April Foolishness

**AJBert** · 04-04-2022, 03:57 PM

I grew up in the country, so no parks, let alone amusement parks. We did have fun, though, with sixty acres, seven ponds and numerous ponderosa pine trees. Amazing how many "contests" we came up with between 4 boys left to their own devices. I guess was one of the more disgusting ones was to see who came out of one of the ponds with the most leeches on them. I suppose the most dangerous was the tree climbing contests, as in who could climb to the top of a sixty-foot tree and get back down the fastest with your feet, or body, on the ground. Of course, there were two of us racing at the same time as none of us had a watch. That also added a bit more to the fun. Amazingly, I don't recall any of us falling out of a tree ever, though if the race was close we were known to jump out of the tree before getting to the lowest limb. Maybe a few bump and scratches but no trips to the emergency room.

**Armybrat** · 04-04-2022, 04:29 PM

I grew up on Army posts in the 1940s & ‘50s that had a minimum of kids playgrounds.
But we did get to play on some cool stuff like Sherman tanks, half tracks, howitzers that were displayed.
At Fort Leavenworth they even had a static display of a captured Nazi Buzz Bomb from WW2 that I loved to crawl all over.
Didn’t get to play on one of those merry-go-round things until we were stationed in St.Louis in the mid 1950s. I didn’t like it because it launched me along with a stream of barf.

**dao** · 04-04-2022, 06:15 PM

Ok, so I should have said, "Jeep, you ever been to the ice races on the lake"?

We were riding that roller coaster once when they stopped the cars right before we got to the top and it released us. They made us walk down because a cable had broken.

**getsome** · 04-04-2022, 07:52 PM

It is amazing that any boys survived the late 60’s early 70’s……..When my friends and I were sub freshmen in high school, meaning that we were nothing but useless slime scum we all hung out at the local park that had one of those kid killer spinning wheels of death and also had one of those three level chin up bars and at the time the campus stud was Ronnie Mayer and all the girls loved him because he was an athlete and good looking and had been held back a few grades and had a drivers license…….Ronnie had a Honda 100 dirt/street bike and one day he showed up at the park and started to do stunts on his bike which ended up with his friend riding his Honda with him on the back and the plan was to ride under the highest chin up bar and Ronnie was going to stand up on the rear pegs and grab onto the bar and do a flip…….They should have measured the bar height better because at about 20 mph Ronnie stood up a little too high and caught the bar right in the forehead…….I remember the sound and if you have ever heard a college fastball contacting an aluminum bat for a home run that was it, PING and Ronnie was out on the ground and not moving…….We all thought he was done and somebody went to get his mom to tell her that Ronnie was dead………..His mom showed up just about the time he came to saying SOB M’fer what happened…..I guess his mom took him home or hopefully to the hospital…….That was 1970 or so and not only did Ronnie live and recover from the near death experience he now owns a very successful wrecker towing business in Chamblee Ga but to this day every time I see one of his R Mayer tow trucks I hear that ping sound and have a little chuckle………

**JohnR** · 04-05-2022, 06:00 AM

Early ‘70s we got those clacker balls - two plastic balls on a string you clack together. We were told they were dangerous, but scoffed. There were rumors that if the balls broke, the material inside was radioactive. I didn’t believe that, but I was 8, and it was the Cold War.