Carol, Jean Forte, Jim Messier are here.
We're talking about things from the 50s, 60s, and today, part three of the dangers we grew up with that we didn't even know were dangerous.
I mean, nobody told us.
We just...
We
were victims, innocent
victims.
Waiting to be victimized.
Yeah, I mean, from chemistry sets to all these horrible things we didn't know
about.
We didn't realize.
My parents, who were so careful with me and my brother, so careful, got my brother a chemistry set.
for Christmas and it was you remember the chemistry sets they
opened up and they all these
chemicals you mix them you make some kind of Gilbert chemistry sets
oh they're
just horrible things
you can make
with these chemicals yeah and they one little thing was a radioactive little thing and you get to put it to your eye to see the radioactive disc oh thinking radioactivity
it was really radioactive we'll be talking about that with Shu
x-rays when you went to the shoe store.
I didn't have that, but I heard
about them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We didn't
have the shoe x-ray machines.
We had to get that from NASA people.
We had feet x-rays going on.
Yeah.
Yeah,
I didn't have that.
We had to strike right shoes.
He just brought out that big thing you stick
to put
it jammed it down on your toes.
Crush your big toe and everything.
Or this should fit.
Then when the shoe didn't fit,
He said, give it to me.
He brought it to the back room for the shoe stretcher, which is more
than
a broom
handle.
He would run on the broom handle and come back
here.
It's all ready for you.
And of
course, it hurt and you had big calluses and big rips on the back of your feet for
the first three weeks.
That's right.
That was growing up.
Yeah.
All right.
So let's talk about this.
This
is part three to dangers growing up in the 50s, 60s, not only just in Racine, but everywhere, I guess.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, thanks, Don.
We had so many dangerous situations back then.
We're even going to do a part four.
There's just too many to talk about.
So anyway, thanks for having us here.
Carol, what are we going to start
with?
Well, as you say, Jim, we are concentrating anytime we're together on pleasant memories.
But we are touching on all these dangers that might make us say, well, is that pleasant?
But now we have to say, most we're not life threatening.
We're going to say that.
And we're going to say that we're survivors.
Do we realize today?
what survivors we are.
I mean, let's give us a big applause.
I mean, we are survivors.
Yeah, I got a pin I wear.
It says
I'm a
survivor at a 50.
That's a good one.
Well, yes, we've covered things already, like the secondhand smoke that we survived.
You or Don said you would even be a kid getting examined in the doctor's office.
Well, the doctor was smoking.
Dr.
Thierman, he used to, well, while he's down here, the stethoscope, he's puffing the sugar
and blowing it
to the side, but it's going all over your face, just sucking it in.
Yeah, think of this.
Which
was
so innocent.
Got nicotine all over your clothes, because he was blowing that smoke at me.
Ashes.
Oh, yeah.
Well, my parents had parties in that, so the neighbors used to come over once a month, and somebody said, it was like London and the fog in that.
And the next morning, all those little ashtrays, we had the sound of a butler ashtray.
packed with
cigarette
butts.
And everything stunk and everything had nicotine yellow all over it.
Airplanes, where you worked in offices, secondhand, the smoke just filling the air.
Quick, quick, cigarette story.
So two radio stations.
One, I worked at Milwaukee.
The walls were white.
It was like a white type of carpeting or something they used for sound.
And we moved.
We moved from capital drive down to downtown Milwaukee.
When they pulled the tables back, I couldn't believe how brown the walls were with nicotine because they allowed smoking.
And my first station, we had a microphone like we do in the lobby here, that ribbon microphone.
And the program director used to say,
and blow it right through the microphone.
And it was, the whole thing was yellow and brown.
It was disgusting.
I suggest you have a learning x-ray one of these days.
Yeah, I didn't, I never smoked a cigarette
in my life, but I probably had one cancer from everybody else.
The second you had smoked it, you had survived in your profession.
Well, I don't know if I survived it yet.
When they do the autopsy, I'll let you know.
That's going to be under 10 years if they can't stand on your leg for one 10 seconds.
Jim
and
I can do it.
Carol stood on the leg and she was there for a half hour on one leg
and I couldn't
do it for three seconds.
Oh, well, we learn a lot of things from you, Daddy, including life expectancy tables.
Well, today, one way we've organized this, because we just can't stop these dangers, is to think about age groups.
And I want to start us off with our early childhoods like babies.
So dangers.
Well, of course, we have to think about our cribs.
So let's go back and picture the cribs that we had.
Now, of course, the distance of the slats.
We understand that.
That's crucial.
But I'll say that in my deep research, I'd research some of my talks here.
Maybe, you know, you don't quite realize how far I go with this.
But the biggest danger of these cribs had been that the drop-down crib.
And that left a space, I understand, between the mattress and the frame of the crib for a child to become stuck in that.
