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Breitbart Had A Point: Why You Should Read The Comments

From yesterday's Morning Headlines, a perceptive and interesting comment from "grizzledcoastie."

When I was 8 during the summer back in the summer of 1968, we'd swim in the bayou, fish all day, live in the woods near my home playing guns (liberals of today would have kittens), football (no helmets or pads), basketball and baseball. We caught crawfish and our dads would boil them in a huge picnic with the corn and potatoes. We'd wave to the shrimp boats and the party boats headed to the Gulf and they'd blow their horns to us on the bank.

I never really watched a lot of TV and never had a reason to do so. I did chores, such as clipping the beautiful hedges that surrounded our parcel like a living fence and mowing the grass under our giant live oak tree with an old push mower. I started mowing the grass when I was 8 and I got an allowance

My parents had a big, screened in porch that overlooked the bayou and we'd have sleepouts on it. We'd sneak outside and look at the massive amount stars overhead.

We'd walk alone to the gas station on the corner and spend some of our allowances on classic candy and Barq's or Cokes in a glass bottle. The summers on the Gulf Coast were hot as hell, but it wasn't because of "global warming/climate change/whatever they'll call it tomorrow." It's the South. It's hot in the summer. Either you deal with it or you don't.

We'd flirt with the neighborhood girls and steal kisses and have little relationships. That's how I met my wife for the first time and we started dating in high school.

The only rules were you had to come inside for lunch and supper and playtime ended when the sun went down.

If someone got hurt, we got an adult. It was no big deal. One time, a friend of mine broke his arm and his Dad took him to the hospital, which was 24 miles away in the city. There was no nanny state going after him for "abuse." His attitude, like all of our parents, were "boys will be boys."

Vietnam was raging, but it was so distant. It wasn't until a boy from up the street died that it became a real thing for me. There were very few black kids in our town, so civil rights was also a distant thing for me.

I sold that house after my parents passed on and I do tear up when I think of it. My Dad never spoke of his time in Korea and not that I blamed him. All I knew was he had a Bronze Star that I happened on one day. I showed it to him and he gently said to put that away and never speak of it ever again. When I read the award after his death, I never realized that my Dad had the courage of a lion.

Now kids can't be kids. They have live in hermetically sealed bubbles. We wonder why there is a childhood obesity epidemic (everything to the nanny staters is an "epidemic") when we won't let kids have their independence and play as kids were meant to do. We don't let "boys be boys." We have to drug them with Ritalin so they won't leave their seats and be active. I was busy as a child, but my teachers accepted that as part of "boys being boys." You want to know why we have man buns and skinny, feminized hipsters and there's your answer right there.

We don't let them learn at their pace and by methods guaranteed to help them. And we wonder why more women are attending college, not that is a good thing since they come out propagandized by the feminist movement into hating men and delaying childbirth or not even having kids.

Our elites denigrate flyover country and blue collar workers, at least until they need a plumber to unclog their pipes or a roofer to plug holes in their leaking roof.

I'm sorry about rambling here, but there's so much in this society that makes me so depressed for the world I hand over to my children and now my grandchild. We need to continue to belittle this bunk from these perennial, freedom-hating busybodies and give our children a chance to have the rich childhoods that ultimately prepare them to be the great future citizens our nation needs them to be.

Posted by: CBD at 11:40 AM




Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 First?

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 11:28 AM (zpYxD)

2 Now I'll read the story.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 11:28 AM (zpYxD)

3 Oh, thank you for posting this - it was an excellent comment!

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:29 AM (NOIQH)

4 Pure hell.

Posted by: David Brooks at July 14, 2017 11:30 AM (oVJmc)

5 White privilege! White supremacist!

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 11:30 AM (39g3+)

6 Memories. Good post.

Posted by: Deplorable Redneck Bitter Clinger at July 14, 2017 11:30 AM (jAZR9)

7 This was an awesome post.

I often mention to my daughter, no an adult, that I wish I could have shared the fun, the joys of the childhood I had.

Posted by: Our Country is Screwed at July 14, 2017 11:30 AM (jxbfJ)

8 I bet that guy voted for Trump.

Posted by: nip at July 14, 2017 11:32 AM (VqJRJ)

9 CBD

Thank you for highlighting this.

Lots of wisdom and nostalgia in grizzledcoastie's words. Those of us that are 29 had a lot more freedom to invent and play than today's children.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at July 14, 2017 11:32 AM (hyuyC)

10 I grew up in the French Quarter of New Orleans, on Bourbon St. ('struth!). There were still mom-and-opo grocery stores and service businesses like locksmiths and service stations down there. I walked the three blocks to and from school, and when I was 12 started going to the library about a mile away. Mostly my brother and I played in our patio, but sometimes we'd venture over to Jackson Square.

And we gave all this up -- a civilized and comfortable culture -- gave it up so we could have cell phones and in service of a goal our "leaders" call diversity.

Pah.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 11:32 AM (zpYxD)

11 Yup I spent my childhood with my friends and learned how to get along with others or not to, but life went on and there were no safe spaces.

Posted by: Nevergiveup at July 14, 2017 11:32 AM (5y11N)

12 Mom-and-POP grocery stores. (It's anybody's guess what "mom-and-opo" stores are -- maybe places where Opie Taylor hung out.)

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (zpYxD)

13 The "boys will be boys" bit is so true.
Boys are not allowed to be boys, whether it's making them sit still for hours in class, or not allowing them to run around playing cowboys/indians, cops/robbers, whatever during recess because *gasp* that involves imaginary weapons.

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (NOIQH)

14 My cousins, with their more rural upbringing had a taste of that freedom. Me and my siblings, not so much.

Posted by: Jackal at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (txw3L)

15 Wow - I don't recall seeing this post from GrizzledCoastie. How the heck did I miss this beautiful, and poignant, look into the mid of a wonderful "average" American. Thanks CBD - really appreciate this.

Posted by: Publius Redux at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (Fb9aZ)

16 7 This was an awesome post.

I often mention to my daughter, no an adult, that I wish I could have shared the fun, the joys of the childhood I had.
Posted by: Our Country is Screwed at July 14, 2017 11:30 AM (jxbfJ)

Hardly anyone gets to have that anymore. I certainly didn't have that. If there was a way to selectively delete memory, is probably dump my entire childhood.

Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (0mRoj)

17 Pretty succinct.
Rue the day my grandkids were carted off to the San Francisco area where their parent's poor parenting skills were reinforced.
Both parents couldn't stand the backwardness of the midwest or the south. Both born in the midwest and they lived in the south for several years. Not cultured enough, too religious.
Culture my ass. You need love, discipline and the help of family. You cannot read every book and every magazine that will tell them the correct way to raise a child.
The kids are a mess, the parents are a mess and their family is falling apart.
Both parents trying to figure out where they went wrong. That's the past. Deal with the mess you've made.
And get out of CA.

Posted by: never enough caffeine at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (N3JsI)

18 Yeah, when I was a kid we had similar rules: don't steal anything, don't set anything on fire, don't kill anybody, and be home by dinnertime. Other than that, we pretty much did what we wanted, and our parents had no idea where we were, other than we were "out playing in the neighborhood."

Any parents who let their kids loose like that today would probably be arrested for child abuse.

Posted by: TrivialPursuer at July 14, 2017 11:34 AM (IBcGJ)

19 About 11 years ago, I started up my blog to be a running documentary of the best comments I could find on the internet. Ace of Spades featured strongly but so did an awful lot of other blogs. I would dig everywhere, find every kind of blog anywhere I could. Left, right, anywhere in the world, blogs about hair styling, blogs about dogs, blogs about guns, blogs about weight loss, it didn't matter. I just wanted interesting, fun, and remarkable comments.

I figured it could be a pretty interesting exercise, since a lot of the time on some blogs, the comments were more weighty and interesting than the original content. You'd get a one sentence knockoff and a few really interesting responses. I hoped maybe it might catch on and people would send me to places they saw interesting comments, and comment on my site too!

Apparently I was the only person alive who thought so.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (39g3+)

20 BTW - I think HuffPo can cancel their "Conservatives in the Mist" U.S. tour and simply read this post instead.

Posted by: Publius Redux at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (Fb9aZ)

21 Thank you for highlighting this.

Lots of wisdom and nostalgia in grizzledcoastie's words. Those of us that are 29 had a lot more freedom to invent and play than today's children.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at July 14, 2017 11:32 AM (hyuyC)

Sure is.

Similar to my upbringing up North in Michigan.

I actually feel bad for kids of all kinds and colors who will never know what it feels like to be able to wander a 1/4 mile, 1/2 mile, mile or farther away from home and not have to worry about anything other than getting home before dark.

Posted by: Country Boy at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (Jcg9Q)

22 As nostalgic as some may be for their childhoods, I remember the 1970's as just being a REALLY weird time to be a small kid.

The books and movies "The Ice Storm" and "The Virgin Suicides" come to mind, even though I lived in San Jose, California suburbia, and not the Connecticut suburbs or the Grosse Pointe suburbs.

So when I hear people lamenting the kids today, I cant help but remember when many of us kids were watching our neighbor's parents, and sometimes sadly our own, who had lost their cultural moorings.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (ujg0T)

23 Yes. A wonderful post this was. I was a bit younger, growing up in the '70s and '80s, but it really resonated with me.

We tried to raise our boys this way, giving them a lot more freedom to roam than most of their friends were given, which certainly raised some eyebrows, but whatever.

Now it's all playdates and jazz orchestra. Go out and hunt for snakes. Take your bike off some sweet jumps.

Sigh.

Posted by: Pug Mahon at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (RwwCT)

24 Sorry, had to vent.
I'm done now.
Loved the post.

Posted by: never enough caffeine at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (N3JsI)

25 So many memories f getting on our bikes and going somewhere as kids. Just be home for dinner.

It's funny how popular the tv series "Stranger Things" is because it is this - the 80's free range kids up to all sorts of things with very little supervision. Seems to be an unconscious yearning for this even from the Left.

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (NOIQH)

26 I loved my childhood.
Classic Huck Finn in a small town in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state.
We miss so much of that today.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 11:36 AM (0tfLf)

27 Sniff.

Sounds like a deplorable life to me.

Posted by: Bruce at July 14, 2017 11:36 AM (8ikIW)

28 this nails it. nothing more to be said. thanks.

Posted by: chavez the hugo at July 14, 2017 11:37 AM (KP5rU)

29 It'd be so much easier to read if there wasn't an ad just below constantly calling my browser's focus to it.

Posted by: JSchuler at July 14, 2017 11:37 AM (YsGL+)

30 Wow - I don't recall seeing this post from GrizzledCoastie.



It was willowed on the EMT.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 11:37 AM (YxyYj)

31 I really feel bad for people that have kids. I can't imagine how hard it is to raise them and how people cope knowing the world we're handing ot them.

Posted by: shibumi at July 14, 2017 11:37 AM (aT+Bx)

32 "Take your bike off some sweet jumps."

Speaking of the 1970's, one of the few childhood heroes around back then was none other than Robert "Evel" Knievel.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (ujg0T)

33 Was it a good movie?

Posted by: joe, living dangerously at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (KUaJL)

34 I saw that yesterday. It is excellent.

Posted by: rickl at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (xjiRE)

35 There is a reason that The Sandlot resonates so well for so many of us. One of the best kid movies ever made.

Posted by: Pug Mahon at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (RwwCT)

36
"What are you doing in here? Get outside and play!"

Whether stated explicitly or implied, that was Parental Rule #1, especially during the summer months.

Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (fseE9)

37 All so true. I am really afraid for my new grandson. His mother is so fcking helicopter that I fear the poor kid will grow up weak.



No cows milk! No plastic bottles, Never let him in a car without a car seat. Hey, chances he is going to die in a horrible wreck in a cab?

Slim.


Working to still be around so I can mitigate some of her shit as he grows up.

Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (lEhiV)

38 Yeah, when I was a kid we had similar rules: don't steal anything, don't set anything on fire, don't kill anybody, and be home by dinnertime. Other than that, we pretty much did what we wanted, and our parents had no idea where we were, other than we were "out playing in the neighborhood."

Any parents who let their kids loose like that today would probably be arrested for child abuse.
Posted by: TrivialPursuer at July 14, 2017 11:34 AM (IBcGJ)

Yup, that is how I was brought up also

Posted by: Nevergiveup at July 14, 2017 11:39 AM (5y11N)

39
Why the Post Office Gives Amazon Special Delivery

A Citigroup analysis finds each box gets a $1.46 subsidy. It’s like a gift card from Uncle Sam.

http://tinyurl.com/yc4ztmjn

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at July 14, 2017 11:40 AM (IqV8l)

40 Yeah I grew up with my mom insisting we were home by dinner or if we weren't going to be to let her know in advance. Dad could whistle so loud we could hear him half a mile away in the woods and come back home if they needed us. Mom had a whistle she'd blow.

I would go wandering in the woods exploring or run around the neighborhood on my bicycle. I walked the half mile to my grade school and back each day, through the countryside. if I needed help, I knew I could knock on any door and people would be glad to.

These days the police would haul off my parents in cuffs. We truly live in mad times run by fools.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 11:40 AM (39g3+)

41 There were very few black kids in our town, so civil rights was also a distant thing for me.

The Left will tell you this makes you a racist, when, in fact, it's just the opposite.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 11:40 AM (oVJmc)

42 Gizzledcoastie. Cut, jib, newsletter. Sounds exactly like my childhood growing up in Minnesota. I weep for our youth of today. And I am guilty myself of some helicoptering.

Posted by: Minnfidel at July 14, 2017 11:40 AM (570lp)

43 When I was 5 or 6, back in the early 70s, my parents knew which neighbor house I was at by checking to see which porch our beagle was laying on.

Posted by: ghbucky at July 14, 2017 11:40 AM (hloNl)

44 Used to go "exploring" up Ross Creek, just to see how far we could go before one of us lost our nerve. Never did go all the way to the source.

Posted by: Blanco Basura at July 14, 2017 11:40 AM (Hk/NM)

45 I thank grizzledcoastie for this comment, and I too had a similar southern raising (after we finished with the military, that is). My parents laugh to this day that in todays world all us kids would have been taken away by the state and my parents would be doing time for neglect and thought-crimes (hell, my dad made me my first fake rifle when I was five years old on a lathe at his work).

I thank the lord above I got so lucky on my family and community, warts and all, and I worry about the future America being created by the dominant culture.

Posted by: Barack Obama is a bad, bad man at July 14, 2017 11:40 AM (ylUqT)

46 I cannot help but wonder if the concentration of people into urban environments isn't part of this phenomenon. There are twice as many people on Earth now as there were in 1968, and they are much more concentrated in urban areas.

When kids have room to play, and fewer busybody neighbors eager to tattle to authority figures, there is a lot more freedom to explore boundaries; to grow. In a typical suburb, not so much.

Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 11:41 AM (O7MnT)

47 Yeah, BUT don't leave your kid alone in a Lego store!



http://tinyurl.com/yanmwpwf

Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 11:41 AM (lEhiV)

48 It's funny how popular the tv series "Stranger Things" is because it is this - the 80's free range kids up to all sorts of things with very little supervision. Seems to be an unconscious yearning for this even from the Left.
Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (NOIQH)

I was one of those kids. Grew up in a tiny (we're talking less than 2,000 people) town. I remember me and one of my elementary school buddies who was a neighbor, riding our bikes the 3 or so miles to school. And the roads didn't have sidewalks. That and riding our bikes to the corner store in the "center" of town to buy candy, climbing trees, and in the winter, building snow forts.

Posted by: Mainah at July 14, 2017 11:41 AM (B+qrE)

49 No cows milk! No plastic bottles, Never let him in a car without a car seat. Hey, chances he is going to die in a horrible wreck in a cab?

Slim.


Working to still be around so I can mitigate some of her shit as he grows up.
Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (lEhiV)

================================================

Depending on how old he is, I can't blame her on the car seat thing. Stepping out on "what's recommended" is a nice way to get hassled by the cops or some shmuck who thinks they know better.

Posted by: Jackal at July 14, 2017 11:41 AM (txw3L)

50

Curmudgeon
as a growing up in the 70's kid.....i totally agree....grew up in the bay area but when to school in the city...my parents tried to shelter us....but we saw things, did and had down to us what my kids can't even imagine.....not all of it bad.....but some of the bad stuff....i'd gladly go to prison to protect my kids from......

Posted by: phoenixgirl... at July 14, 2017 11:42 AM (0O7c5)

51 My childhood to a "T"..
And thanks CBD for making this it's own post..

Posted by: IP at July 14, 2017 11:42 AM (MdC1o)

52 I grew up with woods and a creek in the 'hood that kept us entertained for years.

I note that many of the communities today do not have woods or undisturbed land nearby. If there is any, it's made into a soccer field or "open space" not to be touched by people.

The progs have ruined it for everyone.

Posted by: Deplorable Redneck Bitter Clinger at July 14, 2017 11:42 AM (jAZR9)

53 >>So when I hear people lamenting the kids today, I cant help but remember
when many of us kids were watching our neighbor's parents, and
sometimes sadly our own, who had lost their cultural moorings.



Grew up in Boulder in the 70's, which had the highest divorce rate per capita in the country. Lucky to have stable parents, each of us kids had at least one friend who spent more time at our house than home (two of my brother's friends moved in, though all parents involved didn't acknowledge it, just let it happen because it was best for them). Had several friends whose moms went of to CA to "find themselves" (thanks, Betty Friedan!), one friend whose mom stole another friend's dad, swingers, all of it.

So, part of the lax parenting was due to parents being self-absorbed, way into their own stuff, whether it was fooling around with the neighbor, becoming a potter in CA, going to bars to meet Mr. Goodbar after being dumped by hubby, or getting high with hippie boytoy.

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:42 AM (NOIQH)

54 Great post!

The nanny state continues to grow unabated. From Social Security/Ponzi scheme payouts to the "Head Start" centers in every ghetto to every government school across the nation, those bubble boys and girls all become bubble adults then the SHTF.

Seems like we will need lots of prisons and asylums to house them all.

Posted by: Hairyback Guy at July 14, 2017 11:42 AM (5VlCp)

55 So, I live in Dallas and have two kids (Son, 4; Daughter, 2) with one on the way. While it is true that the amount of helicopter parenting is tremendous, our neighborhood has a ton of free-range kids, parents that proudly drink outside on the weekends, toy guns, and the lot. Real childhood still exists, but only in pockets.

Posted by: In Exile at July 14, 2017 11:43 AM (8/IPw)

56 I would also suggest, this life style of independence, is one reasons liberals hate the Boy Scouts.



Scouts go camping IN THE WOODS, just about once a month, with NO TV, etc.

Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 11:43 AM (lEhiV)

57 38 Yeah, when I was a kid we had similar rules: don't steal anything, don't set anything on fire, don't kill anybody, and be home by dinnertime. Other than that, we pretty much did what we wanted, and our parents had no idea where we were, other than we were "out playing in the neighborhood."

Any parents who let their kids loose like that today would probably be arrested for child abuse.
Posted by: TrivialPursuer at July 14, 2017 11:34 AM (IBcGJ)




THIS is a change. When I hear about neighbor's parents having "Structured Playdates" for their kids, I wonder whatever happened to just going to the neighbor kids house and ringing the doorbell and/or knocking.

I know people are worrked about perverts out there, and in our neighborhood park in the 1970s we DID have a few of those. But our response, even as small children, was to point and laugh.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:43 AM (ujg0T)

58 I had that when I was 7-8. then we moved to Houston.

Posted by: Boulder terlit hobo at July 14, 2017 11:43 AM (GOL7u)

59 I remember exploring everywhere as a boy. Dead animals crawling with maggots were always a strange source of fascination.
I also remember being fascinated by the incinerator at a private boys school not far from where I lived. The stuff rich kids would throw away was interesting to me as a child.
Do they still have incinerators. Oddly enough they had a smell I'll never forget.

And, yes, that post was excellent.

I also rode my bike everywhere and walked to school on railroad tracks, active railroad tracks.
Time my bike chain slipped reminded me I was a boy.

Posted by: Northernlurker, Phillips screwdriver of the gods at July 14, 2017 11:43 AM (hJrjt)

60 none other than Robert "Evel" Knievel.
Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (ujg0T)

He was defintely my hero. He was even born in the same town I was, Butte Montana.

Posted by: Pug Mahon at July 14, 2017 11:44 AM (RwwCT)

61 I was an "Army Brat"

My father's last post before he shipped out to Viet Nam was Fort Huachuca AZ.
The post had a bus system, and at the age of 7, I would get on the bus with my two older brothers (9 and 10) and go down to the post gate and into Sierra Vista. We'd walk down the 'main drag' and visit the stores, sometimes go to the roller rink behind the AJ Bayless store.
When we got tired, we walked back to the main gate and took the bus home.

We usually wouldn't go as far as Stu and Herb's drive-in (where the Wendys is now) or down the road toward Huachuca City to the AandW Root Beer stand.

Often we would go up to Barnes Field House to use the pool.

Now mind you, this was completely without parental supervision.

Posted by: Neo at July 14, 2017 11:44 AM (e8kgV)

62 Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 11:41 AM (lEhiV)

That's the link the triggered grizzledcoastie's comment.

