Maybe with some things, however even as kids we thought Jimmy Carter was a blithering dolt

And looking at Biden, for having a Democrat President, those were the Good Ol Days.

Some great pics in this article that will definitely give color to some of the stories told on this thread

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/07/america-in-the-1970s-texas/100560/

My neighbor had the sticker below on his truck. I think of it fondly every time someone says Carter. That and the Oscar Meyer song that someone changed the words to make fun of Carter.

Born in '85

It is amazing to me the number of kids that live in my neighborhood. The only time I see so many children outside at once is in the morning waiting for the school bus. Kids are never outside.

I was gone all day as a kid. Collecting wood from construction site dumpsters and building ramps or forts. Fishing lake Dunlap. Swimming across the river for fun and exercise. Knowing where coins settle in the schlitterbahn lazy rivers. Collecting enough to walk to Pat's Place for bean and cheese nachos.

Jason_InfinityRoofer said:

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Eso si, Que es said:

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back in old army, you could get a beer at the bird for $1, and that was tipping the bartender a quarter

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You left a quarter tip, on your one dollar bill? I thought this was only suitable for greasy enchiladas.

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Those are not the lyrics.

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We had nickel beer nights in the 70s.

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Drinkin' with Lincoln.

rocky the dog said:

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1975 top left... Jeb Bush couldn't even have fun right....

A few more memories stirred:

My grandparents were young parents during the depression. When we would spend the night at their house, if you didn't finish your dinner, they would save the leftovers, including even a small amount of milk.
Nobody had yard men. The kids did the lawn and dad did the edging. Mom would pull weeds from the flower beds. It was a family thing on Saturday mornings.
Little league fields were in front of the grain elevator off Old Katy Road about 1/2 mile east of what is now Beltway 8. Wyatt Fields. 3 fields going from ages 7-8, 9-10,11-12. Then we played at Memorial, Westchester, and Spring Branch High fields.
Eating out was considered a 'treat.' We might have gone out once every couple of weeks.
When the Salt Grass Trail ride came down the Katy Freeway, school was out that day. We would go watch the trail ride pass by from Gorman's Cleaners parking lot.
I remember having to get off my bike to traverse the rebar as Gessner was being poured from the corner of Memorial City ( which was brand new ) and Memorial Drive on my way to Bunker Hill Elementary.

Constructing a naval armada out of 2x4's and nails to have "maneuvers " in the street following a big rain.

Leave the house in the morning and only being told "be home before dark", even though we would ride bikes down a highway to get to where the arcades were.

Collecting reptiles and amphibians.

Catching birds with the Ol box and string trick.

Riding in the back of a truck to go to the beach.

Harkrider 93 said:

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I learned never to jump off a ramp with one hand. Learned to never pick up a live fire cracker even if you think it burned out. Jumped from the roof with an umbrella, and when that didn't work, a trash bag.

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Great thread. Your post reminded me of this song by Bobby Pinson.

I've tried to explain to my kids about the freedom we enjoyed ... being out and about all day with just our friends, going where we wanted to, no one looking over our shoulder.

They simply can't understand it.

We rode our bikes everywhere, for miles ... to the mall, to the movies, you name it. There was a homemade motocross track cut into a vacant wooded field near our house, with a creepy wooden cabin on it. We spent hours in those woods riding our bikes ... when I look back on it, it was literally like the setting of a horror movie but we didn't care.

We crawled across pipelines that traversed bayous with at least a 12-foot drop, and never thought twice about it.

We did the dirt clod/chinaberry wars, too. There were two giant mounds of dirt at an elementary school in our neighborhood -- not sure why -- that we would use for massive dirt clod wars. I forgot all about those until this thread. And the firecracker blowing up stuff, too.

I remember we had the bright idea to slide down the stairs at a buddy's house on a flat cardboard box -- we'd slam into the wall below and just laugh our ***** off. And then do it again.

Not sure how we survived. I guess some kids didn't, but man, was it fun. And we learned how to make choices and decisions and how to handle bullies and so much more.

But the one thing I remember most fondly is how easy it was -- despite the lack of technology -- to gather a group of kids together for a pickup football, baseball or street hockey game. Our neighborhood was bursting with kids, and you could pull together two teams for anything just by knocking on a few doors.

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But the one thing I remember most fondly is how easy it was -- despite the lack of technology -- to gather a group of kids together for a pickup football, baseball or street hockey game. Our neighborhood was bursting with kids, and you could pull together two teams for anything just by knocking on a few doors.

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There were a lot of Catholics in our neighborhood. Every house had at least 4 kids in it, if not more. Average number of kids per family in a our parish was 5 with some having as many as 8 to 9 kids.

Almost like none of them knew what was causing the pregnancies.

Detmersdislocatedshoulder said:

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AgOutsideAustin said:

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Cutting off your jeans for shorts in the summer. Tube socks up to just below your knees. All our hats had the mesh in back before they were called "trucker" hats like today. Mowing grass for movie money and slurpees. Drinking out of the hose there were no water bottles everywhere. Long family car trips with eating out of the ice chest at a rest stop to save money. No seat belts. Being gone all day on your bike with friends and your parents having no idea where you were until dinner and you were perfectly safe. No cell phones or computers we played sports or outside with friends.
70's were cool. I'll go yell at a cloud now.

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You literally just described this ole boys childhood word for word. I was a kid of the 80's. Way way better in our day.

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Yep, 100%. Me too. The only thing left out were days in summer when you left your house on your bike in the morning and didn't get back until dinner time. Spending hours in front of PacMan, Defender & Tron - or Atari / Intellevision / ColecoVision.

Muy said:

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Without tech we learned to triangulate to find our friends to party on the weekend.

