Thursday, April 12, 2012

#72. or, nobody died

 Some of the new blogger friends that i have are doing this thing called the A-Z Challenge. Basically, you are supposed to post your way through April, with each post being something related to the next sequential letter of the alphabet. I actually thought about doing this quite a lot. In the end, because it's getting to be a pretty busy time of year for me, i decided against it. Still though, i've been trying to keep up on reading the posts of some of the people that i've recently started following.

  One of those people is Bozo, over at a bozo's abbozzo..... She lives in India and for the letter "I" blog, she posted about India. Mostly, it's a video of some of the funny, crazy stuff that happens there.

  I think that every country has a video on the internet about their quirks that other people watch and laugh about. In this India video, i was taken by the trains. The ones that are not only packed full of people on the inside, but also, every available piece of real estate on the outside of the train has people jammed onto it as well. They look like giant woolly bear caterpillars rolling across the country side. I thought that's pretty messed up and dangerous, who in their right mind would do something like that? Then, i though about some of the things we did while i was growing up as a kid.

  Before it became illegal, in the summer, we always rode in the box of the truck when we went to check fields and pastures. It wasn't unusual to see a pick-up rolling down the road with a couple smiling faces peeking out around the cab. It was great fun, wind in your face, eyes watering, until you got twapped in the forehead by a bumble bee.

  I can remember my Dad, pulling us down the road, on our toboggan, tied to the bumper of the truck with 30 feet of rope. No helmets, no titanium skid plates sewn into our clothes, Not even any leather. The only thing protecting our head from bouncing off the frozen gravel road was our tuques and scarves. We'd go for miles, coming home all smiles and frozen snot-sickles.

  We had a camper that fit on the back of the truck that we used on holidays. Because we were a family of four, and my Uncle sometimes came with us, the truck cab was often full. That meant one of us kids got to ride in the camper. It had windows that opened between the truck and camper so you could pile up the cushions from the camper and lay facing forward to look into the truck cab and be part of the conversations. Perfect, in the event of an accident, to be guillotined when the windows became un-alligned.

  Our family car had that shelf between the rear seat and the back window. If you were an 8 year old kid, it was great to lay up there and watch the traffic out the back window. It was also an exceptional launching pad for when your dad had to slam on the brakes for one reason or another.

  We didn't wear helmets when we drove mini-bikes, or bicycle helmets when we rode bicycles. We made ramps out of plywood and rotten lumber that more often were more dangerous because they fell to pieces when you hit them, than from actually launching you into the air. We rode on tractor fenders, and grabbed onto bumpers and skidded along behind the car on our boots on the ice in the winter. We got bumped and bruised, we ate dirt, we broke bones, (not me personally) we sprained things, and sometimes we we had teeth knocked loose. But it never seemed out of the ordinary.

  ...........Oh, as much fun as it sounds, no good ever comes from pulling a bicycle behind a motorcycle with a rope. We tried it.......twice.

17 comments:

  1. What a great post! I love hearing childhood memories and learning how things used to be. I'll have to think up some of the crazy moments from my childhood to share with you at some point. Crazy, but just like your experiences, so very fun.

    I'm thrilled that the video triggered this post and thank you for the mention!

    Sooo... what happened when you pulled the bicycle behind the motorcycle?

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    1. Inevitably, the guy driving the motorcycle will end up going too fast. This will cause the bicycle to go into a crazy sort of power wobble, during which you may may, or may not soil yourself. Then, you will crash, digging a huge rut into the driveway. When the bicycle becomes a cultivator instead of a bicycle, the handling ability of the motorcycle goes out the window, and half of the time, ends up crashing as well.

      thanks for the inspiration. :)

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    2. Ohhhhhhhhh ouch! I was never a brave one when it came to possibly physical harm! I don't think I would have ever been tempted to try this lol... but the boys in our group would have loved it!

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  2. That is great! I can remember some of those things too! It's interesting how as we advance technologically all the things that worked in the past are scandalously dangerous and the government is all like "What? ride a bike without a helmet and Kevlar padding? Are you insane?"

    Not that I think wearing a helmet isn't a good thing, but I find it amusing that it isn't something I ever did as a kid and now I consider putting helmets on my girls when the just go out to draw on the sidewalk with chalk!

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    1. I've learned a lot from the mistakes that i made. Sometimes, as much as we want to protect our children, it's good for them to get banged up a little too. I think it toughens them up.

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  3. The dangerous things we did as kids are long forgotten in this day and age, full of people all about child safety and what not.

    It's not often we ever see any of the same stunts we did as kids being performed today. Society has burned into the minds of today's generation that any unsafe act is unacceptable. To hell with those people! I say if a kid wants to get pulled behind a four wheeler tied to a sled then go for it!

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    1. or behind a snowmobile on an old car hood! I have this awesome idea to mount an old bed onto skis and go down a hill on it. It would probably be an epic blog post?

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  4. I love trains and was convinced that I wanted to be a hobo and live on a train, just riding the rails, when I was a kid.

    Two good Hollywood-esque movies for trains in India: Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle) and Darjeeling Limited by Wes Anderson. Slumdog is far superior. It's one of my favorite films ever:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV912uiRM_A

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    1. I had to re-read that. At first i though it said you were concieved on a train!

      Aside from park rides, i've never actually travelled by train. You can do a trip here that travels through the mountains. I think that would be quite the romantic trip.

      I haven't seen either movie.I will make a point to give it a go. :)

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  5. Hi Ken! I am new here from Bozo's blog. I was raised in farm country in South Dakota, and my Dad was a John Deere dealer, so when I saw your cap, I knew I had to visit! I'm a bit older than you (ok, a good bit - 58), but how well I remember the days you write about. Life seemed much simpler then and parents and kids took more responsibility for their actions instead of running for a lawyer when Johnny rode his bicycle down your sidewalk and bounced off a rock. We didn't wear helmets or protective gear, yet somehow we lived to tell the tale, albeit with a few scars. And yup, we all rode in the back of Dad's pickup truck and loved it, and thankfully no one ever sailed out! Thanks for bringing back some great memories of childhood!

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    1. Welcome, Josie Two Shoes. I am glad that i was able to stir up a few memories for you. Hope you keep coming back. :)

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  6. I have written several posts about the crazy things we did as kids. It has gotten ridiculous how padded we have to be now. We had a camper also. On vacation, we would ride in the bed that was over the cab so we could look over the hood at the highway. If the truck rolled, it was the first thing that would have been crushed, but we didn't care.

    I tagged you on my blog today. The questions to answer are on my latest post if you want to play along.

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    1. I will certainly check it out. I feel bad about the delay in my replies. It's been one of those days out here. Sorry.

      I spent many a mile with the grand view from up on the poop deck. At least thats what we called it riding on the bed above the cab in the camper.

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  7. I used to pull my kids around on an old mattress with a four-wheeler. I'm not a good role model...

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    1. I'll bet that they had the time of their life though?

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  8. We all did that stuff. But remember there really was a lot, and I mean a lot, less traffic than there is now. There is way more people in this country and way more cars. It is not safe to cross the street nowadays. Some days you would barely see a car on the street and usually it was someone who lived on that street. And no I am not an aged old timer. Only 44, but I remember how free we were back then. And how dangerous our toys were. But it weeded out the weak and stupid. :)

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    1. Survival of the fittest and all that! You have a point about the traffic, plus the speed has increased so much. But then, maybe i'm just slowing down?

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