Posted by: Polliwog the 'Ette at July 14, 2017 11:44 AM (rp9xB)

63 Probably most of us in our 60's, 50's, maybe even 40's can relate to this experience. My mom would kick us out and tell us to be back for lunch...then kick us out again until dinner. Then my dad would whistle for us for dinner. Could hear that whistle 1/2 mile away.


And my mom HATED AC....in St. Louis...in the summer. The very few times she did say, "Is it hot in here?" we'd all jump up and shut windows before she changed her mind, even my dad. When she said, "There's a nice breeze outside.", we knew the AC was going off. :/



Posted by: Tami at July 14, 2017 11:44 AM (Enq6K)

64 Lovely story to highlight.

I do notice that today's culture seems to want to "protect" children from perfectly harmless things, like sunshine or church attendance, and yet works to mind-rape them with inappropriate sexual topics and suggest that it is harmful to NOT question one's gender or sexuality. They promote the warehousing of children under the care of people who love the kids much less than the parents with a curriculum designed to break down everything that makes a society healthy.

Not to mention the promotion of single-parenthood, which has the potential to be the worst thing to do to a kid. (I say "potential" because I know these situations are sometimes unavoidable and there are parents who do a great job and strive to provide guidance and stability in a single-parent household.)

Posted by: Emmie at July 14, 2017 11:44 AM (ZapPq)

65 (JPMorganChase CEO) Jamie Dimon blows up at DC's dysfunction, says he's tired of 'listening to the stupid s---'

http://preview.tinyurl.com/ybbtrwrm

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 11:44 AM (oVJmc)

66 From yesterday's Morning Headlines, a perceptive and interesting comment from "grizzledcoastie."

---

and now he's going to be insufferble

Posted by: buzzsaw90 at July 14, 2017 11:44 AM (oGRue)

67 Do kids these days-- both you and adolescent-- know that play involves things other than computers?

Posted by: shibumi at July 14, 2017 11:45 AM (aT+Bx)

68 The thinking behind this post is one of the reasons I live where I do. Nothing is ever quite the same as it was but this place still resembles small town America in just about every way. It's also an island, I don't think this coincidental.

Posted by: JackStraw at July 14, 2017 11:45 AM (/tuJf)

69 "Take your bike off some sweet jumps."



Busted more than one set of forks and gooseneck on sketchy jumps and wicked landings. Landing ramps like BMX uses? WTF were those? Flat ground biotches!

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 11:45 AM (YxyYj)

70 44
Used to go "exploring" up Ross Creek, just to see how far we could go
before one of us lost our nerve. Never did go all the way to the
source.

Posted by: Blanco Basura at July 14, 2017 11:40 AM (Hk/NM)

We had the creek/ ravine. Boy's Paradise.

Posted by: davidt at July 14, 2017 11:45 AM (XoldI)

71 "Seems like we will need lots of prisons and asylums to house them all. "

Undertakers. There is a huge lack of Undertakers in this country. Won't even be time to go through the pockets for spare change. Until the next customer goes into the ground.

Posted by: Roman P. at July 14, 2017 11:45 AM (sf2BM)

72 Great post, CBD !
And great comment, grizzledcoastie !

I grew up as much like that as was possible in the heart of Chicago.
Not as many stars at night, and the fishing wasn't so good except in smelt season, but life was good.

Posted by: sock_rat_eez, they are gaslighting us 24/7 at July 14, 2017 11:46 AM (Mcvvl)

73 I would also suggest, this life style of independence, is one reasons liberals hate the Boy Scouts.

More like: why they infiltrated and are destroying the Boy Scouts.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 11:46 AM (39g3+)

74 Ummm....

Definitely the wrong sock for that one. Let's go with....

Posted by: Judge Roy Bean at July 14, 2017 11:46 AM (sf2BM)

75 There it is: a doctorate in repairing the damage done to America. I can already feel the contraction of the Deep State. Pick four cabinet departments and stop funding now.
Education. HHS. Energy. Ask Rick Perry for one more.

Posted by: 80's music fan at July 14, 2017 11:46 AM (HCnEB)

76 "...don't set anything on fire..."

Posted by: TrivialPursuer at July 14, 2017 11:34 AM (IBcGJ)

What?

What kind of a horrible childhood did you have?

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (wYseH)

77 In a completely different place (CA!), had a very similar childhood. For years I've explained it to the sadly deprived young'ins as "for boys, if you didn't come back with a serious injury, a policeman, or an angry neighbor adult - you were good. And they knew you'd be back for dinner - like an animal, you were hungry."

I also explain the "job" of 11-yr old boys back then: "head into the canyons and find ways to injure or kill yourself - though usually failing to do either, of course".

A lazy and baseless counter to all such observations as this is "well it's so dangerous now! That's just 'golden days" nostalgia." BS. On both counts. But young parents have been soaking in this part of the Idiot Marinade so long there is zero chance their fears will ever be fixed or overcome.

But there are so many wheels turning in this decline, which is cultural.

Posted by: rhomboid at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (QDnY+)

78 >>>20 BTW - I think HuffPo can cancel their "Conservatives in the Mist" U.S. tour and simply read this post instead.
Posted by: Publius Redux at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM (Fb9aZ)

I thought that, too. But they won't "read" it; they won't understand it.

Posted by: m at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (VgThI)

79 >>I was one of those kids.


Me, too!

My town was ~50,000, but in addition to knowing most people in the neighborhood (I had to, I had a paper route), people knew my parents, so it was an invisible safety net; parents could track us down through this network if they ever needed to.

Also, all this driving kids to various lessons and sports stuff today?
We took the city bus, even in grade school.

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (NOIQH)

80 Linky needs fixing?

Posted by: David Horton at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (rJOC2)

81 Curmudgeon
as a growing up in the 70's kid.....i totally agree....grew up in the bay area but when to school in the city...my parents tried to shelter us....but we saw things, did and had down to us what my kids can't even imagine.....not all of it bad.....but some of the bad stuff....i'd gladly go to prison to protect my kids from......
Posted by: phoenixgirl... at July 14, 2017 11:42 AM (0O7c5)




We used to joke that we in San Jose were "a safe enough distance away" from San Francisco.

But there was something really WEIRD about having coaches and teachers, and sometimes even parents, wearing T-Shirts that stated "(people in such and such an occupation) do it (such and such an implied sexual way)." And yes, even as prepubescents, we knew what it meant.

And watching divorcee parents flirting with each other. Or god forbid, MARRIED parents "swinging". My own parents were sane--Mr. And Mrs. American Gothic, I would refer to them with affection--but a lot of peers had some really fucked up childhoods.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (ujg0T)

82
And my mom HATED AC....in St. Louis...in the summer. The very few times she did say, "Is it hot in here?" we'd all jump up and shut windows before she changed her mind, even my dad. When she said, "There's a nice breeze outside.", we knew the AC was going off. :/

*
*
Our "slave quarter" apartment was surrounded by other buildings, and had windows only on one side (the back wall we shared with the famous Johnny White's Bar and Grill). There was no such thing as a breeze, nice or otherwise. When Mom bought our first window unit A/C, all of us immediately moved indoors and stayed there from April to October. (Now, of course, it's hot here from March to December. Gah.)

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (zpYxD)

83 Watched a little girl riding her bicycle on the walking path the other day. Bright pink bike. She was dressed in so much protective gear she looked like a ghey hockey player. We were lucky to have decent shoes on when we were kids.

Posted by: Under Fire at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (mcI77)

84 I really feel bad for people that have kids. I can't imagine how hard it is to raise them and how people cope knowing the world we're handing ot them.
Posted by: shibumi at July 14, 2017 11:37 AM (aT+Bx)

My oldest is 6 and it's not easy, but we're not even to the hard stuff yet.

We have to explain, already, that our world doesn't love Jesus anymore and that the things you see and hear are very often wrong.

Among the items I haven't decided on how to approach: a child in martial arts has decided (with the support of his parents) that he's a girl. He's 6. (He decided this when he was 4-5).

THANKFULLY, we've been busy with a newborn and haven't returned to classes in a year so I haven't had to deal with the questions about "Why is he pretending to be a girl?"

This is something we're eventually going to have to deal with, I'm sure, but I was hoping to at least get my children to the teenage years first. Again, my oldest is SIX and the youngest isn't even walking yet.

I've told many people that the Mennonites are looking more and more attractive and I'm not even sure what they believe.

Posted by: makatta at July 14, 2017 11:48 AM (Y7Qzg)

85 More like: why they infiltrated and are destroying the Boy Scouts.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 11:46 AM (39g3+)

Not in the South. Maybe up North, we're still pretty hard core.

Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 11:48 AM (lEhiV)

86 They all have their faces buried in their phones now.

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at July 14, 2017 11:48 AM (IqV8l)

87 I do notice that today's culture seems to want to "protect" children from perfectly harmless things, like sunshine or church attendance, and yet works to mind-rape them with inappropriate sexual topics

I agree, but its a culture war, still on going. The left wants to destroy the old structures, culture, society, traditions, and worldviews. The problem is, they barely have anything to replace it with, and what they do have changes every few years in a manner that lacks logic or pattern.

Leftists, year 2000: homosexual marriage is an oppressive imposition of heteronormative values!
Leftists, year 2004: homosexual marriage is a required civil right!

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 11:48 AM (39g3+)

88 Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:42 AM (NOIQH)

It's amazing what a difference 30 or so miles makes. Well, ten years later and out in the country probably makes a big difference too, but Loveland could never begin to aspire to Boulder's "fame".

Posted by: Polliwog the 'Ette at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (rp9xB)

89 I can remember being younger than 10 and a group of us would skateboard down a big hill in our neighborhood. One kid stood at the bottom to wave up to us if a car was coming. We did this every day during the summer. Barefoot. Had epic wipeouts and you just got up and tried again.

Posted by: NCKate at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (7ydCJ)

90 And my mom HATED AC....in St. Louis...in the summer. The very few times she did say,



Same here. South St. Louis city. One ac unit in the dining room. Don't ever remember it feeling as hot as it does now. Yet St. Louis usually only runs two to four degrees behind Dallas.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (YxyYj)

91
THIS is a change. When I hear about neighbor's parents having "Structured Playdates" for their kids, I wonder whatever happened to just going to the neighbor kids house and ringing the doorbell and/or knocking.


---

bigger houses, developments, and fewer children per household seems to have reduced the density of kids around to play with. Growing up i had half a dozen kids my age growing up within 500 feet of my house.

Of course we were all outside more too, so we just encountered each other more. video games have turned our homes into plush little cages.

Posted by: buzzsaw90 at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (oGRue)

92 We now live in a constant State of Fear, brought on by 24/7 news.... even though things are much safer than when we grew up.... they SEEM more dangerous, because any time something happens its in the news...

Posted by: Don Q. at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (NgKpN)

93 Yeah, BUT don't leave your kid alone in a Lego store!
========

Yeah, bunch of horseshit. I remember growing up and going to the "department store" with my mom - as soon as we got in there, I would take off to the toy department. I would always eventually find her in the store.

Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (vg8iE)

94 in the summer in ohio in 1980, we rode our bikes all day with no adult supervision and no helmets. These days, I'm surprised to see when a parent in my area lets their kid ride his bike to school alone. I'm all for it, but it's unusual anymore. sad.

Posted by: jp at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (ctXeH)

95 87 I do notice that today's culture seems to want to "protect" children from perfectly harmless things, like sunshine or church attendance, and yet works to mind-rape them with inappropriate sexual topics



"All that is solid melts into air...."

The Commiecrats have gone from economic to cultural.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:50 AM (ujg0T)

96 Thank you, CBD, for highlighting this most excellent comment from grizzledcoastie.

I grew up like this, too. Gone all day, just be home in time for dinner, then go back out again afterwards until dark.

I have to say my kids have pretty much grown up like this too, because a lot of homeschoolers believe in this type of childhood. Also, we are fortunate in that our neighborhood has enough families that also felt this way that our kids were all able to enjoy that kind of freedom with their friends.

My youngest son has 3 or 4 close friends in the neighborhood - all have lived here since they were born, all go to different schools - and any given day in the summer whoever isn't working at that time is off riding bikes or skateboarding or doing all the things boys should be doing.
They roam from house to house eating us all out of house and home. The families with second houses (not us) take the boys for long weekends to their lake places. I wish all kids could have such a childhood.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 11:50 AM (sBOL1)

97 THIS is a change. When I hear about neighbor's parents having "Structured Playdates" for their kids,
======

Ever watch that show, "My Cat from Hell?"

Yeah, the guy on there always says that cats needs structured play.

So I guess people's kids are no better than animals to them.

Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 11:50 AM (vg8iE)

98 What an amazing and poignant post by grizzledcoastie. It underscores how quickly the world can change in just one generation.

I did so many things as a kid that result in a few felonies if done today.

Posted by: fly gal at July 14, 2017 11:50 AM (8TdcF)

99 More like: why they infiltrated and are destroying the Boy Scouts

"Trustworthy and loyal" is toxic masculinity of the patriarchy.

Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 11:50 AM (O7MnT)

100 I remember seeing something about a mother being charged for letting her kids play unsupervised in the back yard.

Posted by: Northernlurker, Phillips screwdriver of the gods at July 14, 2017 11:50 AM (hJrjt)

101 I think there's more to this than just overbearing parents. Don't get me wrong, parenting plays a role, but alot of the helicopter parenting shit is a result of govt. pressure on parents as well as a culture of fear that something horrible will happen if kids are unsupervised. The name John Walsh came up and I have to agree that such things are part of the problem. The fact that people will call child welfare if you give your kids even a fraction of the freedom that grizzledcoastie mentioned is another big part.

Posted by: Jackal at July 14, 2017 11:51 AM (txw3L)

102 Sounds like my childhood in Louisiana except I grew up in a black neighborhood and I managed to fit in a lot of TV watching with all those other activities. Maybe because we ate on TV trays at dinner instead of a table.


Speaking of growing up and being the only white boy on many occasions, we used to play a game called Hidenbebo. This was the black version of Hide and Seek. The seeker would call out ' Hidenbebo are you ready! ' and when you got no reply you could then start your search. Fast forward 20 years to NY and I asked my black coworker if they ever played a game called Hidenbebo? He looked at me and said ' are you trying to say Hiding People? All those years I never knew what I was saying and we both fell in the floor laughing.

Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 11:51 AM (bwBxJ)

103 I used to play war with all my Father's WW2 stuff. And that Jap Rifle was freaken heavy..Took a hollow hand grenade to school more than once. LOL...Yeah I'd be in Juvie hall for that now

Posted by: Nevergiveup at July 14, 2017 11:51 AM (5y11N)

104 Our "slave quarter" apartment was surrounded by
other buildings, and had windows only on one side (the back wall we
shared with the famous Johnny White's Bar and Grill). There was no such
thing as a breeze, nice or otherwise. When Mom bought our first window
unit A/C, all of us immediately moved indoors and stayed there from
April to October. (Now, of course, it's hot here from March to
December. Gah.)

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (zpYxD)

We only had window units on the first floor. The upstairs, where we kids slept, had window fans. It was a converted attic. We had a door at the stairs that had to be kept closed. They put in central AC when I was in HS...I think. She still turned it on only occasionally.

Posted by: Tami at July 14, 2017 11:51 AM (Enq6K)

105 I've noticed this, that as a gen-X type, we straddle the two worlds. Boomers are too old, stupid, and well boomery to care what has happened to america. The younger gens don't even know.

The funny thing is that people thought we would be all sour and only be able to deal with things through irony. But I think my generation is actually the last real american generation. It just sucks we can't do anything about it because while we were in college or getting out of college, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton had set about radical population change that eclipsed what Ted K started. It's true, even Reagan. Check it out.

We woke up one day and America was changed forever. But hay, at least we got some sweet tax breaks for banks and whatnot.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (AU4SY)

106 Sounds a lot lkie My Childhood but I was all girl... real girl... I miss this for My Grand kids...

Posted by: .It's me donna at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (O2RFr)

107 61 I was an "Army Brat"

My father's last post before he shipped out to Viet Nam was Fort Huachuca AZ.
The post had a bus system, and at the age of 7, I would get on the bus with my two older brothers (9 and 10) and go down to the post gate and into Sierra Vista. We'd walk down the 'main drag' and visit the stores, sometimes go to the roller rink behind the AJ Bayless store.
When we got tired, we walked back to the main gate and took the bus home.

We usually wouldn't go as far as Stu and Herb's drive-in (where the Wendys is now) or down the road toward Huachuca City to the AandW Root Beer stand.

Often we would go up to Barnes Field House to use the pool.

Now mind you, this was completely without parental supervision.

Posted by: Neo at July 14, 2017 11:44 AM


My first tour there was in 1975. My daughter was just a kid. Went back in 79 and all I had to teach her was don't play with the big brown spiders.
Last tour there was in the mid'80's. Best stateside tour ever. My daughters are still in touch with their friends from then. They would go everywhere, and everyone knew who they were. And yes, lots of swimming in the fieldhouse.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (0tfLf)

108 Grew up in the 80s & that was similar to my childhood, though more suburban than rural. But I don't have much nostalgia for my childhood, wasn't very fun first growing up with no friends, then moving to a neighborhood with a lot of kids, who then bullied & beat me up a lot. Maybe someday God will bless me with a family, so I can give my kids a chance to have a happy, free childhood.

Posted by: josephistan at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (7HtZB)

109 I can remember being younger than 10 and a group of us would skateboard down a big hill in our neighborhood. One kid stood at the bottom to wave up to us if a car was coming. We did this every day during the summer. Barefoot. Had epic wipeouts and you just got up and tried again.
Posted by: NCKate at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (7ydCJ)
---------

I watched my son and one of his buddies do exactly this yesterday.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (sBOL1)

110 The first time I heard an old person say that air conditioning is responsible for more societal decay than any other one thing, I kind of smiled and winked. Sure, old dude.

But the older I get, the more I understand what he meant. Its not that AC is bad, I love it -- I need it, sometimes. Its that AC made people hide indoors and avoid doing things, trying things, experiencing things, risking things.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (39g3+)

111
I was raised in that culture. So also were our children and the tradition continues with my grandkids.

God willing, if enough of us do what we can, the pendulum will swing back, and this generation of pseudo males will recede into obscurity having done no lasting harm.

Posted by: irongrampa at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (S/hVx)

112 >>but Loveland could never begin to aspire to Boulder's "fame".




That's a good thing!

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (NOIQH)

113 I grew up in Massachusetts in the same time-frame, our folks had the same attitude! Go out play until dinner, burn off energy, "sticks stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me!" etc. [compare that to modern PC snowflakes]...We need to resurrect 2 important concepts:
"NORMAL"--that's US.
"FREAKS"--that's THEM.
It's not Right vs Left, Democrat vs Republican, etc...It's NORMAL VS FREAKS.

Posted by: JewishOdysseus at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (+O9YB)

114 Yeah, the guy on there always says that cats needs structured play.

So I guess people's kids are no better than animals to them.
Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 11:50 AM (vg8iE)

Indoor cats need structured play time. Not children, throw their butts outside.

If I ever said to my mother, I'm bored she would make me do chores. I went outside and found someone to play with.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (Ri/rl)

115
My mothers theroy was if you were indoors when the weather was nice outside you obviously wanted a chore to do like cleaning your room,doing the dishes,sweeping the floor or washing windows.

Posted by: Deplorable Male Logic at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (lKyWE)

116 >>>When I was 8 during the summer

This reminds me a bit of the opening of To Kill A Mockingbird--another good read:

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. . . . When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. . . . He said that it began the summer Dill came to us...."

Posted by: m at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (VgThI)

117 52 I grew up with woods and a creek in the 'hood that kept us entertained for years.

I note that many of the communities today do not have woods or undisturbed land nearby. If there is any, it's made into a soccer field or "open space" not to be touched by people.

The progs have ruined it for everyone.
Posted by: Deplorable Redneck Bitter Clinger at July 14, 2017 11:42 AM (jAZR9)



But that never stopped us as kids or teenagers. I remember the "Open Space" parks becoming the places for kids to build tree forts, or for the teens to drink and smoke weed out of the range of law enforcement.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (ujg0T)

118 I thank my parents for making us independent at an early age. In the second grade I had some cavities so I would walk to the dentist after school, get my teeth drilled and come home. It wasn't a big deal because no one made it a big deal.

And ditto for playing until dark. We'd wander all over town and out of town (the swimming pool was about 4 miles out of town) on our bikes.

Now kids can't even play by themselves. Parents seem to think they have to supervise every minute.

We will all lose in the end as a country.



Posted by: Abby Normal at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (cQO95)

119 I had a NY Daily News paper route starting when I was ten, in late 1967. My best job ever. Lots of big headlines. Ran my own business.

The Daily News then was like The NY Post of today, before they did a polarity switch.

Posted by: Ignoramus at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (+7/1f)

120 BTW, I recommend watching F is for Family on netflix, it's Bill Burr cartoon set in and about the time grizzled coastie is talking about. I can vaguely remember life in the 70's. It's reflected there. Have to be honest, love the Burr character's reminiscing.rants about Korea.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (AU4SY)

121 And my mom HATED AC....in St. Louis...in the summer. The very few times she did say,



Same here. South St. Louis city. One ac unit in the dining room. Don't ever remember it feeling as hot as it does now. Yet St. Louis usually only runs two to four degrees behind Dallas.


