Enough of This Negative News! This if for the Old Guys!

[striker55]

Fascinating subject, actually. Yes, there are soap box derbies and they still have those Pinewood derby races, too. Read up on the designs. They've gotten really sophisticated.

Grandson won a couple pinewood derbies.

 

[oldag]

My Mom always sighed when she saw what I could build out of skates...
Why don't you just put them on go skating, Have you ever tried that?

Geez. That's no fun.

 

[abJarrel3244]

You must be ancient to remember a time when there were no pedophiles. I am going on 66 and I can think of several from my neighborhood and schools alone: a few were priests (though I think only one or two were charged, the others disappeared), one or two were Franciscan brothers, at least a couple were nuns, another the choir master, one was a shoe store owner, one a mental health counselor, one was the husband of a Cub Scout den mother. A couple or few of the religious ones were swiftly moved by the Church to other areas and just disappeared. I think the shoe store owner got away with it but he is known to have diddled with children. They were everywhere but most seemed to be religious. I think that folks just did not talk about them as much back then just like there were no women's hygiene commercials and no condom advertisements. Things were kept under wraps so to speak; in fact at the drug store they'd wrap the boxes of sanitary napkins in brown paper tied with string lest someone see what mom sent her kid to to buy vat the drugstore. Maybe it was a very different era but pedophiles prowled everywhere, not just in NY where I lived but all over the country. See: 1, 2, 3



I remember being with a pal of mine and seeing that priest doing something to an altar boy although at the time we thought at first it was a nun he was doing it to. Then we realized it was an altar boy. We thought he was punishing him for something, he had the boy bent over and was holding him down from behind. On that day, we were in the church doing tasks as altar boy novitiates, when we heard moaning noises coming from the sacristy. We peaked in through a window from near the altar into that room and saw the scene we did not fully understand at the time. Shortly after that, we were no longer altar boys in training - the priest gave some bogus reason about our behavior and the nuns enforced it and that was it for us becoming altar boys. Lucky us I am guessing. Years later I developed the opinion he probably had been molesting the boy and then I heard he made a list of known or suspected pedophiles. In general, even had he not later been accused of pedophilia, he was a very weird & scary man.

That’s so sad man

 

[abJarrel3244]

Summers when every kid headed out after breakfast, played baseball all morning at some abandoned field. No adults in sight. We all descended upon some poor mom's house for lunch. She gladly fixed sandwiches for us all. Then back out again until dark (or until mom came looking for us, hollering our full names...). No bike helmets. No batting helmets. Just happy to be outdoors and with friends.

No worries about kidnappings, pedophiles, etc.

Not anymore.

I’m 23 and I had a similar child hood, but my parents always kept us in the loop about things of the such. Made sure we knew the creepy signs and always asked if anyone older had asked to do things. It was a good time but still aware of surroundings