Needless to say from the comments in today’s countdown, it’s effing hot. My wife and I discuss this a good bit, about things not being like they used to…candy tastes different, days seem hotter or sometimes more oppressive than when we were kids, and the lightning bugs seem to be fewer. Hell, I remember spending a good bit of time using an old broom handle to Dale Murphy cicada shells off of trees, and I can’t say I’ve seen one since I was a kid.
Also, stuff like this:
Today’s thought provoker (not Playpen or political, folks) is what memories do you have of activities or things from summers gone by that seemed to have disappeared over the years that used to help beat the heat or pass away the slow days of summer?
We rode our bicycles for miles. We would bail off in the woods and spend hours. If I was bored and by myself I would take a bat and hit rocks. We would swim in a creek or somebody’s pool. Watch the Braves that night and then camp out on the trampoline. Too hot for a sleeping bag but we would’ve always end up with them pulled over our heads before morning as cover from the skeeters. I don’t know if things were better then but I enjoyed it. Peaches and corn getting ready. Home made ice cream.
This could take a while.
Growing up in the fifties in what was then a suburb of Atlanta, but what is now called Brookhaven (we were even further east from the Brookhaven that existed then), so many memories. Speaking of Brookhaven there was a theater that showed a double feature on Saturday for $0.25, and it had AC. For another quarter you could get candy or popcorn and a drink. Great way to kill a day.
There were about ten of us kids that did a variety of activities usually organized by the oldest of the Lewis brothers, Ken and Scott. Often a game – baseball in their backyard for example – but also a somewhat educational activity even if we didn’t know it (including Ken and Scott) at the time. We spent days trying to take apart a broken lawnmower engine to see if we could fix it. That didn’t work, but still, innate curiosity about how things worked was a good habit for us to get into.
There was a creek that ran behind all the houses on our side of the street. More than once we dammed that creek up creating a small pond waist deep on us. Who needs a neighborhood pool to keep cool? Ken had the idea that he could create a sluice way and generate some electricity. Again, I don’t think it was ever successful, but it was the effort that counted. They also rigged up a zip line before any of us knew what one was. Thinking back as an adult it probably wasn’t the safest thing, but as kid? Damn fun, and no one actually got hurt.
And that is just one group of kids in a neighborhood where almost every house had young children. This could go on for a while.
When I was 13 we moved near Brrohaven. By that time the Brookhaven movie theater was an X-Rated theater.
DDB, you could have lived in my neighborhood. We had the creek we damned up, had a cut water hose in it at the top so we could keep the water at the same level without the dam breaking. Got it deep enough some of our crazier buddies would jump off the street where the big concrete pipe would come in. Surprised someone didn’t break some bones.
Also we would get a window screen and catch minnows, damnest thing is we would build a small fire and cook them AND eat a little piece of them. We did that a couple of times until we told mamma and she threated to whip us if we did it again.
Remember also getting a string with a piece of bacon on it and catching crawdads. Didn’t eat them but our dumbasses would see how long we could stand it with our fingers in it’s pinchers.
I really feel sorry for the last couple of generation of kids. We had some great times.
I grew up in the fifties (born in 47) and was blessed with a creek across the street and a school yard too. We never went indoors until it was dark. We didn’t have AC, nobody did. We did have some big oak trees that shaded the house but come fall I spent the weekends raking leaves.
Every kid had a slip and slide when I was growing up. Great way to beat the heat. Cheap roll of plastic and a water sprinkler. I can’t remember the last time I drove by a house and saw a gang of kids playing on one.
playing “smeer the queer” in the front yard which always ended with someone’s little brother getting hurt and the STQ participants would scatter like crazed chickens when the little bro started crying… then we would reassemble around dark with costco amounts of toilet paper ready to deface some property in the ‘hood.
In and around 1980ish for 3 summers in a row or so a neighborhood parent would frequently drop 6-8 of us nightmares off at Six Flags at opening time and pick us up at closing. Passes were like $40-ish back then so with about $15 bucks in your pocket you were set for 12 hours of unsupervised feral activity.
