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other memories long gone

A

Al Baker(pumpman)

Member
Reading about times gone by I think about just how much has changed in my short 50 something life. I remember Dad needing parts sending me to town with his truck to the hardware store. Told me to go straight there and straight home. Didn't send me with money , just tell them your Vic's boy. He would stop in and pay latter. Also had to buy him a pack of Camel non filters. Check out lady would say, "you are to young to buy these" and I would tell her These are for Dad and that's all I would have to say. Try to buy smokes at 14 today! Never got into any trouble driving to town or the feed mill before getting a drivers license. Everyone knew who Dad was and I was under HIS law so I wasn't any problem for anyone. I even drove to drivers training one afternoon after school cause I didn't have a ride. Dad was old school farm boy who lived through Korea in the Marines. He would hand down punishment far tougher than any lawman would and people knew this and knew us Boys wouldn't dare step out of line. If we got into any type trouble in school just a simple phone call to Dad and we were different students come tomorrow. I remember there was always a raffle at the homecoming game. Winner got to pick between a deer rifle with a scope, or a semi auto shotgun. Try having a high powered weapon on display in the high school gym today!! I even saw kids bringing shotguns into school to the shop class to refinish the wood on them. Teacher just had to check them out to make sure they were empty, and lock them up at the end of the day. Not for our safety, just to make sure no one stole the firearm at night. Every farm boy had a pocket knife. I started at 3rd grade. Never was it a question about safety, it was about if you were old enough to not loose it. Almost all farm guys had a can of chew in his back pocket. You were cool if the jeans had aged and faded in the shape of the can. Even remember spitting into the desks when the teacher wasn't looking! Scary to think about what kids will have to talk about when they get older.
 
You just told my life story, but it was Salem cigs and we spit behind the radiators. Worked great till that fall when they turned the heat on that's when the school house got kind of ripe.
 
I remember when I was 12 years old, I saved up my money from my paper route. I went into the hardware store done on the square and plunked down my money, less than $15 as I recall and bought me a 22 cal. single shot and a box of ammo. No questions ask
 
I was lucky and had a Dad that let (made) me do things that would just be criminal today. To many busy buddies around now. I didn't get, or have to take drivers ed in school. The principal told me it was a waste of time for me cause he knew I had been driving since I was ten. And then there was the time when I was 12 I took a load of wheat to the elevator as I always did. There was a street along side the elevator and then a turn in that doubled back to the scale. As I was driving by on the street I saw a Kansas Patrol going down the line checking drivers and whatever else. I didn't turn in, just turned the opposite way down what was main street and went back out to the field. When I got back to the field, Dad had a bin full on the combine and wanted to know why I hadn't dumped. When I told him, he shut down the combine and we both went to town. By that time the patrol was gone but several of the farmers in line vouched for my story. Not that they had to but they seemed to like how I slipped by.
 
I have to laugh about this a little. My boys are 12 and 9. I run over to the neighbors earlier and they stayed at home. Came back and they were out driving my F-250 in the pasture. Had hone out to do chores and instead of carrying buckets decided to take the truck. Older boy did all the driving. I've let him drive on county road when there wasn't much traffic. I'll probably end up on the wrong end of the law for it someday.
 
My Dad was the same way. Everyone knew him and his word & credit were good anywhere in the community. And everyone knew he would be tough on us kids if we got out of line. Parents can't get tough with their kids nowadays so the kids don't get to learn what is right and what is wrong.

The old adage of "Spare the rod and spoil the child" still holds true. Folks didn't use a rod; they had this big old leather razor strap hanging up; just the sight of it made you not want to be on the receiving end of that.
 
DLMKA- That's great! Just think how neat it would be in 40+ years.... maybe your boys will be on
this same Forum posting that story about their experience, driving the F-250, under their own
Thread titled "other memories long gone"!!!
 
Yes I took a shotgun to highschool, when I
was going to stay overnight at a friends
house. Everybody carried a knife. No big
deal.
 
Dick2- I somewhat agree with what you posted but, have you ever had to wash the blood off of the welts on your legs, back and arms? or what about cleaning up your fingertips when a pocket knife blade is pushed up under your fingernails?

I have...
 
EDIT: Dick2- I somewhat agree with what you posted but, have you ever had to wash the blood off of the welts on your legs, back and arms after the STROP is used? or what about cleaning up all the blood from your fingertips when a pocket knife blade is pushed up under your fingernails?


I have...
 
Dad used his wide leather belt and it would raise some welts but never bleed. But it only took several times to learn how to stay out of trouble. I was told if I got the board of education at school I would get again at home.
 
My dad owned a gas station/garage when I was growing up. I loved hanging out there, pumping gas, working on cars, doing whatever I could get into.

By the time I was 14 I was working every evening after school, every day in the summer, driving myself (in my own car) the 6 miles from home to the shop. My dad went in at 5AM, so he was ready to leave before closing time at 8PM. That usually left me to close up and carry home the money. Back then most every transaction was cash, and he cashed checks, so there was a rather large amount of money involved, maybe $20,000, give or take. I carried it in an old metal lunch box, with a .38 special in the waist of my pants. Never had a problem, but never got stopped... Always wondered if the cops would have believed where the money and the gun came from!
 