We didn't get central air until my teen years. That window unit (actually in a hole in the wall in the living room) really didn't do a whole lot of anything.

Now we're planning to go to Florida next week on family vacation, and I'm checking on the weather down there that sounds exactly like it is here for the last month.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 11:54 AM (oVJmc)

122 It's amazing some of us survived without child seats in cars.

Posted by: Under Fire at July 14, 2017 11:54 AM (mcI77)

123 Grizzled Coastie: Excellent essay.
CBD: Thank you for posting this.

Posted by: Cumberland Astro at July 14, 2017 11:54 AM (pfxf2)

124 Sounds like my '80's growing up. That, plus we had Reagan.

Posted by: flounder, rebel, vulgarian, deplorable, winner at July 14, 2017 11:54 AM (tbOMB)

125 Apologize if someone else mentioned this, but the great DougRoss/DirectorBlue had a sensational illustrated-with-old-ads blogpost on this about 8 years ago, worth a look!

Posted by: JewishOdysseus at July 14, 2017 11:55 AM (+O9YB)

126 If I ever said to my mother, I'm bored she would make me do chores. I went outside and found someone to play with.
Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (Ri/rl)
-----------

CaliGirl, I. am. your. mother.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 11:55 AM (sBOL1)

127 With a few minor changes--the mentions of liberals, Ritalin, nanny state-- this would be a great opening page of a coming of age novel.

I know the POINT of his comment was just those specific things, but WE--and probably most people---would get what he means without them being mentioned.

Posted by: JoeF. at July 14, 2017 11:55 AM (7uYFy)

128 Same here. South St. Louis city. One ac unit in
the dining room. Don't ever remember it feeling as hot as it does now.
Yet St. Louis usually only runs two to four degrees behind Dallas.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (YxyYj)


I think we've discussed this before but where in South STL? I was in the county...Crestwood.

Posted by: Tami at July 14, 2017 11:55 AM (Enq6K)

129 104 . . .When Mom bought our first window
unit A/C, all of us immediately moved indoors and stayed there from
April to October. (Now, of course, it's hot here from March to
December. Gah.)

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 11:47 AM (zpYxD)

We only had window units on the first floor. The upstairs, where we kids slept, had window fans. It was a converted attic. We had a door at the stairs that had to be kept closed. They put in central AC when I was in HS...I think. She still turned it on only occasionally.

*
*
Oh, right; our place had an upper, loft-type floor where we kids slept. No A/C up there until about 2 years after the first one. Darned if I know how we stood the heat.

Oh, wait, I do know. Open windows and mosquito bites, and going to bed as late as possible.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (zpYxD)

130 OT:

Over at ZeroHedge, an article from the Vatican attacking American Catholics who support Trump.

We are "islamophoboc and xenophobic," and "drifting toward Evangelical fundamentalism,"among other things. Also... "wall."

Telling American Catholics they're bad people is not a good way to get their monetary support.

Posted by: shibumi at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (aT+Bx)

131 HA--FOUND IT: http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-did-we-survive.html

Posted by: JewishOdysseus at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (+O9YB)

132 and where I was, it too was suburban. It was still an adventure riding bikes from park to park and to the smaller stores.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (AU4SY)

133
Ever watch that show, "My Cat from Hell?"

Yeah, the guy on there always says that cats needs structured play.


Is that guy a cat coach?

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (IqV8l)

134 Was a free range kid myself.

Posted by: Skip at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (9g/6M)

135 The first time I heard an old person say that air conditioning is responsible for more societal decay than any other one thing, I kind of smiled and winked. Sure, old dude.
But the older I get, the more I understand what he meant. Its not that AC is bad, I love it -- I need it, sometimes. Its that AC made people hide indoors and avoid doing things, trying things, experiencing things, risking things.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017
11:52 AM (39g3+)

Excellent point! It's July and people I come across in my travels tell me "It's too hot outside to do anything."

Boggles the mind.

Posted by: Hairyback Guy at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (5VlCp)

136 >>bigger houses, developments, and fewer children per household seems to have reduced the density of kids around to play with. Growing up i had half a dozen kids my age growing up within 500 feet of my house.

We moved around a bit but I spent my jr high and high school days living on a long street that was basically its own neighborhood. There were about 50 kids living on the street, many guys around my age.

We were constantly out playing whatever sport was in season including a lot of hockey, both ice on one of the 2 ponds on the street and street hockey during the off seasons.

After I got out of high school my folks moved again but I stayed in contact with some of the guys. A couple had younger brothers who kept up the traditions. And then Bobby Orr moved onto the street after he retired from the NHL. Every once in a while one of the kids would go up to the house and see if Bobby could come out and play. And he did! Bobby was a small town kid from Canada and he loved it.

No cameras or reporters, just an adult hero coming out to play with the local kids. You don't see a lot of that anymore.

Posted by: JackStraw at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (/tuJf)

137 111
I was raised in that culture. So also were our children and the tradition continues with my grandkids.

God willing, if enough of us do what we can, the pendulum will swing back, and this generation of pseudo males will recede into obscurity having done no lasting harm.
Posted by: irongrampa at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (S/hVx)

One good thing is that normals will surely be having more children than the freaks.

Posted by: Northernlurker, Phillips screwdriver of the gods at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (hJrjt)

138 119 I had a NY Daily News paper route starting when I was ten, in late 1967. My best job ever. Lots of big headlines. Ran my own business.

The Daily News then was like The NY Post of today, before they did a polarity switch.

Posted by: Ignoramus at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (+7/1f)


You were rockin' with a Daily News route. The little bastard dago kid up the block had that market cornered in our neighborhood. I delivered Newsday. The Sunday paper must have weighed 5 lb.

Posted by: Under Fire at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (mcI77)

139 Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 11:51 AM (bwBxJ)

What the hell do you say when you give up in hide and seek?

Is it ollie oxen free? Or all outs in free?

I've said both, I really don't know which is correct.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 11:56 AM (Ri/rl)

140 The first time I heard an old person say that air conditioning is responsible for more societal decay than any other one thing, I kind of smiled and winked. Sure, old dude.

But the older I get, the more I understand what he meant. Its not that AC is bad, I love it -- I need it, sometimes. Its that AC made people hide indoors and avoid doing things, trying things, experiencing things, risking things.
=====

My father would preach to us as kids that TV would be the ruination of this nation.

Guess what?

He was right.

Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 11:57 AM (vg8iE)

141 We now live in a constant State of Fear, brought on by 24/7 news

https://youtu.be/OgaxUxsJrww?t=3m15s

Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 11:57 AM (O7MnT)

142 91
THIS is a change. When I hear about neighbor's parents having "Structured Playdates" for their kids, I wonder whatever happened to just going to the neighbor kids house and ringing the doorbell and/or knocking.


---

bigger houses, developments, and fewer children per household seems to have reduced the density of kids around to play with. Growing up i had half a dozen kids my age growing up within 500 feet of my house.

Of course we were all outside more too, so we just encountered each other more. video games have turned our homes into plush little cages.
Posted by: buzzsaw90 at July 14, 2017 11:49 AM (oGRue)




And yet, I grew up in such "sprawling" suburbia, and we still hiked or biked all over the place.

And we DID play a lot of primitive video games, back in those days the Atari 2600 was the thing.

But no one ever thought of a structured video game play date.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:57 AM (ujg0T)

143 Broke my foot in 5th grade. Think it was in May because we were still in school but it was warm. Still went out and rode my bike with that damn hard cast on my foot. After an afternoon of riding/playing my toes that stuck out where so dirty my Mom had a little snit-fit and got a bucket and washcloth and pointed me to the bathroom to clean up. The cast survived (more or less) for the 6 weeks it took for the fracture to heal. Didn't keep me from doing "boy things."

Posted by: Deplorable Redneck Bitter Clinger at July 14, 2017 11:57 AM (jAZR9)

144 113. Disagree. They're the normies now. All that is dull and joyless and life-denying is theirs.

Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. All Honor & Glory to Kekistan! at July 14, 2017 11:58 AM (T2WTh)

145 The only rule I really had where I was in the 80s was "Don't cross Rt. [redacted].", which when I turned 10 became "Don't cross Rt. [redacted] except to go to the ice cream stand."

Posted by: Hikaru at July 14, 2017 11:58 AM (9TK8E)

146 But the older I get, the more I understand what he meant. Its not that AC is bad, I love it -- I need it, sometimes. Its that AC made people hide indoors and avoid doing things, trying things, experiencing things, risking things.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (39g3+)


Plus, we miss out on the passive neighborhood supervision from adults sitting out on the porch. They could tell if trouble was brewing among the juvenile horde. And there was the extra friendliness and community-building effect of greeting your neighbors regularly.

Posted by: Emmie at July 14, 2017 11:58 AM (ZapPq)

147 Fine, just Willow me...

The current Modern world is so interconnected that Humans have become disconnected.

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 11:59 AM (+BG/J)

148 We woke up one day and America was changed forever. But hay, at least we got some sweet tax breaks for banks and whatnot.
Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (AU4SY)

Yeah.... I joined the Navy in 79, to protect the America I loved from foreign enemies.... expecting people here to protect it from domestic ones...

I retired to a very different America... and have always had a bit of bitterness about how that deal turned out.

Posted by: Don Q. at July 14, 2017 11:59 AM (NgKpN)

149 In the 1970s we got this concept of Child Protective Services or whatever it is called in your state. When I talk about CPS, I sound like a stark raving mad person. I will try to not seem that way.

CPS exists because we - as in the people - got this idea that some of us were not as capable of raising kids as all of us were. That has always been true, but after the huge influx of life monitoring and altering of the War on Poverty, getting the government to do better than those who were doing poorly seemed like a good idea.

And there are times and places where that makes sense, right? I mean, if you have a parent that puts an 11 year old out front to be a watcher for police at the drug den, you might think that something should be done about it. Not that was really the issue in the 70s, but there are circumstances where you could say, that person should not be raising kids.

But like all bureaucracies, they got power and existed for the expansion and preservation of that power rather than the mission statement. Our child protective bureaucracy has literally unlimited and unchecked power. They have total immunity in their jobs and thus can do anything on the say so of a 25 year old MSW. If they take a child or children from a family, there is no - there CANNOT be - consequence.

There is no presumption of innocence, there is no due process. First level reviews are administrative and conducted by the agency itself and there is no right of representation. Second level review is also administrative. It is only after it gets to a third level that it even gets to court and then things like rules of evidence apply. And even then, you do not have a right to face your accuser.

Because accusers have almost absolute immunity. And large swaths of the people in your child's life are "mandatory reporters." That means that schoolteachers and doctors and counselors and police are all required to report if they think there is an abusive or negligent situation (and the conditions that constitute those are, well, malleable.) I say almost absolute immunity because people who report are protected so long as there is an adverse action against you. If you go through the appeals process and have it reversed, then you can submit to get the identity of the accuser, and then you have the ability to go after them in a civil action. Guess how often that happens and is successful?

The power of the state is pretty crushing. It is very difficult to fight them as well educated, well supported, and well resourced people. Imagine those with little resources, little English, few support systems.

And when children are removed from their families and given over to foster care or state facilities, way, way more often than not, terrible things happen to them. Usually worse than the situation that caused the removal.

So, yeah, if you have your kid living in a crack den/whorehouse, maybe the situation should be changed. But that is not the case, usually. More often than not, there are situations where there are bad faith accusations (happens a LOT in divorce/custody situations), nosy meddlers (remember the free range kids lady who let her kids go to a park 1 mile away?), and misinterpretations of situations and circumstances.

It is like the East German police state.

And it is all in the name of protecting children.



Posted by: blaster at July 14, 2017 11:59 AM (tewYv)

150 I was born in '88, but thank God I didn't have a Millennial upbringing. My parents live on 11 acres (backed up to 200 acres we had permission to be on) in what was then a fairly rural place (it's kind of rural suburbia now). We were homeschooled, so when we got done with school at 10-11am, we'd be handed a bottle of water, a sandwich bag with a PBJ and told to take the dog, not wander off too far, and be back by dinner.

"Not too far" was just my parents' property when we were 7-10ish, but the older we got, the further we wandered. We never quite made it to the small town 8 miles away, but we would often go exploring and find ourselves 3-4 miles away from the house... I don't even think the thought that we were technically trespassing ever crossed our minds. Ponds to play in, creeks to dam up, hills to sled, frozen over ponds to fall into, cows that chased us into trees... I've got so many stories, so many good memories...

That's why after a few years of suffering in the 'burbs my wife and I took advantage of the booming housing market, sold our house, moved into a trailer and are shopping for places to live way out in the sticks, where a family can still raise their kids that way... for now.

Posted by: Inventive at July 14, 2017 11:59 AM (6TVEY)

151 Shotgun houses were developed in the South precisely because there was no a/c . Open the front and back door and let the breeze come through. Some were built with an attic fan.

Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 11:59 AM (bwBxJ)

152 My childhood began six years later but ran a similar course, also along the Gulf Coast. We headed out in the morning with baseball gloves, wooden baseball bats taped to cover cracks, a football, and our bicycles. We played on construction sites and in ditches, often miles from home, making it home for lunch and to see our fathers when they got home. During the school year, we would ride our bikes across a busy road on the way to school couple of miles away, and we would play after school until dinner time. No parents planned our activities. There were no play dates, no cell phones, and we were left to figure things out. Sometimes we fought, but things usually got resolved. There were some awkward moments as boys and girls discovered each other. I feel sorry for those who have come after all that went away.

Posted by: CEL at July 14, 2017 12:00 PM (VO7Tn)

153 Now that is CONTENT!

Should be printed everwhere!

Posted by: Killerdog at July 14, 2017 12:00 PM (KS7f3)

154 Two articles on the topic worth your while. (The second, I think, was in an ONT.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/ hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/06/28/23-dangerous-things-let-kids/

Posted by: flounder, rebel, vulgarian, deplorable, winner at July 14, 2017 12:00 PM (tbOMB)

155 So, what happens? Does society break down and reset? Or is it pajama boys and nasty women in charge from here on out?

Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 12:00 PM (O7MnT)

156 103
I used to play war with all my Father's WW2 stuff. And that Jap Rifle
was freaken heavy..Took a hollow hand grenade to school more than once.
LOL...Yeah I'd be in Juvie hall for that now

Posted by: Nevergiveup at July 14, 2017 11:51 AM (5y11N)

When my father was stationed at the Pentagon, I was in elementary school, I took some 45 cartridges to fourth grade class.

It did not go over well, and I never understood why.

Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 12:00 PM (lEhiV)

157 To some degree, many changes to society are being driven by technology.

Posted by: Max Power at July 14, 2017 12:01 PM (q177U)

158 145 The only rule I really had where I was in the 80s was "Don't cross Rt. [redacted].", which when I turned 10 became "Don't cross Rt. [redacted] except to go to the ice cream stand."
Posted by: Hikaru at July 14, 2017 11:58 AM (9TK8E)

I did anyway. I would find a bottle and go exchange it for a nickel and buy candy. I think it was a nickel.

I think about crossing that road now and that was crazy. I was 4-5 years old.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:01 PM (Ri/rl)

159 BB guns.

Posted by: Under Fire at July 14, 2017 12:01 PM (mcI77)

160 I think we've discussed this before but where in South STL? I was in the county...Crestwood.



Tami - 5510 Nottingham. 63109 (It's ok. Haven't lived there in 37 years)
In the actual city. Not a burb.
Between Kingshighway & Hampton. Chippewa & Gravois Mills Rd.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:02 PM (YxyYj)

161
My father would preach to us as kids that TV would be the ruination of this nation.

Guess what?

He was right.
Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 11:57 AM


But now everybody carries their TV with them.

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at July 14, 2017 12:02 PM (IqV8l)

162 I love this beautiful essay. It is eloquent. It gives me hope that there may be additional voices of reason and courage out there, and that at least, during my lifetime, there are those who are willing to defend freedom until to the bitter end.

This made my day.

Posted by: Ladylibertarian at July 14, 2017 12:02 PM (TdMsT)

163 >>We now live in a constant State of Fear, brought on by 24/7 news




I agree.

However, I think in some ways our cities and towns have managed to make us more vulnerable to sickos with Lefty policies such as allowing mental patients to roam the streets, illegal aliens, etc. Here in Denver, a sanctuary city, we'll see a news report about a kid snatched/raped in a public bathroom, and you can guess what the description of the perp is 99% of the time.

About 15 years ago had a friend whose 4 year old son was playing in the back yard while she was in the kitchen She looks out to see a man is molesting hers son. This was in a *nice* neighborhood, and yet this dude was roaming the alley and got in through the back gate.

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (NOIQH)

164 We learned to smoke burning the trash in a friend's back yard. His mom only smoked those L&Ms halfway down.

When we figured out how to get new ones, we kept our stash of Camels and Luckies in a box nailed to a tree down at the riverbank. We canoed and powerboated all over the Cuyahoga river.

Near the field that we used for playing pickup baseball, the twin tracks of the main line of the Baltimore and Ohio had freights running almost every half hour, and they were still running steam engines. We'd get excited when a diesel came by. Could rarely find the pennies we set on the tracks to see how flattened they could get.

Everybody knew how to swim and no one had any lessons. We made our own arrows for shooting cottontails, and man were they hard to kill. Took a dozen arrows sometimes.

Posted by: Les Kinetic at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (U6f54)

165 So, what happens? Does society break down and reset? Or is it pajama boys and nasty women in charge from here on out?
Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 12:00 PM (O7MnT)
-----------

The way I look at it, the pajama boys and nasty women are not going to reproduce. So eventually those of us who are sane and raising/have raised sane kids will repopulate this country.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (sBOL1)

166 At one point, my father was stationed at Camp Roberts, CA
Camp Roberts must of had it hay-day during WWII. It is a large base with your standard barracks and a large parade field (saw a single-engine plane land on it once). Most of the time the camp is empty, save a few dozen souls. On the back side, is/was a satellite station used by the military. My dad worked there.

Being empty, nobody lived on the post, so instead, we lived 20 miles South in Atascadero (known by some Californians as the home of a mental hospital). I went to school in Paso Robles and one one occasion, school closed early at noon and we walked the 10 miles home, down along US 101 through Templeton back to Atascadero.

Doing that today would be ... cause for legal action.

Vandenberg AFB wasn't too far South and, back in those days, they used to launch about one missile a day. We often could see the missiles from Atascadero. We also used to get jets out of Vandenberg break the sound barrier and unleash their sonic booms.

Posted by: Neo at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (e8kgV)

167 Child Protection is one of those ideas that starts out okay but quickly becomes a monster. Its reasonable to have a service to watch over kids who are runways, parents die or are in jail, or to hold on to kids temporarily when their parents go crazy. Its good to have someone who can step in when mom is beating the kids with wires because she sees spiders on their back. Its good to have someone to step in and take the daughter from a home where daddy creeps into her room at night.

But the mission grew and changed, it crept from "protect the absolutely most needy" into "we can raise your kids better" and what justified taking a kid away became broader and broader until its just crazy now.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (39g3+)

168 You really don't want to know the age one has to be to buy a BB gun now.

18, Just as if you are buying a rifle.

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (+BG/J)

169 Rode my sister's ten speed down the same big hill, missed the curve and shot into my driveway, applied the brakes which were wet from a misty rain and fully flipped over our backyard fence. My mom calls out "what was that loud noise?!?!". My childhood was like a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.

Posted by: NCKate at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (7ydCJ)

170
I would find a bottle and go exchange it for a nickel and buy candy. I think it was a nickel.

I think we only got three cents for bottles.

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (IqV8l)

171 My grade school years were in the '60s. We used to form armies over recess and roam the playground. It was hilarious.
The only dark spot that made us grow up a bit faster was the Cuban missile crisis. I remember my dad sitting us down to discuss what to do if we see a blinding bright light. I was 9 and I knew this was serious.
Then we headed back out to play.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (0tfLf)

172 That's a good thing!

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 11:53 AM (NOIQH)

Very true.

Posted by: Polliwog the 'Ette at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (rp9xB)

173 I'd love to let the kid run around in the woods by us but, honestly, there's sections where gay's meet up for anonymous sex

Posted by: Bigby's Typing Hands at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (AKThB)

174 151 Shotgun houses were developed in the South precisely because there was no a/c . Open the front and back door and let the breeze come through. Some were built with an attic fan.
*
*
A lot of my friends as I grew up lived in shotguns. And as soon as their parents could move to a better house with A/C, believe me, they did!

I guess I was lucky; we got the downstairs window unit before a lot of my close friends got theirs, or moved to air-conditioned houses. Remember, though, that we didn't have air in school -- not grammar school, not junior high (aka "middle school"), or high school. Must have been hell teaching in those buildings then, even with open windows plus fans.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (zpYxD)

175 Blaster said it better than I did. Think: would you let your kids out and be kids if there was the real possibility that you'd get hassled by the cops and the CPS Stasi if they got hurt or if some busybody neighbor called in a tip (say, the kid's riding his bike without protective gear?) just to be an asshole?
Nope.

Posted by: Jackal at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (txw3L)

176 You really don't want to know the age one has to be to buy a BB gun now.

18, Just as if you are buying a rifle.


