Kids these days...

[Radio]

We lived in Sunnyside up until about halfway through grade six (1978ish). We had a territory that went from centre street to almost 14 street and 9th ave to 16th ave.

We'd play on Crescent hill till dark-thirty. You'd have to be careful of the teenagers who hung out in the tunnels up there. Other than that it was a free for all. Jumping off cliffs, sliding down the grass on cardboard, or old baby carriages. Back then they didn't have folding strollers, they had box style beds on frames with springs. Every once and while you could find one in the trash. We'd take the bed portion off, attach a piece of plywood to the frame and ride it down the hill.

We'd go over where the pathway starts at the east end. We'd go about halfway up and man would those things fly!

Then they made the fancy new pathway up the hill by the bridge and once it was open we all decided to race our bike down it. I had a beautiful green bike with fantastic white vynl banana seat, the smallest sissy bar you could get and nice deep handle bars.

So five us get all the way to the top and it being our first time we take it fairly easy until it the last good drop before it kinda flattens out. From there it's no more brakes. we're flying down the hill, we're almost home free!

Me and my buddy Jacky are in the front, he's got an older bike that's too big for him...and he starts to get "the wobble". I can see the panic in his eyes and then he's gone. Skidding and rolling along the pavement, guys behind him trying to avoid him. Man what a mess...we're probably very lucky we didn't lose him that day.

There were a lot of great times in our territory...a lot of times I am surprised we weren't killed.

[SeeBass]

I remember going to the hospital when my father would beat me and the nurse would ask what happened and mom would just say "he got into his father's bad books".

The nurse would just say ooh and then sew me up and send me home.

good times, good times

[Cheerio]

Back when I was in grade 1/2 can't remember which, we used to have fun by pushing our friends off the playground and onto the 2 inch coat of gravel below, and no one thought anything of it (this was only 10 years ago). And when we got in fights you'd have to stay inside for recess for the rest of the week and read. No parent meetings or any of that. And for grades 3/4/5/6 we would play tackle football/soccer/any made up sport which would allow for tackling the other kids to the ground. And in the gymnasium there were ropes that you would have to climb all the way to the top of. Also there was a big metal/wood climbing thingy that would come out of the wall for the kids to play on which caused many broken arms/concussions/ankle sprains. I miss the good old days

[Spuds_Buckley]

Love this thread!

I remember riding luge-style downhill on a skateboard with no padding. The only way to stop would be to bail out on someone's lawn (we rode down the sidewalks, not the middle of the road so we weren't completely stupid).

Also remember summer days where a group of us would play roller hockey in a cul-de-sac from mid-afternoon to when we couldn't see the ball anymore because it was too dark. Then I'd rollerblade home in the dark (no helmets or pads) without any worries.

Ahh the memories....

[Yasa]

It seems like a common thing for pre-internet kids to be first exposed to porn by finding a discarded magazine. I'm not even that old, and the first time I saw it was finding a magazine in the woods, inside a rusted car.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Yasa

It seems like a common thing for pre-internet kids to be first exposed to porn by finding a discarded magazine. I'm not even that old, and the first time I saw it was finding a magazine in the woods, inside a rusted car.

Sitting on your uncle's lap?

[Cheerio]

Oh and I remember going to A&W back in the day and getting these:

The best suckers I've ever had

Edit: picture won't work

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by zukes

As we have discussed before, we went to Beddington Heights together, though I think you are a year or two older than me. I lived on Berwick Dr at the corner of Berwick Rd. and the end of that street was Berkshire Rd and then farm when I moved there.

Yup - and a big part of Beddington Heights was "marble season". Every spring we would all take our marbles to school in our Crown Royal bags and have at it. Marbles were banned from our school for a brief time after a fight erupted over a game involving a King Kong Steely (which in reality was nothing more than a big ball bearing but at our school it represented the heavyweight championship of marbles).

The chap that had the King Kong Steely always demanded you played him 5:1 odds - he would just have to hit you once, you had to hit him 5 times. I lost my best marble in such a game. Anyhoo he finally lost it to another kid but refused to relinquish the marble - leading to a near brawl. Marbles were banned from our school and a letter was sent home to parents.

