What are your fondest memories growing up as a kid?

[donuts]

Locusts singing, the smell of fresh mowed lawn and a ice cold jug of whole milk in the avocado green fridge.. basketball, baseball and football camps. Little league baseball.. born in ‘69 so attended a lot of my now brother in laws ballgames and the smell of second hand smoke floating from the men lined up along the fence , still love that smell.

Late 70’s going out to aunt uncles farm during harvest and hanging out, feeding calves and climbing on tractors , listening to the locusts sing in the evening ..

[Anjdog2003]

Originally Posted by Don Rickles

Picking up my friends in a brand new Mercedes Benz my parents let me drive. I would always pick up the tab. I was in desperate need for friends

[Yadkin]

Originally Posted by Anjdog2003

[Yadkin]

Originally Posted by Aerovette

The smell of caps.

I used to scrape my thumbnail across them and they'd sizzle/pop. My thumb would be ever so slightly burned from it after a while.

Also, the metal "bombs" that you'd put a couple caps in and twist tight, then throw it up in the air.

I never saw one of those. You must have grown up in Hollywood with rich parents. We just smashed the rolls with rocks.

[Frankie the Fink]

Originally Posted by Yadkin

We used to play a similar game but with folding knives. Everyone carried one back then. You would stand facing each other, feet shoulder width apart. Toss your knife between your opponents feet- if it stuck in the ground, then he had to bring his feet one width closer. First guy to hit someone's sneaker lost the game.

Best memories? Playing street hockey. Stickball. Full tackle football with just a sweatshirt for protection. Ice hockey on the pond. Riding bikes everywhere. Hitting 40mph downhill, pedaling like mad, passing cars. Swimming in the lake; jumping off the boulder into the cold water. Hiking the trails from my grandfather's cabin to Mt. Anne- our favorite route included a narrow ledge- certain death if you fell.

Sounds like a version of mumbly-peg...

[StudleyJames]

Christmas when my late uncle stopped by and stayed over night and playing a game of trying to guess what present he got for each of us.

Watching TV game shows with my grandmother and drinking coffee and building model cars

Going for a ride to the corner bar with my Grandpa and having a pop and heated cashews

Staying outside until dark playing with all my neighborhood friends

[BayouCountry]

My uncle taking me around with him to pick up women. I guess men now use dogs. Never thought about it before my aunt told me one day how she met my uncle.

[Frankie the Fink]

Second best memory was discovering a sturdy oak tree that my 13 year old pal and I could climb at night to watch our 19 year old neighbor change into her pajamas some nights though a window. File it under "extracurricular educational activities"..

[Bruze]

Originally Posted by Yadkin

I never saw one of those. You must have grown up in Hollywood with rich parents. We just smashed the rolls with rocks.

LOL yes. I never sore one of those either.

Another fun thing in the spring: I grew up next to a creek that emptied into Irondequoit Bay maybe 2 miles downstream. It was all woods between my house and close to the bay.

In the spring, suckers would swim from the bay upstream to spawn. We'd walk maybe a mile downstream from my house and spear the crap out of them and throw them on the banks. It was just a bloodlust rampage for us.

My dad got wind of it and told me to bring some back, so we did. Having been a young man during the Depression, he had a good sense of what it was like to not have enough food. He would clean a bunch of them up every year and put them in the freezer.

They were bony but okay to eat in the spring before they sat around in the mud during the summer.

[Bruze]

What @Louie Detroit did during his youth:

[Aerovette]

Originally Posted by Yadkin

I never saw one of those. You must have grown up in Hollywood with rich parents. We just smashed the rolls with rocks.

I'm not sure 29 cents indicates we were livin' large.

[VITE1]

Summers spent at the backdoor pool with friends and neighbors, Winter sleigh riding down the front lawn, Ride bikes for miles on side roads and backwoods trails.

[GTOguy]

Originally Posted by Aerovette

I'm not sure 29 cents indicates we were livin' large.

We had these. In ca they were all over the place.

[WydGlydJim]

Stopping for an ice cold flavored pop, in a glass bottle, either grape, strawberry, or orange, out of a vending machine at a gas station on my paper route. I enjoyed it with a package of peanuts.....can remember it like it was yesterday......

[Louie Detroit]

Originally Posted by Anjdog2003

Baseball cards.

What years and type did you buy?

[Louie Detroit]

Originally Posted by GTOguy

catching crawdads in the creek.

Do they actually call them that where you grew up?

[04 commemorative]

Originally Posted by Yadkin

I never saw one of those. You must have grown up in Hollywood with rich parents. We just smashed the rolls with rocks.

we also just used some red bricks

[Thunder22]

not having any responsibilities other than being a kid.

[Bruze]

Originally Posted by Louie Detroit

Do they actually call them that where you grew up?

We just called them crabs. As I found out after I grew up, I guess technically they were crawdads.

[Louie Detroit]

Originally Posted by Bruze

We just called them crabs. As I found out after I grew up, I guess technically they were crawdads.

Here in Michigan they're usually called Crayfish. My cousins in Indiana call them crawdads and others call them crawfish.

I was asking GTO because he's on the Left Coast and they usually have a different perspective on things regarding nomenclature.