WTF? I got a BB gun through the mail as a prize for selling seed packets.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (oVJmc)

177 Excellent point! It's July and people I come across in my travels tell me "It's too hot outside to do anything."


It was 112 on the drive home yesterday. So, yeah, it's possible.

Posted by: Blanco Basura at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (Hk/NM)

178 36
"What are you doing in here? Get outside and play!"

Whether stated explicitly or implied, that was Parental Rule #1, especially during the summer months.
Posted by: Krebs v Carnot: Epic Battle of the Cycling Stars (TM) at July 14, 2017 11:38 AM (fseE9)


-------------

Yup. And we didn't mind because it was just as hot in the house as it was outside. Swamp coolers didn't help much in OK summers. Snow cones and Nehi grape pop kept us cool.

Plus I didn't wear anything but cutoffs. The bottom of my feet were as tough as leather. And I always had a deep tan by the time summer was over.

Posted by: Soona at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (Fmupd)

179 My childhood was like a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.
Posted by: NCKate at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (7ydCJ)
-----------

My boys have peed out their bedroom window at night when they're too lazy to go into the bathroom, thanks to Calvin and Hobbes.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (sBOL1)

180 38 Yeah, when I was a kid we had similar rules: don't steal anything, don't set anything on fire, don't kill anybody, and be home by dinnertime. Other than that, we pretty much did what we wanted, and our parents had no idea where we were, other than we were "out playing in the neighborhood."

Any parents who let their kids loose like that today would probably be arrested for child abuse.
Posted by: TrivialPursuer at July 14, 2017 11:34 AM (IBcGJ)

Yup, that is how I was brought up also
Posted by: Nevergiveup at July 14, 2017 11:39 AM (5y11N)


We had The Fire rule too (exception magnifying glass) but I broke it when I got a chemistry set. It was just a little tar paper basement fire(but smoky) , so thats why my dad threw himself wild eyed in front of the fireman my mother had called when they charged the door with axes. They laughed all the way back to the station.

Posted by: Cannibal Bob, 'Hobo, the other white meat' at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (qdeLs)

181 Reagan, Bush, and Clinton had set about radical population change that eclipsed what Ted K started. It's true, even Reagan. Check it out.

We woke up one day and America was changed forever. But hay, at least we got some sweet tax breaks for banks and whatnot.
Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (AU4SY)




Yes, Uncle Ron foolishly signed on to amnesty. But I forgive him for being more preoccupied with the Cold War.

Moreover, not all the immigration was necessarily bad. I grew up with a lot of "boat people" kids, refugees from Communism all. Their experiences pushed me rightward to be sure. In fact, I remember Tom Hayden coming to speak at San Jose State and some of the Vietnamese Americans throwing rocks at him. I cheered.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (ujg0T)

182 My childhood mirrors this, right down to the bayou thing. Many a meal was planned around the fish me and my brother dragged out of the bayous. we'd get off the school bus, walk in the house, grab shotguns and head out onto a thousand acres of marsh and Gulf Coast prairie and what we came back with was protein for yet more meals.

We could walk to our neighbors a half mile away and play in the hay barn.

somehow I did not feel deprived.

Posted by: Mostly Cajun at July 14, 2017 12:06 PM (U5CmX)

183 Bigby! How are the babies?

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 12:06 PM (sBOL1)

184 168 You really don't want to know the age one has to be to buy a BB gun now.

18, Just as if you are buying a rifle.
Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (+BG/J)

Yeah, for though shalt shoot your eye out!

Posted by: Don Q. at July 14, 2017 12:06 PM (NgKpN)

185 Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (NOIQH)

I would shoot the guy, my husband would have killed him with his bare hands.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:06 PM (Ri/rl)

186 there's sections where gay's meet up for anonymous sex
Posted by: Bigby's Typing Hands

Where do you live?

Posted by: Shep Smith at July 14, 2017 12:06 PM (FZYNt)

187 My boys have peed out their bedroom window at night when they're too lazy to go into the bathroom, thanks to Calvin and Hobbes.

My brother and I did that; my mom thought there was a rust stain out our bedroom window.

Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 12:07 PM (O7MnT)

188 To some degree, many changes to society are being driven by technology.

I agree, tech definitely plays a part. All that stuff you used to imagine and make up yourself playing outside you can have just delivered to you by computer now.

So eventually those of us who are sane and raising/have raised sane kids will repopulate this country.

And hand them to the pajama boys and nasty women to teach and raise. They don't need to have kids, they can just take yours.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:07 PM (39g3+)

189 My boys have peed out their bedroom window at night when they're too lazy to go into the bathroom, thanks to Calvin and Hobbes.
=====

Ha! Been there, done that.

When I was a kid and had to pee and if someone was in the bathroom, my mother would just tell me to go outside.

Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 12:07 PM (vg8iE)

190 16 7 This was an awesome post.

I often mention to my daughter, no an adult, that I wish I could have shared the fun, the joys of the childhood I had.
Posted by: Our Country is Screwed at July 14, 2017 11:30 AM (jxbfJ)

Hardly anyone gets to have that anymore. I certainly didn't have that. If there was a way to selectively delete memory, is probably dump my entire childhood.
Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (0mRoj)

Don't get me wrong -there are a lot of things I'd like to purge from my memory as well.

But I think of all the fun that was had at my grandparents place, going over there every Sunday a smile comes to my face.

Getting out of the house and hopping on our bikes for hours and hours. Seeing who amongst my friends could ride a wheelie the furthest.

It is those memories that I wish my daughter had a chance to experience.

Posted by: Our Country is Screwed at July 14, 2017 12:07 PM (jxbfJ)

191 We have to explain, already, that our world doesn't love Jesus anymore and that the things you see and hear are very often wrong.
---

That is a great way to explain our sad state of affairs to a kid.

Posted by: @votermom @vm pimping great books usually free or sale at July 14, 2017 12:07 PM (hMwEB)

192 WTF? I got a BB gun through the mail as a prize for selling seed packets.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (oVJmc)

Same here, greeting cards.

Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 12:07 PM (lEhiV)

193 Excellent comment. Lyrical, even.

I'm seeing encouraging signs. Lately there have been more kids playing outside and walking around to local spots without grown-ups.

The bubble-wrap mentality doesn't seem to have such a hold on that generation of parents. Also, people my age are becoming young grandparents now and they remember what it was like both to be a free-range kid and to be an overprotective parent, and I think that provides some useful perspective. And while technology gets a lot of blame for lazy kids, I think ubiquitous cell phones with GPS have helped reassure even worrywarts that their kids aren't going to get lost over on the next block, and if anything does goes wrong, they'll know about it instantly.

It'll take time and push back before nannystaters lose their power, but it's entirely doable if we want it to happen.

Posted by: GalosGann at July 14, 2017 12:07 PM (md1b/)

194 Excellent point! It's July and people I come across in my travels tell me "It's too hot outside to do anything."


It was 112 on the drive home yesterday. So, yeah, it's possible.



Yeah. When it's 91 at 9:00 pm...

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:08 PM (YxyYj)

195 This topic comes up often on the ONT.

People of a certain age recollecting the good, wholesome, adventurous times of their adolescence, you know, 'growing up', and enjoying it, curiously unsupervised by adults.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at July 14, 2017 12:08 PM (OdK9v)

196 Yeah, for though shalt shoot your eye out!
Posted by: Don Q. at July 14, 2017 12:06 PM (NgKpN)

My husband told me his 6th or 7th birthday party was in a public park and all the little kids had BB guns and were shooting each other.

In a public park. Things that would never happen today.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:08 PM (Ri/rl)

197 Great post, agree with all of it. I lived it too.

Heard the other day:

We were taught to rely on

God
Family
Self

In that order. Liberals have attacked and tried to undermine religion, the family, and self reliance. If they can succeed, then the only thing left is to rely on Government.

Which is their real goal.

Posted by: Life of Brian at July 14, 2017 12:08 PM (sDBB0)

198 My brother and I did that; my mom thought there was a rust stain out our bedroom window.
Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 12:07 PM (O7MnT)
-----------

The way I found out was looking out their window one day at the roof of the porch and wondering what that streak was from. I have to give it to my kids; they don't lie to me.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 12:09 PM (sBOL1)

199 184 168 You really don't want to know the age one has to be to buy a BB gun now.

18, Just as if you are buying a rifle.
Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (+BG/J)

Yeah, for though shalt shoot your eye out!

Posted by: Don Q. at July 14, 2017 12:06 PM


Ha! My big brother actually did shoot out a tooth with his BB gun. That's why i never got to have one.
Idiot.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:09 PM (0tfLf)

200 Chickens were safer back then. Not completely safe, but safer than now.

Posted by: The Chicken at July 14, 2017 12:09 PM (XoldI)

201 187
My boys have peed out their bedroom window at night when they're too lazy to go into the bathroom, thanks to Calvin and Hobbes.



I know some drunk that did that at night. The window had a storm window.



Did not work out well, I am told.

Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 12:09 PM (lEhiV)

202 I'd put a lot of the blame for this also on liberalization of divorce law and welfare and the normalizing of single parenthood.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 12:09 PM (oVJmc)

203 When my parents would have people over who had kids I'd lock my bedroom door, climb out one of my windows and into a tree and come back into the house thru the kitchen. I didn't like stranger kids messing with my stuff. "The wind must have blown it shut, mom."

Posted by: NCKate at July 14, 2017 12:10 PM (7ydCJ)

204 This topic comes up often on the ONT.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at July 14, 2017 12:08 PM (OdK9v)

It does, and the same people tell the same stories (including me), and that is exactly the point.

Remembering a time in which our country was truly great is important; for nostalgia yes, but also to remind us what we need to work toward.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (wYseH)

205 Bike jumps in the street made of brick and plywood. I'll never forget the time I went off the jump and the handle bars came out of the stem. Oh, and the banana seat with a sissy bar.

Posted by: Bosk at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (n2K+4)

206 Still doing fine bluebell. Girl is starting on turning over on her own now. Starting to get a glimpse of her personality too - might be she's a scrapper lol

Hates her car seat and we have to go to Wisconsin soon. Pray for us all

Posted by: Bigby's Typing Hands at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (AKThB)

207 I've posted this before but my Father was either trying to kill me or make me into a man in his image because he bought me my first gun when I was seven which I was allowed to take out whenever I wanted. I was given his Marine issued machete and recurve bow soon after . A minibike when I was 8 , Honda 70 when I was 10 and a Yamaha Enduro 450 for graduation. Though he wasn't a country guy he encouraged me when I wanted to be a cowboy and entered me in the little britches rodeos . Unfortunately I'm still not half the man he was.

Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (bwBxJ)

208 Yes, Uncle Ron foolishly signed on to amnesty. But I forgive him for being more preoccupied with the Cold War.

***

Sure, reagan got rolled on amnesty but there's a reason why 20-40% of el salavador now lives about a mile from me. The never ending crisis what allows pretty much unlimited South American movement, forget about the DACA's and illegals.

Bush Sr let the somalis in

Clinton just said fuck it, Let's make Cali blue forever.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (AU4SY)

209 Tami - 5510 Nottingham. 63109 (It's ok. Haven't lived there in 37 years)

In the actual city. Not a burb.

Between Kingshighway Hampton. Chippewa Gravois Mills Rd.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:02 PM (YxyYj)

Ah ok. South of The Hill, right?
That's how I relate everything in the city. My Dad was from The Hill...we were there often. Hill Days...whatta eating fest!

Posted by: Tami at July 14, 2017 12:12 PM (Enq6K)

210 And yes at Wally World you too can buy a Red Ryder BB gun. Dunno about the Ovaltine.

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:12 PM (+BG/J)

211 My boys have peed out their bedroom window at night when they're too lazy to go into the bathroom

Meh, all boys do that. Its one of the few advantages of being a boy.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:12 PM (39g3+)

212 196 Yeah, for though shalt shoot your eye out!
Posted by: Don Q. at July 14, 2017 12:06 PM (NgKpN)

My husband told me his 6th or 7th birthday party was in a public park and all the little kids had BB guns and were shooting each other.

In a public park. Things that would never happen today.
Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:08 PM (Ri/rl)


Yeah we had some shooting wars. never go for the head. Body mass only so its safe. ...stings a bit.

Posted by: Cannibal Bob, 'Hobo, the other white meat' at July 14, 2017 12:12 PM (qdeLs)

213 My husband told me his 6th or 7th birthday party was in a public park and all the little kids had BB guns and were shooting each other.



Used to do that with cousins. In the front yard.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:12 PM (YxyYj)

214 That was a good read yesterday. I remember those times too with a great deal of sadness.

Posted by: jazzuscounty at July 14, 2017 12:12 PM (FCN1s)

215 Yeah. When it's 91 at 9:00 pm...

Or 7 AM, like today.

Posted by: Blanco Basura at July 14, 2017 12:12 PM (Hk/NM)

216 Did not work out well, I am told.
Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 12:09 PM (lEhiV)

I have a friend that peed in our friends parents recliner in the middle of the night. We had been drinking. He must've thought he was in the bathroom. He had to buy a new chair for the mother. He also has been known to pee in a closet.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:13 PM (Ri/rl)

217 oops

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:13 PM (dnROW)

218 I don't know about the state of our country in general but I am doing my best to pass the right things on to my boys, and to pass good boys on to our country.
My guys are in their early teens, active in wrestling and martial arts.
Took them out of the City to the burbs for a more normal/independent childhood.
They've played Little League, watch 4th of July fireworks and do not need to check in with us when with friends, if they come home on time.
They've both handled firearms, with supervision of course, and look forward to their trips to the range with Dad and Mom.
Their education includes additional curriculum from Dad, which has included Lone Survivor, Hillsdale lectures on the Constitution, American history from various sources they don't get in school.
They get an allowance, which was cut down in the summer in consideration that they have more time to work, and so the older one has a part time job and the younger supplements his allowance with special projects with and without Dad.

We're not perfect and God knows we could always do more, but I'm very proud of my boys, and at least in this family, their sensibilities are not so far off their old Dad's.

Posted by: xnycpeasant at July 14, 2017 12:13 PM (QtQaN)

219 hope nobody noticed the glitch in the matrix

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:13 PM (dnROW)

220 Clinton just said fuck it, Let's make Cali blue forever.

All those eager immigrants, California must be booming!

Oh, no?

Then where is all this economic miracle we were promised?

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 12:13 PM (oVJmc)

221 Blaster said it better than I did. Think: would you let your kids out and be kids if there was the real possibility that you'd get hassled by the cops and the CPS Stasi if they got hurt or if some busybody neighbor called in a tip (say, the kid's riding his bike without protective gear?) just to be an asshole?

Nope.

Posted by: Jackal at July 14, 2017 12:05 PM (txw3L)


That is exactly right. The risk is too high.

The CPS system is like our "justice" system, it seems like a necessary and good thing until you get caught up in it. If you have no interaction you don't know what it is like. ANYONE can make an accusation about you and you are presumed guilty. If someone makes a serious accusation about you, CPS can take your children from you on an emergency basis - no court order necessary. And the only way to get your kids back is to confess. Seriously - they take your kids, and they say you can get them back if you sign this "Safety Plan." And, oh, they won't necessarily tell you what you have been accused of, but you can probably figure it out from the context of the safety plan.

So let's say random person X makes an accusation that you did something to your child, CPS takes your kid, and then says you can have them back if you sign the plan. First, you want your kids, you don't want them in the foster system where terrible things happen, so you sign. And you read the plan, it says you won't allow Y situation to occur. And you say, well that's easy, that doesn't/didn't happen anyway. So no problem. But what you have done with that signature is agree that there was a need for that safety plan. It is a confession. And that confession, which was coerced, will be used against you.

Are you going to let your kids go out to check the mail on their own?

Posted by: blaster at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (tewYv)

222 My cabin in WV is on a septic system and a well. Peeing outside is the norm for the males in the house.

Our place here in KY is "rural" so....

Posted by: Deplorable Redneck Bitter Clinger at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (jAZR9)

223 Uh oh OregonMuse has keys to the time machine again...

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (+BG/J)

224


When I was 8 in the summer I wore a flimsy camisole and sat on the porch and batted my eyelashes at the boys, who for the most part were'nt interested. At night I'd tuck my junk between my legs and dream of the day when I could leave that boat anchor behind and look good in yoga pants.

Posted by: Caitlyn Jenner at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (OZmbA)

225 219
hope nobody noticed the glitch in the matrix


Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:13 PM (dnROW)

I did cuz I had just hit 'post'.

Posted by: Tami at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (Enq6K)

226 205 Bike jumps in the street made of brick and plywood. I'll never forget the time I went off the jump and the handle bars came out of the stem. Oh, and the banana seat with a sissy bar.
Posted by: Bosk at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (n2K+4)

My bike had a banana seat and a sissy bar. Yes my brothers ruined my bike going off of jumps.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (Ri/rl)

227 My whole frigging life is a monument to "boys will be boys". lol

Seriously though. I can't believe the shit we did growing up. I was in the burbs, but it was a very interesting place. Houses weren't cookie cutter, there was a huge, huge park a few blocks away, and there were woods, and train tracks. There was a trail that ran along the tracks, and kids were always riding minibikes. or smaller dirt bikes. There was a very small river/ stream that ran through the area and there was an old mill of some sort, so kids were always out in the woods. Kids had slingshots, or bows and arrows, or BB guns. In winter when the stream froze kids would ice skate. A few blocks up the street there was an estate section, old money, big houses that had names, and a lot of those bordered a golf course. It was an amazing area. So much to do, and nobody gave a shit.

These days we would probably have broken a dozen laws and our parents would be in court.

The fucking left, I call them the destroyer of civilizations.

Posted by: Berserker- Dragonheads Division at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (aMlLZ)

228 26
I loved my childhood.

Classic Huck Finn in a small town in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state.

We miss so much of that today.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 11:36 AM (0tfLf)

Concrete?

Posted by: kathysaysso at July 14, 2017 12:15 PM (vkS2Z)

229 9 CBD

Thank you for highlighting this.

Lots of wisdom and nostalgia in grizzledcoastie's words. Those of us that are 29 had a lot more freedom to invent and play than today's children.

Posted by: NaCly Dog at July 14, 2017 11:32 AM (hyuyC)
---
This! Been 29 for a couple of minutes now.. LOL

Posted by: NALNAMSAM - not as lean, not as mean, still a Marine at July 14, 2017 12:15 PM (lwKRt)

230 Ah ok. South of The Hill, right?
That's how I relate everything in the city. My Dad was from The Hill...we were there often. Hill Days...whatta eating fest!



Yeah. Just south of The Hill. My grandma lived on the Hill. My first paying job, cash under the table at 15, was at an eye tye restaurant on the Hill.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:15 PM (YxyYj)

231 I'm seeing encouraging signs. Lately there have been more kids playing outside and walking around to local spots without grown-ups.

I'm seeing that too. Also seeing fewer people with their face in the phone as well. Just walking around like a normal person. I don't know if its local or a shift in culture or what.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:15 PM (39g3+)

232
I guess I was lucky; we got the downstairs window unit before a lot of my close friends got theirs, or moved to air-conditioned houses. Remember, though, that we didn't have air in school -- not grammar school, not junior high (aka "middle school"), or high school. Must have been hell teaching in those buildings then, even with open windows plus fans.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (zpYxD)

-----------

This was true for me also. Even if it was a hundred fucking degrees inside the school, they just told us to suck it up and turn to page 15 for today's reading. And this was throughout my K12 years.

Posted by: Soona at July 14, 2017 12:15 PM (Fmupd)

233 Remembering a time in which our country was truly great is important; for nostalgia yes, but also to remind us what we need to work toward.

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (wYseH)


Also, our memory is a weapon against the progressives who want to stamp those things out.

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:15 PM (dnROW)

234 A little note about the "Vietnamese near-nekkid coffee shops" mentioned in the sidebar: That OC Register article was originally published 7 years ago! They dusted it off, and reprinted it practically verbatim, and passed it off as a "new" story. Even the freakin' pictures are 7 years old.

This is our news media now. Recycling very old news as clickbait. As our President would say, "Sad."

Posted by: Rusty Nail at July 14, 2017 12:15 PM (toi7g)

235 76 "...don't set anything on fire..."

Posted by: TrivialPursuer at July 14, 2017 11:34 AM (IBcGJ)

What?

What kind of a horrible childhood did you have?
___________________

Those were the rules, but being kids, we naturally didn't always follow the rules . . . .

Reminds me of this old boarded-up duplex in our neighborhood. It was a SF-only neighborhood, and the owner had violated the zoning rules, so the county told him to either convert it to SF, board it up, or tear it down. He'd chosen to board it up for years, and one night somebody got into it and set it on fire. It was going up in a big blaze, big enough to see from our house, which was a couple of blocks over. My mother woke up my brothers and me in the middle of the night and demanded to know if any of us had had anything to do with it. We hadn't, but since we were already awake, we jumped on our bikes and rode over and spent the rest of the night watching the firefighters trying to put out the fire.

Posted by: TrivialPursuer at July 14, 2017 12:16 PM (IBcGJ)

236 >>Remembering a time in which our country was truly great is important;
for nostalgia yes, but also to remind us what we need to work toward.



Definitely! When my son was in grade school there were enough families with kids in the same age range on our street that they group would bop from one house to the other during the summer and after school. Epic water gun fights, etc. Not as free as my childhood, but certainly never micro-managed. Son has thanked me for not being a "soccer mom".

