OT: Something you miss from summers you had when you were young | The Boneyard

OT: Something you miss from summers you had when you were young

Spaceman213J

Spaceman213J

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I grew up in a family that was very loving and though we didn't have a ton of money, summers were always a blast.

One thing I miss a lot was playing Jarts or lawn darts. I remember having to wait until I was old enough and then loved it. I would play with my parents, brother, uncles and cousins.

I know they are banned in the U.S. now. I wish they would unban them. Is there anyone who can explain to my why they are banned, but I can drive 20 minutes and go to a place and drink and throw axes in a public venue?
 
Spaceman213J said:
I grew up in a family that was very loving and though we didn't have a ton of money, summers were always a blast.

One thing I miss a lot was playing Jarts or lawn darts. I remember having to wait until I was old enough and then loved it. I would play with my parents, brother, uncles and cousins.

I know they are banned in the U.S. now. I wish they would unban them. Is there anyone who can explain to my why they are banned
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Like most things “fun” growing up - they were banned in the late 80’s due to a few high profile injury/impalements resulting in death. Believe a few were pediatrics wandering in the flight path.

We had a blast w/ the original heavy metal tip ones.
 
  • Outside, bare foot almost all day.
  • Baseball in my backyard. We'd play 3 on 3 or 4 on 4 and just make up rules to make it fun.
  • Swimming on a swim team. Loved doing the breast stroke. Hated Butterfly but ended having to do it as a 7 and 8 year because I could do a lap without getting DQ'd.
  • Visiting my grandparents in PA who lived near a bakery. With the windows open at night for cool air you'd wake up to the smell of fresh bread every morning. And since it was Eastern PA, Charles Chips out of a metal can and Tasty Kakes before they sold out.
 
So, families in the neighborhood would get together for cook outs and the dads would play bocce. It wasn't until I was 25 and in the US Navy when I knew there was a small ball that wasn't a golf ball you aimed for. It was also then that I learned there was a court and all that good stuff. Neighborhood bocce was whomever was closest got to throw the golf ball to the next spot. As a kid, we had two duties if we wanted to tag along. One, we carried the tape measure. Two, when the game got far away from the host's home, we had to run to get refills on the cocktails and beers.
 
Wiffle Ball
Little League
Exploring the woods with friends
Riding quads
Family vacation to Cape Cod
Family cookouts
Going to Blockbuster with my Dad
Sneaking out with friends and going pool hopping
 
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huskymedic said:
It was a privledge to have an older relative let you throw the pallino during a match!
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It was a Top Flight XXX Out and no way in hell was any dad handing it over to their kid or any other kid.

There was also one or two clam and lobster bakes during the summer. Start before sunrise digging a pit in the backyard and getting a fire going. Go to the market and get the seafood. More than once a dad (who may have had a drink or two too many) lofted a live, unbanded lobster in to the swimming pool while kids were in there.

Party would go all day and eventually a great, homemade New England Clam chowder was served along with the lobsters. And then the kids would go to the fire to cook s'mores, and then finally try and burn anything we could find.
 
Here's another one. Going to Atlantic City and then to Ocean City, NJ for a week during the summer. Both my folks were from Eastern PA and, as is the norm, they'd go to Atlantic City when they were kids. Mr. Peanut, the boardwalk, the stallions on the pier. All that good stuff.

So, as they started their own family, we went to AC until they opened the casinos. Then we started going to Ocean City. As a young kid it was my first exposure to what is known as a "dry town". As soon as my dad got four of us kids to the hotel in the station wagon (where sitting in the way back facing backwards was the best seat), he'd bolt out of OC for a couple of drinks. My mom handled it well knowing us kids drove him nuts on the ride to the shore.
 
Fishing on Seboeis river. Blowing things up with illegal fireworks. Bar Harbor before it became a mad house and Perry's Nut House in Belfast. A decrepit cottage on Narragansett Bay with my elderly aunt catching salt water eels in a minnow trap and nailing their heads to a plank to peel their skin off, Rhode Island clam cakes and Weiner Genie.
 
