All our Yesterday (Tall Tales?)

[Zflyer]

I see that the funnies topic is being overtaken by tales of yesteryear. Perhaps we can have them in here instead, please....

 

I remember when we had gas poker which were used to start the coal fires ate home. My brother and I would fill a bowl with water and fairy liquid, shove the poker in and get it bubbly, Poker off and out match in, cleaned the carpet!

Mum weren't happy lol

[Paul De Tourtoulon]

Lighting sparklers on a 2 bar electric fire, and still here to tell the tail,,,😄

[Ace]

Banger (firework) down a hand held piece of steel conduit followed by a marble.

Remember Sodium Chlorate (weed killer) - Pipe bombs and rockets.

Arr those were the days

[Don Fry]

A Victorian book, found in a junk shop, Fireworks. OMG. 

[Eric Robson]

1 hour ago, Zflyer said:

I see that the funnies topic is being overtaken by tales of yesteryear. Perhaps we can have them in here instead, please....

 

I remember when we had gas poker which were used to start the coal fires ate home. My brother and I would fill a bowl with water and fairy liquid, shove the poker in and get it bubbly, Poker off and out match in, cleaned the carpet!

Mum weren't happy lol

I remember the home made gas poker we had at home, my mother used to take the rubber pipe off the cooker and push it on the gas poker, light the fire then push it back on the cooker , no hose clips.

[Basil]

35 minutes ago, Ace said:

Banger (firework) down a hand held piece of steel conduit followed by a marble.

Remember Sodium Chlorate (weed killer) - Pipe bombs and rockets.

Arr those were the days

YES!!! I remember igniting flash powder straight up into my face , and my eyes survived, well only after loosing my sight for some hours. And the 'Canon', well they really whent. Kids today dont know the half of it. At least we did not go around armed with knives and guns.

Bas

[Eric Robson]

Self harming had a different meaning those days.

[Shaun Walsh]

3 minutes ago, Eric Robson said:

Self harming had a different meaning those days.

Darwinian selection removed the exceptionally stupid from the gene pool.

[Cuban8]

Climbing trees without a risk assessment or any form of safety equipment ditto playing conkers................copying the cowboys waiting to rob the trains in the old TV westerns and putting an ear to the rails to hear the approaching locomotive. Actually, not a brilliant idea either back then as a kid in the 1960s or now in 2023. However in my defence it was on a very quiet country branch line that survived Dr Beeching.

As for fireworks - putting a lit banger (before it started fizzing) into an empty  screwtop glass lemonade bottle. Usually a two handed job to get the top on tight PDQ - how stupid we were.

 

Kids certainly do some stupid things today and when I'm tempted to moan about today's youth, it helps to think back to one's own time as a teenager. The big difference is the amount of real murderous violence, spitefulness and true criminal activity that is commonplace now. A lot of which is drugs and gang driven and which simply didn't exist to anywhere near the modern extent when I was young and not at all away from the known and notorious areas and their 'characters'.  Makes the Mods and Rockers punch ups look like a tea dance. Most of us carried penknives and the lucky ones might have had an air pistol or air rifle bought for them. (still got my GAT pistol - quite hopeless)

Edited May 22, 2023 by Cuban8

[Gary Manuel]

The DARWIN AWARDS WEBSITE is always worth looking at for a morbid chuckle at other peoples stupidity.

[Robin Colbourne]

Today                                 Then

Kids with knives                Cutting out balsa ribs and one's fingers
Glue sniffing                      Enjoying the aroma whilst sticking the kit together
Solvent abuse                   Doping the model
Drug abuse                       Topping up the ether in the diesel fuel can
Self-harming                     Flick starting the diesel's prop with its razor-sharp moulding mark edges
Taking suicidally               Retrieving one's model from trees, roofs, railway lines etc.
dangerous risks

Edited May 22, 2023 by Robin Colbourne

[David Davis 2]

Playing full contact fifteen a-side rugby at the age of eleven.

[Cuban8]

3 hours ago, Paul De Tourtoulon said:

Lighting sparklers on a 2 bar electric fire, and still here to tell the tail,,,😄

Just remembered.......tried something similar myself with silver paper..........a hell of a flash and bang, no RCDs back in the day.

[J D 8]

1 hour ago, Basil said:

 At least we did not go around armed with knives and guns.

 

   We did, air rifles, sheath knives and as teenagers shotguns. Never hurt any one except ourselves. Air rifle pellet ricochet sure hurt [ shooting at live shotgun shells ] and my friend fell on his own knife and had a hole on his leg. Still we survived and learned some thing.

Pic taken in large town visit in early 60's, No one cared or worried I was armed.

[Cuban8]

33 minutes ago, J D 8 said:

   We did, air rifles, sheath knives and as teenagers shotguns. Never hurt any one except ourselves. Air rifle pellet ricochet sure hurt [ shooting at live shotgun shells ] and my friend fell on his own knife and had a hole on his leg. Still we survived and learned some thing.

Pic taken in large town visit in early 60's, No one cared or worried I was armed.

A totally different mindset - the knife shown was regarded as a tool and not a weapon. I remember them being sold in all manner of hardware shops etc often IIRC on revolving stands.  Clearly there were exceptions, years before we had the Glasgow Razor Gangs and of course much later Teddy Boys were often partial to carrying the odd flick knife now and again. All a bit before my time.

[PatMc]

2 hours ago, J D 8 said:

   We did, air rifles, sheath knives and as teenagers shotguns. Never hurt any one except ourselves. Air rifle pellet ricochet sure hurt [ shooting at live shotgun shells ] and my friend fell on his own knife and had a hole on his leg. Still we survived and learned some thing.

Pic taken in large town visit in early 60's, No one cared or worried I was armed.

