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Our toilet was down the yard you had to put your coat on just to go and carry a torch it was bloody cold sitting there in winter and no toilet paper ether news paper strips on a string  but you dint get any pong in the house

Hi I can remember when crack and smack used to hurt.


  pete

I can remember not locking the doors if we went out day or night. Grew up on a farm in SE PA, nearest town of any size was 20 klicks away. We made our own entertainment. Heck, some of the farms had no phone then, late 50's. We worked all summer, laying in hay, planting and cultivating corn, and in fall after school started we put in a full day at school, then came home and did our chores, then homework. Read many a novel while cultivating corn, steered the tractor with one foot, watched the rows with one eye, and read with the other. The steady drone of the diesel would put you to sleep by late afternoon, though.
Remember gettin' my bum whipped, too. If you showed up at school and the PE teacher saw belt marks on you, his comment was "what did you do now? Yer Old Man whipped you good, eh? Did you learn something?" None of this "Oh, how horrible!! Call the police! You poor boy!" Of course, if the Old Man knew half what we did, he'd have killed us all, and rightly so.
Remember once, old Gene McDowell up the road a ways had a couple of us boys do his milking on Sunday mornings so he could take his brood to early Church etc. He had about 10 of the prettiest little gals you ever saw, each about a year or so apart. Every time the Missus washed his skivvies, she got pregnant. Last one was a boy, and he stopped whatever he was doing to get her preggers.
Anyhow, me and Moose Corby was doing the milking one find Sunday AM, and Gene had a rented bull in the barn to service the cows. Moose looks at the bull contentedly standing in his stall munching hay, and looks at the automatic milker in his hand. I read what he was gonna do, and had just whimpered "Moose, no, don't...." when the suction took over. Said bull let out a bellow that was heard in Maine, wood and timbers flew in every direction, and out the barn he goes at roughly warp 9 with me and Moose laying in the debris field in his wake. Took us 3 hours to find him and get him back in the remains of the barn.
We gets back with the bull, and there's old Gene, Moose's old man, and mine, eyeing the tornado damage, the cows are pretty vocal about wanting to be milked, and narry a flicker of a smile on their faces. I'm talking three pretty irritated large men. Oh, that was not one of my better mornings. Took us two days to repair the damage to the barn and the various fences the agitated bull went thru, the bull was a little edgy for ever after around a milker, and oh Lord, the beating that night. Moose's was a lot worse than mine. Found out later Gene, my Old Man, and Moose's, laughed their bums off over what we had done. Still, lesson learned. Bulls don't like to be milked.
How the world has changed. Today, my father, Moose's father, and Gene McDowell would be in jail for whipping us, me and Moose would have charges for animal cruelty on the bull and the unmilked cows, the neighbors would have sued over the damage the bull did by charging thru various fences etc, and we would probably have had to file an Environmental Incident Report for the bulls emmissions as he was crossing the general AO so fast he was only putting a foot down here and there to steer himself.  And the milking equipment would have had to be isolated and destroyed as a bio hazard. Sigh.
It was worth it growing up then, though. Well worth it, but a different time and world. Better then? Who knows.

Thats a good one Bob im a city boy never had them problems but got my butt wiped with a weeping willow branch quit a few times had non of that sent to bed or nose in the corner my grand mother would buy me a new set of hot wheel tracks every christmas just to wear them out on my butt every year .

jimmy

How well I remember that day! There was that one instant when the suction cup hit the bull, he was standing there with his eyes half closed lazily chewing hay, and in a nanosecond his eyes were the size of headlghts. The rest of the visual of him is lost in the swirling timbers etc.
Yeah, I got whipped fairly often, and usually deserved it. Today, I have seen young children, toddlers, hitting and biting their parents in public, and the responce is "Now Cuthbert, if you continue doing that we are going to have to consider a time out" Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?? When I was young if I even thought of hitting the Old Man, the result would have been akin to attempting to punch a German cop say 45 years ago. Not a good career move.
Oh yeah, forgot one minor detail. The weapon of choice for the Old Man was a razor strop. What's that, you younger ones will ask. Look it up.

I still have my grandads straight razors so I know the strops well never got one used on me though a bamboo cane across my back yes  a slipper on my backside as well

Hi,

I felt very sad reading these posts. The childhood and teenage years have been killed by Health & Safety, political correctness, loony lefty tree huggers who don't believe in discipline, playstations and crap tv programs.

Or maybe I am just another bad tempered old fart who likes to live in the past. But Even nostalgia is not what it used to be.............

Peter

It's all I have got left I don't see much future anymore

I dont know whether my tears are from laughter, or for the world we are loosing.

I love the story of the bull. I have a field of cows over the road being serviced by a bull bigger than a shire horse. I have never seen an animal this big. It is called a Charlerois... or something like that...it is French, cream in colour, total muscle and massive in girth...if you get my drift...bring on the milker eh.....it would take out most of East London before it stopped !

Like Larry (Big Mig), I love steam trains. I remember hanging out of the window getting a black face and shirt from the smoke and creeping onto the tracks with other kids collecting the coal that fell off the footplate for our house fire. I went on a nostalgia steam train journey a year back, I loved it and will gladly pay to do it again.

When I think of the games we played with flick knives, catapults, bows and arrows, jars full of hornets...and the tall oak trees we climbed, I dont know how I got to 60. I havent had a broken bone or chipped tooth in all my years...I was just plain lucky.

I ran a scout group for 25 years. We used to camp and make fires, now its youth hostels... and the kids only know how to cook in something that goes "bing" when its done.

My grandad saw flight go from bi-planes to landing men on the moon. He saw 2 world wars, saw National Service the great depression and general strikes.... if he was alive now....I dont know what he would do to one of the little sh"ts we see in the streets today.

When this thread has run it's course, I will print it off and show my grandchildren, it has been terific fun.

Thank you all for humouring me, and joining in with your reflections on a wonderful world we once lived in.

Mike

Hi,

Great thread, but you know the irritating thing?

We might yearn for the golden days of our youth, but without these modern, newfangled and ufathomable innovations like the internet we would not be discussing this.

Peter