Growing up without a cell phone

[queenlives]

Yeah, we all had fun. Somewhat like the Lil' Rascals. :smile: We built a treehouse one summer with an operational gondola over to another nearby tree. Must have been up some twenty feet or more. Parents never found out.

what a hoot! over time i've noticed that @ a certain age, parents - like many dogs - rarely look up.

(ok, if we're tellin' "back when i was a kid" stories)

in the week following my 9th birthday, due to very difficult family circumstances, my sis and i were placed in the care of a home for children ... picture a very large institution w/early 20's architecture, palm trees (located in so. cal) on about 45 acres.

my first week in the home i learned that we boys (age 7-18) were going to the back part of the property and were going to weed "the hill", the natural slope of the property that dropped about 60' to a lower, undeveloped area. down the hill was a fairly good sized pond that had a pair of small islands. each island had a eucalyptus tree or two and tons of tall bamboo growing. one of the islands had a small fort on it - not much to it, maybe 10' tall with entrance via ladder located in the center of its floor.

my first day working the hill (btw, we were paid 1 cent per hour for each year of our age - BIG MONEY - and 100% of the money we earned went to our bank account), at lunch break time, sandwiches / drinks were brought down to us and we had a good meal and a rest. those "in the know", though, finished eating very quickly then sprinted down the hill to the pond and islands and got to horsing around, throwing dirt clods between the islands and making lots of noise carrying on.

the new guys like me finally headed down to join in the fun and about the same time we arrived is the time the rotten duck and goose eggs began flying. turns out there were - you guessed it - tons of goose / duck nests and many contained rotten, unhatched eggs ... the "older guys" were just baiting us down to whack us with sulfur-smelling eggs.

old-guy story mode off now.

(btw, got my first "car phone" ~'85. cost about $4k and took up a bit of my volvo's trunk.)

 

[queenlives]

I said father but he was really my step father. He was a refuse technician, in those days they were known as a garbage man. That guitar is one of the few things he owned that didn't come from the trash route. He saved up for a long time to buy that brand new. I'm not saying he didn't waste money on other crap but nothing as expensive as that guitar, I think he spent 600 bucks on it. My mother was so pissed that he spent that money. I think my mother was mad for a year about it, maybe more. In the grand scheme of things it blows my mind that my step father has been through 3 marriages, moving and living in several states, dozens of cars, many step children and he still has that old guitar. And my sister, she has a great voice from all that singing we did as children. My voice is still as bad as it's always been.

A shortage of things to burn was never a problem. We were always dragging stuff home from the garbage route or tearing down some old house and bringing it back, stacking it up in the yard, slowly burning it or building something out of it. The size of the project was only limited to how many bent nails I felt like straightening from the bucket of salvage nails. Which was really limited when I had to use a hammer and bang my fingers every so often. THEN... I made a nail straightener out of an old bottle cap press machine. It also doubled as a hickory nut cracker when it was winter time. Once I had what seemed to be an endless supply of nails I started pumping out picnic tables left and right.

good stories, steve. guitars are great and easy to transport.