 

 That's a nice hat you're wearing, JD. 😁

[Don Fry]

I got cocky, showing off to a mate with an adder I caught. Adder took offence and she bit me. Did that hurt, you bet. Did mum find out, less pain, just shut up. Three days in hell. She kept asking, I kept lying, I’m coming down with an unspecified lurgy.
Funny enough, never picked one up again. 

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

For some long forgotten reason, when I was about 14 I had my Weller soldering gun [still in regular use well over 50 years later] partly dismantled in my bedroom and realised that I'd just touched the live connection on the switch with it plugged in to the mains.  As I was standing on a dry carpet, all I felt was a slight tingle.  This excited my curiosity and I invited my mate next door in to test me with a neon screwdriver which duly lit up when I touched the live connection.  As I didn't feel the slightest bit dead, we experimented with various configurations of human chain and neon tester until I happened to place my finger across both the live and earth terminals.  At that point, I had my first experience of 240V travelling through skin with relatively little resistance.

 

I reassembled the soldering gun fairly soon after.

 

This experience did cause me to do some thinking about the effects of electricity on the human body which has generally served me well over the years - particularly tinkering with live equipment where I've always been careful to ensure only one hand is ever used and the other kept well away from anything at neutral/earth potential.

 

Like JD8, we would strap our sheath knives onto our belts at the start of school holidays and wear them wherever we went.  The thought of sticking them into anyone [barring the odd accident playing splits] never occurred to us.  I do recall a potentially nasty incident with air guns though - for some reason, my mate [the same one as in the electrical experiments] turned round and fired his Gat at my feet while we were patrolling the local byway - the Gat being a rather feeble example of an air pistol there was little or no risk to life or limb - but years of conditioning playing cowboys with cap guns kicked in and I fired my cocked and loaded Webley .22 from the hip in reaction.  Fortunately, he reported only feeling the pellet brushing his hair!

[John Wagg]

7 hours ago, Eric Robson said:

I remember the home made gas poker we had at home, my mother used to take the rubber pipe off the cooker and push it on the gas poker, light the fire then push it back on the cooker , no hose clips.

My job when coming home from school was to light the coke stove. (this heated the hot water). So out came the gas poker, proper bought one, and connected it to the gas tap. ( a piece of ruuber tube on the flexible metal pipe.) Turn on the electric fire, poke the poker near the fire radiant bar and turn on the gas. Gas ignites and then push the lit poker into the stove. 

Needless to say once I got it wrong and the poker touched the radiant just as my hand went to turn the gas tap on. Quite a spark jumped from my finger to the tap and that hurt. 🥴

We used to make gas bombs using an empty Tate & Lyle syrup tin.

Knock a small hole in the bottom and another in the lid. Fill with gas from the gas tap. Make sure the lid is firmly in place.

Stand tin on ground and light the gas seeping out of the hole in the lid. After a short while - BANG - lid flies off as the gas/air mixture reaches its explosive composition.

Similar but we had coal gas :-

 

 

[Peter Christy]

The local council used to have a big bonfire night on the beach every 5th of November. One of my school mates used to live on a farm and would turn up to the event with a sack of potatoes. All the parents would watch from the comfort of their cars, parked on the sea front facing the beach. Whilst the fireworks were ongoing, a gang of us would go along the line of cars shoving a spud up each exhaust.....

 

Once the display was over, and everyone went to leave, the results were inevitable! Small Fords and Austins (remember them?) would probably stall, but Jags and Rovers would expel the spuds with explosive force - just like a giant spud gun - imperilling anyone in their way.

 

No-one ever got hurt - aside from those unlucky enough to get caught, who usually received a sound paddling of the rear! But occasionally an older Ford or Austin would blow its exhaust off, and leave with it dragging on the floor...!

[Peter Miller]

Back in 1954 I was a member of the Regents Park model flying club for a time. We use to fly on Hampstead Heath.

 

One Winter afternoon one of the lads got his Mercury Mentor rubber powered model stuck right at the top of a tree. We were all standing round wondering just how to get it down as the tree was tall but not very climbable.

A well dressed Indian gentleman walked up, stared up at the model and then, without a word, he took his shoes of and went straight up the the tree, retrieved the model, came down, handed the model to the owner, put his shoes on to a chorus of thanks and he then walked off without  a word.

[J D 8]

   Talking of Darwin awards. We used to have a sign in our Coast Guard station that said 

    " HM Coast Guard working against the laws of natural selection since 1822"

   A new generation of young noob leaders made us take it down.

 

[Don Fry]

What I’m waiting for, after these tales of learn quick, learn once, is memories of  when those members of humanity, ignored, started to develop bums, and were taller, and it slowly dawned they were the same species as Ursula Andress, and the frictionless transition to silver tongued Lothario, or not.

[Simon Chaddock]

Of course when I was young we had town gas at home. 

A length of rubber hose fitted to the gas tap that our dad illegally added to the gas fire so we could use a Bunsen burner. Pipe end into a pot full of water with plenty of washing up liquid. Gas on and you had a mass of bubbles that soon lifted off the surface and rose into the air. Throw an ignited match at it and whoosh! a nice fire ball! My brother and I actually did a couple of times in our bedroom! 😲

[Peter Miller]

21 hours ago, J D 8 said:

   We did, air rifles, sheath knives and as teenagers shotguns. Never hurt any one except ourselves. Air rifle pellet ricochet sure hurt [ shooting at live shotgun shells ] and my friend fell on his own knife and had a hole on his leg. Still we survived and learned some thing.

Pic taken in large town visit in early 60's, No one cared or worried I was armed.

I was given a sheath knife at the age of 6.  Never hurt myself or anyone else.