how about a few other things we lived through........

hillbille

as kids growing up and running the neighborhood from daylight till, " be home before dark".  tackle football in someones side yard,and other things, but one we tried but never got to work real well was,  we had a tar and chip road and in the summer the tar would ooze up  and we would pull it up in sticky globs and using old shotgun shells we tore apart, pour the powder in the tar balls and add fuse from those little model rockets you could buy, and tried to make our own fireworks, mostly they just turned into stinking burning tar blobs.

BobJudy

Do NOT use the plastic barrel from a bic pen to make a firecracker! We didn't understand the concept of shrapnel. No injuries but plastic will imbed about an inch into a cedar fence post and knock a couple of pickets loose. Bob

varian

as a teenager in wva my dad an i trout fished the crandberry river, much of it back country and a lot of walking.  many times you would come upon a spring or small creek where someone left an empty vienna sausage  can hanging on a bush,  everyone who came by and wanted a drink would use this same can to drink from, and then leave it hanging for the next thirsty person.

Smitty500mag

When I was a kid I took a spent CO2 cartridge and filled it up with some Alcan green dot smokeless powder and then took a fuse from a cherry bomb that fit really tight in the hole on the CO2 cartridge. I lit it behind a concrete bridge pier that I could get behind. It made a pretty loud explosion and left about a 2 foot diameter clear spot in the grass. I was thinking it might not go off without some sort of primer or blasting cap but it did. 

Butchdog2

Real M-80's.

Swinging on grapevines.

Walking a mile to school, through the snow, through the cow pasture

Playing hubcap and shots fired.

mark christian

hillbille said:

... tackle football in someones side yard...

On my block there was an older man named Mister Shell: his first name was Mister, so far as us kids were concerned. His wife had died many years earlier, he had no children, and his front yard was shaped perfectly for football. Other parents didn't want us tearing up their yards or making noise- my mother, who worked nights, being one of them. Mister Shell let us play football in his yard while he sat on his porch and watched. 

I doubt I've thought of him in 40 years. A nice man, Mister Shell. 

varian

speaking of swinging on grapevines, up on the mountain in back of the house was a cable swing in an oak tree,  had been there a very long time.   one of the boys had him a good swing going when the cable broke, because of how steep the hill was it didnt take long to be really high off the ground.  well he rode it all the way to the ground, never letting go of the cable.  spent the rest of his summer in a half body cast.

montanajoe

Use to flick lit wooden matches into a tin can of gasoline to put them out without blowing up the can.  Would then dump out the gas and flick a lit match into the can to watch it jump as high as the roof of the garage.  

dunbarboyz

Shaving cream can in the burn barrel! Only did it once what a mess.

toad67

Scotch taping a 22lr round on the end of a bb gun....

pickenup

2 man teams. Wrist rockets and cherry bombs. The other team was the target. After a few tries you got pretty good at knowing when to let it rip, to explode when it hit the other team., At first a few bounced off, but we got better at it.

A neighbor shooting arrows straight up. He got a pierced ear before it was a fad. I am surprised we all made it through those years.

Ditch-Runner

 all the normal stuff burned off eyebrows  from playing with fireworks , bb gun fights , tennis ball lighter fluid hair spray / mortars , jarts . shooting arrows straight up then trying to catch them on the way back down . riding on the top or hood of a car doing what ever mph the driver was willing to push it ( 100 was my record  I was driving  with a friend on the hood ) ) of a car to name a few , 
 then I was thinking even in high school in 9th grade we had a metal shop that taught us to weld  what go go wrong with arc welding and kids and better yet  the shop had a aluminum foundry we would suit up ( I doubt if was any real protection  ) and make sand castings and then melt and pour molten aluminum into out molds by hand ,, I guess 15 years old had more common sense about not wanting burned alive back then 
playing chicken with the trains  comes to mind
and of course drinking out of a garden hose for that wonderful flavor 
 some one mentioned a common cup / dipper / as a kid it was a way of life we had a 3 gallon pail of water in the kitchen ( no running water . every one used th etin dipper to drink from or sharing a bottle of pop ( soda to some of you ) with about a dozen neighbor kids taking a swig / drink from th esame bottle of course we wiped the top off with out shirt tail before we took our turn LOL 
  one more amazing  thought most people  I knew as a kid  had a loaded gun hanging on the wall or leaning in the corner with countless kids in and out no one ever played with or was shot by any of the guns ( but then again that was before glocks  

Nanuq907

Waiting for the pond to freeze over, then going out on it next morning.  Every step the ice would crack and you could see the fish swimming around under your feet.  Who's going out the farthest?
Jumping off the roof into the snow in the yard.
Playing pond hockey after dinner, we didn't have boards and two boots were the goal.  We'd play until someone missed a pass and the puck shot out into the darkness and we couldn't find it anymore.

bpost

Across the street from me was the home of Mr. Thomas.  As the field corn grew behind his house (before GMO corn) he would build a bonfire and invite over all the kids, about 30 in the neighborhood, we would all pick and have a corn roast with the young corn.  We dipped it in butter and salted it.  To this day I remember it being the best corn we ever ate.

We played tackle football in the side yard.  On a long pass Jerry Taliferro jumped and caught a pass, he landed on the hood of a old couples car.  The old folks about freaked out they had seen him running to the ball and stopped just in time for Jerry to land on their hood.  Jerry jumped up and shouted "TOUCHDOWN".  The old man driving was outside the car holding his chest like he had a heart attack.  We all just laughed, thanked him for not running Jerry over and went back to the game.