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 12:16 PM (NOIQH)

237 Uh oh OregonMuse has keys to the time machine again...

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (+BG/J)


Nothing to see here...

Move along...

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:16 PM (dnROW)

238 171
The only dark spot that made us grow up a bit faster was the Cuban
missile crisis.


Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (0tfLf)

I was living at Fort Huachuca, AZ then and being a military base, we were considered a target. Some of our parents had moved out to staging positions around the country. And even at 7, it was serious business.
Later in life, I ran into a guy who was at McGuire AFB during this time. He told me how he was given the job to escort a number of "little blue containers" (nuclear devices) to Gitmo, weeks after they had arrived on based protected by only a padlock.

Posted by: Neo at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (e8kgV)

239 219 hope nobody noticed the glitch in the matrix

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:13


Is that what that was?
Here I thought it was Pixy flirting by letting me be first.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (0tfLf)

240 207 I've posted this before but my Father was either trying to kill me or make me into a man in his image because he bought me my first gun when I was seven which I was allowed to take out whenever I wanted. I was given his Marine issued machete and recurve bow soon after . A minibike when I was 8 , Honda 70 when I was 10 and a Yamaha Enduro 450 for graduation. Though he wasn't a country guy he encouraged me when I wanted to be a cowboy and entered me in the little britches rodeos . Unfortunately I'm still not half the man he was.
Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (bwBxJ)

My brothers got enduros for Christmas one year. They were 15 and 11. I got a purse. I'm still mad about that.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (Ri/rl)

241 220 Clinton just said fuck it, Let's make Cali blue forever.

All those eager immigrants, California must be booming!

***
You read VDH talk about the change. It's not just LA going Mex. The countryside is basically federally funded alternative countries.

Also, the Germans were the ones what got rolled on eceonomic benefits of muzzies and african children aged 45 who can't read good.

Americans got rolled on this subject because we're a bit evangelical. We're letting them in because it's good for them, we assume. Of course, the details lose things like numbers and what they do when here. But hey not all X are like that, hater, I know one X who was like the best person you ever met.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (AU4SY)

242 Can someone please try to explain why the GOP is completely paralyzed with fear?

These useless cunts are squandering this once in a lifetime opportunity!

Assholes.

Posted by: Kreplach at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (2JcMg)

243 I put a huge lizard in our refrigerator and when my mom opened the door it pounced on her. I laughed my ass off at that.

Posted by: NCKate at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (7ydCJ)

244 Whadya do, Oregon?

Posted by: @votermom @vm pimping great books usually free or sale at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (hMwEB)

245

I would run in the woods, climb 100-foot decrepit abandoned oil derricks, pick and eat huckleberries from the bush, catch possums by poking them with a stick until they "sulled up" (played dead) and then pick them up by the tail. Some kids took them to school on the bus.

Posted by: Sphynx at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (OZmbA)

246 OT personal:

For those who are interested I acquired shelter. Thanks to all who offered up prayers. The way forward is not particularly bright but the immediate crisis has been averted.

Thank you all.

Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)

247 I have a friend that peed in our friends parents recliner in the middle of the night. We had been drinking. He must've thought he was in the bathroom. He had to buy a new chair for the mother. He also has been known to pee in a closet.

Oldest brother, Solo Basura, one got so hammered at a party he walked into the parent's bedroom and proceeded to urinate on their bed. Wouldn't have been so bad had the "host's" parents not been in the bed at the time.

Posted by: Blanco Basura at July 14, 2017 12:18 PM (Hk/NM)

248 Fiddled with the time machine again, I see...

Posted by: @votermom @vm pimping great books usually free or sale at July 14, 2017 12:18 PM (hMwEB)

249 222. And how are things in Appalachia? Grew up in West By God Virginia. Had a very good childhood, too, for a jewbilly Kekistani refugee.

Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. All Honor & Glory to Kekistan! at July 14, 2017 12:18 PM (TwwWO)

250 I have just one question: for those of us who dedicatedly don't read the content but do read the comments, does reading the content in this case count as reading the comments?
IT'S LIKE A CONTRADICTION AND STUFF *stares at hands*

Posted by: Sporkatus at July 14, 2017 12:18 PM (eXSOZ)

251 Gah. This is depressing the hell out of me.

Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 12:18 PM (0mRoj)

252 58 I had that when I was 7-8. then we moved to Houston.

Just now going through the comments. Have to say that I had those times, and I grew up in Houston. You must be a whole lot younger than me.

Posted by: jazzuscounty at July 14, 2017 12:18 PM (FCN1s)

253 Bush Sr let the somalis in

Clinton just said fuck it, Let's make Cali blue forever.
Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:11 PM (AU4SY)




Don't forget the whole Bush Dynasty had and still has this delusion that they could win a Hispandering contest, aided and abetted by the Wall Street Journal greedheads who just cynically wanted cheap hired hands.

And yes, I grew up around a lot of "chicano" Mexican Americans and later Salvadoran Americans as well. Spome were great people. But I could tell we would need to be more choosy about who we let in, even back then.

And when lib "feminists" turned a blind eye to "machismo" spouse abuse....

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:18 PM (ujg0T)

254 Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)

Vlad, that's wonderful!!!!

I will continue to pray for you.

Posted by: @votermom @vm pimping great books usually free or sale at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (hMwEB)

255 Most of the kids in my neighborhood had mini-bikes.
Once in a while the cops chased us-- halfheartedly.

Posted by: Under Fire at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (mcI77)

256 "...don't set anything on fire..."

Posted by: TrivialPursuer at July 14, 2017 11:34 AM (IBcGJ)

What?

What kind of a horrible childhood did you have?
___________________

Those were the rules, but being kids, we naturally didn't always follow the rules . . . .




Usually it meant no structures.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (YxyYj)

257 A high-trust, mostly homogeneous, mostly Christian society is what made those things possible. Now we have "diversity" and "multiculturalism" instead.

If you showed people back in that era a picture of the United States today, they'd think they were seeing a vision of Hell. It's funny to me that people can still call themselves "conservatives." After more than half a century of the cultural Marxist firebombing of Western civilization, is there even anything left to conserve?

Posted by: Antisocialite at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (Z0/+C)

258 187 My boys have peed out their bedroom window at night when they're too lazy to go into the bathroom, thanks to Calvin and Hobbes.

My brother and I did that; my mom thought there was a rust stain out our bedroom window.

*
*
My brother and I never did that -- if we had, Mom would have dismembered us. (We were renting.) But we did our own kinds of scampery.

In the summer of '67, Mom decided we were eating too much junk food. Rather than, yanno, not buy it, she put a padlock on the kitchen cabinet. (Mom worked nights and left us, ages 13 and 11, to our own devices in the summer.) I found that if you removed the drawer just above, you could reach down and come up with goodies.

She nailed a board at the end of the drawer.

So I realized there was enough play in the cabinet doors that I could unscrew the hasp that held the padlock, open the cabinet, then reinstall the hasp before we went to bed. Unable to figure out how the food was disappearing, she threw up her hands. "Get fat. You'll lost he weight when you go back to school anyway."

Thus ended the Great Junk Food Raid of 1967.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (zpYxD)

259 Over on Flickr some 4,300 photos from Normandy have been posted including German photos. Like this one.

It's good to be the occupying force at Cafe Brassiere and look at the shorts on that gal to the left.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosnormandie/1687216415/in/photostream/

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (+BG/J)

260 I guess I was lucky; we got the downstairs window unit before a lot of my close friends got theirs, or moved to air-conditioned houses. Remember, though, that we didn't have air in school -- not grammar school, not junior high (aka "middle school"), or high school. Must have been hell teaching in those buildings then, even with open windows plus fans.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (zpYxD)


****

hahaha, yeah, my florida house got one wall mounted AC unit and one window AC unit making two rooms in the house cold. Wasn't for my bedroom. But it was a treat.

Also, these idyllic reveries make me think this was what Hot Rod was going for as a movie.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (AU4SY)

261 I grew up in the 1980s in different places but this story parallels my own childhood. We were all about free range. Once I learned how to ride a bike, forget it. I was gone!

Posted by: CatchThirtyThr33 at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (1k+zy)

262 Vlad thank you for bringing good news, and good on you for finding shelter. A lot of people here were praying for you.

Posted by: blaster at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (tewYv)

263 246 OT personal:

For those who are interested I acquired shelter. Thanks to all who offered up prayers. The way forward is not particularly bright but the immediate crisis has been averted.

Thank you all.
Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)

Well thank goodness for that at least. Please don't be a stranger.

Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (0mRoj)

264 For those who are interested I acquired shelter. Thanks to all who offered up prayers. The way forward is not particularly bright but the immediate crisis has been averted.

Thank you all.
Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)
-----------

Vlad. That is so good to hear. One little step at a time. Keep going. I'll keep praying.

Thank you for checking in with us.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (sBOL1)

265 I even on other sites ( especially on a couple) read the comments some only a couple

Posted by: Skip at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (9g/6M)

266 For those who are interested I acquired shelter. Thanks to all who offered up prayers. The way forward is not particularly bright but the immediate crisis has been averted.

Thank you all.


Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)

=======

So glad to hear that. Take care of yourself.

Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 12:20 PM (vg8iE)

267 255 Most of the kids in my neighborhood had mini-bikes.
Once in a while the cops chased us-- halfheartedly.
Posted by: Under Fire at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (mcI77)

The kids all rode dirt bikes at a place called mud lake. There's houses there now, I call them mud lake estates. No one likes that name.

Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:20 PM (Ri/rl)

268 >>Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17



Fabulous news, Vlad!!

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 12:20 PM (NOIQH)

269 I do notice that today's culture seems to want to "protect" children from perfectly harmless things, like sunshine or church attendance, and yet works to mind-rape them with inappropriate sexual topics


"All that is solid melts into air...."

The Commiecrats have gone from economic to cultural.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 11:50 AM (ujg0T)



The Left's brilliant insight was this-

Their economics are profoundly stupid but makes those at the top and who are connected rich.

Most middle class people like the economics of their lives and can mostly/sometimes/often see the scam. So, getting us aboard their bus to our own poverty is a tough sell.


But.....everybody, everybody has some emotional issue that eats at them.

So, the Left has concocted a boogieman to blame for "your emotional issue" or "your failure in life".

And stupid people fall for it.

Apparently, there are about 20-30% hardcore stupid voters in the US.

And about 20-30% who lean stupid.

This is why Dims are so retardedly emotional about their politics and can't be argued with logically.

You are just another boogieman/boogiewoman attacking them for their "problems that you people caused".


It's a bit like really sophisticated brainwashing and tough to crack.

Look how many volunteer "manchurian candidates" occupy education, culture, and gov't.

How do you walk this back? I don't know.

Posted by: naturalfake at July 14, 2017 12:20 PM (NyJwR)

270 257 A high-trust, mostly homogeneous, mostly Christian society is what made those things possible. Now we have "diversity" and "multiculturalism" instead.

***

from high trust, virtue assumed society to a low-trust extreme virtue signaled society where everyone is behind plexiglass.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:20 PM (AU4SY)

271 Another part of what made our childhood what it was, was the still-existing Judeo-Christian heritage. Even most people who were not Christian were basically Christian in their worldview, and believed in some absolute, external concept of justice, truth, and an afterlife. The ideas of there being right and wrong and that one should avoid the latter while encouraging the former were part of our assumptions, without being questioned.

The concept that one was responsible not just to yourself but someone greater than you, someone to whom obedience and honor was due was part of the culture. You grew up just knowing that truth was good and lies wrong, that good was better than evil, and there was a clear delineating division.

Abandoning all that has much more significant rot inside than telling kids they can't play outdoors. Embracing it has a far more healthy effect than letting jr have a BB gun.

Its the why things were done, without thinking about it. Losing that means you lose the things that were done, too.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:20 PM (39g3+)

272 Hardly anyone gets to have that anymore. I certainly didn't have that. If there was a way to selectively delete memory, is probably dump my entire childhood.
Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (0mRoj)



Don't feel bad. You are not alone. As I meant to illustrate with my 1970's and 1980's stories, childhood could really suck.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:20 PM (ujg0T)

273 238 171
The only dark spot that made us grow up a bit faster was the Cuban
missile crisis.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:04 PM (0tfLf)

I was living at Fort Huachuca, AZ then and being a military base, we were considered a target. Some of our parents had moved out to staging positions around the country. And even at 7, it was serious business.
Later in life, I ran into a guy who was at McGuire AFB during this time. He told me how he was given the job to escort a number of "little blue containers" (nuclear devices) to Gitmo, weeks after they had arrived on based protected by only a padlock.

Posted by: Neo at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM


I was up by Seattle and I remember it was the first time I looked at a map. Dad had it spread on the table and from what my little mind could tell, we were "mostly" out of range so I'm thinking no big deal.

I like the padlock thing. Ironically I grew up to become an Army officer and NRAS custodian in Europe. The padlocks weren't much better I think, but at least there were two.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:21 PM (0tfLf)

274 Thank you all.
Posted by: Vlad the impaler



Great news!

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:21 PM (YxyYj)

275 Life is often only a tiny step to go forward at a time.

Posted by: Skip at July 14, 2017 12:21 PM (9g/6M)

276 257. 'Conservative' is now largely meaningless. More and more, I'm embracing the concept of counter-revolutionary insurgent.

Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. All Honor & Glory to Kekistan! at July 14, 2017 12:21 PM (TwwWO)

277 Though he wasn't a country guy he encouraged me when I wanted to be a cowboy and entered me in the little britches rodeos . Unfortunately I'm still not half the man he was.
Posted by: Jack Sock
------------

Jack - Chet Atkins: http://tinyurl.com/z2976af

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at July 14, 2017 12:22 PM (OdK9v)

278 242 Can someone please try to explain why the GOP is completely paralyzed with fear?

These useless cunts are squandering this once in a lifetime opportunity!

Assholes.


You Rubes will vote for us anyway. You have no choice.
Now GFY.

Posted by: GOP at July 14, 2017 12:22 PM (mcI77)

279 That is great to hear Vlad, you really need to publish an e-book titled One Thousand and One Ways to Impale Your Enemies.

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:22 PM (+BG/J)

280 And growing up in Ohio, I experienced much the same thing, but with lakes and woodlands instead of the seacoast. My friends from California say much the same thing. WTF? The left captured the institutions of powers and so-called learning.

Posted by: Locke Common at July 14, 2017 12:22 PM (0/O2t)

281 I got a red rider BB gun for christmas when I was around 10. First thing I did was start shooting the ornaments off the tree. Mom was pissed . lol

Posted by: Berserker- Dragonheads Division at July 14, 2017 12:23 PM (aMlLZ)

282 I grew up in the 1980s in different places but this story parallels my own childhood. We were all about free range. Once I learned how to ride a bike, forget it. I was gone!
=======

We had bikes and horses. Same story - gone on one or the other...

Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 12:23 PM (vg8iE)

283 276 257. 'Conservative' is now largely meaningless. More and more, I'm embracing the concept of counter-revolutionary insurgent.

**
was conservative when america was engaged in battle of ideas.

now america is engaged in a battle for its destiny. Either nationalism or globohomo. Sorry, I'll take nationalism over tax cuts.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:23 PM (AU4SY)

284 Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 12:03 PM (NOIQH)

Your friend's experience shows that there are some people that everyone else will simply *never* be safe from. If a fenced back yard is no protection we either need to acknowledge that some people will *always* be dangerous and no amount of precautions will be enough, or keep the kids indoors all the time. Society seems to have chosen the latter, and the really sad part is that the predators just move indoors too so the kids aren't actually any safer.

Posted by: Polliwog the 'Ette at July 14, 2017 12:23 PM (rp9xB)

285 'Conservative' is now largely meaningless. More and more, I'm embracing the concept of counter-revolutionary insurgent.
Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. All Honor & Glory to Kekistan! at July 14, 2017 12:21 PM (TwwWO)

As this thread is evidence, we're not conservatives any more because the current status quo isn't worth conserving.

Posted by: joe, living dangerously at July 14, 2017 12:23 PM (KUaJL)

286 I recall reading an article in the Washington Post regarding culture clashes in the area as we have lots of people from outside the US who live here. A townhouse development with people from Africa letting their kids, age 6 and 8, play by a creek behind the house (which most of us, age 29 or so, did a lot). Nosy neighbor (my guess, full on Maryland liberal American) calls CPS.

Yeah, like that.

Posted by: blaster at July 14, 2017 12:24 PM (tewYv)

287 264 For those who are interested I acquired shelter. Thanks to all who offered up prayers. The way forward is not particularly bright but the immediate crisis has been averted.

Thank you all.
Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)
-----------

*
*
Good for you, Vlad.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 12:24 PM (zpYxD)

288 278 242 Can someone please try to explain why the GOP is completely paralyzed with fear?

Because the Dems read Machiavelli first. They play hardball and no doubt have the pictures needed to keep most of the GOPers in line.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:24 PM (0tfLf)

289 Anna I could sit and look at every one of those, but got stuff to do outside right now.

Posted by: Skip at July 14, 2017 12:24 PM (9g/6M)

290 Vlad, my main Romanian man! May it keep well for you, and give you time to think and plan and advance.

Shaky shelter will frazzle anyone - lot of us have been through that. Keep the Horde posted.

Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. All Honor & Glory to Kekistan! at July 14, 2017 12:25 PM (TwwWO)

291 272 Hardly anyone gets to have that anymore. I certainly didn't have that. If there was a way to selectively delete memory, is probably dump my entire childhood.
Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (0mRoj)


Don't feel bad. You are not alone. As I meant to illustrate with my 1970's and 1980's stories, childhood could really suck.
Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:20 PM (ujg0T)

Yeah. It just makes me deeply sad to think about it, which I always do when this subject comes up. It's like cuts in your soul that never heal.

Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 12:25 PM (0mRoj)

292 When I was 8 in the summer I wore a flimsy camisole and sat on the porch and batted my eyelashes at the boys, who for the most part were'nt interested. At night I'd tuck my junk between my legs and dream of the day when I could leave that boat anchor behind and look good in yoga pants.
Posted by: Caitlyn Jenner at July 14, 2017 12:14 PM (OZmbA)



What is REALLY sad is that when I was 8 I was cheering a then very manly Bruce Jenner on, as he was training at San Jose State track and field for the 1976 Montreal Olympics. WTF happened? Did the Kardashians fuck with his head?

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:25 PM (ujg0T)

293 In the late 70's early 80's, my buddies and I made a trail behind the cemetery. Well, not made exactly, the whitetail deer made it, but we improved it. It went from the edge of the big park in town almost to one of our houses. Year after year we kept it clear cutting back bushes and moving the trail as it washed out down the ravine it ran along side. BB guns, BMX bikes, Mini bikes, mopeds, overnight camping, squirrel and mushroom hunting, you name it, it was done. It became a popular shortcut for everyone and we were proud.

Well, it's paved now. It has a name too, some nobody that never put into it nearly what we did.

Posted by: IP at July 14, 2017 12:25 PM (MdC1o)

294 My brothers got enduros for Christmas one year. They were 15 and 11. I got a purse. I'm still mad about that.

Yeah that's not right. And it does highlight something about the past: it wasn't all sepia-tinted joy. There were wrong things then, too. They were just different wrong things that we took for granted. Getting the daughter a dirt bike is fine, too, she's not going to turn into one of those girls. Girls will be girls even if they do boyish stuff as a kid. We all knew girls like that, they'd be just as scrappy and adventurous as us, until a certain age when suddenly they were all interested in lipstick and stopped wanting to play cowboys and indians with us.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:25 PM (39g3+)

295 Posted by: CaliGirl at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (Ri/rl)

Heh I can understand that. Okay so admittedly misogyny was a negative at that time. Unfortunately the pendulum has swung over way too much in an attempt to correct. How come we can never stay in the sweet spot for more than a second? Aggravating.

Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 12:25 PM (bwBxJ)

296 278 242 Can someone please try to explain why the GOP is completely paralyzed with fear?

These useless cunts are squandering this once in a lifetime opportunity!

Assholes.


***

so much snark wells up inside me. At the end of the day, our leaders are shit.

McConnel was scared of losing his deep red senate seat and stole funds that could have gone to purple contests.

Ryan is a globohomo cuck who is embarassed about our president.

McCain...ah sweet sad McCain.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:25 PM (AU4SY)

297 Hmm, grizzledcoastie is only a year older than me. Wonder if we served together? Coast Guard isn't that big of a service.

Posted by: Scott-High Plains Deplorable at July 14, 2017 12:26 PM (XQOnA)

298 In 4th grade I did a book report on a civil war book called "Rifles For Waitie," and as a prop I brought my father's Spencer Repeating Rifle into school.

Imagine what would happen today in pretty much any elementary school in the country....

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at July 14, 2017 12:26 PM (wYseH)

299 Your friend's experience shows that there are some people that everyone else will simply *never* be safe from. If a fenced back yard is no protection we either need to acknowledge that some people will *always* be dangerous and no amount of precautions will be enough, or keep the kids indoors all the time. Society seems to have chosen the latter, and the really sad part is that the predators just move indoors too so the kids aren't actually any safer.




Or, some people simply need to be shot.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:26 PM (YxyYj)

300 261 I grew up in the 1980s in different places but this story parallels my own childhood. We were all about free range. Once I learned how to ride a bike, forget it. I was gone!
Posted by: CatchThirtyThr33 at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (1k+zy)

-------------

Yup.