Nope, sorry to hear that your folks didn't know where to draw the line. I only got that razor strap once when I went swimming in the stock tank to cool off and kept the cattle from coming in to drink. Mom used the razor strap on me, but not hard enough to leave a mark - she knew how much force to use so I got the message without getting hurt.
 
The mid-1960's, I think you guys might be remembering the highlights of being young.
For me, probably the best part was my folks, grandparents, aunts and uncles were still alive back then, but other than that, and we were all much younger, but I would not want to go back to those times for anything.

I remember party lines with ten families listening in to every call;
a three minute phone call to the next town was a long distance charge and cost over an hours wages, it was cheaper to drive instead;
houses were drafty, few were insulated;
open heart surgery and transplants were still experimental, successful surgeries made the nation news wires and the TV news;
anyone who got seriously sick, had a heart attack or got cancer would usually be gone within the next three years.
No thank you.
 
ss55- "a three minute phone call to the next town was a long distance charge and cost over an hours wages".

That brings back a memory. When we went to visit my Grandparents that lived two counties away, after the visit and we would return home. It was agreed to call my GP upon returning home to let them know we made it safely. The long distance toll charges were expensive. So, my Mom would place a 'collect' call to her parents. Mom would use my Grandmothers name as the person calling collect. The Operator would place the call and inform my GP of a collect cal from "XXXXX". My GP would decline to accept charges and disconnect. Thus, they knew we made it back home safe. LOL!

Thanks for the memory!
 
My oldest son was 11 when he started driving the truck to the other farm to feed cattle. Right past the hobby farm neighbor who was a County Deputy.
 
When I was in high school we did not have indoor toilets and the gym did not have showers. We got a new home-ec building completer with a fully equipped bathroom. The girls would take a tub bath at school and oftentimes do their necessary tasks in the home -ec building. The boys did not take baths during winter but changed underwear every week. I sat by the prettiest girl in English class, only because the teacher made us sit in alphabetic order by our last names. This girl went on the senior trip to Washington DC and her mother made the remark that she hoped Marilyn would not get into one of those bath tubs and catch a cold.
 
When I was 21 in 1965 we needed dynamite for stumps etc. I went to a local stone quarry and they sold it to me no questions asked (that I remember). We've gone a long way down the wrong path, for instance consider the bill being debated in North Carolina.
 
Another thing, I could scan a picture in my senior yearbook of the RIFLE CLUB, all the students with rifles AT SCHOOL!
 
There was a shooting range in the basement of Ann Arbor, MI Pioneer High School with a shooting club..Imagine that nowadays..
 
Your post reminds me of high school in the late 70s. We had a high school FFA game hunt every year. This was where the FFA members were divided into about 7-8 groups and every body went hunting on the first Saturday of the hunting season with shot guns, and of course, LIVE AMMO. THIS WAS A SCHOOL-SPONSORED EVENT. About a week later, the game was eaten by the FFA members at the game supper.
Today, could you imagine the lawsuit if somebody got shot. Or the lawsuit if somebody got food poisoning.
We were a lot tougher back then.
 
I'm just a pup, but I remember a little something we used to do. Didn't have cell phones yet, so if we needed to be picked up from school after an event or something, we'd call home on the pay phone at the school without paying the 35 cents. When mom or dad would pick up, we pressed buttons on the phone and it would click on the parent's end. They'd say they were on their way.
 
I can remember just about all the local businesses carried accounts for their customers. We only shopped at one of two groceries stores as that is where we had an account. I can remember my Mother coming home in tears when that store changed hands and the "new" owners did not carry accounts. She was short on "store bought stuff" and did not have the money right then to get what she needed. I got a job the very next week at the feed mill. My Mother is now eighty-one years old. She never has had to worry about not having money for "store bought stuff" since I started working.

Also my Grand Mother lost a younger brother in 1928 to appendicitis. Minor thing now but a slow death then.

So while many things where better socially, the benefits out weight the negatives. As for the out of control government. We have let it happen and do very little about it. We still elect the same people year after year and wonder why we get the same results????
 
That reminded me of my mother telling about how the doctor removed hers on the kitchen table. This was before doctors had cars. She was born in 1902 and lived to be 101.
 
In HS there were a number of vehicles in the parking lot that had guns in them. Everyone carried a pocketknife. No one was ever shot, stabbed or even threatened. Fights happened as much as they do anywhere else.
 
Pat's story brings back memories for me. When I was 14 I helped all the neighbors with hay, tomatoes and tobacco saved up $17 and went to the hardware store by myself and bought me a springfield 22 singleshot rifle and still have it.And I'm almost 65 now.
 
I remember our teacher giving every boy in her one room school a jacknife for Christmas...just what every farm boy wanted.....still have it. Ben
 
In 1951 when I was a Junior in high school, we used a fully functional, however obviously unloaded, .45 pistol as a prop in a class play and no one gave it a thought. It was just an inanimate object necessary to the plot of the play.
 