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Never worrying about heat exhaustion

The near-complete lack of fear when engaging in ridiculously dangerous stunts

The ability to heal quickly

Honestly, there are too many things going thru my head right now, but I'm chuckling because Jarts was the very first thing to pop into my brain, even though we didn't play it all that much.
 
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I loved summer keg parties in high school. I get nostalgic every now and then about pumping cheap beer into a red solo cup on someone’s deck as the sun went down and the heat was breaking. They were just fun.

I wouldn’t want to be a teenager in 2025, but it was a lot of fun to be a teenager in Connecticut in the 80’s and 90’s.
 
Early life backyard wiffle ball or hardball in the vacant lot in our 'hood in Plainville. Norton Park swimming hole with rock and roll (late 50's) constantly playing on the loudspeaker all day. Cape Cod vacations every summer. Moved to a then rural area of Bristol in 7th grade. Playing baseball, fishing, working on a dairy farm baling hay and sneaking in the reservoir to fish. Playing "tree tag" where you would find a lot of densely growing fairly young 25 foot maples and sway them and move from one tree to another. If you had to go to the ground you were the new tagger or "it". Anything for an adrenaline rush. Having apple or peach fights much to the local farmer's dismay. Hunting "varmints" including woodchucks which dug holes in the meadows and often caused the cows to break legs. On this note we redeemed ourselves with the farmers as well as doing very hard work for a dollar an hour but we were allowed to drive the trucks.
 
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Great thread!
  • Riding your bikes behind the "Mosquito Man" as he went through the neighborhoods. What a great smell to that toxic, billowing smoke, it smelled like victory.
  • Playing wiffle ball during the day then whacking lightning bugs with those same bats at night.
  • Lil' Jimmy Italian Ice trucks.
  • Skee Ball at the 18th Ave. arcade in Belmar. Where you got nothing but crap with all of your tickets but it was your crap.
The list could go on and on . . . . .
 
I miss getting lost and/or disappearing all day with your mom just yelling your name, and the neighbors relaying the message.

Building forts in the woods, playing kick ball, getting into a fist fight with a friend and still
Hanging out after. Ghost stories.
 
Catching grasshoppers with my buddy
Playing hide & seek at dusk
Walking to Wickham Park to find pollywogs
Lightning bugs
basically running wild
 
Driving my parents crazy playing "marco polo" in our pool with the neighborhood kids.
"Cannonball" competitions jumping into our pool.
Street hockey & whiffleball in the church parking lot.
Exploring the unfinished I-291 "stack" in Farmington/W Htfd.
 
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I pretty much liked every response. Seems like many of us had the same summer activities. Wiffle ball was big. We also played tennis ball in the street. I guess that would be the CT version of stick ball. Telephone pole to telephone ball. Home run if it landed past the telephone pole. But you were allowed to catch it so some of us had a lot of HR’s robbed. Played hard ball in the hospital field and dodging security.

Going to the firehouse and the firemen would buy us sodas from the old time soda machines that were flat tops with the glass bottles hanging. 25 cents for a bottle of orange soda. Don’t remember if they were 10 or 12 oz.

Listening to both the Yankees and RedSox games on the radio while we played fast pitch Wiffle ball in my friends backyard. His Dad hooked us up with 3 spotlights and it was under the lights. In the garden was a home run and we had to get an adult to get the ball because we would inevitably stomp on some vegetable every time we tried to retrieve the HR ball.

My kids spend their days in their rooms playing video games, we were out from 8am until 9-10pm every day playing something. So happy I grew up in the late 70’s early 80’s.
 
Once a year, every summer, my parents would pack up and take us to Sound View.

Tuna fish sandwiches (yuk) and State Line potato chips and a thermos of red kool aid. A transistor radio on the beach. The same wornout old quilt to lay on. A few trips on the merry go round, a Vecchitos italian ice (watermelon) and back home.
 
I really miss the no responsibilities part. Just hop on my bike with a fishing rod, and baseball bag right after breakfast and return home before dark. No cell phone, very little cash, and just seeing where the day took me. Could be pick up basketball, home run derby, or just fishing all day at the beach.

Now I have a career and two kids that rely on me. Being almost 40 kinda stinks, but the money is nice.
 
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