# When I was a kid



## Pappy (Nov 8, 2018)

this was our front door lock. Although we never locked the main door, this held the screen door shut.


----------



## C'est Moi (Nov 8, 2018)

We had one of those on the "kitchen door"... aka, the back screen door.


----------



## Ruth n Jersey (Nov 8, 2018)

When I was a kid we had an old metal ladle hanging by the faucet outside and everyone drank from the same ladle during the long hot summer days.


----------



## Aunt Bea (Nov 9, 2018)

Those were our version of child-proof locks when I was a kid.  

If you were old enough to reach the hook you were old enough to be trusted with whatever was inside.



Pappy said:


> this was our front door lock. Although we never locked the main door, this held the screen door shut.
> 
> View attachment 58986


----------



## Pappy (Nov 9, 2018)

Ruth n Jersey said:


> When I was a kid we had an old metal ladle hanging by the faucet outside and everyone drank from the same ladle during the long hot summer days.



We did too Ruth. Only it was a crank to get the water started. When my parents bought the old homestead, there was no running water until they installed it a few months later.


----------



## AZ Jim (Nov 9, 2018)

If your screen door didn't squeak, it had to be installed wrong.


----------



## Falcon (Nov 9, 2018)

Ha Ha      AZ Jim.


----------



## Ferocious (Nov 9, 2018)

[h=2]When I was a kid[/h]
It was my job to take the dinosaur for walkies....


----------



## Tommy (Nov 9, 2018)

*When I was a kid* ... the world was big and safe and wonderful and mine to explore (as long as I got home in time for supper!)


----------



## Sassycakes (Nov 10, 2018)

When I was a kid all we had to worry about was disobeying our Parents, hiding under a wooden desk to protect us from a bomb and in my case getting our Nun in school annoyed. Oh they were the good old days. Playing outside, getting wet under the fireplug without a care in the world. I wish my grandchildren had days like that now.


----------



## Getyoung (Nov 11, 2018)

When I was a kid, all the kids basically lived outside, out in the neighborhood. When it was around 5:00pm, all the Mothers would be on the back porch calling out, "supper", when you heard your Mom's voice you better get on that bike and ride home pronto!


----------



## Butterfly (Nov 12, 2018)

Getyoung said:


> When I was a kid, all the kids basically lived outside, out in the neighborhood. When it was around 5:00pm, all the Mothers would be on the back porch calling out, "supper", when you heard your Mom's voice you better get on that bike and ride home pronto!



Exactly how my childhood was!  And if you didn't get home in time to get your hands washed and sit down with everybody else, they would start without you and there would be lectures about the children starving in Japan and how hard mom had worked to get supper on the table and how hard dad had worked to get money for said supper.


----------



## Pappy (Nov 12, 2018)

This is similar to the door hatch I had on my closet door upstairs in my old homestead. I wrote in another forum about how careful I was to latch it before I went to bed. And then it would be open in the middle of the night. Definitely something going on in that room at night and my young defense was to cover up my head with my blankets and try not to think about it.

Oh, by the way......it would be latched again in the morning.


----------



## fuzzybuddy (Nov 13, 2018)

When I was a kid, the world didn't revolve around me. I was 11, I had to walk a mile to and from school, twice a day. No, there were no school meals. At noon, I had to walk home and then back to school. I lived at 264 Pleasant Street. If I lived at 266, I could have  taken the bus, because 266 Pleasant was over the 1 mile limit. All the kids, who lived further up the street, rode the bus. And where did they all stand to catch the bus? right in front of my house.


----------



## peppermint (Nov 13, 2018)

fuzzybuddy said:


> When I was a kid, the world didn't revolve around me. I was 11, I had to walk a mile to and from school, twice a day. No, there were no school meals. At noon, I had to walk home and then back to school. I lived at 264 Pleasant Street. If I lived at 266, I could have  taken the bus, because 266 Pleasant was over the 1 mile limit. All the kids, who lived further up the street, rode the bus. And where did they all stand to catch the bus? right in front of my house.



In Elementary School, we had to walk home for lunch...over the railroad tracks...My Mom would have the Peanut butter sandwich or anything she had in the house....They
did have a lunch room but Mom didn't want me to eat there...I learned many years later why she had to do that...."Money" that she didn't have....
She did bring me back to school after lunch with the junky car....She had my little brother and in the winter she would bundle him up and take my cousin and me back
to school....Then she went to the grocery store....She did pick us up in the winter from school....In those days there were no School Bus....

I never noticed we were a little poor...My parents had toys under the Christmas tree, every year...One year my parents bought me ice skates....I use to ice skate with my
brother's skates...They were the one's boy's wore...I didn't care, I just loved to ice skate....By the time I was in High School my parents were doing pretty good and my
big brother was working contributing to the household food....

I learned as I got older my Mom had a Sears Card....That's how she bought me skates....


----------



## fmdog44 (Nov 13, 2018)

Six blocks one way good *excercise*. "Hey Gramma, how about another grape soda?"


----------



## Butterfly (Nov 20, 2018)

We walked to school.  Everybody walked to school; there wasn't any school bus.  My dad went to work really early in the morning, and we only had one car and he took it to work, and my mom didn't know how to drive.    Most of the kids' families had only one car, so we were on our own.  We never thought much about it.  We went home for lunch or brought our lunch.  No cafeterias in schools back then, at least not here.


----------



## jujube (Nov 21, 2018)

School was exactly a mile away and across a busy highway.  I started first grade at five and walked to school in the dark in the snow and, how I remember it, uphill both ways.  Mom was at home with a sickly newborn and couldn't walk with me.  I had a flash light; I loved that flash light. The "crossing boys" would meet us at the highway and they were the biggest bullies in the school.   It wasn't until the 4th grade that we had school buses.


----------



## oldman (Nov 25, 2018)

We seldom locked our doors, except if we were going to be gone overnight. Shortly after I married, my wife and I decided to just take off driving and wherever we ended up, so be it. As it happened, the first night we stopped in a small town in western Virginia and near the North Carolina and Tennessee border. It wasn’t Mount Airy, which supposedly Mayberry was depicted from, but it sure felt like it. 

And, speaking of Mayberry, if that had been a real town, that’s where I would have wanted to live forever.


----------



## MeAgain (Dec 2, 2018)

We had screen doors and an out house in the country. In the city house we had indoor plumbing and modern. Loved both places.


----------

