Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Way, way back...

Great thread. I'm younger than most of you Fuds but I do remember when the TV went off line at 2AM and all you got was the test screen until morning. I also remember taking the kitchen phone receiver and cord up to the second floor and hanging it out the window to untwist the cord. I also remember my mom making me a bed in the back window shelf of our Ford LTD so I could sleep on a long trip from Nebraska to Washington.

Steel cans for Coke and beer

Some of East Texas is still open range. Banco and I hunt in it.

I remember stomping that in a 1969 4-door Impala....

I remember our first five digit phone number when I was five (1955).

I remember walking to school.


Beat that!

My great grandmother. Born 1889, died 1992. I still marvel at what a ride she had, the things she lived through, saw and remembered.

Grandpa worked on the railroad from 1887 and drove a coal fired locomotive in northern Wisconsin until he retired in 1939. Oh what that guy must have seen in his lifetime. Dad talked about crawling under their 1926 Rio with a blow torch to heat up the oil so that the engine would turn over. Sis had him dictate his autobiography into a book and what a real archive that has been. Mom made a CD which was another great idea. Way simpler times for us growing up. 5 cent fries and 15 cent burgers at McDonald's. We'd walk over there after grade school to see if they had changed their sign of how many million burgers they had sold.

Milkin' by hand.

Dittos to the "clean your plate" adage from Depression parents. And I still cannot bring myself to throw food away willingly.

One of my worst spankings came the day my Mom said "There are starving children in Europe who'd love to have that" because I had left something. Foolishly I replied, "So how does it help them if I eat this?"

2 bits, 4 bits& 6 bits...I still use this term to explain the silver in my pocket. I also used a carbide lamp , I was taught to take this neccessity while hunting and fishing.
Amazing device, no matter how wet it got( the Carbide was kept dry separately until needed) you could create heat & light and without a match.

Wow! lots of stuff I'd forgotten. Dimmer switches on the floor....totally had forgotten that. I recall the frustration when shifting gears and needing to dim the lights at the same time.
My 1st recollections were of a house in S. Missouri on a dirt road (main road in the area) with the electricity in our front room provided by wiring with brown rough textured insulation (cloth?) mounted to the wall on white glass insulators with a rotary switch to turn the only light bulb in the room hanging in the center of the room on the same type of insulator. Water for the kitchen sink provided by a pitcher pump next to it on the counter... which drained out of the house by a pipe that just went outside to run away from the house in the yard. "Cabinets" were just fabric hung to cover the shelves. Outhouse in back. Only business in town was a combination gas station, feed store, post office, and had some groceries. Church next door where ladies organization had quilting bee's where they made quilts to help finance the church activities and my dad's salary(He did circuit of 3 small churches). Boxes full of rags/cloth they used were kept in the corner along with their quilting frames.
Don't recall our phone, but grandparents used a wall mounted crank type that as I recall had no dial....they had to tap the "speaker" hanger to get the operator so they could connect. Party line which confused me about why they didn't answer every time it rang. Wood cook stove only heat in the house.
In HS gas was about 25 cents and gas wars would go down to 15cents. Buddy had a Mustang convertible 6 banger and the 4 of us all chipped in a quarter for gas and we could tool around all night.

Dad was teasing Mom about her dishwasher and I ask,
"What would be the last gadget you would give up?"

I'm thinking microwave, dishwasher..... things a kid that grew up
in the 70s would think of.

Immediately, without thinking,
"Running water. Especially having running hot water."

She was 16 in 1954 when they got running water in her house.
Didn't even have a well, they carried water 150 yards from a
neighbors dug well.

Married my dad at 18 and lived on the farm. A mile off the road with no
electricity, for 3 or 4 more years. They had a hand pump, and only
had to carry it bout 50 yards. But somewhat uphill.

Asked Dad when did he get running water.
UGA, Athens, GA.

Lost it when he returned home after graduation. LOL

<LOL> ..... Impending doom!

I had an aunt/uncle and cousins that still had hand pumped water and an outhouse into the '70's.

Way Way back we had the duck and cover drills in school

The carbide I remember was a grey cake that reacted with water to create a gas, and this had to be lit to provide light...the light was extinguished by pulling the inner container containing the carbide out of the outer container containing the water.

It was useful for fishing if you put the carbide in a tin and soldered the lid on, then put a small hole in the tin and dropped it in to a larger tin with rocks in it and a hole for water ingress...the tins sank to the bottom and the water slowly leaked in and the resultant gas in the inner tin built up pressure 'til it blew the tin and killed or stunned nearby fish.

They banned carbide here as drunks has a habit of not pulling the inner carbide tin out of the water and extinguishing the flame, instead the flame would blow/peter out and the carbide being still in contact with water would continue to produce gas in an enclosed space occupied by a sleeping occupant.

That and fire risk from a naked flame...great fun for a young lad when dropped in a puddle of water as it was very entertaining.

How many of you remember Sputnik?

Imagine the kids that are growing up with backup cameras trying to hook up without one.

LOL

That gonna be awkward.