Age poll - how old are we?

How old are you?

  • Under 20

    Votes: 29 13.4%

  • Under 40

    Votes: 65 30.0%

  • Under 60

    Votes: 87 40.1%

  • Over 60

    Votes: 36 16.6%
  • Total voters
    217
I remember a movie theater to drop your kid of at the front of a grocery store while your mom shopped...S&H Greenstamps...35 cent a pack cigarettes in Kentucky 18 cent gas war cruising around the town square about 50 times on a Friday night.
 
Living in Nebraska now but when my Dad lived in International Falls I"d go up from Fairmont with the Boy Scouts on canoe trips. There are several canoe bases I remember just outside of Ely. Used to take the Scouts up the chained lakes making portages and camping out --- lots of fun. But its been years ago, used to be able to cross the Canadian Line easy all you needed was a Canadian fishing license and that was about the extent of it. We spent most of the 80s in Texas.
 
Well u dudes are alot older than me, I remember when the cigs went up-to 75 cents a pack and all the adults were screamin about it. Choclate bars were only a dime.

Now cigs are 10 bucks for the cheapest ones.

I remember fishing at chain lakes, but I thought that Chain lakes were north east of Edmonton now I found out that chain lakes are south east of here.

At one time u could drink the water out of those lakes. That's how clean they were.
 
Buzzard & Blakenstein,
Not sure about the "chain lakes" you're referring to as there are a number of lakes with the same name, like Twin Lakes... lotsa twins in all those lakes. Minnesota has over 12,500 lakes (has to be at least ten acres to be considered a lake or it is just a pothole or pond). Most of those lakes are in the northeastern part of the state, an incredible number and it is much the same on the other side of the border with Canada in the Quetico Provincial Park. In our Boundary Waters Canoe Area there are over a million acres loaded with inter connected lakes. Yes, it is canoe country. Buzzard, the scout base outside of Ely is called "Somers" if that rings a bell. You can still pass into Canada by canoe and only need a fishing license if you plan to fish. You can still drink the water from most of those lakes. I do.
Blake, when I was in my late teens I remember my buddies being outraged when cigarettes in the machines went up to 35 cents a pack. "Man, who'd pay that much!"
SB
 
Silverbear & fasteddy You are right Silverbear it was a long time ago. I can remember it was something like Man Chain or Chain Lakes just across the Canadian line I can remember there was a waterfall that came out of high bluff rocks had a drop of maybe 75yds we camped there for 2 days. and the water was colder than **** in August.
fasteddy a 1929 model A would run on almost anything that would burn. I had a date one night coming back from roller skating in Truman headed back to Fairmont and I knew I was low on gas so I took a short cut on a county road little old gas ball on the dash said empty... there was a bridge works with smudge pots on the side of the road so I dumped whatever was in them in the gas tank... the engine was still hot and I retarded the spark and hit the starter and away we went. When we got into town it was smoking so bad I dont' think there were any mosquitos within 50 miles. LOL
 
I like the poll choices.. haha it jumps from 'under 20' to 'under 40'.. Well i'm under 30.. And I like all you guys. Especially you Silverbear....keep on truckin' It's like having a bunch of great friends, and a bunch of awesome grandfathers..

Glad we can all have a sense of community in this crazy world.

- The stranger
 
What a bunch of geezers...No wonder we get so many smiles from neighbors. They see silver beards and bicycles and I guess it makes them feel good. Does me. You guys are just too cool for school. What fun if we could all meet together some day.
Tom
 
Buzzard, who remembers the old cannonball road flares, or the old red barn lanterns hung from the road barracades.

Steve.
 
fasteddy said:
Buzzard, who remembers the old cannonball road flares, or the old red barn lanterns hung from the road barracades.

Steve.
Click to expand...

Who had at least one (usually more than a couple) of those old "cannonball road flares" in their car trunk, bedroom, shed, etc. that they "accidently" picked up somewhere?

Maybe even a stop sign or two? LOL

Ah... the glory days of our youth, huh?
 
Homeless Bob, I do believe one or two followed me home. In Ontario we have highway 69. In the 60's the Ontario Provincial Police had a cruiser under each one because the highway boys couldn't keep replacing the ones stolen fast enough.
A fella could get as much as $25 each for them.

Steve.
 
conabree said:
I like the poll choices.. haha it jumps from 'under 20' to 'under 40'.. Well i'm under 30.. And I like all you guys. Especially you Silverbear....keep on truckin' It's like having a bunch of great friends, and a bunch of awesome grandfathers..

Glad we can all have a sense of community in this crazy world.

- The stranger
Click to expand...