Now, I learned, and of course they were painted with lead paint, almost always.
Lo and behold, in this extensive research,
I found that it took until 1972, so we were high school graduates by that time, for the Federal Commission to be formed on product safety.
So we didn't have the benefit of the Product Safety Commission.
And just to show you in retrospect, I was shocked at this.
Because of that commission, between 2000 and 2008,
There were 500,000 cribs recalled.
And that brand mainly was the Stork Craft, which was sold at all of our reliable stores.
So can you imagine?
We didn't have the benefit of that.
Then we think of high chairs.
Now many of us inherited an old woman, an old wooden high chair, and without straps and all, but the thing about high chairs is tipping over.
And so would you believe that in 2010, so again, just to prove what were we enduring, how do you say Greco or Greco, Greco brand, Greco brand?
Over one million high chairs were recalled in 2010.
So we, we survived, we survived the high chair.
How about those mobile things above the bed, the crib?
Oh, yeah.
They had hooked on.
Yeah.
And
you know,
one of
the comedians we have here said, you ever see that thing when I was a kid?
I said, look up.
And you say, oh, yeah, it's coming down.
I mean, I think they could have come and crashed right on your baby's head,
those mobile things.
I don't think they
have those anymore, those mobile things.
I think they do.
They must be approved by the federal commission.
I mean, they were just kind of
flimsy hooked on with like
a little turn
screw on the side of the bed.
And
they try to hit him.
Little babies try to hit the things.
Comes crashing down on them.
Well, and to continue on with this saga, we all were going to read and be brilliant so we had our alphabet blocks.
They were painted in lead paint.
And of course, being wood, they had splinters.
Now just think, we survived our blocks.
Jim, do you remember any problem with your blocks?
He got hit in the head with him a few times.
My sister threw him at
me.
He didn't know this was a
letter eight.
Now it's imprinted on your forehead.
You'll never forget it.
Yes, yes, yes.
We're talking to Jim Messier, Carol, Jean Forte.
The dangers of growing up in the 50s and 60s, things you never even thought about.
Your life was in danger and you just went about your day happy and go lucky and you never even realized what was lurking all around you.
And we talked about being a baby in the crib.
Who knew what was going on in that crib?
That we needed a federal commission eventually on product safety.
We'll also like the packaging of medicine in caps.
That took until 1970, I found, to have the Poison Prevention Packaging Act.
Have you ever heard of that?
No, but I
remember when they had to make a child proof, yeah.
1970, so we had to live before that.
Well, Jim, I'd say...
You boys, though, in general, had... You had your own set of dangers.
Oh, yeah, the one I remember, Carol, was jarts.
Remember jarts, the long darts?
They had actually a big metal tip on that large dart, and you would aim for a circle, plastic circle, and there would be kids or adults standing right next to that circle.
and here's incoming missiles, missing
them probably by inches,
and
they were
laughing and hey, good job, you know.
Yeah, that was unbelievable.
Did you have a set or two?
Oh,
absolutely.
We played that constantly.
Your eyes taken out or anything?
No eyes.
No, no, that was for BB guns.
We'll get into that.
You were going to get to that
one.
Riding bikes without helmets.
No one ever thought to wear one back
then.
We had this area where it's grown out.
Now it became a shopping mall, but before
that
it was an empty, we called it the pit.
It was real deep.
And you can ride your bike down the sides of these, but it's very steep.
We used to ride the bike, no knee pads,
no.
And the
bike would flip over, you're rolling down
the hill with a bike hitting you and everything.
And he just got up and said,
let me try it again.
Brush
yourself off.
So generally, these dangers were not life-threatening, but a few broken bones or a slight concussion.
I keep remembering, how did I, this bike that was
going down at like a
straight angle, straight down this, and
you just hopefully
didn't skid and
everything hit you in the head going down.
And you know, we've got some great hills here in Racine.
Yep.
down the McKinley Hill as fast as possible, down the St.
Patrick's Hill.
Well,
the good part is it was mostly like a sand type of,
you had to the bottom.
It was
dirt, but it was very
sandy.
It wasn't concrete.
No, it
wasn't concrete.
No, we were that stupid.
Yeah, a lot
of times.
You could have been elsewhere.
Yeah, a lot of times
we would
ride our bike with no hands on the hand.
Oh
yeah, and
by
the
way, if you got
hurt, what's the first thing you hurt?
Don't tell your mother.
You're walking with an arm dangling by the elbow.
I was drawing that in your ear.
Don't tell your mother.
And then you get all kinds of mature chrome
on
it.
Another safety hazard.
Don't tell
mom.
And
like Don said, riding your bike down a steep hill, sometimes with no hands.
Remember that joke going around?
The kid would go around the block and, hey, look mom, no hands.
