The 1970's

[Hepcat]

I/we did so many things when I was a kid in elementary school from 1957-65 in London, Ontario that I never see kids doing today:

* Walking just over half a kilometre to kindergarten unaccompanied by any parent/adult in the fall of 1957. Walking unaccompanied the nearly two kilometres to grade school in the fall of 1958.

* Just leaving the house in the morning to go out and play with friends, whether it was baseball, football or whatever activity in the park, or hide-and-go-seek or any other game right out on the street. Sometimes we'd ride our bikes as much as a mile away to a particular park or street. The key though was that there was no need to report to parents, so long as we were home by the time it got dark.

* Trick or treating on Halloween with my buddies without any balls and chains(a.k.a. adults) in tow. Using a pillowcase to maximize my haul.

* Being given bus fare and taking the bus downtown by myself for French, Lithuanian or accordion classes at the Ontario Conservatory of Music. The latter of course required lugging a full-size accordion on the bus.

* Hitting up my parents for a dime to go to the skating rink or swimming pool with friends. No parents to supervise of course. Pools had lifeguards. What more did you need?

* Hitting up parents for the twenty cents to go to the Saturday afternoon kids' matinees with two movies and cartoons or Three Stooges shorts at the neighbourhood theatre.

* Going out for little league football (Chester Pegg at the Normal School Grounds) without the parents knowing anything about it. I mean why would they care?

* Reaching into ice water coolers in variety stores to select soda pop in dripping wet proper ten ounce refillable glass bottles. Such joy on a hot summer's day!

* Roaming streets looking for empty pop bottles for the two cent deposit. I needed the money for cards, comics and potato chips because I was always collecting something.

* Going to the local library several times a week to check out books and read the newspaper and magazines such as Boy's Life, Model Airplane News, Life and Look. I didn't watch much TV at all since we didn't get a TV until the summer of 1961 in the first place and we picked up only one channel anyway. Nor was I allowed to watch TV on school nights either.

* Looking through the spinner rack at corner variety and drug stores to select ten and then twelve cent (eeeeek!) comic books. Specialty comic shops weren't even imaginable, let alone comic books that cost over 25 cents.

* Sneaking peaks at the titty magazines in corner variety stores.

* Flinging baseball, hockey, etc. cards up against brick walls in winner take all games with nary a thought as to future "values".

* Selling newspapers and chocolate bars door-to-door.

* Having an early morning or after school paper route.

* Being sent to the store to buy cigarettes for my dad, or six bottles of pop for the family.

* Hitting up my parents for dimes and quarters to buy firecrackers before Firecracker(Victoria) Day. I mean what's wrong with young boys letting off firecrackers? Playing with caps all year round.

* Playing with marbles, Yo-Yos and Duncan Spin Tops. Sidewalks would often be taken up by young girls skipping rope. When was the last time any of us saw any little girls engaged in this splendid aerobic activity?

* My skateboard was a first generation wooden one with steel wheels very much like this Nash Shark model here:



We didn't do any tricks with it. We just did our best to navigate down hilly pothole infested roads (such as Cove Road) without wiping out.

* Doing wheelies on my bike. That's something rarely seen these days. Whether wheelies are no longer fashionable or whether kids don't get the chance to pop any wheelies under the ever present gaze of helicopter parents is a question I can't answer.

* Playing nickel pinball machines at local variety stores or diners. There were no pinball arcades in London at the time. Then the killjoys banned pinball machines as potential gambling devices for about a decade.

* Building model kits and slot cars. Racing these slot cars at the hobby shop track downtown (Cowans Hardware). Kids don't build models anymore. Kids these days aren't interested in anything that doesn't provide instant gratification, i.e. anything not TV screen related. Just check out the clientele of the few remaining hobby shops. They're all aging boomers.

* Firing up the .049 Thimbledrone engine of my Cox Spitfire gas powered plane in the house. What a racket! It was line control but I never mastered the trick of flying it without crashing immediately. I had to order a new body from Cox to replace the one I'd shattered beyond repair.

* Playing with pea shooters. My parents giving me a BB gun and a bow and arrow with a steel point.

* Carrying a jack knife around for games such as knife baseball.

* Going for a dip in the creek behind the house on Phyllis Street which my father had dammed up to form a swimming hole.

* Camping out in a tent overnight with friends in the backyard.

* Climbing trees.

Oh, I'm sure modern parents would all be aghast. They want the kids safe in front of the TV with video game consoles at all times. And that's why so many kids are obese and end up with deadly peanut and bee sting allergies. Keep kids squeaky clean and of course they don't develop their natural immunities. And of course when these overprotected kids eventually leave the nest to go to college or somewhere, they're all snowflakes with such fragile egos that they need "safe places" where they can be insulated from dissenting opinions/inconvenient facts.

Deny kids deadly pea shooters and (heaven forbid!) metal lunch boxes and they end up arming themselves with real knives and even guns to go to school. It's the principle of the dam. Keep denying kids whatever is "unsafe" and the pressure just keeps building up and building up till it explodes.

The ultimate irony of course is the parents who demonize sugar (of course their inactive kids don't need the extra calories). These kids then take to experimenting with alcohol, pot, crystal meth and cocaine at first opportunity. It's the boy who cried wolf syndrome. "Hey, remember, you were the ones who told us sugar was so bad! You think we're going to listen to you now when you tell us to avoid booze and drugs? And what about all that Scotch and gin you drink and those sleeping pills and pain killers you pop all the time? Sure, sure, we kids are going to listen to you old farts. Yeah, right."