Neighbor kid just brought the shotgun shells to school. He went down the basement and tossed a couple shells into the furnace. When those shells exploded, it blew apart the sealant between the sections of the furnace and most of the ductwork came apart.

It took the Dad's a couple days to put the furnace all back together again. Kid was overage and still in the 8th grade; they just kicked him out, which is where he wanted to be. He had another brother that told the kids that he wouldn't be coming to our rural grade school anymore because he was going to be 16 years old the next day and his folks couldn't force him to go to school anymore.
 
Sitting on the front porch with my grandfather whittling toy boats out of cedar. Riding on a WC Allis sitting in my grandfathers lap. Escaping out of the enclose/play area in the back yard and climbing onto the seat of Pop's Farmall M at three years old. To this day I can hear the screech my mother let out when she came out to check on me and saw me sitting up there on that M. (I seem to remember leaves coming off the tress. Lol!) I can remember getting onto the drawbar was no big deal, but straining every muscle in my little body getting up to the axle and unto the floorboard. (I have pictures of me on that M seat, too) Snow fence silos. Bagging oats on a AC 66 combine with my grandfather. (a dirty, filthy job)
 
My granddaddy had a razor strap that he used. We always had cousins around and when he needed the strap he lined us up. I called it getting a whipping by association. He never hurt any of us but he said if you don't need it right now you will before the day is over. We always thought it was funny, but he didn't get,it out very often because we knew how to act back then. The times I got it I knew I deserved it and I possibly got it more often because we lived next door. I still miss him and the good old days. Tommy
 
Greg1959, I'm glad you said what you did. It gets tiresome hearing people blow about abusing kids. I understand about the welts and bruises and slaps. It is "tradition" in families that don't have the gumption to learn better. gm
 
Age 12, hand digging an air raid shelter in a neighbor's back yard with the neighbor's son (he was 13). The ground was dry and hard. We figured it would be easier to just blow a hole than to keep digging. Got his older brother (age 15) to take us to the hardware store. Went in to buy gun powder and dynamite fuse...it must have been our ages because they would only sell us one or the other. Undaunted, we purchased the gun powder and then had the brother drive us across town to another hardware store where we bought the fuse. Got back to the "construction" site, filled a jar with gun powder, sealed the lid with wax, punched a hole in the lid, inserted the fuse, buried it, lit the fuse and went down into the back yard to play. The explosion rocked the neighborhood, of course we knew nothing...AND, it didn't make much of a hole. That was in 1957...today we'd propbably be in jail for just trying to buy the gunpowder or fuse. I'm glad I was raised in a simpler time.
 
When I tell people I was driving an IH 350 when I was seven years old. Drove my grandfathers IH pickup when I was 13 and that was down the county roads. Nothing to it!
 
Another thing that seems strange as I think back: When I was 14 years old, My dad was bad sick, he filled out some paper work for me to get a hardship drivers license, that was in 1949. I failed the driving test the first time but passed it the next week. When I turned 16 all the other kids were taking drivers ed and getting their license. I already had mine so I took the test for commercial license. (same as CDL now) My junior year the bus driver on my route got sick. The school board members signed some kind of waiver and I got a chaffers license and drove the school bus a lot of my junior and senior year. I realized how fortunate I was and was very responsible. This was a full size 40 or 50 passenger bus. Most of the roads were dirt and very muddy when it rained. I never got stuck. Drove it several miles in 2nd and 3rd gear some days. The old bus was a 47 or 48 model with a non-sincronized transmission. Had to doble clutch it to shift.
 
(quoted from post at 22:14:12 04/08/16)
Click to expand...

You must have grown up in my hometown. Everything you said could apply to my growing up. I drove myself to take my drivers test too. I spoke to the testing cop when I went in. In HS nearly every car and pickup had a deer rifle in the back glass or back seat. We sold magazine subscriptions in FFA and some of the prizes were guns. Many of them were carried home on the school bus.
Most kids had an after school job. Ball practice had to work around the players work schedule and it was expected that grades were maintained. Work ethic was expected as well as respect for parents, teachers, law enforcement and elders. Stores were closed on Sunday, the only thing you could buy was gas at just a couple of stations and a motel room for the few that passed through.
In the early 70's there were 9 grocery stores, 3 new car dealers, 5 tractor dealers, 3 shoe stores and at least a dozen full service gas stations. In a town of less than 2500. Now there is only 4 self service gas stations, 2 grocery stores (counting Walmart), 1 new car dealer and 2 tractor dealers. There are no shoe or clothing stores and the population is now over 9000.
In the early 70's there were more manufacturing jobs here than there were working age people. People didn't make much but most had a few acres and raised a garden and some livestock. Now people have no jobs and wait by the mailbox for their check.
 
OR ASHAMED TO CHANGE INTO GYM SHORTS, SHOWING MARKS OF BELT TIP, OR BOARDS BROKEN ON YOU....BE BLESSED, GRATEFUL, PREPARED..WE STILL GOTTA FORGIVE EM...
 
That wasn't discipline that was pure abuse. Not to be disrespectful to those who did that to you but they neede a dose of their on medicine.
 
Dick2- Not trying to be the 'Grammar Police' but it's called a STROP instead of a "strap".


HTH
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