Conabree,
Thanks for your kind words. Geezerdom is something I'm still trying to get a handle on. When I was young I enjoyed time with my grandfather who I called "Wa" and who smelled of Velvet tobacco which he made into cigarettes with great precision and who shaved with a straight edge razor as I watched, open mouthed and expecting blood which never flowed. He was a retired machinist and very good with his hands. It seemed to me he could fix anything, but he sure was old. I knew on some level that he had started out small and young, but it was such a stretch of imagination that I could never picture it, as if he came into the world grizzled with a cigarette burning. As I grew up I never pictured myself old even though I knew the theory; it just didn't seem remotely possible for me. And here I am. Sometimes it is still a shock when I look in the mirror and see an old fellow, perhaps my grandfather looking back at me. On the inside I am still the same 12 year old boy who looked at Whizzer ads in Popular Mechanics and pined for a motorbicycle, as if I am a boy wearing the tattered overcoat of age, pretending to be an elder. And it is just a disguise, a cloaking device, as no one but me knows my true identity. Well, my big brother knows since he is in disguise, too. So does Buzzard and 2door. And my friend Fasteddy up in Canada... he knows. We're all really boys on the inside, timeless spirits riding our motorbicycles with the wind in our faces and the sun at our backs, smiling, smiling...
SB
 
YAY!!1!

A forum where I'm not the eldest by a long shot lol, jus' squeakin' by on the "under forty" option :D

Tho TBH, like good ol' silverbear I have a hard time believing it... when a gray hair shows up in my hairbrush - I keep thinkin' it's overspray, even if I hadn't painted anything o.O

It simply boggles me how many people will insist on "acting their age" - why rob yourself of the joy of playing like a child? I remember vividly when I was fourteen and striking out on my own to wander the countryside, swearing to myself that I'd never grow up, that no matter the circumstance I'd keep that sense of adventure and do whatever it took to perpetuate my freedom...

...and after over two million miles and a coupla decades later it's an oath I've never broken.
 
Silverbear, that was great, not only a good story but sharing your thoughts is a learning experience for younger guys.
 
BarelyAWake said:
...I remember vividly when I was fourteen and striking out on my own to wander the countryside, swearing to myself that I'd never grow up, that no matter the circumstance I'd keep that sense of adventure and do whatever it took to perpetuate my freedom...

...and after over two million miles and a coupla decades later it's an oath I've never broken.
Click to expand...

Ah yes... the lifequest.

How often have I sat and recalled the night my best friend and I were talking those many nights ago when we were in high school. I can remember looking at him and saying; "I never want to be one of those old guy in the nursing home who says 'I wish I had...'."

It has caused me problems over the year... and heartache, and loss, and pain... and joy, and a life unlike those around me.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. ​

Peace...
 
fasteddy - You do bring back memories of pin setting. I set pins at the Edwards AFB bowling alley on the Mojave Desert in 1956-7. The front part of the place had a swamp cooler the the back where we worked just had a tin roof. Talk about hot! Most of the guys working pins were GIs so they had a fridge set up in the back and the place kept it stocked with beer for them. They didn't put any soda pop back there so I drank the beer as I worked the pits too. I was 14 and 15 during that period and I can tell you setting pins for one league night I could go through a six pack and never came close to getting a buzz one. I used to hate double ballers on open (non-league) days. You'd jump down in the pit to grab the pin right after the ball hit them and the a**h*** would fire another ball down the lane while you were still picking up fallen pins. I got automated out of that job. Never been in a bowling alley since then either..wee.
 
Exavid, that time period and age was when my parents owned thier 12 lane bowling alley. I would never set foot in a bowling alley today.
People say, you must be a great bowler. Nope, still hear the balls coming down the alley 50+ years later.

It was a wonderful time, at the time, but it's time is long past.

Steve.
 
"On the inside I am still the same 12 year old boy who looked at Whizzer ads in Popular Mechanics and pined for a motorbicycle, as if I am a boy wearing the tattered overcoat of age, pretending to be an elder. And it is just a disguise, a cloaking device, as no one but me knows my true identity." silverbear

Silverbear,
I have a hunch that twinkel in your eye gives you away.

PS:
I hereby nominate you for "Post of the Year" ... shear poetry.
 
Last edited:
exavid said:
You do bring back memories of pin setting. I set pins at the Edwards AFB bowling alley...... I drank the beer as I worked the pits too. I was 14 and 15 during that period and I can tell you setting pins for one league night I could go through a six pack and never came close to getting a buzz one.
Click to expand...

You did know they only serve half beer on a military base...pretty much impossible to get drunk on. Same stuff they sell in Oklahoma. Still a very cool story..flg.
 
What they had then on base was 3.2% beer. I can tell you from experiments swiping a few from my dad's stash in those days I could feel a can and got downright tipsy from two. Setting those miserable pins in the heat tended to get one goofy anyway so maybe it got to me there too but I can tell you it didn't slow me down. Only the best pin boys got to specialize in league bowling with fixed tips.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top