[Scatter]

  My ex's uncle used to pick up hitchers and read them the riot act about the danger and how he was old but not harmless.

.............and then he killed them.

[Flower]

.............and then he killed them.

Who told you???

I think that he retired to Century Village in Boca and started to scream at people for smoking .. I know that they had a sign on their front door of their condo saying something like 'Smokers will go up in puff and shot on sight"

I'm very anti smoking but in the 70's .. people were allowed to smoke at their desks, there were smoking sections in movie theatres and on planes. So some things are better now.

**I do hate passing office buildings with scores of people smoking outside.

[jimm]

A lot of bikes and bmx as we got in near the ground floor. Toys, comics, cards, and especially model kits. I recall always making sure I got a kit to bring to a birthday party as a gift, it was always a winner! Lots of fireworks of course, I recall a couple of us kids pooled our money together for one of the big assortment boxes in 76. Anyone remember "House on fire" or something like that, it was an actual little house you would torch, doubt they will make that one again. Playing everything from sports to army, some kids had to go in when the street lights came on, the rest of us a bit later, oh for simpler, care free days...

[Hepcat]

Anyone remember "House on fire" or something like that, it was an actual little house you would torch....

A very popular firework piece in Canada was the "Burning Schoolhouse". It was included in almost every box assortment and sold individually as well.



The Burning Schoolhouse

[The Batman]

To add to the previous list I posted...

building & launching Estes rockets - my alltime favorite is The Interceptor
playing tennis, then handball, then discovering raquetball
and then going to college & living right next door to FREE raquetball courts
hours of riding bikes and skateboards and competing in skateboard contests (classic for CA)
having a paper route and collecting from deadbeats & sometimes cancelling their subscription

[jimm]

Ah, yes, we loved those also. My brother did one where rubber band loaded wings swung about and the rocket/plane slowly circled its way back to earth, impressed we were!

[The Batman]

Ah, yes, we loved those also. My brother did one where rubber band loaded wings swung about and the rocket/plane slowly circled its way back to earth, impressed we were!

'VERY cool! A circling glider re-entry.

I remember building an extra small Estes rocket known for it's high altitude flights. We launched it and NEVER saw it again! It was cheap so we just laughed. 'Never got into the triple stage rockets of today, but I know you'd need a HUGE field to ever find 'em again!

[jimm]

We were were always impressed by the d engines rockets I believe they were. I do recall the shorty rockets that took the big engine!

[Hepcat]

I remember building an extra small Estes rocket known for it's high altitude flights. We launched it and NEVER saw it again! It was cheap so we just laughed. 'Never got into the triple stage rockets of today, but I know you'd need a HUGE field to ever find 'em again!

Still a compelling reason for a kid not to get into rockets.

Ah, yes, we loved those also. My brother did one where rubber band loaded wings swung about and the rocket/plane slowly circled its way back to earth, impressed we were!

Now that makes more sense!

[AlwaysWitty]

I envy all of you guys.

[RedKing]

I was born in '71 and grew up out on the country, so the late 70's-80's were the era of my youth. We stayed outside literally from morning to well after dark in the summer and weekends, played hide n seek in the woods, hiked, fished, camped, made ridiculously dangerous bike jumps, carried jack knifes and hatchets almost all the time, caught all kinds of bugs, frogs, toads and turtles, had firecrackers, road our bikes for miles and enjoyed inside activities like building kits, staying up late on Friday and Saturday nights to watch horror and sci-fi flicks on UHF TV , read and collected monster mags and comics(not just superheroes-there were still plenty of horror, cowboy, war and cartoon/TV show titles all through the early to mid 80s). I am pretty sure I and others in my age range were the last to grow up like this and it is a shame children today do not have the same environment. The world is just too different today. 

[horrorhunter]

I am pretty sure I and others in my age range were the last to grow up like this and it is a shame children today do not have the same environment. The world is just too different today. 

Today's entertainment is more virtual reality than just reality. Don't get me wrong, I play video games (especially Skyrim), but growing up immersed in reality was the best. We were lucky to grow up when we did. I wouldn't trade the memories for anything.

[Dr Wolfenstein]

 Sounds like you had a great childhood Redking.

  One thing about growing up in the 70's and earlier,I was born in '66, the cartoons we watched were made for entertainment first and then if they did well merchandise was produced.Whereas now cartoons seem to be just ads to sell toys.There are exceptions of course.Maybe I'm just showing my age.
 
  I know the next thing is kind of stupid but I'm going to say it anyway.Remember when you turned off the old B&W television and the screen seemed to shrink done into that small white dot in the centre of the screen.Did anyone else look into that dot to see if they could see anything?Ok I said it was stupid!
 
  Just a random thought. I've been watching the first season of Outer Limits and really enjoying it.How would they make it today now that televisions don't have horizontal and verticals hold adjustments anymore???

  Anyone else have water bomb fights using those little balloons or run around the sprinkler on a hot summers day?

  For some reason UFO sightings seemed to happen a lot more back then.I was fascinated by them.

  Small carnivals used to come by once a year I don't see that anymore.

 




 

[Hepcat]

One thing about growing up in the 70's and earlier,I was born in '66, the cartoons we watched were made for entertainment first and then if they did well merchandise was produced.Whereas now cartoons seem to be just ads to sell toys.

Very true!

Small carnivals used to come by once a year I don't see that anymore.

They ones with rides and carnival games show up frequently during the summer in shopping center parking lots in Toronto and area. Or do you mean small travelling circuses, which I've always thought were a small town phenomenon?