Childhood Memories of Our First Home made Firecrackers

[painter777]

Combat started in 1962

Don't forget Rat Patrol.

spoon fed and spoiled..

Hats on backward, pants or shorts hanging to their knees and a vocabulary that consists of "Huh" "Yeah" "What" "Dude" or "You know what I'm saying". Can't look you in the eye because they can't stop playing on the phone. Drives me nuts.

Can anyone remember:
When the last time you had a knock at the door with a teenager asking if you needed your lawn mowed, leaves raked, snow shoveled, bushes trimmed or any other chore? I sure can't. Easier to remember when I was doing the knocking looking for the odd job. They won't do it because they don't need to. Their time spent on video games, the phones with countless apps and many with parents who don't have a clue as to what they do, or who'd care.
I really worry about these young gals out there that may still be single who may have a little one. The odds of these gals finding a mate.... a 'Good One' are stacked against them. These guys have a small fortune invested in tattoos and many already way behind on multiple child support accounts. And or have multiple DUI's with records.
I'd better stop this rant, this has been a entertaining topic.

Please continue

Charlie-Painter777

[CINDERS]

Hah now in the political correctness we have today the children tell their parents what to do, if I dared to share my opinion or back chat my parents it was a perilous excersize.
As a kid growing up I like watching Combat, Rat Patrol, Ripcord, Cisco Kid, Hawaii Five O, 77 Sunset Strip, 12 o'clock High, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, the early versions of Dr Who, Rin Tin Tin yep where you got 15 minutes of show & 5 of ad's now its 5 of movie and 15 of ad's.

It's is quite a good thread with shares of the kind of fun we could have as kids in that era when you could sleep with the keys in your car and sleep with the front door open to your house, building cubby houses up trees in the back yard one we even built below ground oblivious of the obvious danger of a collapse, billy carts, losing heaps of bark in perilous adventures just all round good clean fun.

[JimF4M1s (Deceased)]

Charlie,

Rat Patrol started four years after Combat, 1966. I watched it, but I didn't like it as much as Combat.

We would find buckeye's. Use our pocket knife (do kids carry those anymore) and make a little hole. Ram a fire cracker in it, and pretend we hand hand grenades. It was a lot of fun. Now it's hard to find places you can legally even buy fire crackers. I have a few packs of Roman Candles I'm going to shoot off on the 4th. Still a kid at heart.

[cipherk98]

Only half decent fireworks story I have is in PA you can't buy good stuff if you live here... in Maryland you could buy whatever if you're out of state, they don't ask too many questions. My dad and a few guys he knew would go down to a distributor there, buy the good stuff (mortars, 500gram cakes, etc) in case quantity to meet the minimum sale, then split it all up. Had really memorable fourths with some great shows, certainly as good as you could get without going into true professional grade stuff. Did have one very memorable instance where a mortar was either too tight in it's tube or the initial charge failed and it went off on the ground.

All this got shot off at our neighbor's house which had ample room and was up on a hill, I'd cut their grass during that season. I'd mow the lawn about a day before the show so it'd look good and make sure the cut grass was mulched to avoid issues, then come back probably a week later to do it again like I always did always a bit nervous about hitting potential unexploded ordnance, especially left overs from "warmup act" stuff like bricks of firecrackers but never did. They've since moved so those days are gone, but definitely some of my defining childhood memories.

[speckles]

North Carolina was like northern states: sparklers and snap caps so we made our own devices. Anyone remember the polish canon sending reasonably sized objects hurling at amazing speeds that could dislocate a shoulder (clearly it can be done). Change the projectile to a lightbulb and you spend 30 mins pulling glass out of your friend's body parts. (Jeez)
Next the home made flame thrower: can of longshot raid or the like and hurl flames through the air. What idiots. But really cool looking
Finally the bombs: pressurized cans of whatever... pledge, raid, wd40..... in a bag of newspaper, light, and run like hell... night time was the best to visualize home made Moab. Again, absolutely crazy and stupid.
I will Mimmick the previous disclaimer!!! Don't do this at home...

[Flying10uk]

As a child, I use to love making "go-carts" out of old pram wheels and odd/scrap bits of wood, something you never seem to see children doing nowadays. The fun part was taking it out to try which I sometimes did on a quiet side street that was on a hill. Today you would probably get in trouble for having an unroadworthy vehicle on public highway.

[painter777]

Back in our youth you'd never heard of a spud gun, like you see around today.
We would take Campbell soup cans and cut both the top and bottoms out of all except the one we'd use for the bottom which we'd only cut the top off, leaving the bottom in tact.
Stack and tape them securely together, basically making our own mortar tube/cannon. Then poke a small hole near the bottom cans side edge. A tennis ball fit perfectly. Use some lighter fluid poured in the top and twirl it around a bit to fill it with the fumes. Drop in the tennis ball, aim, and put a light to the poked hole. Boom off went that ball to (back then) felt like up to 50'+. After getting run out of the neighborhood because of our cannons, we fell back to our home base on the river bank. The river flowed around a big lazy bend. This is where we had dug our fort. There on that peninsula in that fort I'd had my first taste of beer.. a Carling Black Label. Had my first taste of Canadian Mist. Puffed on my first smoke there... a cigarette type cigar called a Winchester. Seen my first set of Hooters in a playboy book. Small radio so we could hear the Detroit Tigers ball games..... Ahhh Al Kaline ! Just never knew what one of your buddies would sneak away from their Dads stash. This was like a 5 star as ground forts would go. Good roof if raining, small fire box if cold but most important it gave us perfect concealment along with a excellent view looking down current, while sitting well up the bank in the tree line. When older punk types would canoe by we'd wait for them to get downriver from us......... pulled some camo brush back.... ready our cannon and fire... then quickly cover back with our camo brush. By this time we were ON TARGET most every time. We'd stay tucked hearing the punks toss their threats, but never knowing where we were. We grew out of the fort but passed it on to the up and comers.

Good times I'll never forget.

Thanks to all for sharing your memories, makes me feel like I was part of the fun.

Cheers All,
Charlie-Painter777

[RASelkirk]

In the mid 60's, we (boys) burned a half-dozen of my little sister's Barbie Dolls with "flamethrowers" made from squeeze bottles of model airplane fuel, which was a mix of alcohol and nitromethane. Those dolls are prolly worth North of 10 grand today!

Russ

[Flying10uk]

I remember the time when me and my brother thought that it would be a good idea to make our own "home made" candles by melting shop bought candles into glass jam jars heated up on my Gran's open fire. All was going fine until my brother managed to break his jam jar, full of molten wax, over the open fire which seemed to have a similar effect to tossing petrol onto a fire. Flames shot up the chimney and set the chimney on fire which started making a roaring noise, at which point my Gran came back into her lounge. On seeing her lounge fire place having taken on the appearance of a blast furnace, Gran started having chest pains which happened when she got very worried about something. She had to take one of her "special" tablets given to her by her Doctor for stressful situations and after a rest she was ok. The chimney fire did eventually burn it's self out but we were banned from making candles ever again.

[2A-Jay]

I have made Tennis Ball cannons, as recently as 2 years ago. Growing up I had a Carbide Cannon that I bought from an ad in a comic book. Now I have my Thunder Mug (Signal cannon) to annoy people with. 20grams of Salt Peter Black powder (Cannon Powder) Can be heard clearly 1 mile away. Still fun at 63 years old.