Posted by: Soona at July 14, 2017 12:27 PM (Fmupd)

301 This weekend, my 14yo middle daughter and a bunch of friends are heading up to a cabin in Wisconsin. Last time they went, they sent pictures of them target shooting with BB guns. I'll be helping my 7yo try to learn to ride a 2-wheeler. My 16yo? Yeah, she'll probably spend the weekend buried in her phone. But 2 out of 3 ain't bad!

Posted by: Chris M at July 14, 2017 12:27 PM (eAZVt)

302 The 11th Commandment is
No Republican can take away a entitlement that the Democrats give away.

Republicans are 0 for that in the last 156 years

Posted by: Skip at July 14, 2017 12:27 PM (9g/6M)

303 We walked everywhere (or rode bikes) because our parents worked and weren't home during summer days. My sister and a friend would go to Sea-Tac and collect carts for the refunds. I'd spend entire days in a Douglas Fir tree reading and eating licorice whips and candy cigarettes. We'd roam all over the place. Heck, even our dogs roamed around and weren't chained or contained. We were 10 years old, and took care of ourselves.

Posted by: kathysaysso at July 14, 2017 12:27 PM (vkS2Z)

304 Skip, yeah. This one can simply be called the Victor and the Vanquished

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosnormandie/1588324862/in/photostream/

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:27 PM (+BG/J)

305 My childhood was in the 50s and was similar. On my one block there were over 70 kids from 1 to 18 so I had 4 other guys my same age to hang with. Things we did would now days get us and our parents arrested. We'd go anywhere, especially once we had bikes, which were freedom to us as getting a car as a teen was later.


Posted by: geoffb5 at July 14, 2017 12:27 PM (d3wbb)

306 285. Bingo. As I said upthread, we're not the normies.

**places tendy on Kek altar, pours libation to Tengri. Looks at suit hanging for his RC class this afternoon. **

Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. All Honor & Glory to Kekistan! at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (TwwWO)

307 276 257. 'Conservative' is now largely meaningless. More and more, I'm embracing the concept of counter-revolutionary insurgent.
Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. All Honor & Glory to Kekistan! at July 14, 2017 12:21 PM (TwwWO)

=================================================

It's worth noting that, at it's roots, American Conservativism is more a descendant of the British Whig (Classical Liberal) tradition, not Toryism. The only Tories left on the American right are the George Will set.

Posted by: Jackal at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (txw3L)

308
Remember, though, that we didn't have air in school -- not grammar school, not junior high (aka "middle school"), or high school. Must have been hell teaching in those buildings then, even with open windows plus fans.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius


Same when I went to school but we didn't go back until after Labor Day. Around here they go back August 1.

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (IqV8l)

309 Same age as me, I was 8 in 68 and just turned 57 this week. We rode bikes (stingrays) 8 mile one way to old bauxite pit to rife our bikes in dirt. Carried a surplus army canteen for water and often stop and knocked on doors to drink from the water hose. Been stripped naked and washed down with the hose cause I was too dirty to come in the house. Paid cash for cars the last 20 years. Paid cash for both degrees my daughter earned. Paid cash for healthcare since about 1996. Only had catastrophic plans for family many years.

Now everyone thinks I owe them something. Free Healthcare, abortions, BC pills, college education, EBT card, housing, phone, internet, and prolly a BJ if you look hard enough.

There has never been a more ungrateful, lazy, worthless, spoiled, illiterate, uneducated, group of sluts, whores, C'suckers, ne'er do wells ever assembled on the face of the earth.

Posted by: Rhennigantx at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (bmkS9)

310 My childhood was basically the polar opposite of the idyllic bayou childhood described by grizzledcoastie.

I won't go all poetic like he did, and I'll keep it short and brief, but:

Inner city, extreme racial violence as a matter of course, sex education classes starting in fourth grade that were XXX rated, gay runaways on the corner looking for tricks, heroin dealers in pimp hats, parents joining hippie-dippie cults, kids growing up in communes where molestation was the accepted norm, constant intense hatred of America and anything "middle-class," and on and on -- I could write volumes about all the insanity.

School hallways were a constant war between rival black gangs, Asian gangs, and Mexican gangs. My chemistry teacher had his skull crushed in because he gave one student an "F" -- he survived and continued teaching. 80% of the kids I knew had divorced parents -- few marriages survived intact. I fifth grade, I went over to a friend's house, and his mom with in bed having sex with three guys, with the door open. My school song in ninth grade, that we had to sing at every assembly, was "Young, Gifted and Black" -- even though only 35%-40% of the school was black. I was never taught one thing about "white history," which was disparaged with intense vitriol. We ONLY ever learned "black history" - -Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, the tribes of Africa, etc. Drugs were everywhere, a constant pressure. Most kids eventually caved in and entered the drug culture. I was practically unique in resisting it.

Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

311 >>Society seems to have chosen the latter, and the really sad part is that
the predators just move indoors too so the kids aren't actually any
safer.


That's the thing - our city's leaders, at least some of them, side with the predators, the criminals, the deviants. If your president and mayors are not only allowing MS-13 across the border, but having DHS supply transportation inland, and then telling public schools they *must* enroll them despite no ID (no check on age, vaccinations, etc.), then you get the MD. school bathroom gang-rapes and the MS-13 killing of teens in LI.

Yes, one can be overprotective, but we now have those in our communities inviting the predators in.

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (NOIQH)

312 That's great news, Vlad. You've been on my mind.

Posted by: fly gal at July 14, 2017 12:29 PM (8TdcF)

313 Great post by grizzledcoastie!. I wish they could find some way to disseminate to a larger audience than is here. Also, I didn't recognize that handle. Maybe they were lurking. but I'm glad they posted!

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at July 14, 2017 12:29 PM (iVOAv)

314 Hope all you Royalist keep you heads today.

Posted by: Skip at July 14, 2017 12:29 PM (9g/6M)

315
Now everyone thinks I owe them something. Free Healthcare, abortions, BC pills, college education, EBT card, housing, phone, internet, and prolly a BJ if you look hard enough.

There has never been a more ungrateful, lazy, worthless, spoiled, illiterate, uneducated, group of sluts, whores, C'suckers, ne'er do wells ever assembled on the face of the earth.
========

Right on Right on Right on

Posted by: bicentennialguy at July 14, 2017 12:29 PM (vg8iE)

316 And I remember the time I fell out of
old Boo Radley's apple tree...
...and broke my arm.
And my father, before he passed away...
...from the disease of the lepers...
...he came and he scooped me up
and he ran me all the way to Dr. Pepper's.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:29 PM (AU4SY)

317 Wow, photo taken by an F-5 photo-recon Lighting of Gold Beach, King Red sector on 6 June 1944.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosnormandie/1588250982/in/photostream/

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:29 PM (+BG/J)

318 >>>251 Gah. This is depressing the hell out of me.
Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 12:18 PM (0mRoj)

Why?

Posted by: m at July 14, 2017 12:30 PM (VgThI)

319 Life was great, growing up in Winchestertonfieldville

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:30 PM (AU4SY)

320 308
Remember, though, that we didn't have air in school -- not grammar school, not junior high (aka "middle school"), or high school. Must have been hell teaching in those buildings then, even with open windows plus fans.
Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius

Same when I went to school but we didn't go back until after Labor Day. Around here they go back August 1.

*
*
It shifted -- school used to start after Labor Day and end in early June. After 1966 school started up in late August and ended in mid-May.

Didn't matter. The climate still was hot, as it is to this day.

Posted by: Wolfus Aurelius at July 14, 2017 12:30 PM (zpYxD)

321 We were sitting on our deck last night and heard an odd sounds- children playing outside. That was a societal staple when we were kids, yet we sat enjoying it like entertainment for about a half-hour.

We have a new neighbor around the corner. On July 4th, he put up the most magnificent display of flags and a big "Happy Birthday" sign with balloons. It was unusual in the sense that the only people who put up flags in my neighborhood are mostly vets. The average person can't be bothered.

What I will tell you is both of those families are immigrants. One from South America and the other from the Middle East. You have to find some irony in the fact that liberals are trying to destroy our social mores and traditions, while some of the grateful more recent immigrants are restoring

Posted by: Marcus T at July 14, 2017 12:30 PM (TE03o)

322 271 "Another part of what made our childhood what it was, was the still-existing Judeo-Christian heritage. Even most people who were not Christian were basically Christian in their worldview, and believed in some absolute, external concept of justice, truth, and an afterlife. The ideas of there being right and wrong and that one should avoid the latter while encouraging the former were part of our assumptions, without being questioned. "

***

Exactly. There is no longer a belief in absolute truth, and so there's no longer any solid moral foundation for society. We have so many people with wealth and power, yet no real authority; we just spiral further and further out of control.

Posted by: Antisocialite at July 14, 2017 12:30 PM (Z0/+C)

323 Well, it's paved now. It has a name too, some nobody that never put into it nearly what we did.

Yeah, thats a cool story but it sucks how it turned out heh.

Can someone please try to explain why the GOP is completely paralyzed with fear?

They are isolated from their voters, surrounded by leftists, and get all their information from news sources that hate them. They never had much courage to start with, and what little they had has been watered down by "the way things get done" and "you have to compromise in this system" until all they are left with is being a wretched politician, not a man at all.

And like others have said, they'll get reelected anyway. But what they don't seem to grasp is that the same incumbent effect that protects them for being worthless would protect them for being courageous as well. 90% of them will get reelected even if they vote to totally repeal the ACA. But they don't think of it, because they're drowning in a sea of leftist voices.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:30 PM (39g3+)

324 244 Whadya do, Oregon?

Posted by: @votermom @vm pimping great books usually free or sale at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (hMwEB)


I blame CBD.

I noticed the link to grizzledcoastie's comment went nowhere and fixed the coding error. The when I saved it, I accidentally saved it back in draft, which scared the crap out of me, because when I refreshed the page, all the comments were gone. So I published it and all the comments came back.

Whew!

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:31 PM (dnROW)

325 Anna your keeping me tied to this tablet for the afternoon

Posted by: Skip at July 14, 2017 12:31 PM (9g/6M)

326 Can someone please try to explain why the GOP is completely paralyzed with fear?

Fear is just the excuse. The truth is, they're progressive corporatists. Same as the Democrats.

Why do you think Obamacare makes people buy insurance they're never going to use? (Making 58 year old men pay for obstetrics and gynecology?) Crony capitalism 101: Use the state to force people to pay for things they're never going to use and keep the profit.

Big Insurance writes big checks to both sides.

Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 12:31 PM (O7MnT)

327 For those who are interested I acquired shelter.
Thanks to all who offered up prayers. The way forward is not
particularly bright but the immediate crisis has been averted.

Thank you all.


Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)

Great news Vlad! May things continue to improve. Do not be afraid to ask for help here. People want to help if you want it.

Posted by: Tami at July 14, 2017 12:31 PM (Enq6K)

328 305
My childhood was in the 50s and was similar. On my one block there were
over 70 kids from 1 to 18 so I had 4 other guys my same age to hang
with. Things we did would now days get us and our parents arrested. We'd
go anywhere, especially once we had bikes, which were freedom to us as
getting a car as a teen was later.




Posted by: geoffb5 at July 14, 2017 12:27 PM (d3wbb)

Same here. One week all the kids in the neighborhood got mad at their parents and we decided to "run away".
Well, the parents found out about it, and set us big time. I remember mom helping me pack my "run away from home bag".
After a while, I decided maybe it was too much trouble to leave, so we all decide to stay home.

Posted by: Ralph at July 14, 2017 12:32 PM (lEhiV)

329 Wow, zombie. Just. Wow. To survive that intact is quite an impressive feat. Good on you.

Posted by: fly gal at July 14, 2017 12:32 PM (8TdcF)

330 I was always amazed by how my mother could tell us almost everything we did in a day even though we were no where near the house. It didn't occur to me until I was a teenager that the neighborhood moms all called each to report the whereabouts of their kids. Plus, my family was so large we had a relative on almost every block. When I was a senior in high school, I had at least one cousin in every grade below me.

Posted by: no good deed at July 14, 2017 12:32 PM (hsb2w)

331 There has never been a more ungrateful, lazy, worthless, spoiled, illiterate, uneducated, group of sluts, whores, C'suckers, ne'er do wells and Methodists ever assembled on the face of the earth.

Fixed.

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:33 PM (dnROW)

332 At some point, we do need to think about what kind of world we will leave for Keith Richards.

Posted by: Grump928(C) at July 14, 2017 12:33 PM (LTHVh)

333 Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at July 14, 2017 12:22 PM (OdK9v)

Thanks for that link. I still keep a bottle of Old Spice just so I can smell it and conjure up memories of my father.

Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 12:33 PM (bwBxJ)

334
I do notice that today's culture seems to want to "protect" children from perfectly harmless things, like sunshine or church attendance, and yet works to mind-rape them with inappropriate sexual topics


They rob kids of their childhood.The left believes young kids be socially aware,environmentally conscious and engaged with the important issues of the day

Posted by: Deplorable Male Logic at July 14, 2017 12:33 PM (lKyWE)

335 307. Sadly, it seems that classical liberalism - wonderful though it is - is not a durable system. Or, as some have said, 'liberalism is not sufficient to secure and maintain liberalism.' There's a huge cultural stock we drew upon and just assumed existed naturally and spontaneously. Like all heirs, we took it for granted.

Posted by: Your Decidedly Devious Uncle Palpatine. All Honor & Glory to Kekistan! at July 14, 2017 12:34 PM (TwwWO)

336 >>>Yeah. It just makes me deeply sad to think about it, which I always do when this subject comes up. It's like cuts in your soul that never heal.
Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 12:25 PM (0mRoj)

I'm sorry; I just found this.

Posted by: m at July 14, 2017 12:34 PM (VgThI)

337 Great googly-moogly. A concise, well-written expose at SNOPES (!) on anti-Trump Fake News. This is a must-read. Yes, Snopes, but trust me.

http://www.snopes.com/2017/07/12/trump-lies/

Posted by: WhatWhatWhat? at July 14, 2017 12:34 PM (ul9CR)

338
I was practically unique in resisting it.
Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM


Out of the gray of the western sky comes...HuffPo bus!

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at July 14, 2017 12:34 PM (IqV8l)

339 zombie, how horrible. I'm very glad you survived all that and are with us here on the right side.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 12:34 PM (sBOL1)

340 grizzledcoastie's experience was pretty much my experience except for the living on the bayou. We were two blocks away but it was our path to the entire SW side of Houston from Highway 6 to Meyerland and beyond. My Schwinn Sting Ray covered many many miles.

We had cheap riding stables. We worked on dairy farms in the summers. Bailed hay. I ran a gas station from 6pm to closing at 10 when I was 14. Measured the tanks, balanced the books, etc.

I'm probably one of the youngest white house framers left in town at almost 60. I worked as a mechanic in my late teens and early 20's. Like most of us on this board, I did the jobs they say Americans won't do and don't regret any of it.

Posted by: DanMan at July 14, 2017 12:34 PM (XTiHL)

341 148 We woke up one day and America was changed forever. But hay, at least we got some sweet tax breaks for banks and whatnot.
Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 11:52 AM (AU4SY)

Yeah.... I joined the Navy in 79, to protect the America I loved from foreign enemies.... expecting people here to protect it from domestic ones...

I retired to a very different America... and have always had a bit of bitterness about how that deal turned out.
____________

Fighting communism abroad wasn't a bad plan, but they should have invaded Columbia and Berkely and Madison first. Oops.

Posted by: Common Tater at July 14, 2017 12:35 PM (E9vLe)

342 Damn Zombie... that's rough.
And great to hear Vlad, it's cliche but take it one day, one step, at a time. It's no crime to pause to check your footing from time to time either.

Posted by: IP at July 14, 2017 12:35 PM (MdC1o)

343 333 Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at July 14, 2017 12:22 PM (OdK9v)

Thanks for that link. I still keep a bottle of Old Spice just so I can smell it and conjure up memories of my father.

Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 12:33 PM


Aqua Velva here.

Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:35 PM (0tfLf)

344 Heh this was my life living next to "the riverbottom" I could go through a carton of BBs in a weekend. Bought my first dirtbike for 65 dollars. Would ride my bike down there with my single shot 12 gauge and shoot ducks. Catch fish and crawfish and snakes and lizards. We had access to about 6 miles of it via an abandoned railway right of way. Its a bike path these days.

Posted by: The Jackhole Somewhere on Ventura Highway at July 14, 2017 12:36 PM (M+Lyo)

345 Most of the South is still like this. Hell, most of Texas is still like this, even around Dallas. My girls both volunteered at a horse ranch that helps at-risk kids by teaching them the value of work.
America hasn't gone away, it's just hidden behind a wall of coastal propaganda coming from the TV and Netflix. That hilarious thread on Twitchy today about the huffpo people touring flyover country? It's hilarious because it's true. We have 30 million people on the costs preaching to the other 300 million of us what we should think/belive/act/do.
America is still here; we just don't advertise it and our kids don't either. They're too busy sitting 15 feet up a tree starting at their phones together.

Posted by: Dax at July 14, 2017 12:36 PM (r0rZG)

346 College educated women have the majority of births each year. This has been the case for a couple of decades. Since they're more likely to be the mothers these days, their preferences in childrearing are what we see compared to the 70s, when they were still a minority of mothers.

Posted by: The Practical Conservative at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (FGg43)

347 Ace will now have a post on his childhood on Endor, swinging through trees, capturing offworlders, yub-yub singalongs, fighting the Empire...

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (oVJmc)

348 Hillary's 3 million extra votes are right out of zombieland

Posted by: Bertram Cabot, Jr. at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (IqV8l)

349 310 My childhood . . .
Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)



Wow. Just, wow.

Posted by: Sphynx at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (OZmbA)

350 There's a huge cultural stock we drew upon and just assumed existed naturally and spontaneously. Like all heirs, we took it for granted.

Exactly. Every generation complains that the sucessive one is worse, that they've lost something, that they aren't as good. Granny said the same thing about mom. Great granny said the same thing about granny.

And I think they're all correct. Each generation for a long time has lost something the previous one had and understood. And they lost it by taking for granted what they had and not fighting for it, teaching it, and protecting it. Ever since WW2, the USA has more or less been coasting on previous momentum and the greatness of those who came before. We're running out of momentum.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (39g3+)

351 I was an Army brat but we did live in a town of 1250 people from my 5th grade on. If I wasn't in school I was either at the ballpark, the basketball court or in the woods. I got a .22 for my 11th birthday and sometimes took my Dad's shotgun, which was about as tall as I was, to "hunt".

I had a VA physiologist ask me do describe my childhood in a word, I said idyllic. The VA was evaluating me for PTSD which I don't have, I told them that and they agreed.

Posted by: Javems at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (yOqwj)

352 I don't see a way back to the sane upbringing of children. The busybodies in are weaponized - people will call CPS if they see your kids playing in your front yard without supervision.

My sister in law is like this. No sacrifice of liberty or money is too great to ensure kids are raised on organic food in hermetically sealed bubbles.

Posted by: Ace's liver at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (Xuv2G)

353 Ace will now have a post on his childhood on Endor,
swinging through trees, capturing offworlders, yub-yub singalongs,
fighting the Empire...
Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (oVJmc)
______


Yub-yub? That's code isn't it.

Posted by: IP at July 14, 2017 12:38 PM (MdC1o)

354 College educated women have the majority of births each year.

I find that hard to believe. Is there a link that you might share?

Posted by: Grump928(C) at July 14, 2017 12:38 PM (LTHVh)

355 I have childhood experiences that mirror most of those here, well with the exception of setting things on fire. Well, regularly setting things on fire anyway.

Yeah, we've lost something. When we have CPS harassing parents in Maryland for letting their kids walk to a park alone, when we have parents being arrested for letting their kids go into a store alone, when we have to send Outlook meeting invites to get kids together to play...something has gone terribly wrong.

I don't know how to fix it. I'm happy to have my memories of growing up, kind of sad that my children didn't have those same kinds of formative experiences, and frustrated that this is apparently the new normal. Our world is becoming more sterile and lifeless.

Posted by: WitchDoktor, AKA VA GOP Sucks at July 14, 2017 12:38 PM (eytER)

356 Hardly anyone gets to have that anymore. I certainly didn't have that. If there was a way to selectively delete memory, is probably dump my entire childhood.

Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 11:33 AM (0mRoj)


I find that I remember almost nothing of my childhood. I expect most of it is due to my drinking, but I'm sure some of it is simply a mental block. There are small bits here and there, but in general, my childhood and most of my life is a hazy blur. In fact, about the only thing I remember with clarity from being a child was my great-aunt looking closely at me one day and asking, "Why don't you ever smile?"

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (X6fMO)

357 I won't go all poetic like he did, and I'll keep it short and brief, but:

And the crazy thing is, San Francisco used to be one of the toughest, most conservative places in the country. All that changed in one generation to being the most degenerate, leftist, corrupt places on earth.

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (39g3+)

358 Posted by: Diogenes at July 14, 2017 12:35 PM (0tfLf)

I find it to be a gift that it can trigger so many good memories. Hope it does the same for you.

