What did American children ever do before there was Internet, PC's, tablets, gaming and mobile phones?

[AlongCameJones]

Some of us who are boomers here and older may have some good answers.

 

[Chief Sapulpa]

Played and stayed outside 'till Mom yelled or we knew it was time to come home or got thirsty / hungry. Played in the woods and built tree forts. Fished in the canals or with Dad on the weekends. Helped Dad with home, car and boat maintenance and repairs. Built plastic models and then usually blew them up with fireworks. Rode our bikes everywhere and walked to school. Shoveled snow, cut the grass and raked leaves.

 

[AlongCameJones]

My brother and I:

-mowed lawns
-weeded
-raked leaves
-moved potted plants for mom
-helped dad fixing automobile
-played with Tonka trucks
-played baseball
-swam
-did homework with old-fashioned manual typewriters
-had hand-held calculators for math
-had Best of the West cowboy and horse collection
-played ball with dog outside
-hiked
-walked dog
-fished
-hunted rabbits with 22
-electric trains, Lionel and Marx
-rode Schwinn Varsity 10-speed bicycles
-tree houses
-Frisbee
-swimming
-diving
-boating
-river canoeing
-model airplanes but sucked at it
-camping
-played LP records and 45's
-used Panasonic cassette recorder to tape rock and roll/pop sings off radio
-had transistor radio to listen to music and baseball games
-played 8-tracks on portable Panasonic Dynamite 8-track player
-kite-flying
-drove friend's go-kart
-operated 5-HP roto-tiller for mom's vegetable garden, hard work!!
-did chores with wheelbarrow and Radio Flyer red wagon
-had pedal kiddie car, red Fire Chief car, had Krazy Kar, had swing set, had Harry Kanarie airplane by Mattel, had Mattel Big Jim Camper with pet eagle, had Johnny Lightning Customs race car set, had Kenner SST gyroscopic powered vehicles, had Dasiy BB gun, remember the 1970's?
-collected Hot Wheels and traded them
-while living in Novato, CA, fed the animals we had as pets at one time or another, and cleaned their pens: we had dogs, pygmy goats, ducks, rabbits, fancy chickens, gray geese, guinea fowl, doves, cats, peafowl, pheasants, Japanese Koi fish in garden pond: there were dairy farms in this semi-rural area; neighbors had horses, ponies, Hereford beef cattle, black and white Holstein milk cows, Suffolk sheep, pot-belly pigs and goats

We had very rich boyhoods without an ounce of geek stuff.


The first time we ever saw a computer in person was at Radio Shack in 1978. TRS-80 series. They were demonstrating horse racing game on it at the store. My brother and I told my folks about the Tandy Corp. computer but mom and dad wen't too enthused about the notion of going out to buy one then. Cassette ROM BASIC. About $1,000 for a 64 KB RAM machine with cassette tapes or floppies as a filing system. In 1982, 12th grade, I had an introduction to BASIC programming class on the Commodore 64.

 

[Timmy59]

@AlongCameJones , IMO your doing good for a new guy keep up the good postings bro..

 

[Aku]

Being inside was the exception. Sick, or something broke. Grew up on a farm, went hunting, fishing, riding bikes.

 

[Hodrod]

Played with our friends mostly outside....made up our own games, fished, hunted, camped, collected things we liked and only watched the b/w round 9"tv on saturday mornings.....Oh the good old days (1949 to the 1960.s)....

 

[cowadle]

we worked. and when we weren't working we played. and if we weren't playing our parent's would find some work for us to do.

 

[AlongCameJones]

It sounds like us older generation folks were more active physically than kids these days. We weren't sitting on our duffs hardly. Sitting at a desk at school sucked especially for boys. One doesn't necessarily have to go outside to be physically active. We had to clean our rooms and do some house chores too. There was Captain Kangaroo before school and The Electric Company after school. There was the Saturday morning cartoon lineup on television. My mom didn't want her boys watching too much television. There had to be book reading too. She thought too much TV makes growing minds small. I once got scolded for turning on the TV at my grandparents without asking.

Too much TV makes you a very small person:

 

[Hodrod]

Some of us who are boomers here and older may have some good answers.

This is a really good post....I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments....

 

[Timmy59]

I have often compared my childhood to that of Beaver Cleavers..