bad things that almost happened growing up

I have had a few things that could have turned out real bad. This one stands out in my mind I will never forget. I had a 46 ford that never started with the starter. I would park it on a hill above the farm. To start it I would start pushing it then hop in. One time I didn't get in fast enough. I was running beside the car, steps getting longer, and longer the faster the car went. To make matters worse the car was heading for our wood water tank. by that time I was being drug, but still held on. I did manage to grab the stearing wheel just in time to turn off the the left into a open field. Dad would not have been too happy to come home to find my ford sticking out of our water tank. Junked the car shortly after that. Stan

ya just turned 61 Tuesday and have no idea how i got this old should have never made 20. we had black powder for a old log blasting wedge had a 50lb keg setting around all the time and as kids we made a ton of pipe bombs and some times the fuse was a little short [a lot short] well you know the rest. NEVER did any vandalism with them. one time we were in the town dump shooting rats with 22 and shot a old shitteer in the bowl and the bullet went around the bowl and hit me in the chest still have the mark to this day. one thing for sure we sure had fun. kids now day don't know what they are missing

Far too many to count Stan. Where to begin? Five, six, seven years old watching and learning from Bugs Bunny that we could take turns climbing trees, say 20' or 30' or so up while the others chopped them, us down because the Coyote showed the Road Runner that everything was survivable. In theory, all we had to do was jump out of the tree just before we crashed into the ground, which we always did very hard, and not get hurt? Luckily we never broke bones, but we proved the Coyote right, we always lived. How out the time, five, six, or seven years old we stood around in the middle of the woods lighting small fires, then wizzed on them to put them out, and did that enough times that the last time we ran out of wiz, and burned the whole woods down, a few hundred acres of it? It happened. How about instead of walking around the corralled hogs about to be loaded up and taken to market, me and a couple of buddies climbed the fence and waded through the hogs, their backs up to our shoulders, pushing them out of the way just to get to the other side, climb up and out just to get beaten by Dad for being stupid enough to possibly get knocked down and eaten by them. And you know what? One or two of them hogs might have had good memories and remembered that a couple of times while out in the orchard eating apples on the ground, one of my buddies kicked at least one of them in his rocky mountain oysters, making him so mad that he chased my buddy to the fence trying to eat him. He was pretty mad, and might have been one of them crankers corralled up on his way to be turned into bacon, and he couldn't have been happy about that either.

My Mom has the same gray hair today that she did before she was 30, thanks to my brother, our buddies, and me. I really do owe her a ton of apologies. I really truly do. 50 years later, I should round all of them up, make them come over, get down on their knees and beg her for forgiveness. And to make it good, I should join them.


Cowboys and indians with a real bow and arrows maybe? How about the tunnel we dug down 6' and over about 20', no supports? When Mom and the others moms found out about that one, they caved it in and nearly beat us to death, out of love and fear.

There are so many. Way too many to count.

Mark

If you ever get the urge to go skydiving, don't pick parachute #13. Maybe it's been on the shelf longer than the others and just might not deploy properly.

The black powder you mentioned brought this to memory. A friend got hold of some dynomite blasting caps, and some fuse. We were using them like fire crackers, with short fuses. Then another time we got hold of some dynomite. Should have seen the rocks fly by us.Stan

And we talk about the kids of today.............!!!!!!!!!!!

Of course, I ain"t gonna talk too much about climbing saplings and riding them down as they bent over when we reached the top - except the one really tall one that quit bending about half-way down. Having to bail out and pray on the way down was very educational. I learned about religion and about how cruel gravity can be.

There was a major road rebuilding project a few miles away from home, and they were hauling a lot of sand from a sand pit near my house. Friends and I used to ride our bikes all around through it. The topsoil had been pushed up into big piles and we got the idea of digging a cave into one of the piles. There were usually four of us that hung together, and we worked pretty expeditiously as it was going to be a sort of "fort". So we got may be five feet in, but never thought of any thing to hold the dirt up. After awhile it was time to go home, and when we came back a day or two later it was caved in and you could hardly see where it had been.

