Here are some things that I miss....

[Perfect Stranger]

Smudge pots - those round kerosene lanterns they used to have around highway construction.

Riding laying up in the back windshield of the car.

Squirrel Nut Zippers candy

Knowing and being friends with everyone in the neighborhood

Going "exploring" with a bunch of buddies as a kid. We'd cover as much as 10 miles @ 10 years old.

Buying real, hand-formed hamburgers at the drive-in restaurant

The "ka-thoing" of the old channel changers

Attic fans (a southern thing, I think)

Not worrying if you forgot to lock the front door

Going to the drive-in theater for a cheesy, double-bill horror movie

"Real" fountain cherry Cokes and vanilla Cokes

Patches on the knees of my jeans

Building forts

Taking naps to the sound of rain on a tin roof

Real old-time family reunions....where family came from all over the state.

Camping out in the backyard with all my buddies....

Going out to eat after Church on Sunday with the whole family.

Not knowing who is calling....or why

The ice cream truck coming...

Sitting and watching TV with my mama and daddy after taking my bath.

Going with the family to see the Christmas lights downtown.

My aunt's sweet tea....must have had 2lb of sugar in each pitcher

Peach season in south Georgia

Taking my daughters fishing when they were little

My mama's fried cornbread

Nehi grape drinks with a pack of peanuts in the bottle

Comic books...yeah

Baseball cards on my bike spokes

Sodas in glass bottles

Riding in cars with the windows down

Big tail fins on cars

Penny candy

Watching Lassie, Leave It To Beaver, Andy Griffith, My Friend Flicka, Wonderful World of Disney, The Rifleman, Have Gun/Will Travel, once a week.....new for 9 months of the year!

Laying in the grass making things out of clouds

Going to the Fair

Getting switched for being bad....

Yoohoo

BB Guns

Circling all the stuff I wanted in the Sears Wish Book

Christmas Shopping down town before the malls came

Merthiolate and bandaids

Hand churned ice cream on Sundays

Building models...cars, airplanes, boats....really all kinds of things!

Yo-yoing

Mom taking us kids buying schools at the end of summer...and them having to last till Christmas, when we got part 2 to last till summer. Then cutting off all our jeans for the summer.

The last day of school each year...

Sitting in the Barbershop every Saturday morning waiting my turn...

And a million other little memories.... :AOK

[guitarhack]

I have lots of the same memories. I wish all my friends and family with whom I shared those times were still here.

[Tig]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. :poke

Yep, I share quite a lot of the same things growing up. Here are a few things my brother and sister, or my friends experienced with me.

We spent hours each afternoon on our bikes, swimming, playing with Hotwheels, little green army men, or exploring the long and wild creek behind our house. We drank our fill from the garden hose during summer.

Family reunions were huge. My grandmother was one of 5 sisters. Do the math!

We ate home cooked meals except Friday and Saturday night.

We knew every neighbor on our street, about 25 houses in all.

Once a month on Sunday, we'd visit my great grandparents and eat gumbo or chicken and dumplings. My great grandmother would play the piano and my Dad would sing classic crooner songs for her.

A trip to the beach wiped us out and we'd sleep during the drive home.

The longest time in existence was during Christmas Eve between the time we went to bed and the time our parents got up (after telling us for an hour to go back to bed until the sun came up).

We had 5 or 6 TV channels. Saturday morning cartoons were the highlight of the TV week except for shows like Batman or The Green Hornet.

We collected comic books and sports cards for fun, not as an investment.

To fill up an empty gas tank in the car cost about 8 or 9 dollars (our 1970 Thunderbird had a 429!). It looked exactly like this:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_szY6czURhx0/TDdPB_2kkjI/AAAAAAAABS0/b594oBVo0Ew/s320/Ford-Thunderbird_1970_800px_wallpaper_02-1.jpg

[Perfect Stranger]

oh, man.....I had hundreds of little green army men.

[Katastrophe]

I remember (and miss) games that required imagination...

Cokes out of a green glass bottle,
leaving the house in the morning with instructions to stay out, be careful, and be back before dark...
football games with the neighborhood kids,
fishing and hunting with my granddad,
family vacations in the car - (Y'all leave each other alone, or I'm gonna pull this car over!)
field trips during school,
four square at recess,
Captain Kangaroo,
My grandmother's cooking and wisdom,

and a whole lot more!

Great thread, PS.

[oldguy]

I miss going to the farmer's Co-op on Saturday with my Dad when he sold the cream from our cows. If I helped I got 25 cents. That got me a comic book, a vanilla creme soda, and a comic book at the grocery store next door.
I almost always helped.......