Posted by: Jack Sock at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (bwBxJ)

359 I am glad I grew up without computers. I spent a lot of time outside. Although I played with dolls I also enjoyed fishing and catching frogs and wading in the streams and ponds.. I also wrote and performed in little plays in the disused chicken coops behind my friend's house.. I'm sure I read more than many kids do today because I didn't have games to play on the computer. Now I spend too much time here but if I tried to catch frogs I'n end up flat on my face. I'm not as limber or slim as I was as a kid;^) Still like to take walks in the morning or in the evening when it's cooler. Yesterday my husband and I were out at 5;30 a.m. because it gets too hot later on. I marveled at the masses of cornflowers. God is such an artist! Cornflowers were one of my mother's favorite flowers-the color of the her eyes so I always think of her when i see them..

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (iVOAv)

360 Iran leases air, land and sea bases in Syria
The leases are part of Iranian plan to permanently base fighter aircraft and roughly 5,000 militiamen capable of striking Israel; plan part of larger Iranian strategy to forge territorial and maritime contiguity in the Middle East.

Lovely. Oh and a Lovely target also

Posted by: Nevergiveup at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (5y11N)

361 Photo of General Eisenhower

https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosnormandie/1345894502/in/photostream/

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:40 PM (+BG/J)

362 Ace will now have a post on his childhood on Endor, swinging through trees, capturing offworlders, yub-yub singalongs, fighting the Empire...
Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 12:37 PM (oVJmc)


Roasting off-world travelers on spits...

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:40 PM (dnROW)

363 257 A high-trust, mostly homogeneous, mostly Christian society is what made those things possible. Now we have "diversity" and "multiculturalism" instead.

If you showed people back in that era a picture of the United States today, they'd think they were seeing a vision of Hell. It's funny to me that people can still call themselves "conservatives." After more than half a century of the cultural Marxist firebombing of Western civilization, is there even anything left to conserve?
Posted by: Antisocialite at July 14, 2017 12:19 PM (Z0/+C)



In fairness, my parents and late grandparents told me of a time when the traditional culture seemed to be under attack from waves of "Yids, Polaks and various other -skis, Eyetalian Mobsters, and on the west coast, Chinamen."

BUT--back then we believed in assimilating and later integrating them all. The public schools back then explicitly wanted to do that, and when the South balked, we even changed that too. No longer, sadly. It is re-segregation now.

AND--From 1921 to 1965, we realized we had overdone the immigration thing, so we closed the floodgates. Then Ted Kennedy (is there nothing awful he did not do?) worked to open them again. Just at a time when African Americans were finally integrating. And guess what happened to their upward mobility?

In 2017, time to close them again.

And I say this as a guy who married Asian brides. That may have been because femicommunism made the White women into dykes from hell, but more on that in another post.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:40 PM (ujg0T)

364 My childhood was fairly idyllic, and I have the scars to prove it.

Posted by: Grump928(C) at July 14, 2017 12:40 PM (LTHVh)

365 I like the "Wall of Coastal Propaganda" line. Very apt.

Posted by: nip at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (VqJRJ)

366 Grump @332 - ha! Good one.

P.S. - did you see my note yesterday about CMP having Winchester service grades for sale?

Posted by: rhomboid at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (QDnY+)

367 331 There has never been a more ungrateful, lazy, worthless, spoiled, illiterate, uneducated, group of sluts, whores, C'suckers, ne'er do wells and Methodists ever assembled on the face of the earth.

Fixed.

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:33 PM (dnROW)

----------

I hate fucking Methodists.

Posted by: Soona at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (Fmupd)

368 Golf clap!!

We did very similar things even right here in California, when it was Reagan country. Hell at 20 I had my first .22. We would go out all day and shoot stuff but never each other. Pretty much 80% of what I did in high school is now considered a felony. This truly is the nasty progressive government and feminazism.

Posted by: Jukin the Deplorable and Profoundly Unserious at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (npdX6)

369 I find that I remember almost nothing of my childhood. I expect most of it is due to my drinking, but I'm sure some of it is simply a mental block. There are small bits here and there, but in general, my childhood and most of my life is a hazy blur. In fact, about the only thing I remember with clarity from being a child was my great-aunt looking closely at me one day and asking, "Why don't you ever smile?"

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (X6fMO)


How old are you?

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (dnROW)

370 IPspouse asked me how it came to be I know so much about bugs, and critters, and safe plants to eat..
I said "I don't know really, I guess I just learned it one day."

Posted by: IP at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (MdC1o)

371 Roasting off-world travelers on spits...


Hobos.

Posted by: Grump928(C) at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (LTHVh)

372 I hate fucking Methodists.
Posted by: Soona at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (Fmupd)

Again with the phrasing. Didn't we all learn from the gorillas?

Posted by: What's a Seawolf? at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (72PAC)

373 I hate fucking Methodists.

Posted by: Soona at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (Fmupd)


Teed that one right up, didn't you?

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:42 PM (dnROW)

374 350 There's a huge cultural stock we drew upon and just assumed existed naturally and spontaneously. Like all heirs, we took it for granted.

***

yeah, the culture shifting BS was sold to us by promising that, hey, we're so big we can cut off piece after piece of america and still be ok forever. so let's fucking trash the place. And sadly, it wasn't just the hippies who went along, a lot of the change was brought about by the evangelicals who really believed that the rest of the world is like us and just wants to be like us and not all x are like that and, besides, surely if we pray enough, a few million mexicans, somalis and whoever else will just magically be absorbed into our prayer circle.

Nope, we had what we had because of stability and a strong central idea of who we were.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:42 PM (AU4SY)

375 Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

Jesus. California I presume?

Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 12:42 PM (0mRoj)

376 Inner city, extreme racial violence as a matter of course, sex education classes starting in fourth grade that were XXX rated, gay runaways on the corner looking for tricks, heroin dealers in pimp hats, parents joining hippie-dippie cults, kids growing up in communes where molestation was the accepted norm, constant intense hatred of America and anything "middle-class," and on and on -- I could write volumes about all the insanity.

School hallways were a constant war between rival black gangs, Asian gangs, and Mexican gangs. My chemistry teacher had his skull crushed in because he gave one student an "F" -- he survived and continued teaching. 80% of the kids I knew had divorced parents -- few marriages survived intact. I fifth grade, I went over to a friend's house, and his mom with in bed having sex with three guys, with the door open. My school song in ninth grade, that we had to sing at every assembly, was "Young, Gifted and Black" -- even though only 35%-40% of the school was black. I was never taught one thing about "white history," which was disparaged with intense vitriol. We ONLY ever learned "black history" - -Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, the tribes of Africa, etc. Drugs were everywhere, a constant pressure. Most kids eventually caved in and entered the drug culture. I was practically unique in resisting it.
Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)


I was approached about running a startup in the Bay Area. I wanted to site it elsewhere. They said "no," it had to be in the Bay Area.

I told them that I wasn't raising a family in that cess pit, for the reasons you cited, and that they should get stuffed.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:42 PM (SRKgf)

377 I think it is beyond the time for congress to reform the federal judiciary. How in the hell does a single federal district judge have in-appealabe veto power over the Supreme Court? 9 justices ruled on the "travel ban" and a single asshole Hawaii judge can say "Naaaaaahhh. Still don't like it". And the 9th circuit says it is not an appealabe decision! WTF? How do individual federal judges hold veto power over all 3 branches of government?

Posted by: Cat Ass Trophy at July 14, 2017 12:43 PM (dnWSK)

378 P.S. - did you see my note yesterday about CMP having Winchester service grades for sale?


I did, and I want one, but my safe is too full, literally.

Posted by: Grump928(C) at July 14, 2017 12:43 PM (LTHVh)

379 Anna, I blame you - last night I scrolled through a zillion of those pics from the first one you linked - and I was wondering about that one you linked earlier here today.

Captured Germans doing small chores on a US ship? What was that about? Learning to tie knots?


Posted by: rhomboid at July 14, 2017 12:43 PM (QDnY+)

380 We did very similar things even right here in California, when it was Reagan country. Hell at 20 I had my first .22. We would go out all day and shoot stuff but never each other. Pretty much 80% of what I did in high school is now considered a felony. This truly is the nasty progressive government and feminazism.

***

Think about it. California used to be the GOP's Texas. But, for some reason, get this...a state or a nation is composed of the people who are in it. weird. By admitting a couple dozen million foreigners...the place changed.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:43 PM (AU4SY)

381 Regarding zombie's story, that's the kind of "diversity" Our Betters wish for all of us.

Posted by: rickl at July 14, 2017 12:44 PM (xjiRE)

382 We ONLY ever learned "black history" - -Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, the tribes of Africa, etc.

What did they teach about African literature? African mathematics? African science? African architecture?

Or was that covered in the first few minutes of the school year?

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:44 PM (SRKgf)

383 I find that I remember almost nothing of my childhood. I expect most of it is due to my drinking, but I'm sure some of it is simply a mental block. There are small bits here and there, but in general, my childhood and most of my life is a hazy blur. In fact, about the only thing I remember with clarity from being a child was my great-aunt looking closely at me one day and asking, "Why don't you ever smile?"
Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (X6fMO)

Damn.

Posted by: Insomniac at July 14, 2017 12:44 PM (0mRoj)

384 yeah, the culture shifting BS was sold to us by promising that, hey, we're so big we can cut off piece after piece of america and still be ok forever. so let's fucking trash the place. And sadly, it wasn't just the hippies who went along, a lot of the change was brought about by the evangelicals who really believed that the rest of the world is like us and just wants to be like us and not all x are like that and, besides, surely if we pray enough, a few million mexicans, somalis and whoever else will just magically be absorbed into our prayer circle.

Nope, we had what we had because of stability and a strong central idea of who we were.
Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:42 PM (AU4SY)

We inherited this great nice big house and decided to renovate, without thinking for a moment that when we knocked down the wall so that we could make it all Open Concept! that there might be a load bearing beam in there somewhere.

Posted by: joe, living dangerously at July 14, 2017 12:44 PM (KUaJL)

385 Well said.

Posted by: alexthechick - Ragebunny now with MAGIC Jazz Hands at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (dEQP3)

386 Dang, Grump, sorry to hear that.

But I'm happy to report that I run a firearms storage service.

More or less secure, firearms always well cared for, and only charge is ..... I get to shoot 'em as much as I want.

Let me know.

Posted by: rhomboid at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (QDnY+)

387 UN declares that "low birthrate countries," including the US, needs to bring in high birthrate migrants.

So... whites having babies kills Gaia.

But Muslims having babies saves the world.

Gotcha.

http://___ur.com/a/ZugK2

Posted by: shibumi at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (aT+Bx)

388 Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

Hunters Point?

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (wYseH)

389 Jackal: the American neoreactionary movement was/is a reboot attempt at Toryism. when people come in on 4 July posting Hutchinson's "Strictures" rebuttal of the Declaration, that's what they are up to.

there are probably about a couple hundred neoreactionaries in all of America and most of them seem autistic.

Posted by: Boulder terlit hobo at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (GOL7u)

390 wow sounds like hell "rival black gangs, Asian gangs, and Mexican gangs. "

of course, if the white students ever got organized, worse than hitler. because whites are uniquely evil. We invented war and stuff.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (AU4SY)

391 If someone got hurt, we got an adult. It was no big deal. One time, a friend of mine broke his arm and his Dad took him to the hospital, which was 24 miles away in the city. There was no nanny state going after him for "abuse." His attitude, like all of our parents, were "boys will be boys."


It's all fun and games until someone loses a schlong.

Posted by: Caitlyn Jenner at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (xAvrH)

392 zombie, that is horrifying!

Posted by: Lizzy at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (NOIQH)

393
And the crazy thing is, San Francisco used to be one of the toughest, most conservative places in the country. All that changed in one generation to being the most degenerate, leftist, corrupt places on earth.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (39g3+)


True but S.F. was the Barbary Coast from it's very beginings and has always been a strange city.

Posted by: Deplorable Male Logic at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (lKyWE)

394 I hate fucking Methodists.

Maybe we should introduce them to the monkeys and let them get on with it.

Posted by: Mr. Peebles at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (oVJmc)

395 Chesterson's Parable of the Fence comes to mind.

Posted by: Grump928(C) at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (LTHVh)

396 Think about it. California used to be the GOP's Texas. But, for some reason, get this...a state or a nation is composed of the people who are in it. weird. By admitting a couple dozen million foreigners...the place changed.
Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:43 PM (AU4SY)



Nope. It was the other way 'round. The place changed largely because of liberals moving here from the Northeast and upper Midwest.

They're the ones who encourage(d) the foreigners to come here, exacerbating the damage done by the native-born American liberals infesting the place.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (SRKgf)

397 re: grizzledcoastie

I'm about 3 yrs older, and my childhood was much the same. Ex-burbs in NE Ohio. Big swamp at the end of our lane. Most of the Dad's were WW II or Korea vets. Guns, football, baseball. Building forts in the trees in the swamp.

At age 11, we moved to the county seat (pop about 20000 back then). I ranged about 2 miles from home of my bike, mostly playing baseball. Would go to the city parks and pool by myself.

TV was different. Daytime TV did not have kid programming. Soaps, game shows, etc, so there was "nothing on TV".

Posted by: Iron Mike GOlf at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (di1hb)

398 Are neurotypical kids really over medicated today? The reason I'm asking this is because I have no other barometer than my daughter who is autistic and needs medication at least for now. I am just wondering why parents who have neurotypical kids would even think of medicating them.

Posted by: IC at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (a0IVu)

399 We inherited this great nice big house and decided to renovate, without thinking for a moment that when we knocked down the wall so that we could make it all Open Concept! that there might be a load bearing beam in there somewhere.

***

It's like this old Indian expression...we don't own the land, we're only borrowing it from the high birthrate migrants the UN wants us to bus in to live off of welfare system.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:47 PM (AU4SY)

400 Rhomboid, not sure but that is what it looks like.

And this one, I will simply call it poignant
https://www.flickr.com/photos/photosnormandie/1341803695/in/photostream/

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:47 PM (+BG/J)

401 I find that I remember almost nothing of my childhood. I expect most of it is due to my drinking, but I'm sure some of it is simply a mental block. There are small bits here and there, but in general, my childhood and most of my life is a hazy blur. In fact, about the only thing I remember with clarity from being a child was my great-aunt looking closely at me one day and asking, "Why don't you ever smile?"

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM
--

We're so sorry to say this, but you were either frequently abducted by space aliens and then brain bleached, or you were part of the CIA Monarch program, and were brain bleached.

Posted by: Conspiracy Theoriests Everywhere at July 14, 2017 12:47 PM (aT+Bx)

402 There is not just a time element, there is a place element. My wife grew up in Detroit, the city, not the suburbs. She and I are the same age (29, natch), but she learned black history in school (and she isn't black). It still surprises me the things she just doesn't know, and never learned. She's really smart, but there are things that she was just never told.

Posted by: blaster at July 14, 2017 12:48 PM (tewYv)

403 I saw Dykes From Hell open for 1,000 Homo DJs at the Cuckoos Nest in '91.

Posted by: Banana Splits Guy at July 14, 2017 12:48 PM (fMidn)

404 Inner city, extreme racial violence as a matter of course, sex education classes starting in fourth grade that were XXX rated, gay runaways on the corner looking for tricks, heroin dealers in pimp hats, parents joining hippie-dippie cults, kids growing up in communes where molestation was the accepted norm, constant intense hatred of America and anything "middle-class," and on and on -- I could write volumes about all the insanity.

Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)


How the hell did you turn out normal?

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:48 PM (dnROW)

405 And the crazy thing is, San Francisco used to be one of the toughest, most conservative places in the country. All that changed in one generation to being the most degenerate, leftist, corrupt places on earth.
Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:39 PM (39g3+)



I dunno about that. I grew in SF back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and it was a blue-collar union Democrat city. Think Pittsburgh with a bay.

It did have its wild side - the Barbary Coast bit - to be sure.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:48 PM (SRKgf)

406 When I was about 14 my grandpa threw me the keys to his old 3 on the column truck and told me to go get him some cigs.

Posted by: freaked at July 14, 2017 12:48 PM (THuWn)

407 NOOD. Italicans.

Posted by: Lord Chancellor johnd01, Cheif Covfefe at July 14, 2017 12:48 PM (ukNFU)

408 Nope. It was the other way 'round. The place changed largely because of liberals moving here from the Northeast and upper Midwest.

***

obviously, liberals are to blame.

The problem with liberals is ... there aren't enough of them. They needed shock troops to win elections. Where'd they find enough votes? Anywhere but America.

Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:49 PM (AU4SY)

409 How do individual federal judges hold veto power over all 3 branches of government?

Because nobody stopped them and nobody does anything about it. Courts just keep taking more power on to themselves and everyone bows and scrapes and obeys.

It wasnt just immigration that changed California, though. CA was the left's great experimental lab. They infiltrated and took over every institution, even entire cities (San Francisco) and through that raised generation after generation of ever-more-radical leftist kids.

All those conservative parents, sending their kids to the schools and whining about how the kids were taught, but sure that the 1/4 amount of waking time they had the kids around to teach would overwhelm the careful psychological undermining of their children's upbringing. I just don't understand what happened to Billy, we raised him so well, to know better!

Posted by: Christopher R Taylor at July 14, 2017 12:49 PM (39g3+)

410 I hate fucking Methodists.
Posted by: Soona at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (Fmupd)

It's not a requirement that you do do! ;^)

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at July 14, 2017 12:49 PM (iVOAv)

411 349 310 My childhood . . .
Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)



Wow. Just, wow.
Posted by: Sphynx


The stuff posted above is actually not even the worst of it -- the tip of the iceberg. To reveal more details would violate opsec (location, race, gender, era, etc.). The details are simply beyond mind-boggling.

This still pisses me off royally to this day:

When we kids were little -- nursery school through second grade -- everybody was too young to even understand was "race" was and inter-racial friendships were commonplace and unremarkable, because "kids are just kids." Very utopian in that sphere -- at first.

But then in third grade -- I don't know if this was a built-in part of the curriculum, or if there had been a left-wing coup in the school district, or what -- in every classroom in the entire school district there was a special assembly for black kids only where they brought in ex-Black Panthers and other revolutionary radicals, and the black kids were told: Whites are not your friends. They hate you. They are racists. They were slave-owners. It's payback time.. The speakers were very blunt about it.

You guess what happened. The blacks kids came out of that assembly filled with rage, and the playgrounds that lunch period -- and every subsequent lunch period for the rest of time, actually -- became like one vast boxing ring, as every black kids beat up every white kid. And the teachers? The teachers stood there on the steps, surveying the melee, smiling, smoking cigarettes calmly and watching the revolution starting. No help was offered. It was part of the plan.

Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:49 PM (DQ4Fv)

412 Katshit crying again about Medicaid cuts. Fuck off Son of a Mailman. Just fuck the hell off.

Posted by: Under Fire at July 14, 2017 12:50 PM (mcI77)

413 388 Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

Hunters Point?
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (wYseH)



Her comment took me back, it did.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:50 PM (SRKgf)

414 We'd flirt with the neighborhood girls and steal kisses and have little relationships.

Talk about toxic masculinity. More like little rel-RAPE-tionships. Those poor girls were obviously suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

Posted by: Emma Sulkowicz at July 14, 2017 12:50 PM (xAvrH)

415 What was with all the Dads whistling for the kids back then??...my dad also whistled for us, very distinct whistle...

Posted by: KWDreaming at July 14, 2017 12:50 PM (N/v1f)

416 there are probably about a couple hundred neoreactionaries in all of America and most of them seem autistic.

Sounds in a way like Ignatius J. Reilly in Confederacy of Dunces. He was, at heart, a monarchist - and profoundly spergy in addition to his other qualities.

He was also an SJW and attempted to advocate incoherently for some of his black coworkers at one point...

Posted by: Sporkatus at July 14, 2017 12:51 PM (eXSOZ)

417 Zombie, from Powerline reports of how the Red Guard have control of Edina High School in Minneapolis

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y9uy7kee

Posted by: Anna Puma (HQCaR) at July 14, 2017 12:51 PM (+BG/J)

418 We have some new neighbors across the street, and their little kids are always out in the front yard playing baseball or soccer. One day I heard their voices, but couldn't see any of the kids. They had all climbed a tree and were playing up in the branches. My kids still use the swing set in our back yard, even though the older ones exceeded the weight limit years ago. All you childless oldsters bitching about "kids these days" can go EABOD.

Posted by: Chris M at July 14, 2017 12:51 PM (eAZVt)

419 396 Think about it. California used to be the GOP's Texas. But, for some reason, get this...a state or a nation is composed of the people who are in it. weird. By admitting a couple dozen million foreigners...the place changed.
Posted by: andrew jarbacka at July 14, 2017 12:43 PM (AU4SY)


Nope. It was the other way 'round. The place changed largely because of liberals moving here from the Northeast and upper Midwest.

They're the ones who encourage(d) the foreigners to come here, exacerbating the damage done by the native-born American liberals infesting the place.
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (SRKgf)




Actually, it was TWO factors:
1. The Irony of Cold War victory, and
2. The Hispandering delusion of "our betters"

1. Cali always had a Commiecrat Left, but it was offset by a Patriot Right. But the Cold War was won, and aerospace, defense, computer hardware, and other Right industries folded up. Military bases mostly closed, save for around San Diego. The Left did not move in so much as the Right moved out.

