The things we did as kids

[Tarhead]

Remember beer can canons?
We took 3 beer cans and opened the tops and bottoms; duct taped them end to end; take the top off of a 4th can and tape that can to the rest; poke a hole in the bottom of the 4th can with a brad . Squirt a teaspoon of Ronson lighter fluid (Naptha) in the hole; swirl it around and light it off from the small hole. If the wind was right we could launch tennis balls ~50yds. Lucky to be alive!!!

[Workman]

BB gun wars (chipped tooth), Black Cat firecrackers in drain pipe (will shoot tin cans just slightly smaller than pipe - we did this one WITH my father's help), jumping from barn loft with umbrella to see if it worked like a parachute (it didn't), rattlesnakes baled into square hay bales - see if you could scare the dickens out of the guy on the hay wagon by throwing the bale WITH the snake, watching the lightning storm by laying in the open field so you could really watch it, touching both metal prongs of the partially plugged-in electric plug with your fingers (1) to see what it felt like and (2) to see who could hold on longest!, playing with dry ice with bare hands for same reasons, touching tongue to frozen pipe for same reasons (this one's not just in "The Christmas Story"). Trips to hospital - playing "Lone ranger" on tricycle over the old floor furnace and "rearing" on the grate, tackle football between house and garage (and anywhere else) without pads or helmets - tackled into the garage wall once (many stiches in face - no scars), hand sickle used on hand instead of grass (I thought this was a tool for both hands!), fingers in car door - amazing that we are alive AND have all our parts (or most of them). By the way, do you know what your kids are doing?

[germdoc]

We were only allowed to do safe things when I was a kid...

Let's see--in elementary school drove a go kart at breakneck speed around my cousin's back yard, went too fast, went through a wooden fence. (No injuries)

Anything farm or woods or firework-related that was semi-dangerous and/or semi-legal we did.

In high school our science teacher frequently demonstrated the combustible properties of sodium in water--once put too much in, singed his eyebrows.

In college we had bottle rocket wars with neighboring fraternity--one lit their carpet on fire, resulting in several thousand dollars' damage. (No injuries)

Probably most dangerous in retrospect was nocturnal rock climbing on top of Lookout Mtn. in Chattanooga after a night of heavy beer drinking. We climbed up to this precipice overlooking the city, drank some more beers, then realized we had to get back down. There were 200-foot drops on either side of the ridge. Not sure how we made it down, or how we made it home. That's the kind of things I warn my kids against!

[pierhogunn]

Three Words

Bottle Rocket Fight

Requirements

Leather Gloves ( So your hand doesn't smell like bottle rocket exhaust in case the fuse was fast)
Lighter
Bottle Rockets

[jaywood]

We had two apple trees in the back yard. They not only provided apples to eat... but they also provided great ammunition while playing "army". You could bite the stem off and hurl the "grenade". To make it even more realistic... we'd put firecrackers in the apples... light the fuse and then hurl them at the enemy (brothers and friends). Fortunately no injuries!

The apple tree got it's revenge one year though... we were playing tackle football in the backyard... the apple trees were the goal line. I did an out an over pattern, caught the pass and turned right into a waiting apple tree branch. The branch caught me right in the eye and broke off. I had a small tree branch sticking out of the white portion of my eyeball. Fortunately, no permanent damage... it WAS quite freaky seeing the scalpel come straight into my eye to cut away the offending stick. Numbing drops were great... but that visual effect is one I'll NEVER forget!

[Mrs. Wallnut]

In the winter time around here when I was a kid we used to gets lots of snow. Our house was located by an overpass so we didn't need to go and find a place to sled. Just was a little way down the driveway and the up the hill and start sledding. Well my grandpa worked at the school bus garage and we got some of the tubes that go in those tires. A couple of things, one when you stand the tube up like it is in the tire and climb in it and try to "roll" down the hill, it doesn't work very well.

The other thing that we did was slide down the hill and go up the side of the driveway and try to go across the driveway and down the other side. Well we got the idea to put some water on the "sledding path" that way we could go fast. Well when you fly up in the air and then hit the ice covered driveway with your back you just lay there for a few minutes, just trying to catch your breath and letting the stars clear your vision.

I think that is about the only thing that I can think of that "I" did as a kid, but I am sure if you were asking about siblings I could tell you some things that my little brother did. The one that I really remember with him is that he climbed a very tall Pine tree and was swinging at the top of it and when my mother saw him she yelled at the top of her lungs and for the neighbors to hear, "You had better not fall and break your neck or I am going to ring your neck!"

[Sid]

Perhaps not really terribly dangerous, but certainly indicative of a change in times: Our little South Dakota town didn't have a swimming pool, but a slightly larger town, maybe 20 miles away, did. Some local organization scheduled regular trips for kids (I was in second grade) to go to that swimming pool. Transportation was about 20 kids in the back of a farm truck, driven by the farmer, probably a volunteer. Imagine that happening today? The liability considerations would be staggering!

Sid

[Ed62]

Two more I just remembered:

1. Hopping slow moving trains, and hanging on until the speed got up pretty good. Then we jumped off.

2. My good old high school days. I used to get a can of lighter fluid, fill my mouth with it, then light a match in front of my face, and blow the fluid out. It really made an impressive fireball!

Ed

[kirkroy]

Back when I was in elementary school my uncle had a small barn to keep his tractor in. There was a playroom with a deck over the storage area. We would jump down from the deck (10') onto the ground below and run back up the stairs and do it again and again. Jumping off stuff was a popular thing for us back then but that deck was the best spot... Nowadays I wouldn't even attempt jumping off of something 3' or 4' off the ground.

