Ride in the backs of our uncle’s truck to watch the Rangers lose multiple times

Ya might be right Dave

Brother and I told mom we were going to grandmas to go fishing, she thought it was to grandma that lived 3 miles across town, but we grabbed our bikes and fishing gear and 5 hours later was 75 miles away at my other grandma's house.

Same!!!
The creek behind my grandmas was pretty over grown, enough we built a pretty kick [censored] clubhouse. We would catch the crawdads in the creek, cook them in an old hubcap and eat em in that clubhouse.

Marked safe from Coronavirus.

Wow. Just wow.

You have a way with stories.

I shoved toads in the cabs of my Tonka trucks and forced them to work against their will.

Caught bluegills at the creek, made them eat Alka Seltzer in hopes they’d blow up, and watched them swim down and float up in the creek. They never exploded, but they did have a hard time staying down, and you could track them when they did.

Had a lot of fun with eggs that our chickens laid. I threw a few at the transformer on the nearest power pole. One finally connected just right. That was exciting enough to put an end to that. Usually, I just stashed a few somewhere safe in the heat of the summer until they were ready. Then I’d bust them in a strategic spot and take off, leaving the bewildered guests in that vicinity wondering what could possibly smell so horrible.

Someone taught me how to make a bomb using toilet bowl cleaner. A couple guys at work didn’t believe me when I told them what could be done with that stuff in the cabinet. I showed them. About that time, a customer was entering the store with her dog. I didn’t intend to, but I showed him, as well. I don’t know if that lady ever found her dog, but I got the weekend off, so it wasn’t all bad.

Caught schools of Bullheads, put firecrackers in their mouths and blew them up. Riding 3 wheelers and motorcycles around the neighborhood. Bottle rocket wars.

If we weren't paying the older kids to buy us a fifth of Wild Turkey with a sixer of Schlitz for chasers, we would knock each other out. Not with blunt force trauma, mind you, but with hyperventilation and pressure to the chest. Out like a light... and man, the dreams we would have...

Bottle Rocket wars in the neighborhood!



I also forgot about the bacon to catch crawdads in the drainage ditches.



Target shooting in the garbage pits at the grandparent's farm. Extra points for finding glass bottles.

City boys getting picked up to grab hay bales.

Getting stuck in grandpa's truck and getting out with a bumper jack.

River fishing with drop, throw, and taught lines. Grandpa said you were not fishing unless you had 500 hooks out.

Catfish heads hanging on the fence line.

Grandma and the aunts making grape juice and canning jelly.

Dewberry picking and using clear nail polish on the chigger bites.

Being told not to be seen until you hear the truck horn honking for supper (and being mad that it was too early).

Christmas with 20+ cousins. Grandma and grandpa only having wrapping paper to wrap the front side of the presents and you not being allowed to look on the backside to see what the presents were. (we all got the same thing, over and over we still loved opening them).

Watching the Dallas Cowboys with 20+ cousins and all the uncles.

Watching the tu/Aggie game on Thanksgiving Day.

There are many more.....

Yes! The dreams are wild! I remember waking up quite pissed off that someone cut off my dream.

Snowmobiling on golf courses.

I did pretty much the same as most above including the raft, the one we built suck like a rock too.

We'd mow lawns and spend all of our money on cheap Chinese throwing stars, candy and fireworks once the 4th of July came around. Repackaged a few fireworks here and there in attempts to blow up the little green army men. Whatever was left we would usually finish off with some sort of improvised flame thrower. We would rotate sleepovers so that someone usually wasn't home for 3 or 4 days. We'd spend those days running around with pellet guns and fishing most of the day. If it was a Monday we'd sneak onto the golf course and play a few holes since that's the day they would mow. I couldn't imagine a boy getting caught doing any of that stuff these days without having hell to pay.

I mostly climbed trees.....

Much of the above. Grew up rural. Crawdad fishing in the creek behind the house. Spent many days in the woods, pellet rifle or shotgun/22 with a Daisy BB pistol in an old leather G.I. holster. Setup target ranges using matches and old playing cards .Improvised fireworks from Blackcat firecrackers.

Dad rebuilt a wooden cabin cruiser, kept slipped at Lake Whitney. We would spend weekends on the boat. Slept on a wooden bench bench seat under the stars. Caught many Sandbass off the front deck. Met my first summer love.

Spent weekends at my grandparents house. Had Chinaberry fights with kids there. Built a tree house. Strung a bike inner tube between limbs to make giant slingshots. The treehouse became an armed fortress. My Oak Cliff best friend and I could fire Chinaberries a hundred feet. Hard to believe we didn't shoot anyone's eye out.

Bet on horny toad races!

Catch one and race them against your friends after you built a track with parallel 1X4s lined up to keep them going straight.

Smoke grapevine till our tongues swole up
Shoot stripped lizards with bb guns
put black cat firecrackers in toads mouths and light
Yep we were some mean little sum beaches

Around 4th-6th grade, my buddies and I became kings of about a 100 acres behind our neighborhood. Everyday after school, we’d take a hack saw, whatever scrap nails and a hammer to the woods to build our kingdom. The goal was to cut 1-2 young pines down everyday, about 5-8” diameter, so that we could build our forts. I don’t recall ever changing the blade out of that hack saw, which is why it would take us all afternoon to get one pine on the ground..lol. Looking back on that, we took a pretty hefty profit away from some poor guy. We also booby trapped the mess out of our trails.. glad no one got hurt..
We’d sneak our BB guns back there, shoot chichi birds and cook them over a fire...none of us ever got to spend the night out there, but that was the big plan until my family moved away. I believe there’s a neighborhood in that area now.

How about 10-11 years old my mom would sign a check and I would walk to Skaggs alpha beta and buy her a carton of Tarteon 100 cigarettes. She would even give me some money to buy a can of Happy Days.

A lot simpler times.

Every now and then my mom would hand me cash down to the penny to go get her a carton of Salem Menthols, there were 10 packs to the carton and each pack had I thought had 20 cigs in them = 200?

Back in the 60's I knew every inch of Five Mile Creek between Hampton Blvd and HWY 67 in Oak Cliff, use to noodle before noodling was a big thing. Sticking my hands in those holes in the clay bank under the water line and usually pulling out a mud cat, also trapping them up against submerged rocks, got finned by more perch than ever stuck by a cat!

I used to make a cabin with Lincoln logs. Placed some army men in and around it. Them I would bomb it all using logs catapulted. I used one of the old address books that would fly open when you touched the release as the catapult.

Played a lot of sandlot baseball. Walked or road my bike everywhere. Had some good dirt clod fights - I was the big loser one time. While walking we'd turn over anything flat (plywood or cardboard) that we came across to see what was underneath it. Also kept an eye out for any discarded adult magazines (kids these days don't know how good they have it)!!

JR

When my Dad was in the USMC, we lived in trailer parks.
I remember running from shady spot to shady spot because we hardly ever wore shoes in the summer.
Getting out of the park to the unpaved areas was always the goal.

After he retired, we rode our bikes for miles a day, always looking for coke bottles we could turn in for the deposit.

Working with my Grand-dad on his farm, picking fruit - nothing like apricots and peaches fresh off the tree... or a (picked that morning) watermelon that spent the past few hours in the well (to get cold).