We was brung up proper !!

"And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993"!!!
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1930's 1940's, 50's, 60's


First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
They took aspirin, Bex, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or any cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.


We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.


As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags, or in the back of a Ute.


We drank water from the garden hose, or a bubbler and NOT from a bottle.


Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, or Subway .


Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!


We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.


We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Bubble Gum and some ‘crackers’ to blow up frogs with.
We ate copious biscuits, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with heaps of sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!


Out of school we would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.
No one was out looking for us all day. And we were O.K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams. Or fruit boxes and ball bearings and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. Our bikes had back pedal brakes, but only for as long as the chain stayed on. We built tree houses and dens and played in creek beds with matchbox cars.


We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY ,
No video/DVD films, No mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms...........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!


We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.


Only girls had pierced ears!


We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.


You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...


We were given air guns or cap guns, and catapults for our 10th birthdays,
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the back door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!


Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet! RUGBY and CRICKET had try outs and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on
MERIT. Our teachers used to hit us hard with canes, straps and gym shoes.


The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!


Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla' and ‘Lotus’


We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL !

And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

I remember swimming in the river and making canoes out of corrugated iron, billy carts using pram wheels and axles held on with bent over nails. We also played on steel monkey bars and would ride the log swing so high that it would bang against the top of the frame. Played cricket with just a hat and one pad on your leading leg.

All of the above was usually done barefoot. The only time you heard "sue somebody" was when you were referring to some girl whose surname you didn't know.

Not the safest certainly but all good fun.

and we did not have to lock the doors when we left home and our neighbours knew where we were going and would keep a look out after the house, and we would do the same when they were away.

corrugated iron canoes - if we could pinch an end board from one of Dad's fruit boxes we could have a square end to the canoe - pretty flash. When the tide came up Meunga we would use our canoes to fish the front of the tide - on a good day we would catch a Barra or maybe a red brim - with a careful eye out for crocs. There was always a piece of rope off a tree branch that we would use to swing out over the swimming hole, and then make a "spectacular" dive-bomb into the water. Crabbing down the mangroves - sandflies, ah, but what a childhood - wouldn't swap it for the world.

Brosh

We would build scooters from a 2x4, wooden fruit box and a steel wheeled roller skate. The fruit box was an amplifier for the sound of the steel wheels running across the asphalt. The neighbors hated these scooters.

Oh yes! "Be home when the street lights come on."

The street game was 'Stick Ball'. A form of baseball that could be played by two using a broom stick and a Spaulding (pink) tennis like ball without fuzz. The strike zone was painted on the wall behind the batter. It could amuse two kids for a few hours.

We would play tackle football in the street between autos driving by. No pads, no helmets, just good fun.

Bicycles were by far the quickest form of transportation. In New York City, a bicycle could zip around and between cars with ease. On a particular 11 mile trip, (18 K) I could usually beat the people driving in an auto.

The street was the playground. We were inconvenienced by auto traffic and usually an auto caused a 'do-over'.

Soda bottles were returned for the deposit and considered found money.

As soon as I had a paper route, (12 years old) I opened a charge account at the local candy, newspaper and cigarette store. People told me that smoking would stunt my growth. I'm 1.86 M today. Although I did quit smoking about 50 years ago. Smoking was something that the GIs brought home from WWII and it was considered a normal activity for adults. My father was a New York City fireman (FDNY) and his mantra was "Don't smoke in bed." He put out a lot of fires caused by smoking in bed.

If I got my paper route done early enough on Saturday, I could walk up Bedford Avenue to Ebbets Field and watch a Brooklyn Dodger baseball game. It was not unusual to see other 12-16 year old kids alone at the ball game. Bleacher seats were fifty cents.

It was against the law for minors to go to a movie without an adult. So theaters would have a separate children's section on Saturday afternoons and they hired a matron to watch the kids. The children's section was not the place to sit if you really wanted to watch the movie. A few of us would usually go upstairs into the balcony to watch the movie. When accosted by theater management about going up into the balcony the answer was, "But smoking isn't allowed in the children's section." Smoking was permitted in the balcony then. The theater management would grumble, shake their heads and leave us alone. And yes, I got the 'Smoking will stunt your growth' lecture many times.

In eighth grade, the class bully hit one of the girls really hard enough where she was crying. Our teacher hit the bully so hard that his college ring left a bruise on his arm that lasted for over a week. The next day the bully came to school with a very fat lip and a black eye accompanied by his father. We couldn't hear what they said but the father shook hands with the teacher and patted the teacher on his upper arm. Lawyers? We don't need no stinking lawyers.

The drinking age in New York then was 18 years. By 14 years, I had managed to get a government I/D that said that I was 19 years. On Sunday evenings after Luther League, I would usually stop in at one of the neighborhood bars (I think that you blokes call it a Public House) and flavor some ice cubes. I learned to appreciate the finer aspects of good (Emphasis GOOD) Irish whisky. Sometimes after arriving home my mother would smell the whisky and the "Have you been drinking?" was her retort. My response would be, "Yeah, but just one." A bit more grumbling and a "At least you don't drink several beers like your father." Mother's philosophy was, Everything in moderation.

If you were at a friends house for dinner or whatever and alcohol was being served you were always offered some. The query went something like this. "Do your parents allow you to drink at home?" And if you answered affirmative, you would then be offered what ever was being poured.

The funny thing about drinking at home, my father would have a glass of beer with dinner. I was always offered a small glass of my own. The glass was rarely more than 3 ounces of beer. This started before I started going to school. I was probably about 5 years and enjoying a beer at dinner. What is unusual, I didn't have a "legal" drink until I was almost 22 years. So much for child abuse and child corruption.

Yes, I survived very well, thank you, but it appears that the world has gone FUBAR. (It's a military acronym.)

over here the Military Term is WOFTAM - Waste of F@#$%$# Time and Money

home made marble guns with water pipe and bungers, rabbiting with ferrets, lived in the river in summer, big old river oak and a rope swing, collect all the empty soft drink bottles left by the city water skiing mob and cash in for ice creams, locked doors, why, no one stole anything and all your mates parents were addressed as Mr or Mrs, yep, we were lucky to be of that generation.

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Originally Posted by rwbuild

all your mates parents were addressed as Mr or Mrs, yep, we were lucky to be of that generation.

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SWMBO and myself are in our mid 70s today. We have lived in this house for over 40 years. Prior to our moving into this home all the neighborhood kids wanted to know if I was bringing more kids to the neighborhood and of course their names.

The neighborhood kids wanted to know our last name so we could be addressed as Mr. and Mrs. My answer was to call us by our first names because the Mr. and Mrs. seemed so stuffy. Obviously the other parents had a hissy fit that their children were calling us by our first names. But our home became the neighborhood hang out for all the kids. Our kids were happy to always have the other kids hanging out at our house. To this day, some of our "Other Kids" will stop by to show off their children which I guess are our "Other Grandkids".

It was a time when there was consequences if you misbehaved. I was one of 5 and Mum didn't drive so we had to walk to the railway station or bus. You knew if you did something wrong there would be a whack from the cane handled feather duster. If someone said "I'll tell your Father" you knew you were in real trouble!!! The leniency of the law now is doing no good for the current crop of young people.

Did it do us harm to be whacked for doing something wrong? I don't think so. The path was clearly defined and you knew what an alternative would bring

Did we all turn into axe murderers because we were punished? NO it didn't