There were only 3 boys my (approximate) age in our community; one was 6 days older than me and the other was 2 years younger. One lived about 3 miles away and the other about 5 miles. We each had a horse and every Sunday afternoon during our early-mid teen years, we'd meet....on horseback....and spend the afternoon together. Sometimes other guys would show up and we'd play baseball or football, but the 3 of us were the 'core'. We rode thru everyone-in-the-community's farms/pastures. There was a small pond in every pasture and sometimes in July/August, we'd ride the horses into the ponds. We couldn't get our clothes or the saddles/blankets wet, cause our parents would know, so we'd strip off buck nekkid and remove everything from the horses except the bridles. The other guys could swim, but I couldn't. One Sunday, we went into a small pond that we'd never been in before; the mud was deep and my horse started lunging; I was afraid he was gonna fall, so I jumped off and the water was deeper than I expected. I was flailing around and probably on my way to drowning, when my best friend jumped off his horse and pulled me out. We were all shaken to our core and the third guy said that he was watching and wondering how they were gonna tell my mother that I'd drowned.

Kids today don't get the opportunity to have close calls like that. Everything is "too dangerous." What little interaction happens outside the home is under the close scrutiny of their helicopter parents, with emphasis on "fairness" and "equality."

All they have left is to sit in front of the TV and play violent video games. You wonder why they come out all useless and screwed up in the head with delusions of entitlement...

In the winter, one of our favorite "activities" was taking turns running across the thin ice on one of the ponds.

Innevitably, that would get boring if the ice wasn't thin enough to crack out below us - so we'd start throwing large rocks through the ice to weaken in.

It'd always end with somebody falling through and us dragging him out - it was a small pond and the water was fairly shallow in most spots... 4 feet or so give or take a few feet.
Which was probably up to our chins given our age.

One of our friends had his stylish 1970's skimobile suit on (that's what we called them anyways - the ones with the two reflective racing stripes down the side - I'm sure you all remember them)

His suit apparently liked to float.

He fell through one of our 'ice bridges' and plunged deep into the water and some how moved sideways and came up under solid ice - and stuck there. I remember seeing him flailing away under the ice with nothing to grab onto.

I was of the (#*&$ing-my-pants-is-my-only-defense-mechanism age, but my older brother had more of his wits about him.

He just dove under, grabbed our friend, and slid him out without a second of hesitation.

We of course always made fun of my friend's spastic flailing from then on.

- and it WAS funny.

But my god - what a STUPID thing to be doing.

And why my parents never questioned us when we'd always be coming home soaking wet for a change of clothes in the middle of a winter day is beyond me.

I guess they were just happy we were all out of the house, and details didn't matter.

Two things I remember more than the rest of the stuff that could have gotten us killed.

I talked my big brother into hitting a loaded .44 mag shell with a hammer. The primer blew and went into his knee.

The other was that we used to have this old warehouse dolly. We would put old couch cushions on it, lay down on them, more cushions, then big ratchet straps to hold us on. Put on an old motorcycle helmet. Then my buddies would get the whole contraption rolling at high speed down the sidewalk and just let go...the thing would tumble end over and with one of us on it.

I was on a trap shooting team in a small college I went to and borrowed my future brother in law's reloading equipment. Had a shell that was fully loaded but noticed I didn't get the primer pressed in far enough. So I put it back on the machine but upside down and started to press the primer in using the tool that presses it out of an empty shell. Luckily I didn't press too hard and I suddenly realized what I was doing and stopped before the shell went off and probably killed myself. I still get chills thinking about that.

Otherwise, we weren't too careful driving the tractors but we never turned one over, fell off or got caught in a PTO shaft (none of the guarded) and we (me and 3 brothers) all lived to adulthood.