[username]

I remember biking to Princes Island Park with my brother. We would always launch off those 3 hills since they made such excellent jumps. Now they've put trees in the path of bikers so you can't take the jumps.

I also remember buying a 55 cc mortor bike from like 1960. We use to ride it all over West Hillhurst never blinking an eye at stop signs just to see how fast we could get it going. I even remember taking the air filter out of it to get an extra MPH or 2 ha!

[macker]

[QUOTE=pylon;3238112]LOL.

One weird story, we got sent out of Fish Creek Park by the cops, the day they found Charles Ng down there. All these years later, that is a scary thought. We used to cruise run around in the bushes a few hundred feet from the guys hideout down there.




We toured by San Quentin earlier this summer and he is on death row there......the amount the park is used now a days I don't think it would be such a good hideout. Anyone know exactly where he was squatting? I would imagine around the rock garden area? Just North of Evergreen which wasn't there at the time.....

[zukes]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

Yup - and a big part of Beddington Heights was "marble season". Every spring we would all take our marbles to school in our Crown Royal bags and have at it. Marbles were banned from our school for a brief time after a fight erupted over a game involving a King Kong Steely (which in reality was nothing more than a big ball bearing but at our school it represented the heavyweight championship of marbles).

The chap that had the King Kong Steely always demanded you played him 5:1 odds - he would just have to hit you once, you had to hit him 5 times. I lost my best marble in such a game. Anyhoo he finally lost it to another kid but refused to relinquish the marble - leading to a near brawl. Marbles were banned from our school and a letter was sent home to parents.

Haha, I remember that. There were quite a few marble related fights.

I played that kid a few times, I think I even got up to 3 or 4 before losing some good marbles. Man, "marble season", those were the days. I recall it was usually after the snow melted for good.

[zukes]

A few things as we got older, like 11 - 13. We'd ride our bikes to Airdrie on a Saturday and spend our day there, trying to find new girls to hang out with.

I remember one successful trip out there, we would always stop for a Slurpee first then ride around until we saw a bunch of girls. on this partiuclar day we were riding along, Slurpee's in hand and saw these girls in bathing suits suntanning on their roof. Of course we stopped and started chatting, they invited into the back yard, which had a pool! We swam with these girls all afternoon and I a few of us made out with some of the girls. That was scoring back then!!!

On the way home, one of us got a flat tire, so we started to ride slowly so the guy with a flat could walk his bike, all the while trying to hitch-hike. Finally a guy in a pick-up let us all jump in the back until we got back into Calgary. I am not even sure now at 34 years old and 6'3", 255lbs I would have the balls to hitch-hike.

[Coach]

I feel like those of us born in the late 80's/early 90's are a little between generations. We weren't brought up inately with the technology like kids of today have been, but it became prominent at an early enough age for us to become a part of it. I also feel like my age group were raised in the infancy of this "pussification" of todays youth. I saw it with some people my age and not so much with others. My brothers and I fought each other with cut off hockey sticks, threw baseball bats at bees nests, rode our bikes everywhere with no shirts/shoes/helmets.

I think part of this is due to my parents upbringings, as they were both small town saskatchewan kids who were brought up fending for themselves, so we were taught to do the same.

Nothing makes me angrier than seeing a parent baby their kids. It gives them no life experience, exposes them to bullying and takes away the joys and discoveries of being a child. Even toys dumb down kids now. I saw a play house thing in walmart one day that was a kitchen set and it included everything. Fake pans, fake phone, fake food, etc. Wheres the imagination? Me and my brothers used to run a garage where our bunk beds were cars and we would work on them with Cool Tools. Or we would be outside with our "swords" fighting each other as knights/jedis/ninjas/whatever we wanted to be that day.It's very disheartening to see the dumbing down of a childs imagination.

