Random childhood stories, feel free to post your own.

[Cougar_ml]

So driving home today I remembered something from childhood, not all that clearly mind you, but also remember hearing others talk about it.

Will be somewhat rambling, I was young at the time so it's more snippets of story and background all tied together at the end.

 

So we moved from the house we were living in down the road to one my dad had just finished building.

This is on the family property, so several uncles also lived on the property as well as my grandparents.

The old house was old and crappy.  Gaps in the walls, no insulation (or very minimal) and generally falling apart.  

I was about 4 when we moved out.  

House remained standing for a few more years. 

Eventually decided to allow the local fire department to burn it down and use it for practice.

 

Waiting for the school bus, we would walk down the street to play with the cousins while waiting for the bus.

It snowed pretty good one time, so we built some snow barricades out in the field in front of the old house.

 

Local SWAT team is allowed to use the house for some training, because hey, it's in the middle of an empty field and going to be burned down anyway, so they can do destructive entry practice and stuff like that.

 

So at one point the door to the kitchen got it's window broken, and my father replaced it with plexiglass.

Swat team apparently decided to fire a smoke grenade into the kitchen through that window.  

That didn't work out too well for the swat team, smoke grenade ended up bouncing back off of the window towards the guy that fired it.  He was a little surprised to say the least.

 

Probably the best part of it was coming home on the bus (we were one of the very last stops so bus was empty) and seeing SWAT attacking the old house while using our snow forts for cover.  

 

Yeah, not really much point to the story, but some of the visuals in my head are pretty funny.

 

 

 

[ASH]

we were big into bmx  back in early 80ties ,  i still wish i had those bmx bikes  they are worth fortune  now.    but i remember me and friends building ramps  and jumps .  you did not know what a helmet was back then lol

we had a old park down the road that was closed for years  so we didnt have money  to build super ramps  ,  so we dug up old boards , cinder blocks ,  etc   .  i remember building the cinder block ramp 7 blocks high , come down the incline  and go table top  way in the air  .  and everytime  someone jumped the ramp we had to rebuild it quick for next jumper  rofl .   fun times    .  i still wear  checkerboard vans  out and about  /   matter of fact  you can go to vans website and custom make  some vans  and only you will have   pattern with a certain color .  i made shoe  online  for my wifes birthday    ,you can choose anything on the shoe .  hers is red plaid in front and tie dye  ,only thing custom orders  take 2 to 4 weeks ,  im in week 2 now ,   

[tadbart]

I used to live about 35 miles from Kennedy Space Center, until age 8 (now i'm about 60 miles away). Anyhow, I remember once in the early 1980s, looking up as a 747 with the Space Shuttle on its back flew over. THAT made a dent. One of the few good memories at that house. Every once in a while, I'll drive past there. The hood has only gotten worse- project apartments one block over, not a good part of town. A few years back, the current owners closed in the front porch, which probably added 300 sf to the house.

[gwalchmai]

When I was three or four my grandfather owned a lake southeast of Cedartown, near Antioch. One day Dad took Mom and my sister and I to the lake for a ride in an old rowboat we kept there. As Dad pushed the boat away from the dock so we could get in we noticed the bottom of the boat was wriggling. The entire bottom had 2 - 3 inches of water and it was ALIVE with baby water moccasins! We decided to not go for a ride.

Mom then took me for a walk around the lake. We were pretty jumpy after seeing the snakes, and about 50 yards away from the dock another moccasin appeared in the grass. This one was 4 - 5 feet long (Mama Moccasin?), and Mom assumed the worst. She grabbed me by the arm and took off running back to the car (I assume Mama Moc ran in the opposite direction). I know that my feet never hit the ground until we got to the car. We went back to town and Mom told my grandpa about the incident. He went out the next day with his shotgun and blew the bottom out of the boat, as well as bagging three mocs on shore.

It was a happy time...

[ASH]

a REAL   Moccasin  story !!!!   cool 

 

 

[janice6]

I was in high school. I and my buddies got in/on one of friends old Model T.  Sometime we rode outside.  One of our group had snuck his fathers .38 semiauto (too dumb to find out what make) and some ammunition, another guy had his fathers Western Revolver in 45 Long Colt.

It was a monster to hold it was so huge.  Especially so, since none of us had any experience with pistols.  We each had rifles, but no pistols.

Well, we drove the old T out in the country and found a dirt road, off the "main dirt road" that looked like a nice place to shoot.  So we drove in there.

We each took turns shooting a couple of rounds from the .38.  It was a nice shooting gun.  then we each took a turn on the "hogs leg".

None of us could hit anything and the recoil along with the god awful weight made it hard to hold on target.  But we did shoot it without hurting ourselves.

My sister yelled that she wanted to shoot too.  (she was a pretty little thing so the guys let her come with).  So she got the .38 and stood up and squeezed off a round.  She was elated that she actually got to shoot a pistol. 

In her glee and excitement, she whirled around with pistol in hand, finger on the rigger, pointed at the group and said, What do I do now?

I dove for the dirt in front of her and grabbed the pistol around the slide and gently pointed it away before taking it out of her hand.  Everybody sighed in relief that she didn't shoot us.

Then we heard a honking repeatedly.  It was the farmer that owned the land we were shooting on coming after us.

We all piled in and on the T and started to haul ass down the dirt road with the farmer gaining on us, but a ways back.

My sister was in the car, but a couple of us didn't make it in and were hanging on the running boards, while gripping the top as best we could.  That old beat up car got up to real speeds around 50 or 60 when we were coming to a T in the dirt roads.

