. I laugh now, because it wasn't a dangerous area at all, but in the dark, the imagination runs wild.
When I was in junior high, one of my best friend's family was like that. Her mom and dad were divorced, and she lived with her mom and step dad, but on the weekends she spent with her dad, they often spent time in the local pub.
It wasn't what my family did either...but the way my friend talked about it, it didn't seem like that big a deal.
When I was a kid (60 years ago) we used to play "Cigarette Tag" on the front lawn. If you stooped down and called out a brand of cigarettes you couldn't be tagged out. One day, the kids that lived there's dad came out front and suggested we yell brands of beer instead of cigarettes. So here's these kids yelling "Schlitz!" "Budweiser!" "Strohs!" "Blatz!"
Could you just imagine what a Childrens' Services rep would do if they saw that today?
We played TV tag. You had to name a TV show. Of course we only had 3 channels in those days.
My dad took my sister and me to the bar on Saturdays, too. We would each get a "Shirley Temple" (Coke with a maraschino cherry) while he had "a quick one" (beer). We loved sitting on the bar stools! I guess people would be horrified at the idea of bringing a child into a bar nowadays.
A Shirley Temple is 7-Up or ginger ale with grenadine syrup, and a cherry. A Coke with a cherry is just Coke with a cherry. If you add grenadine to the coke and cherry, it's a Roy Rogers. My step dad was the bartender, so you know...we learned how to make drinks. I guess that's another one for this thread! LOL.
No seat belts in cars. Driving on ice to go ice fishing, with one hand on door handle, just in case the car went through the ice. And my dad sent me to buy cigarettes all the time in my early days, from machines or the gas station. Plus, we woyld go all over town,60s, no adult supervision. Mom didnt worry unless we missed meal time, which never happened. And, we could go and sit at the bar in a tavern with my dad. Plus we could drink been at when we were16.
Just remembered another one. The used to close a side street in town, and remove a fence so the kids could sled down this really big hill.
Most of the time, I got to school by walking by myself or with friends, a mile, even in first grade. But, if the temp was below 10F, then we got a ride.
Trick or treating at night without parents. We could even stop in the local pub. He had the best stuff.
Last edited by augiedogie; 10-31-2018 at 09:36 AM..
Another thing - kids were their parents' "remote" for the TV. No matter where we were in the house, when Dad called for us to "turn the channel" (round knob) we had to scamper to do it. Believe me, nobody mouthed off or sassed about that either! It just was the way it was. My adult kids think that's hilarious today.
Drinking for 18 year olds was legal at the time and my boyfriend and I had birthdays within a few days of each other so my parents took us out to a nice restaurant to celebrate. My parents always had Manhattans (which I knew tasted like firewater!) but my BF only had beer before that. We were in high school.
My mom asked if we wanted to order drinks so I was smart enough to choose a mild Tom Collins. My BF was trying to be sophisticated and ordered a Manhattan like my parents as he knew no other mixed drinks to order. When it arrived he took a big slug and almost fell off the chair. Certainly would not be approved of today but it was pretty funny at the time - I still remember the look on his face!
I kind of feel sorry for young people today . . . seems like so much pressure and less imaginative fun. Everyone is much more into organized and planned activities without as much freedom to explore and learn on your own.
Sending kids to corner store with a list that included cigarettes, beer and or booze. You handed over note, store owner or whoever was behind the counter filled the order, and either put it on your old man's account or took the money and gave you back change.
Smokes, sure booze? Oh NO WAY and I had that happen to me. I sent them back with a note saying "If you're too lazy to come buy it and send children, you deserve NONE of it" The father can down after they went home, mad as a went hen. I explained why it wasnt legal and that I could have turned him in (Not true) but it shook him enough.
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Originally Posted by BugsyPal
Leaving children younger then middle teenagers home alone. My parents left us kids (oldest about ten or eleven) home alone many times. That and or we came home from school sometimes and there would be a few hours before someone got home.
Yep, Mom had to work. Older sis would rarely get up before 10 am. I once caused a grease fire, the comment from me was "Well, that was the fastest time (Sis) woke up
Quote:
Originally Posted by BugsyPal
Leaving kids alone in parked cars. Not talking about infants and or toddlers; but school aged children. My mother and grandmothers for instance found they could "run to the store" and get out faster if all us kids weren't tagging along. Dad? Forget it; we kids rather have stayed in the car anyway because he was no "fun" to shop with. The man pulled into nearest entrance to store, found what he wanted/needed, paid and was done and out like *that*.
Yep, she'd go into the shopand leave us there....
Quote:
Originally Posted by BugsyPal
Taking kids (again school aged) to local bar. We kids did learn early on that going out with Dad often meant a stop at his local. While he was at the bar having a few and talking with is buddies, we kids sat in a booth drinking Coke out of glasses with a cherry added, and munching potato chips or pretzels (bar food). More often than not Dad was run to ground by Mom who rang up and gave bartender/owner a message; "you're wife just called, she said bring her children home *NOW*. Of course having had all that pop and snacks we kids were "full" and didn't want dinner. That began round *two*.
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Never got taken to as bar...damnit, others are so lucky!
My older brother JUST told me about this last night.
While he was living in Jamaica as a 5-10 year old, and my mom was in the Bronx working as a nurse, she would pay for him to come up on the plane for the holidays. My moms Aunt would hand him to a stewardess in Jamaica, who would hand him to my Mom at the arrivals gate at JFK. They did this for years until she could get him a visa to stay. I had no idea this type of thing was done.
My mom used to throw wooden spoons at us...
We used to ride in the car with no seat belts. My dad did spin the oldsmobile around on the highway once. Nowadays if I wasnt strapped in he would have been in hot water.
My parents put my little brother in the car at somewhere around 6 years old while the car was warming up. He found out how to shift the car into drive and rolled past the driveway damn near into the shed. My Dad always used to tell the story "I saw the car roll right past the window and was stunned for a second." This was a 72 torino that didnt need you to step on the brake to shift. I miss those cars.
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Not everyone's husband was an actual alkie or a compulsive gambler like mine, but that was a normal way to spend a Sunday afternoon for a certain segment of society. It's not the way I grew up, but it is the way many people I got to know had, and it was the way life was when I was married and my daughter was small.