PS: Eat some effing dirt kid! Its not going to kill you and develops the immune system. With the precautions some parents take nowadays, its no wonder things like allergies and asthma and general fraility seems so prominant, at least to me. When I was younger there was maybe a few kids that were allergic to peanut butter and 1 or 2 that had asthma, and now it seems like every second kid has some type of ailment. The same thing goes with ADD. ADD seems to me to be the most overdiagnosed disorder there is. A kids a bit hyper, must be ADD. Or maybe the kid just wants to do his own thing and has a vivid imagination, so give him some pills for it, that'll get rid of it.

/rant

[Hockeyguy15]

Originally Posted by MattyC

I feel like those of us born in the late 80's/early 90's are a little between generations. We weren't brought up inately with the technology like kids of today have been, but it became prominent at an early enough age for us to become a part of it. I also feel like my age group were raised in the infancy of this "pussification" of todays youth. I saw it with some people my age and not so much with others. My brothers and I fought each other with cut off hockey sticks, threw baseball bats at bees nests, rode our bikes everywhere with no shirts/shoes/helmets.

I think part of this is due to my parents upbringings, as they were both small town saskatchewan kids who were brought up fending for themselves, so we were taught to do the same.

Nothing makes me angrier than seeing a parent baby their kids. It gives them no life experience, exposes them to bullying and takes away the joys and discoveries of being a child. Even toys dumb down kids now. I saw a play house thing in walmart one day that was a kitchen set and it included everything. Fake pans, fake phone, fake food, etc. Wheres the imagination? Me and my brothers used to run a garage where our bunk beds were cars and we would work on them with Cool Tools. Or we would be outside with our "swords" fighting each other as knights/jedis/ninjas/whatever we wanted to be that day.It's very disheartening to see the dumbing down of a childs imagination.

Agreed! Kids need to eat dirt here and there, they don't need to have anti-bacterial hand gel applied every time they touch something. Let them build up their immune system. I get that people don't want bad things to happen to their kids but some stuff is bound to happen! Coddle them too much and they are bound to turn out badly (I think anyway).

Also about the swords thing...Wasn't it just great when the wrapping paper ran out and you were left with a cardboard sword, which when it for sure broke turned into some sweet nunchucks.

Thundercats were the best...That and my pet monster.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

[dissentowner]

I was an 80's child and we had it good! Saturday mornings were all about cartoons and not infomercials like today. We had the best cartoons ever! Smurfs, He Man, Thundercats, ect... Our toys were awesome and were made of metal which means they were durable and dangerous. You could knock someone out with your Transformer whereas now they are all made of weak plastic. Even a Rubik's Cube could kill someone and an original Slinky could take your finger right off! We had cool games like Hungry Hippo as well that could break your finger with those big metal mouths. Todays edition of Hungry Hippo has such weak plastic hippo's they break within a few rounds of play. Action figures for the likes of He man were obviously on steroids, even Skeletor was huge! Todays edition of Skeletor looks like a damn cancer patient! The internet was none existant to so you would play outside all the time during summer holidays. Back then your mom had to bitch at you to get in the house, now they have to force kids to get the hell of the computer and go outside. Instead of sitting in front of a screen you went swimming, riding bike, catching bugs and frogs, playing sports, and being healthy. My favorite place in my small town was Skate Estate where you would roller skate every weekend. I would be there every Friday night from 7pm to 11pm by the time I was 8 years old and my parents were never paranoid about somebody trying to snatch me up or anything like that. They ended up closing it and turning it into a bingo hall, b***urds! There was no hands off policy at school, if someone bullied you then you fought him and it was over and half the time you ended up friends. Now kids bully a kid and he either retaliates and gets suspended or kills himself. I think things were better when I was kid but maybe that is just me.

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

He thought I forgot about it until he got that call at work in the middle of the winter, that I had jumped off the roof into a snow bank and busted my ankle.

Hahaha . . . . I jumped off a roof into a snowbank as well but didn't bust anything.

My brother tells me now that when he was 13 or 14 he would get on the Dayliner train running between Edmonton/Calgary at the time, go to downtown Calgary, get off the train, walk around looking at the skyscrapers (in the 1970's), get back on the train and come back to our dusty prairie town . . . . . and no one ever knew.