2. However, people recruited by the Left DID move in--aided and abetted by immigration romantic fools, or people who just cynically wanted cheap gardeners and maids.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:51 PM (ujg0T)

420 Hunters Point?

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at July 14, 2017 12:45 PM (wYseH)


Sounds like it.

Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:51 PM (dnROW)

421 Guns and the country that existed 1,000 years ago - i.e., 40 years ago.

Suburban SoCal (not rural OK). Walking home from 6th grade (kids now are all driven to/from that school - WTF?), I heard a shot. My oldest brother and his friend had just shot a large rattlesnake in the front yard, by the garage. With home-made snake-load, Ruger Blackhawk .357.

Helicopters? SWAT? Local/national news? School lockdowns? Sheltering in place?

No. Total reaction: retired military guy living across the street, checks out snake, says "wow, that's a big one", and walks back across the street.

And in 8th grade or so we used to walk to a local quarry, not far from the junior high, and shoot a Springfield rifle. Guys at the office trailer at the front of the quarry would barely look up from their dispatch work, and say "just stay in the back". 14-yr olds. 30-06 military rifle. "Just stay in the back" was the sum total of society's f***s-given over this.

I *did* say 1,000 years, right?

Posted by: rhomboid at July 14, 2017 12:52 PM (QDnY+)

422 I am just wondering why parents who have neurotypical kids would even think of medicating them

Because if you don't you'll A) Get a visit from CPS and B) Have your kid expelled from school.

And not everyone has the means to homeschool or private school.

Posted by: GMan at July 14, 2017 12:52 PM (sxq57)

423 Amen!

Posted by: E, ROBOT at July 14, 2017 12:53 PM (u1QaY)

424 I hate fucking Methodists.
Posted by: Soona


*fistbump*

Posted by: Augustus Montague Toplady at July 14, 2017 12:53 PM (xAvrH)

425 OMuse, no Simian punditry today . I was getting used to the little bugger.

Posted by: bluebell at July 14, 2017 12:53 PM (sBOL1)

426 375 Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

Jesus. California I presume?
Posted by: Insomniac


Don't wanna say.

Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:53 PM (DQ4Fv)

427 310 My childhood was basically the polar opposite of the idyllic bayou childhood described by grizzledcoastie.

I won't go all poetic like he did, and I'll keep it short and brief, but:

Inner city, extreme racial violence as a matter of course, sex education classes starting in fourth grade that were XXX rated, gay runaways on the corner looking for tricks, heroin dealers in pimp hats, parents joining hippie-dippie cults, kids growing up in communes where molestation was the accepted norm, constant intense hatred of America and anything "middle-class," and on and on -- I could write volumes about all the insanity.

School hallways were a constant war between rival black gangs, Asian gangs, and Mexican gangs. My chemistry teacher had his skull crushed in because he gave one student an "F" -- he survived and continued teaching. 80% of the kids I knew had divorced parents -- few marriages survived intact. I fifth grade, I went over to a friend's house, and his mom with in bed having sex with three guys, with the door open. My school song in ninth grade, that we had to sing at every assembly, was "Young, Gifted and Black" -- even though only 35%-40% of the school was black. I was never taught one thing about "white history," which was disparaged with intense vitriol. We ONLY ever learned "black history" - -Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, the tribes of Africa, etc. Drugs were everywhere, a constant pressure. Most kids eventually caved in and entered the drug culture. I was practically unique in resisting it.
Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)




It's like the "If You're Going To San Francisco...flowers in your hair" dream turned into a nightmare. Oh wait--it did.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:53 PM (ujg0T)

428 Insomniac-

Here's a gentle suggestion. I think you and MPPP had horrific childhoods or the fact that he doesn't remember means it's likely he was abused as well. You are good guys and it's clear the abuse has continued to affect you as adults. Please get some help. I will post some responses. Yes, It's from a Christian perspective but I know people who have recovered

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at July 14, 2017 12:53 PM (iVOAv)

429 337
Great googly-moogly. A concise, well-written expose at SNOPES (!) on
anti-Trump Fake News. This is a must-read. Yes, Snopes, but trust me.



http://www.snopes.com/2017/07/12/trump-lies/

Posted by: WhatWhatWhat? at July 14, 2017 12:34 PM (ul9CR)

Whoa! It just got a bit chilly in hell.

Posted by: Tami at July 14, 2017 12:54 PM (Enq6K)

430 Or, some people simply need to be shot.

Posted by: rickb223 at July 14, 2017 12:26 PM (YxyYj)

Exactly. We have put the innocent in prison to "protect" them from predators. The idea of removing the predators is now alien in most cities and making them "sanctuary cities" has codified the advantages of what *should* bring the consequences of being an outlaw.

Those who have no intention of living within the restrictions of society should not be allowed to benefit from those same restrictions on others.

Posted by: Polliwog the 'Ette at July 14, 2017 12:54 PM (rp9xB)

431 FWIW I moved my kids from Houston to a 300 acre farm two years ago where they can fish in their own pond, ride bikes forever, find a place all their own in the woods, and just be kids. I can't pry them away from watching videos of people playing video games.

Posted by: Mx4 at July 14, 2017 12:54 PM (wnDRY)

432 I hate fucking Methodists.
Posted by: Soona


There's a methodist to my madness.

Posted by: John Wesley at July 14, 2017 12:54 PM (xAvrH)

433 For the flip side, the freedom I had in the early 1970s in about 3rd or 4th grade did illustrate the potential risks.

I was almost sexually assaulted while in a small patch of woods in Waukegan, IL, when 3 older boys on minibikes came across us. The leader decided I was going to give him oral sex and began trying to physically intimidate me into doing it while his friends watched my friends.

Now, I was stubborn and decided that was not going to happen. I was thinking about how to escape the situation and I was able to squirm out from under him, push one of the bikes over as I passed it and run back down the path and off into the fields to the side of the area we were at where I hid in the tall grass. He was delayed by having to deal with my friends. Eventually I saw them on the back of the minibikes as they searched for me. I ducked down and managed to get away. They eventually let my friends go after not finding me.

I was lucky that he was not older or more determined. But... my independence from a less coddled upbringing like we had then, and Waukegan being a fairly rough place at the time (though not like today) where I had already faced a variety of real world life lesson BS since kindergarten prepared me for the challenge. There was no parent there to save the day. I was a sweet, sensitive kid and to this day I am thankful that those experiences gave me a bit of an edge that I would not have had otherwise.

Of course, being a stupid kid and having nothing really bad actually happen and that little wooden area being a really cool place I went back to the woods with my friends weeks later after being forbidden from doing so. And, of course, my mom tore my ass up as she should have when she found out. I think I stopped going back after that...

Understanding the risks and now with younger children of my own I try my damnedest to give them as much independence as I can. It's hard because you are almost alone in that mindset these days, at least in urbanized areas.

There are risks, but there is so much fun and the mental growth that comes with it helps when the SHTF and there's no helicopter parent around to save your ass.

Posted by: Keith at July 14, 2017 12:54 PM (USf3s)

434 How old are you?


Posted by: OregonMuse, AoSHQ Thought Leader at July 14, 2017 12:41 PM (dnROW)


54.

Posted by: Mary Poppins' Practically Perfect Piercing at July 14, 2017 12:55 PM (X6fMO)

435 Try raising foster kids. There are CPS agents, foster agency workers, moms lawyer, dads lawyer, kids lawyer, kids court appointed advocate all breathing down your neck with every bump and bruise. Kid trips and scrapes his knee, report it, write an incident report, get call asking for "clarification" on how it happened, weren't you supervising him? Are you overwhelmed? Do we need to put the kids in another home? You better take him to the ER to get checked out "just in case". Then get told by strangers I only do fostering to get free money from the state.

Posted by: Cat Ass Trophy at July 14, 2017 12:55 PM (dnWSK)

436 388 Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

Hunters Point?
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo


Don't wanna say.

Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:55 PM (DQ4Fv)

437 This is a book on recovering from Child abuse.

http://tinyurl.com/ybdq4krq


There is also a woman named June Hunt who has written a lot on this. She has a website "Hope For The Heart"

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at July 14, 2017 12:56 PM (iVOAv)

438 263 A healthy, strong civilization can tolerate a certain amount of diversity, just like a healthy immune system doesn't need to dwell within a sterile bubble to survive. A sick, weakened society, on the other hand, has no ground from which to defend itself and is soon overwhelmed. That's where healthy immigration becomes a pathogenic invasion.

Nihilism of the sort that "progressives" promote is basically the AIDS that's killing Western civilization.

Posted by: Antisocialite at July 14, 2017 12:56 PM (Z0/+C)

439 Fear is just the excuse. The truth is, they're progressive corporatists. Same as the Democrats.

Why do you think Obamacare makes people buy insurance they're never going to use? (Making 58 year old men pay for obstetrics and gynecology?) Crony capitalism 101: Use the state to force people to pay for things they're never going to use and keep the profit.

Big Insurance writes big checks to both sides.
Posted by: V the K at July 14, 2017 12:31 PM (O7MnT)




Honestly? Christopher Taylor has it. Fear of not fitting in does affect us all. And in a leftist hothouse, the GOP politicos wilt.

My own father, who taught me his Republicanism, now tells me to tone it down because "What would your neighbors think?" Yes, he is senescent and old, but still....

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 12:56 PM (ujg0T)

440 246 OT personal:

For those who are interested I acquired shelter. Thanks to all who offered up prayers. The way forward is not particularly bright but the immediate crisis has been averted.

Thank you all.
Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)


Vlad--I am so relieved to hear this. Please let the Horde know if and when you need anything. We want to help.

God bless you.

Posted by: Ladylibertarian at July 14, 2017 12:57 PM (TdMsT)

441 429 337
Great googly-moogly. A concise, well-written expose at SNOPES (!) on
anti-Trump Fake News. This is a must-read. Yes, Snopes, but trust me.



I don't know. I'm a bit skeptical of anything I read on the internet. I'll have to check snopes before I believe that snopes wrote an objective article on a republican.

Posted by: Cat Ass Trophy at July 14, 2017 12:59 PM (dnWSK)

442 436 388 Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

Hunters Point?
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo

Don't wanna say.
Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:55 PM (DQ4Fv)



Sounds very much like it.

Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:59 PM (SRKgf)

443 Posted by: John Wesley at July 14, 2017 12:54 PM (xAvrH)

LOL

The non religious students at Oxford called the men who gathered together for regular devoionals, prayer, Bible study and Holy Communion "Methodists" disparagingly, but John liked the named and it stuck. I know you recall that, John, but maybe some others didn't.

Posted by: FenelonSpoke at July 14, 2017 12:59 PM (iVOAv)

444 How the hell did you turn out normal?
Posted by: OregonMuse


I'm normal?

I'm not even close to being normal. I'm a very strange person. But yeah, the people who know me say my life is like a scene from Terminator where the indestructible robot emerges from a intense fireball, unscathed.

People in my immediate family did NOT emerge unscathed. Terrible, terrible -- it drags you down. ("It" = the cultural milieu of your upbringing.) I guess I was just very very lucky, and very very smart.

Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 01:01 PM (DQ4Fv)

445 Nope. It was the other way 'round. The place changed largely because of liberals moving here from the Northeast and upper Midwest.

They're the ones who encourage(d) the foreigners to come here, exacerbating the damage done by the native-born American liberals infesting the place.
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (SRKgf)


People came from all over the country because the California economy used to go into recession last and come out first. As the rust belt was, well, rusting the "golden state" was booming due to trade with Asia, the semiconductor companies in the northern part of the state, and the massive defense industry in SoCal.

Mostly the foreigners were encouraged to come by the garment industry in LA and farmers in the Central Valley.

Posted by: Ace's liver at July 14, 2017 01:04 PM (Xuv2G)

446 442 436 388 Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

Hunters Point?
Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo

Don't wanna say.
Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:55 PM (DQ4Fv)


Sounds very much like it.
Posted by: Deplorable Jay Guevara at July 14, 2017 12:59 PM (SRKgf)



Definitely San Francisco, Oakland, or Berkeley. We down in San Jose used to think that was just leftist fairy-land mixed with ghetto-land and it could be contained. We were wrong. It took over the state.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 01:04 PM (ujg0T)

447 I'm still laughing about the caution 'don't set anything on fire' because last weekend I finally got my #3 kid to pick up most of his stuff (loaded his truck to the max), and one of the silly keepsakes I wanted him to take was the stupid Radio Flyer wagon. He and his friends used it to start fires, set off fireworks, etc. I made them repaint the bed (those old RF wagons were sturdy suckers) and I wanted him to take it back with him. Keep fingers crossed that he will be back with new grandkid and take the old wagon.

Posted by: mustbequantum at July 14, 2017 01:08 PM (MIKMs)

448 There has never been a more ungrateful, lazy, worthless, spoiled, illiterate, uneducated, group of sluts, whores, C'suckers, ne'er do wells ever assembled on the face of the earth.
-------------

*takes notes*

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at July 14, 2017 01:10 PM (OdK9v)

449 398 Are neurotypical kids really over medicated today? The reason I'm asking this is because I have no other barometer than my daughter who is autistic and needs medication at least for now. I am just wondering why parents who have neurotypical kids would even think of medicating them.
Posted by: IC at July 14, 2017 12:46 PM (a0IVu)


Because they're convinced their kids are not healthy by people in positions of authority in the school system.

Posted by: Ace's liver at July 14, 2017 01:10 PM (Xuv2G)

450 Definitely San Francisco, Oakland, or Berkeley. We down in San Jose used to think that was just leftist fairy-land mixed with ghetto-land and it could be contained. We were wrong. It took over the state.

Dennis Erectus used to read ads out of the Berkeley Barb on air to "shock the squares". These days it would be considered a bit tame.

Yes, you'd need to be a Bay Area kid to understand that last paragraph.

Posted by: Blanco Basura at July 14, 2017 01:12 PM (Hk/NM)

451 I hate fucking Methodists.
Posted by: Soona
-----------

Stop doing it.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at July 14, 2017 01:12 PM (OdK9v)

452 I was practically unique in resisting it.
Posted by: zombie at July 14, 2017 12:28 PM (DQ4Fv)

You are an amazingly strong person.
And must have a really top notch Guardian Angel.

Posted by: @votermom @vm pimping great books usually free or sale at July 14, 2017 01:14 PM (hMwEB)

453 Dennis Erectus used to read ads out of the Berkeley Barb on air to "shock the squares". These days it would be considered a bit tame.

Yes, you'd need to be a Bay Area kid to understand that last paragraph.
Posted by: Blanco Basura at July 14, 2017 01:12 PM (Hk/NM)




Yes, then San Jose's resident shock jock on then KOME 98.5 FM. "Don't touch that dial, there's KOME on it!"

He suffered a massive heart attack in 2006, never really recovered, and passed away in 2012 in a nursing home.

Posted by: Curmudgeon at July 14, 2017 01:19 PM (ujg0T)

454 Reading comments is how I knew trump would win in 2016 and how I knew obama cheated in 2012.

Posted by: Flowerbelle1 at July 14, 2017 01:22 PM (AkAvN)

455 First, I got my first .22 at 10 not the typo 20.

California began its trip to hell when so many military bases were closed under Clinton. Don't think the donks back then did not see a prize and were, as always, ruthless in getting those electoral votes. Then the productive, read conservatives, had a mass migration out of California between 2006 and 2009. Finally, Obama's open illegal welcome mat sealed the deal with automatic voter registration and drivers licenses for illegals.

Kalifornia will not come back to sanity anytime soon, if ever.

Posted by: Jukin the Deplorable and Profoundly Unserious at July 14, 2017 01:28 PM (npdX6)

456 Between the fireworks, the motorcycles, the guns and the amateur rock-climbing, it's a damned miracle I made it to age 18 in one piece (I grew up in the mountains of western NC back in the late 70s and early 80s, talk about being raised "free range"...)

Posted by: Pave Low John at July 14, 2017 01:30 PM (OejZ/)

457 Kids back then had time and freedom to have to make actual decisions. They were out by themselves and friends. Situations came up, no adults around to tell them what to do. They(we) had to fix it, help it, get it back home, find a phone and call for help etc.... Now days kids are never out of eyesight of their parents. They never have to make decisions, good, bad, or indifferent. It's always made for them. I think this is one of society's biggest issues now. Arrested development. And I think that is why moms are crazy, send the kids outside to play, go away, far away. Come back at sundown.

Posted by: Loveulongtime at July 14, 2017 01:50 PM (CreXv)

458 1970s, Goleta, CA. bike everywhere (no helmets, of course); rock fights beneath the underpass; rope swing over the poison oak-infested creek; rafting down San Jose Creek to the Pacific Ocean 3 miles away. Just needed to be home by dark, plus or minus.

Posted by: Friendo at July 14, 2017 01:58 PM (eUnhA)

459
Think about it. California used to be the GOP's Texas.

I figure ... after the "Big One" ... California will transition again.

If the pull of of the US, we will make them pay for reconstruction

Posted by: undocumented illegal SMOD at July 14, 2017 01:59 PM (e8kgV)

460 First: #20: BTW - I think HuffPo can cancel their "Conservatives in the Mist" U.S. tour and simply read this post instead. - Publius Redux at July 14, 2017 11:35 AM

If they were smart enough to cancel "Conservatives in the Mist" (Love that title. I LOL'd) they never would have come up with the insipid, self-revealing idea in the first place.

But I hear you. We can hope.

Posted by: DrDeano at July 14, 2017 02:07 PM (il0rd)

461 California went to hell when republicans stopped elected. What caused this surge of democrat victories? Reagan's amnesty. Sure there are protests votes, Arnie, for example, but republicans have had tough sledding since Amnesty.

Posted by: Locke Common at July 14, 2017 02:09 PM (0/O2t)

462 For those who are interested I acquired shelter.
Thanks to all who offered up prayers. The way forward is not
particularly bright but the immediate crisis has been averted.

Thank you all.


Posted by: Vlad the impaler, whittling away like mad at July 14, 2017 12:17 PM (qdsua)

Glad to read about this turn of events Vlad. Keep fightin' the good fight!

Posted by: browndog...not to be confused with Browndog, who just showed up recently...gggrrrr at July 14, 2017 02:18 PM (bGMOs)

463 I raised my kids as I was raised. They are not quite as wild as I was, but close. Now they are in their teens, all I hear is how smart, reliable, competent, and confident my girls are. A 13 year old that knows how to run a chainsaw properly, drive a stick, and poop in an outhouse, is oddly reliable with all sorts of other things - money, watching your kids, working...

I blame the news media. They define "news" as something that must be fear inducing. So they are constantly ginning up false panics about this and that. Watch less news, and notice how much more relaxing you life becomes. I really noticed it when I wen on a three week vacation with no media. I came back and there were all sorts of stories that had happened, that people were upset over. I realized I didn't care, and in the end, none of it amounted to much.

Posted by: Evergreen Student cowering in his dorm at July 14, 2017 02:27 PM (UgF8H)

464 Your growing up years were very similar to mine. Too bad we didn't realize at the time how good we had it!

Posted by: scoripowarrior at July 14, 2017 03:01 PM (OIPiK)

465 When I was 8 during the summer back in the summer of 1968, we'd swim in the bayou...

Your experience and recollection pretty much captures the American Dream. Everything else is icing and optional.

Posted by: n.n at July 14, 2017 03:50 PM (Fs28d)

466 My summers in the 60's- Lived in the wilds of Houston but had a great forest to explore (with a bayou running through it) and miles and miles of paved roads in the neighborhood to ride my bike. A ton of kids, ice cream trucks, community swimming pool. Only break all day was a tuna sandwich and sweet tea at noon. We were all left to our own devices. Only a few times getting in trouble, but great memories of a carefree childhood. Passed it on to my kids in the 80's. Now one daughter lives in a similar neighborhood. Everyone out in the driveways, potlucks, kids running all over. Makes my heart glad.

Posted by: Sooze at July 14, 2017 04:04 PM (zfP1m)

467 That's really a great read, grizzledcoastie. Thank you so much.

Posted by: m at July 14, 2017 05:57 PM (VgThI)

468 Summer of '68 I was 9. We rode our bikes everywhere. Ca n't imagine anybody showing up wearing one of todays goofy looking helmets, he would have had his ass beaten.
As a now-adult leisurely bicyclist, I still refuse to wear one.

Posted by: gobagoo at July 14, 2017 06:32 PM (A/saJ)

469 BRAC removed many hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs out of the state. (military base closures). THAT IS WHY Sen's Fiendstein and Boxer did not fight the closures....Republican votes left the state as they chased jobs elsewhere.

I'm one of the left overs...I never had enough time at the bases to secure a permanent postion so when the jobs left I had to fend for myself. I ended up in a JC...a bastion of libtard heterodoxy albeit in a sparsely populated 70% R county.

Now in my mid 60's, I am trying to educate myself up economically or get out. CA has gone to libtard hell.

Coastie and I had some of the same growing up experiences....floating down the American River on a sweltering hot patched inner tube. Butt frozen, sunburnt on the top side. Vietnam flew over our heads with B52 launches...Saturn V rocket motors shook the house at night.

If that war had not ended it might have gotten me too.

Posted by: torabora at July 15, 2017 01:46 AM (6dFYM)

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Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
News/Chat