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Looking back, I'm still a little amazed by this. That was a big part of school on Friday and the game on Friday night was figuring out where everyone would be on Friday night.

maroonthrunthru said:

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…
However, at 68 years old, I do think there is a societal benefit that was better in MY good ol' days… The Seventies in Texa…

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The 80s were pretty darned good as well.

Yepper those were the days of summer fun during school vacation in the late 50's and the 60's. Spending countless hours laughing and joking and preparing to milk cows, milking cows, cleaning up after milking cows, feeding the calves of the milk cows, shoveling the milk cows' poop. When that fun was over we got to have just hours and hours of fun sitting on a tractor plowing, planting , cutting silage, cutting, raking and bailing hay, hauling hay, moving irrigation pipe ......come the first of September the day we 2 boys looked forward to all summer came about ...... it was called back to school.......and we only had to do the above after school and on weekends. While you guys were swimming in the sparkling clear water of the city pool, we were swimming in the same water the cows pooped in, pee'd in and drank.
I wouldn't change it for the world though ....made me the well rounded, understanding, compassionate fun loving person I am today 55 to 60 years or so later. I'd highly recommend it

aggiehawg said:

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Quote:

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But the one thing I remember most fondly is how easy it was -- despite the lack of technology -- to gather a group of kids together for a pickup football, baseball or street hockey game. Our neighborhood was bursting with kids, and you could pull together two teams for anything just by knocking on a few doors.

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There were a lot of Catholics in our neighborhood. Every house had at least 4 kids in it, if not more. Average number of kids per family in a our parish was 5 with some having as many as 8 to 9 kids.

Almost like none of them knew what was causing the pregnancies.

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Wow! We had a lot of Catholics, too, and some big families. But the biggest factors for us were the migration away from HISD due to the threat of busing, and the recession in many Rust Belt towns. Just brought a ton of young families into our neighborhoods all at the same time.

Subtle country boy brag.

Could have used that song as advice! Song talked about don't steal the candy if you don't have the dime.

I got in trouble for stealing candy. Was stupid enough to pull it out of my pocket and start eating it in the car. Had to go back in with mom and tell the manager. Manager made me go to the office and tell another manager.. Said they would spare me jail if I paid for it. Got a wooden spoon spanking when I got home.

Serotonin said:

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Squadron7 said:

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A perhaps underrated demarcation point between generations: Around 1976-1977. That was when the first home TV recorders came out and you no longer had to be tied to a programming schedule.

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Good point about demarcation lines.

The Gen X / Millennial dividing line is a good one because if you're Gen X (born 1965 - 1980) then you were the last generation to grow up without cell phones or internet.

Once Gex X dies off then none of humanity will remember a time before cell phone connectedness and internet and what that life was like.

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The older millennials are old enough to remember a time when cell phones were car phones and they were extremely rare to see, strictly the province of the ultra-wealthy and ultra-obnoxious. When most homes didn't have a computer, you might get to play around on a green screen Apple II with the big floppy discs at school once in a while, and nobody had heard of the internet. When it was still possible to go places with people and just be with them, not receiving any long range communications. Anyone else would just have to try and reach you when you got home.

We had video games, but multiplayer meant crowding around the tv with your friends. It's funny to think about how back then a group of kids hanging out in a basement playing Mario or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever were seen as antisocial geeks, but they were physically going in person to a social gathering with other people. Basically the same as my grandparents having their friends over to play gin and bridge in their dining room. We didn't have the version where you could play games against people all day without ever leaving your room.

And then the internet did come and we came of age there and it felt like it was ours. It was years before the boomers started socializing online or understood why anyone would want to. And even then the internet stayed where you left it. I was out of college before the first iPhone came along.

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When it was still possible to go places with people and just be with them, not receiving any long range communications. Anyone else would just have to try and reach you when you got home.

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Early, early 90s. Cell phones were still the big clunky ones but had a very rich friend/client who had a phone with an answering machine in his Mercedes. The message? "Hello, you have reached my car. I'm not in it right now but will call you back next time I'm out."

Cell phones changed everything. No down time, ever, without the effort to cut off from the world.

Oh also I remember when people used to roll their eyes if someone used a credit card to pay for a small purchase. A major appliance, sure. A big grocery run or a reasonably nice restaurant meal for several people was maybe acceptable. But what kind of jerk would buy some $4 movie tickets on credit?

People sometimes laugh at Odessa. Granted its a hole but what a fun place to grow up

Early: Forts, dirt-clod wars, street football, hide-and-seek till 10:30 or when the porch light went on. water-balloons
at whatever.

Later: women in halter-tops, tube tops, short shorts and high school football. And the only video games were at the mall.

ChipFTAC01 said:

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Muy said:

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Without tech we learned to triangulate to find our friends to party on the weekend.

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Looking back, I'm still a little amazed by this. That was a big part of school on Friday and the game on Friday night was figuring out where everyone would be on Friday night.

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And you could never call their home after 7pm on a Friday to see if the parents know where their son is, so you had to learn skills…. dangerous skills.

Muy said:

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ChipFTAC01 said:

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Muy said:

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Without tech we learned to triangulate to find our friends to party on the weekend.

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Looking back, I'm still a little amazed by this. That was a big part of school on Friday and the game on Friday night was figuring out where everyone would be on Friday night.

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And you could never call their home after 7pm on a Friday to see if the parents know where their son is, so you had to learn skills…. dangerous skills.

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One Friday night in high school I remember the "Where are we going?"?conversation at the football game. Some younger girls who lived on the next block were having a party but I went to another friends house. The girls apparently were using my house as a reference point. The message must have gotten crossed in a game of telephone because some guys I knew came lugging a keg up to my front door thinking the party was at my house.

My mom wasn't happy when I got home.