Riding along with Mom in the family station wagon, a red and white '58 Ford, to take supper to Dad during planting time. He had a 70 model John Deere tractor with a 4 row planter. If we were good we got a malt on the way home from the town drive in, the M&M, (Montgomery and Montgomery, Freddie and Blanche were their first names), much better than the big city Dairy Queen. We were almost always good.....

Going to visit my grandparents on Mom's side of the family. My Grandpa taught me to shoot pool after he bought his Sears pool table. He and I built a box kite that flew for three days, tied off to the fence around his alfalfa field. My Grandma taught me patience, humility, and to love without judging. She did that by example, not by lecturing.

Fishing a pond at night with a kerosene lamp and willow branches for bank poles. Finding enough dead branches for a campfire all night long. Finding enough rocks to build a fire ring. Going to sleep under some old blankets and quilts that we kept for just such an occasion. Looking up at the stars until dozing off to sleep.

Spending one night with my great-grandfather before he passed on. We had Sanka instant coffee and toast, with leftover hard candy from Christmas for dessert. I was maybe seven yrs. old. It was awesome. We watched wrestling on his black and white TV. He let me sleep on his foldaway bed, he slept in his easy chair. I had no concept of poverty, to me he was a rich man. We were king's in his castle that night.

Swimming in the creek in the summer.......well, technically, in 3 feet of water you don't swim, but it was cool.
Sledding down the hill in the pasture in winter, and ice skating on the little pond back of the house.
Mushroom hunting in the spring. Warm rains and humid weather brought 'em up, and little kids are close enough to the ground to see 'em. :)

Jim,
We have an attic fan, and I know where to find hand-formed, grill cooked hamburgers, and where to get fountain drinks. There's still some old-fashioned goodness around here.
Thanks for the memories.

[sunvalleylaw]

I share some of those memories. The biggest things are the versions of exploring. We did it on our Schwinn Sting Rays and Pea Pickers and such, and on our skateboards, and just on our feet. We did it down the hill, through the woods, across the tracks and onto the puget sound beach. We did it in the rainy or snowy woods in Packwood Washington where the cabin was where we stayed, and in many other woods or beaches or mountain trails we drove to. Good stuff.

Fortunately, my kids can ride their bikes around some, and walk around some, where we live. So they get to do a little too. I guess for me though, I miss the unstructured free time that allowed for that simple, non-destination oriented, exploring.

Brandi wrote a song that made me think of it. She came from the same woods I did and gets it I think. I want to learn a version for campfire purposes this year. I may sing it lower. ;)

[
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coyMHk2LTnc&feature=fvwrel

We just had a family trip to Holland that included a bike trip with the kids. We did have a route, but no real time constraints, and the distance was doable with lots of time to explore. The best family time we had in years. If you have a chance to go on a walkabout or bikeabout with your fam, I highly recommend it.

[deeaa]

Smudge pots - those round kerosene lanterns they used to have around highway construction.
Knowing and being friends with everyone in the neighborhood
Going "exploring" with a bunch of buddies as a kid. We'd cover as much as 10 miles @ 10 years old.
Not worrying if you forgot to lock the front door
Building forts
Taking naps to the sound of rain on a tin roof
Real old-time family reunions....where family came from all over the state.
The ice cream truck coming...
Comic books...yeah
Sodas in glass bottles
Riding in cars with the windows down
Big tail fins on cars
Laying in the grass making things out of clouds
Going to the Fair
BB Guns
Christmas Shopping down town before the malls came
Building models...cars, airplanes, boats....really all kinds of things!
The last day of school each year...


No reason you can't enjoy at least these ones? I still do, pretty much....

[deeaa]

Exploring was fun...especially when we found places like railyards etc.

The thing I'm sad I don't think I'll want my kids to do is what we used to do a little bigger, say 13-14 or so...we'd just tell our parents we'd go cycling for a week, get a couple of tenners for food and off we went...the longest trips I rode on my bike were 600km...usually more like 100 miles in a week though...we'd go to our families' cottages if parents weren't there, just swim and cycle and 'borrow' cars and tractors etc. and secretly drive rally with them around the countryside roads, scared of being noticed by the police...get drunk on wine we found in the cellar...and cycle along highways with no worries or money by the last days, stealing apples for food etc...and since there were no cell phones, parents didn't even know where we'd gone until we got home all dirty and tired and dying of hunger...those were the days...

I don't think I'd allow my boys cycle by themselves across the country until they're more like 16 or more, these days. It just feels too dangerous.