What are your fondest memories growing up as a kid?

[Louie Detroit]

I'll start

Back in the 60/70's for me it was stuff like:

Music
Collecting sports cards, stamps and coins
Playing baseball and football
Riding my bike
Fishing
Snake Hunting
Doing the Dog (riding the Greyhound bus)

[Don Rickles]

Your mama!

[Steve_R]

Heading out after breakfast with friends on our bikes in the summer and returning home for dinner.

Having no cell phones or iPads to stare at all the time like kids today.

[Mick]

Originally Posted by Don Rickles

Your mama!

You nailed Louie's Mom?

[Anjdog2003]

Dealing drugs and extorting money.

[Bruze]

Spending summers on my uncle's dairy farm in the late '50s into the '60s. Learning to drive a tractor before I could push the clutch in all the way, doing hay, milking, gathering eggs, going out in the summer evenings picking wild blueberries in the pasture, hunting woodchucks, deer season, making maple syrup, gads there were endless fun things to do there as a kid.

My sisters and I often talk about how much fun it was there. We're all still alive, so far, but my uncle and all of that generation have been gone for decades.

[KenHorse]

Getting beat up by other kids at my elementary school for being Jewish.

(wasn't a total loss - taught me to fight and protect myself)

[Onebadcad]

Paying every bill I had, movies and haircuts and BMX bikes and clothes, since I was 13.
Mom had enough family bills, was glad I could help out.

Another was riding my bike 6 miles to the beach, I was 10 when this started, spending all day there, leaving at dusk and hitting McDs for dinner on the ride home.
Back then you could get two burgers and fries for under a buck, never ordered the soda, drank water, as we were starving due to no lunch.

[Anjdog2003]

Originally Posted by KenHorse

Getting beat up by other kids at my elementary school for being Jewish.

(wasn't a total loss - taught me to fight and protect myself)

If you were a real Jew you would have paid some Italians to take care of business.

[04 commemorative]

Playing outside all of most days,using our imagination and never had to worry about crazies taking any of us but.....it was the "cold war" so there were searchlights at night at times and sirens,along with the hiding under our school desks but we still were able to enjoy life much more than kids do now I think.

We would climb up my neighbors fence and onto their garage roof,we loved being able to see so much more than on the ground....two of my friends lived next door to me so we actually waxed up string (with wax my mom used to seal grape jelly I helped her make every year) connected tin cans and we had a string phone that really worked from my bedroom to theirs ! Life was pretty good !

[KenHorse]

Originally Posted by Anjdog2003

If you were a real Jew you would have paid some Italians to take care of business.

Actually, had a black friend who taught me

[CurtP]

BMX. Enough so that I've been building a couple. Just got done with my GT I rode when I was Navy, now working on a Mongoose Californian like I had in the early 1980s.

[Taurus]

Beating up Jewish kids in elementary school.

Actually, bike rides to the fishing hole, street football and camping out.

[Bill]

Originally Posted by Anjdog2003

Dealing drugs and extorting money.

So, about the same as now, just with no van?

Checks out.

[Rodnok1]

Just being outside without a care...

[GTOguy]

Riding my bike...exploring the new housing being built and making forts in the tall grass...catching crawdads in the creek...going to the drive in movie in pajamas...getting my first BB gun...learning to build and fly control line airplanes...racing my slot cars at the local slot car spot...Straw Hat pizza with all the old silent films playing...Rat Fink...The Tijuana Brass...riding in Dr. Cramer's '62 XKE...getting a ride in a Aeronca 90 HP and doing aerobatics...the fun house in San Diego on the way to our vacation in Ensenada in '66 and '67, and on and on. It was an analog world where the sky was the limit and our freedoms were encouraged.

[Aerovette]

Neighborhood games on those certain nights where every kid was available. It was a bit rare, but sometimes the stars would align and it seemed like every kid in a mile radius was out and ready to play. Kick the Can, Release the Den, Hide and Seek, etc.

Card games at 14 and 15 on the cute girl's back patio listening to Bob Welch, Wings, Peter Frampton, Gerry Rafferty.

Saturday morning bike rides to places we'd never tell our parents that we rode to.

Tree forts, go-karts, Hot Wheels.

I have lots of great memories as a kid.

As an adult...not so much.

[KenHorse]

Originally Posted by Taurus

Beating up Jewish kids in elementary school.

I knew it!!!

[69camfrk]

Family reunions at Roan Mountain Tennessee and the follow family gathering at my mom's homeplace in Abingdon Va with Grandparents, all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was a 400 some odd acre working dairy farm. We would hear the pump house come on in the morning and we were off to help. Running all over the farm, fishing with a cane pole in Parks creek. Yes, those were wonderful times that I reflect on with great fondness.

[Anjdog2003]

Baseball cards.