We had a minibike with no suspension that was also missing the return spring in the throttle. We'd go wide open in a grassy area into a field that had been plowed in the fall and then frozen over in winter. Half the time you'd go straight over the bars once you got to the deep furrows, half the time your right hand would come off but you couldn't shut the throttle down, and half the time you'd actually make it through, certain that you were the greatest kid ever to live. You don't even want to know what happened the other half of the time.

Amazing that I have never broken a bone (of my own)...

[Jim Boyd]

There was the smoke grenade (military type) in the school bus. C-ration cans of cheese on a lit heating tab in the stairwell of somebodies quarters at 2 a.m. Throwing C.S. grenades back at the M.P.s that threw them at us. Throwing really rank garbage from the mess hall on same M.P.s and them puking in their gas masks. Those were the days

[Slik Geek]

We had a propane tank on our small farm. The hinged lid often became a home for hornets (or something like that - never let them get THAT close). For sport, sometimes my friends and I would walk up to the tank and smack it with a piece of wood. (It would ring like a dampened bell). A stream of angry stinging critters would pour out while we ran for our lives.

I loved the Wild Wild West television show. I wanted to be like Jim West so I strung a length of wire that was hanging in the garage between two trees in our yard. I hung a large cast iron pulley (with a wood wheel) on the wire.

I'd grab the ring on the pulley and jump off the limb and ride the wire down to the ground. (I tied the wire close enough to the ground on the low end so that my feet would hit the ground before my body smacked the other tree).

One day, my grandma was visiting. I told her to come watch me. When I got into position, I noticed that two of the five strands of the wire had broken about five feet away from the start. Anxious to show off my skills, I shrugged off the wire break, telling myself that they would hold me.

The wire didn't hold. When I hit the break, the entire wire gave way. My arms were staining at the pulley with my entire weight, so I yanked the pulley firmly into my head as I tumbled towards the ground. (It was high enough to hurt, but not so high as to cause serious injury).

As I writhed on the ground in pain, my grandma laughed harder than I had ever heard her laugh.

[Hoakie]

Sounds like the Bottle Rocket wars are pretty standard, we used copper pipe with exhaust holes drilled into it. Those all came to an end when one got stuck in my down vest and exploded. The hole and feathers could not be hidden from my mother

In keeping with the pyrotechnics, we used to build model airplanes (never painted cuz they didn't last that long ) and put eye hooks on the top. We would then attach it to fishing line run out the 2nd story window to the ground and release. After a few test flights the fun started, and ended, when we would strap on an m80. It doesn't take much imagination to picture the result. Fortunately we never had a premature explosion in my room.

We would also shoot arrows up in the air with bottle rockets, fire crackers, m80's to see the outcome. Overall this may not seem like a big deal but I grew up in the suburbs, not on the farm. We were very lucky we didn't hit a house or person.

Home built sled ramps in the winter out of wood were always fun as well. Our engineering and construction practices were awful but would get a lot of air. You just didn't want to be the guy on the ramp when it fell apart. That hurt bad. I'm sure they paled in comparison to the stunts today's X-Gamers pull off but hey they had to get the ideas from somewhere

[Dale In Corona]

Lets see. I grew up in the city and the burbs so all the frivolity took place in areas of relatively high population. Bottle rocket wars occurred in the street in front of the house, at night. Other than rules to assist with determining scoring the only other rule was a "foul" rule that occurred when someone would launch one that went off under a parked car. Never a good thing to have the neighbors come out and yell at you about setting off fireworks under their car.

Riding bikes down the steep incline of the hill that was the street that the house sat on; and going off a 4' ramp at the end. Lucky for me the landing was into grass or I would probably be paralyzed by now from spinal compression.

Hanging on to the tailgate and or bumper of my brothers truck while riding along on bikes, skateboards, scooters, big wheels, shopping carts, and anything else we could get our hands on with wheels until we were "up to speed". Then we would let go and allow our momentum to carry us until we would coast to a stop. On a bike we could go usually go the whole three or four blocks down the street to the ice cream shop and arcade without ever pedaling. Right through intersections and stops signs... didn’t dare even think about stopping!

Riding in the uncovered bed of the said truck. The whole 15 miles to the beach.

One of the neighbor kids had a pool in his backyard. Jumping from the roof of his house into the pool.

Had an adult neighbor who occasionally brewed beer in his garage. He never bothered to lock the back door to his garage (you could do that back then). He would bottle about half of each batch and keep the rest in a growler so that he didn’t have to open a bottle every time to have a glass. We (the accomplices varied) would sneak in and swipe (steal) some from the growler while he was at work.

So many more things... so little time to write about it all.


And I was the “good” son!

[ironhat]

My buddy's parents were proud that they had bought their son the World Book encyclopedias. I'll bet they didn't know that the formula for black powder was in there and that you could buy two of the three components at the Thrift Drug Store down the street. The third component, carbon we reasoned, could be made from crushed charcoal briquettes. Yep, his parents didn't knos this this until a spark from a test patch, in his basement, jumped into the **paper** cup of the remainder of the batch (about the size of a large coffee). Fortunately, we had used too much charcoal and it didn't explode but burned and sparked as we threw cups of water on it. Well, the physical punishment we received was expected. What was not expected was that I would be dumb enough to make a small batch and detonate it in the back yard with a match. Being cold and rainy I had to kneel really close to get ignition. At about that same time my extended family arrived and there I stood with no eyebrows, eyelashes and crispy hair - boy what a stink!! I still remember the second whippin'. I *wished* I was dead at that point. I won't even bother ya with the other dumb stuff.

[Uncle Cracker]

Dang! I almost forgot (maybe it's the head injuries) tooling around the Daytona Speedway in a hopped-up 120-mph twin engine racing kart.