I also had a great aunt who had a double wide on Clark’s Hill where family would gather for fishing, boating, swimming, bbq, fireworks, etc…
After we left metro Atlanta for the foothills, I spent quite a bit of time chasing trout in various North Georgia mountain streams.
Most of that summer fun came to an end when I was old enough to get a job (15). I’m currently “celebrating” my 40th year in the labor market. At least my current job comes with a/c. Didn’t take very much summertime outdoor labor to convince me about the value of getting an education.
I did however vastly overestimate how much golf would come with it…
Catching lightning bugs and playing wiffle ball for hours.
Wiffle ball, basketball at the dead end of our street at the end of the day. We lived in the woods and the “ball court” was surrounded by trees on all sides except where the road was. Shaded and “cool” at least cooler than the rest of the neighborhood.
If we were lucky my Uncle Lloyd would let all of us and the cousins spend the night at his house and we would order pizza, play scrabble, and watch movies all night.
We would organize hide and seek games in the woods with the neighbors kids when the cousins would come over and spend hours in the woods hiding or sneaking around.
During the day we would pile up in the bedroom and play Mario or Zelda until Dad came home from his second job and we would have to go play outside so he could sleep.
We were kings.
Alpharetta early ‘80’s. We had a few of us that had dirt bikes and go carts and subdivision roads/woods that hadn’t been built yet or very few homes in them.
We rode around like hells angels all day every day. Broke em, fixed em, hit up a pool somewhere.
I never saw my parents until dinner time, they never asked what we were doing.
Of course afternoon TBS in those days, and actual music television.
Early 60’s, Greensboro NC: KICK THE CAN!
Late ’70’s here, in Morganton NC. Kick the Can was epic! Played over many acres in the central part of our neighborhood. Every kid in the area played, was a huge part of life. We also threw stuff at cars, but there was an ethos here, never throw things that could damage the car. Just mudballs, magnolia pods, tomatoes, etc. A bunch of us one time rode our bikes to Hickory NC (~ 40 miles) one day, for no other reason than we could.
Jimmy Carter years, summer quarter, Athens, un-air conditioned house: Skip, Ernie, Pete, and maybe John Stirling. Braves would reward you winning about one out of three.
I love Georgia summers. Like Ol’ Maj said: “You just got to get hot with it, boy.”
I try to stay out in it as much as I can even though the job these days requires mostly seat time. Golfing, fishing, yard work, the farm, and a little lake time here and there.
Two things.
1: Arthritis gives me a break when it’s hot
2: A cold beer tastes magnificent of an afternoon.
GO DAWGS!
One of the neighbors had a big yard, big enough for baseball games.
Then when it got too hot, we’d come inside and play Strat-O-Matic.
I bought a Strat-O-Matic anniversary All-Star edition a few years ago just for the memories.
Safely getting in the Chattahoochee river to swim, do rope swings, and catch trout with corn. Water seems a bit toxic nowadays.
Wiffle ball, Matchbox cars in the dirt, riding bikes, ping-pong if someone’s Mom allowed it in their basement and hanging around hoping one of the “lucky” kids would invite the rest of us to their pool. Point was…you knew where every kid in the cul-de-sac was yet none were inside. Today, I don’t even know if some of my neighbors have kids…never, ever see them outside and certainly not in the cul-de-sac.
One of the reasons you’re seeing fewer lightning bugs is because a lot of people use services such as Mosquito Authority to kill off the mosquitos in their yards. Unfortunately, the chemicals kill lightning bugs, lady bugs, pollinators like butterflies and bees, and lots of other organisms that would normally help pollinate crops and provide food for birds and other critters. So if you’re one of those people paying some company to “sanitize” your yard of insects, you should stop this practice. Seriously, it’s bad for the environment when you start messing with the food chain.
Born in ’77, Tucker GA. Neighborhood swim team, which was WILDLY competitive (beating Dunwoody Country Club, with our proletarian-ass team, was always sweet.).
Spending ALL DAY at the pool. 2v2 volleyball on our sand court. As a teenager, I was a lifeguard, so, it was getting kids dropped off for me to essentially babysit, for free, all summer.
Tromping out in the woods behind my Dad’s house with my friends there to build forts, and skip rocks across the pond.