The Sad Truth
- Thread starter Hashish
- Start date
Within 5 minutes of handing over the phone the guy would be playing Angry birds or some other crap. Sad truth, yes. Hard to explain...unfortunately not.
Call me an old fart but...long nostalgic ramble.
Call me an old fart but...long nostalgic ramble.
I was a youngster in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio during the late 50's.
After school almost every summer day, me and a friend would walk about 2 miles thru fields down to the "big creek".
It was a a downhill 150 foot climb thru heavy forest to access it.
It was crystal clear pristine water laden with
Fish, Turtles, Frogs, Water Puppies, Water Snakes, all the neat stuff.
We would spend summer hours trying to catch "critters".
We once even found access to a huge storm drain, brought flashlights and investigated the maze of watery tunnels just for fun.
We popped a cover in a far neighborhood and were amazed where we ended up.
We once went back to a dry portion of the drain and carted in all the dry twigs and leaves we could locate and set them on fire, just to watch the smoke pour out like a giant smoking a pipe....that was my first encounter with the fire department....gotta good ass whopping on that one.
We used to spend a dime on a bus ride to downtown Cleveland Ohio and buy candy and just marvel at the big city sites, there were no shopping malls.
We routinely road bicycles for miles and miles, just to see where we would end up.
We would get a bunch of neighborhood kids and play street whiffle ball, strategic pavement cracks and storm drain covers as "bases"
My dime allowance bought 2 packs of baseball cards or a comic book. (I collected Cleveland Indian + Brooklyn Dodger cards)
Opening a pack hoping for a Mickey Mantle card was liking winning a lottery then.
All this, and much more, without our parents in the LEAST worried about our safety, they encouraged it.
Early 60's the "Big Creek" was pretty much polluted and near lifeless...Cleveland Ohio (now a reclamation project) was a polluted
mess....later they closed beaches on
Lake Erie, and the Cuyahoga river caught fire.
The 50's were actually not so bad, looking back.
Call me an old fart but...long nostalgic ramble.
I was a youngster in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio during the late 50's.
After school almost every summer day, me and a friend would walk about 2 miles thru fields down to the "big creek".
It was a a downhill 150 foot climb thru heavy forest to access it.
It was crystal clear pristine water laden with
Fish, Turtles, Frogs, Water Puppies, Water Snakes, all the neat stuff.
We would spend summer hours trying to catch "critters".
We once even found access to a huge storm drain, brought flashlights and investigated the maze of watery tunnels just for fun.
We popped a cover in a far neighborhood and were amazed where we ended up.
We once went back to a dry portion of the drain and carted in all the dry twigs and leaves we could locate and set them on fire, just to watch the smoke pour out like a giant smoking a pipe....that was my first encounter with the fire department....gotta good ass whopping on that one.
We used to spend a dime on a bus ride to downtown Cleveland Ohio and buy candy and just marvel at the big city sites, there were no shopping malls.
We routinely road bicycles for miles and miles, just to see where we would end up.
We would get a bunch of neighborhood kids and play street whiffle ball, strategic pavement cracks and storm drain covers as "bases"
My dime allowance bought 2 packs of baseball cards or a comic book. (I collected Cleveland Indian + Brooklyn Dodger cards)
Opening a pack hoping for a Mickey Mantle card was liking winning a lottery then.
All this, and much more, without our parents in the LEAST worried about our safety, they encouraged it.
Early 60's the "Big Creek" was pretty much polluted and near lifeless...Cleveland Ohio (now a reclamation project) was a polluted
mess....later they closed beaches on
Lake Erie, and the Cuyahoga river caught fire.
The 50's were actually not so bad, looking back.
- Mar 19, 2006
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