| LIFE Here is your stupid thought for the day.
- Thread starter TerryP
- Start date
Spent my childhood summers being totally away from the house for basically the entire day.
Get up, eat breakfast, head out on my bike to meet up with friends. There was anywhere from 10 to 20 of us in a group all riding around just being kids. We'd make bike tracks to race on. Jump our bikes WAY too high and get all banged and scraped up...maybe even a broken bone here or there. But you'd just suck it up and keep on ridin'. For lunch, we'd all pool our money together and one of us would ride to the local Jack's and get a sack of cheeseburgers. Or we'd stop at the closest house that one of us lived in and their mom would make everyone a sandwich.
No internet
Only 3 channels on the TV
And nothing but all damn day to get into stuff
Riding bikes for miles and miles all over the damn town
Bottle rocket wars
Tackle football with no pads...in the dirt...and rocks
Nobody ever got lost
Nobody ever got kidnapped
Nobody ever got seriously hurt
I still have a scar on my ankle from a bike wreck on a race track we'd made. I also have a scar on my opposite leg from just walking home from school. I fell while walking along the top edge of a big, sharp rock. It cut me open pretty good. I bled a decent amount, but it never really hurt. Scar on my head from where I got whacked by a golf club; took 6 stitches. It hurt a bit, but I never cried about it. Scar between my little toe and the next toe where I stepped on a piece of broken glass while walking down the road (very last things my mom told me before I left the house was to put on some shoes...no bullshit). Took 5 stitches. Never really felt it and it never really hurt. But damn I remember there was a lot of blood from that one.
I drank water from many garden hoses. I swam in many natural pools of water. I'm pretty sure I ingested things that I probably shouldn't have. And I'm still here.
Yeah, we Gen X kids were some tough bastards.
Get up, eat breakfast, head out on my bike to meet up with friends. There was anywhere from 10 to 20 of us in a group all riding around just being kids. We'd make bike tracks to race on. Jump our bikes WAY too high and get all banged and scraped up...maybe even a broken bone here or there. But you'd just suck it up and keep on ridin'. For lunch, we'd all pool our money together and one of us would ride to the local Jack's and get a sack of cheeseburgers. Or we'd stop at the closest house that one of us lived in and their mom would make everyone a sandwich.
No internet
Only 3 channels on the TV
And nothing but all damn day to get into stuff
Riding bikes for miles and miles all over the damn town
Bottle rocket wars
Tackle football with no pads...in the dirt...and rocks
Nobody ever got lost
Nobody ever got kidnapped
Nobody ever got seriously hurt
I still have a scar on my ankle from a bike wreck on a race track we'd made. I also have a scar on my opposite leg from just walking home from school. I fell while walking along the top edge of a big, sharp rock. It cut me open pretty good. I bled a decent amount, but it never really hurt. Scar on my head from where I got whacked by a golf club; took 6 stitches. It hurt a bit, but I never cried about it. Scar between my little toe and the next toe where I stepped on a piece of broken glass while walking down the road (very last things my mom told me before I left the house was to put on some shoes...no bullshit). Took 5 stitches. Never really felt it and it never really hurt. But damn I remember there was a lot of blood from that one.
I drank water from many garden hoses. I swam in many natural pools of water. I'm pretty sure I ingested things that I probably shouldn't have. And I'm still here.
Yeah, we Gen X kids were some tough bastards.
Sounds a lot like my childhood!!!!!
Mostly cousins though, and about 7-8 friends on top of that… Had an awesome childhood!!!
From two to twelve, I grew up on ten acres that adjoined 400 acres of Kimberly Clark land, which then connected to the Colonial pipeline running from parts beyond to Chelsea through Westover...to parts beyond. We crisscrossed the timberland along the fire lanes, and from there we could ride our motor bikes for miles. I started on a Honda Mini Trail 50, then to a 70, and then to a Yamaha Enduro 125 when I was 11. It was geared low, wasn't fast, but could climb a tree. Only rule was stay off paved roads and be home by dark. Then we moved to twenty acres that adjoined some family friends' eighty acres, more conducive to hunting than biking, but I still had an offroad way to the pipeline. At 14, my Dad gave me his Honda Elsinore 250, which was a beast. It was a good thing I was immortal.
When I turned 16, as my Dad promised, every motorcycle disappeared from our place. Regarding bikes, my Dad said, "you and a car, you lose...you and a tree, you lose...you and the pavement, you lose...you and a mailbox, you lose...you never win on a motorcycle."
The internet provided these images from my glorious past:
And, as a bonus, Steve McQueen putting his Elsinore 250 through its paces. He was a great rider, did his own stunts in The Great Escape.
Doggone. Trail of Dreams...the memories are so thick, I've got to brush them away from my face.
When I turned 16, as my Dad promised, every motorcycle disappeared from our place. Regarding bikes, my Dad said, "you and a car, you lose...you and a tree, you lose...you and the pavement, you lose...you and a mailbox, you lose...you never win on a motorcycle."
The internet provided these images from my glorious past:
And, as a bonus, Steve McQueen putting his Elsinore 250 through its paces. He was a great rider, did his own stunts in The Great Escape.
Doggone. Trail of Dreams...the memories are so thick, I've got to brush them away from my face.
Secondand26
Member
Me & my brother both had the Honda mini trail 50’s (used).
Those things were damn near indestructible!
Great memories
Dry limas with ham bone and conecuh sausage and Mexican cornbread for me tomorrow