Cowperson

[Coach]

Originally Posted by Hockeyguy15

Agreed! Kids need to eat dirt here and there, they don't need to have anti-bacterial hand gel applied every time they touch something. Let them build up their immune system. I get that people don't want bad things to happen to their kids but some stuff is bound to happen! Coddle them too much and they are bound to turn out badly (I think anyway).

Also about the swords thing...Wasn't it just great when the wrapping paper ran out and you were left with a cardboard sword, which when it for sure broke turned into some sweet nunchucks.

Thundercats were the best...That and my pet monster.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Pfft cardboard?! Please, I almost took out my little brothers eye with the end of a ski-pole I was using as my weapon of choice that day. And all I got from my parents was "be more careful, and maybe use more blunt obejects inseadt of pointy ones" lol. And with regards to your eating dirt argument I gave my post an edit haha.

[Cheese]

um well....

• First pron mag was a National Geo with topless africans....then I found Playboy.
• My mom would give me $0.35 to go to the movies. That was enough for a bus ride downtown and back at age 8 (Saskatoon)...a double header movie WITH Cartoons at the the beginning of each movie and a popcorn.
• Same as everyone else...hop on the bike and disappear from the first day of summer until the last.
• My grandparents farm. My cousins and I would disappear much like the kids in the movie "Stand by Me". Great summer days.
• Raiding gardens late at night.
• Hockey in the winter. Sun up until sundown. We'd have to use the big 2 man shovels to scrape the snow off the ice before we could play. Saskatoon snow storms dumped a ton of snow on the ice.
• Building snow forts in the drift that would build up to the eaves of our house. Amazed they never caved in and smothered half the neighborhood kids.
• Candy at the corner store was THREE for a penny! We'd buy the little licorice babies that were called "n!gger babies" or jaw breakers of every kind.
• Albums. I had an amazing collection. Loved reading the jackets when I bought them and the great artwork. 45s before that.
• Watching the old black and white tv my dad got....thought it was amazing until color came out.
• The amazing cabinet stereo my parents bought LOL. 26"TV in the middle with a radio on one side and a multi racked album player on the other.
• 8 tracks. LOL. My collection took up the back seat, Had to slip a matchbook under the tape so it would play properly and not drag.
• The Muscle Cars. Amazed I lived through those days.

[North East Goon]

I remember one summer, literally playing tennis everyday for hours on end, no wonder I shot up to the #1 Pee Wee Hockey team that year. Now you have kids who think playing NHL11 on the Xbox is good training for the sport. And who can forget the refreshing tasty drink from the garden hose during those hot sunny days.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by Cheese

um well....

• First pron mag was a National Geo with topless africans....then I found Playboy.
• My mom would give me $0.35 to go to the movies. That was enough for a bus ride downtown and back at age 8 (Saskatoon)...a double header movie WITH Cartoons at the the beginning of each movie and a popcorn.
• Same as everyone else...hop on the bike and disappear from the first day of summer until the last.
• My grandparents farm. My cousins and I would disappear much like the kids in the movie "Stand by Me". Great summer days.
• Raiding gardens late at night.
• Hockey in the winter. Sun up until sundown. We'd have to use the big 2 man shovels to scrape the snow off the ice before we could play. Saskatoon snow storms dumped a ton of snow on the ice.
• Building snow forts in the drift that would build up to the eaves of our house. Amazed they never caved in and smothered half the neighborhood kids.
• Candy at the corner store was THREE for a penny! We'd buy the little licorice babies that were called "n!gger babies" or jaw breakers of every kind.
• Albums. I had an amazing collection. Loved reading the jackets when I bought them and the great artwork. 45s before that.
• Watching the old black and white tv my dad got....thought it was amazing until color came out.
• The amazing cabinet stereo my parents bought LOL. 26"TV in the middle with a radio on one side and a multi racked album player on the other.
• 8 tracks. LOL. My collection took up the back seat, Had to slip a matchbook under the tape so it would play properly and not drag.
• The Muscle Cars. Amazed I lived through those days.

What was the style back then? An onion tied to your belt?