I hollered to the driver, Which way? (at the T)  He replied right!  So as I plastered myself against the body on the right running board, he suddenly said, NO!  LEFT! and cranked the wheel as sharp as he could.

When he suddenly turned opposite the way I was braced for, he and the car went left at the T, and I was thrown off pedaling just as fast as my long legs could go, to the right  all by my self down the dirt road.

I must have been making 6 or 8 foot between steps when the speed and my ability ran out.  I went ass over tea kettle down the road.  By this time the farmer accomplished his purpose of running us off, so the guys came back for me.  I got back in the car and the quantity of blood confirmed that I split open my elbow in the fall. 

I wrapped a hanky around it and we all were hyped about our experience and my funny attempt to run at 50 miles and hour.

I survived and was none the wiser for it.

[janice6]

Another time.  About 4 or 5 of us of grade school age, got our .22 rifles and went out of town to shoot.  Pretty much anything!  This was a weekly Summer occurrence for us.

We got to a plowed field outside of the city limits and started shooting at everything.   One guy spotted a large concrete blockhouse in the middle of the field. 

We went to investigate it and found it was poured concrete about 6 by 8 foot inside, with 6 inch thick walls and cutouts for a small window.  It had a hinged door that was 1/4 inch steel with a hasp. 

Being young and stupid, we pondered what we could do with it.  We finally reached a consensus, and as a result, each of us took turns hiding in the blockhouse while the rest of the guys shot the hell out of it. 

The first guy found that if you tried to blend in with the inside of the steel door (like a coat of paint), the ricochets didn't hit you when the others started shooting through the window into the building interior.

Each of us took a turn, and when it was all over, nobody had a scratch on them.  But I can tell you it's like meeting God, when all you can hear are rounds flying all around you and hearing the sounds of the ricochets.

We went home with a feeling of satisfaction and having learned nothing for our efforts.  It turned out that some years before, the city police had a shooting range out there and the blockhouse was where they stored ammunition.  They abandoned it when people got too close.

.

 

 

[janice6]

Another time.  I mentioned previously, we lived in an old mansion and my father rented the unused rooms to college students.  We had another house nearby that was rental properties too.

My father went uptown and my sister was in her room on second floor.  I was bored and looking to get into some trouble.  I had a knack for it.

I pondered the moment and got my Model 1886 Winchester lever action in .33 WCF. and a shell.  My father let me use a basement room for shooting .22 into a sandbox.  The foundation walls were three foot thick Granite blocks so unless I shot the ceiling, the bullets stayed in the room.

Anyway, I loaded one round into the rifle and squeezed it off.  The concussion brought down a layer of dust and dirt from the joists that came down in a layer so thick you couldn't see through it when it passed eye level.

Somehow, I heard the bullet, after it went through my box of sand and took a two inch deep chunk out of the cement wall behind it, and it seemed to ricochet forever.  I wasn't worried.  I just stood their listening to it and believed that momentarily I would be dead from the bullet.

Well, it finally quit.  And surprising to me,  I still lived.

Of course, I was instantly damned near deaf, so I could barely hear my sister coming down two flights of stairs in about three steps.  She suddenly appeared before me screaming at the top of her lungs, "What the hell happened?  It sounded like all Hell broke loose.  This was from the second floor too!

Anyway,  she looked at me and I must have triggered some maternal instinct because she then said, "We won't talk about this anymore!"

Eventually my father got home and had to listen to the tenants asking what the explosion was.  He asked my sister and I, but we hadn't heard a thing.  MY ears are still ringing as I write this, much, much later.

Edited January 11, 2020 by janice6

[gwalchmai]

I once shot a fullsize Sears catalog with my .410, in my room. Unfortunately I chose a 3" Magnum #6 shot. It shredded the catalog, and the rug under it, and gouged the floor.

I got in trouble for that one...

[janice6]

2 hours ago, gwalchmai said:

I once shot a fullsize Sears catalog with my .410, in my room. Unfortunately I chose a 3" Magnum #6 shot. It shredded the catalog, and the rug under it, and gouged the floor.

I got in trouble for that one...

Greetings fellow club member!

[tadbart]

6 hours ago, janice6 said:

Greetings fellow club member!

black powder, PVC, cannon fuse. and that's all i'm saying about that, even a quarter century later.

[janice6]

Another time.

Since our home was also an apartment house, my father rented out the unused rooms.  The house was later on a historic register, as you might suspect it was a Victorian Mansion with all the creepy accoutrements.

My three sisters and I used to work hard at getting our home a reputation for being "spooky".  We would do things that to us were "fun" but to the tenents were strange events.

For example, we used to play tag through the passageway between the slope of the roof and the walls of the rooms.  This area went almost all around the periphery of the house.

Soon, the house had rumors of being haunted, because people would hear muffled voices and strange sounds when we ran through the space between the wall of the rooms and the outside wall.

One day we got a particularly sadistic idea.  So I pulled the bullets from some .22 shells and put airplane glue and a little bead from a plastic necklace over the end of the shell with the powder in it.

My father went uptown so I and my sisters got at the end of the second floor hallway and I screamed something like, "I hate you!" and my sisters ran down the hall.  Now that we had some people's attention, I shot the plastic bead at the far wall so you heard the shell going off and something impacting the wall.

We quickly ran back to the first floor where we lived and put everything away.  Now people talked about the crazy people shooting in the house.

We were probably a nasty bunch of kids, but we got along together well, mostly.

On Halloween our house was considered haunted and real spooky for the neighborhood kids.  We worked to keep it that way.