Next time he goes around the block, look mom, no feet.
Next time, look mom, no
teeth.
That's funny.
Of
course, we had firecrackers back then.
M80s, cherry bombs, bottle rockets.
They seem to be more common back then.
I know I got mine when I was in a scout drum and bugle car.
We would travel throughout the Midwest.
And a lot of times these cities would allow us to buy these things and I would load up my suitcase with them, bring them back and blow them off every chance I could.
And we used to buy, they called them mats.
That was like a 24 pack of
firecrackers, the mats
they
used
to call them.
Just buy him a kid
on the
street selling him.
So we used to buy him, shoot him off, and the day after the 4th of July, it was called dud hunting.
Oh,
dud hunting, funny.
You have to go through the streets starting off with the
duds that
you can shut off a pack.
That is funny.
If you shut off 24-5, maybe some blew away in
there.
That's
right.
So we used to go dud hunting looking for them.
That's
right.
And
one day, we're lighting them up.
and I'm covering my ears and I didn't know it was lit.
And I quickly looked
down and my fingers blew apart.
And
I thought, it was just like a numbing sting.
I never, ever, ever picked up another firecracker.
It scared me.
It scared me.
Back then, a lot of us boys would become blood brothers.
This sounds terrible to me.
We watch about
this.
I know we watch too many Westerns, I think, but that would denote loyalty and friendship.
You'd make a small cut on your finger with a knife, and then you'd press your fingers together.
And you'd be a blood brother for life.
And
you'd get tuberculosis.
Yeah, everything would go along with it.
You get everything from that.
Oh my
God.
Let's talk about the
Washington
Park.
Yeah.
Right in our own territory.
They're beautiful Washington.
But before you get to
Washington, you actually cut your hand and rub the blood together with
your
friend.
Yeah, a little slit and rub together like this.
Just like in the movies, the westerns.
Yeah, there were a lot of
things in the westerns I didn't do.
That
was
one
of
them.
Approximately what age were you when you were doing this?
I hope it wasn't 18 or 19.
30.
Last week
sometime.
At your bachelor party.
Yeah.
Roman is next door neighbor.
We're neighbors from
blood.
Man, oh man.
Yeah, well, this is really like a list of the dangers that we were encountering, which was in our beautiful
Washington Park area.
We've talked before about our Washington Park pool.
We were all there.
The goal was to get good enough to swim to the island.
And when we have given programs, Jim, and found pictures of people or kids on the island at the top of the
island,
we said, well, there must have been 50 kids.
just jammed in up there, ready to fall off.
But, of course, then the dives would start.
Just diving right down.
People below you.
Yes.
Right.
Missiles coming through there.
Look out, here I
come.
Yeah.
Ready
or
not, here I come.
Talk about non-safety.
Oh, yeah.
How about the winter?
Oh,
the toboggan slide, which is long gone.
That one, you get a lot of scraped knees.
Where was that?
The Washington Park Ball Area.
Yeah,
Washington Park, across from the old Capitol Theater.
Okay.
It had cement sides.
So if your knees were sticking out, you didn't know it, but when you come down to the bottom of the hill, you have a very scraped knee or a hole in your knee or whatever.
You didn't realize it until you got
home.
You know, last night, I had to go to Gateway because for the pre-parade thing, we had a meeting for the 4th of July, parade from 4th Fest.
And right in front of me was the skateboard.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Park.
Yeah.
I don't know how these kids don't get hurt.
Yeah, right.
I mean, they go, there's like multiple going criss-crossing
each other, going, doing
circles in the skateboard park.
That's right.
When you do, when you do a show about the year 2026, the dangers, that'll be it.
Yeah, that's
going to be it.
Right.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're
doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what
they're
doing.
They
know
what they're doing.
They know what they're
doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they're doing.
They know what they
I have a scar to prove it that I was there at one time.
Is that what's on the back of your head there?
No, my knee.
Another thing that those guys did for fun, which was considered dangerous, was BB guns.
We would shoot at anything and everything.
And I got mine for Christmas.
It was a daisy BB gun.
You know, you couldn't really shoot outside.
It was just too cold for around Christmas.
So what I did, I found a cardboard box in the basement and like any other kid, I drew a big circle on it, a big target.
And I was blasted away at that thing probably for about two months until spring.
One day I heard my mom give out a shriek and a yell and I run downstairs.
There was this priceless mirror inside that.
that
cardboard from
which she got from her mother, blown the pieces.
And I didn't have, I had no clue about that.
I just was shooting at a target.
First of all, I thought it was a good idea.
You're shooting inside a box, you save the BBs and it'll
go over.
I thought it was a
good idea.
I didn't know you were too stupid to know
the rest
of
the mirror.
I'm
glad to know you're an Ethel hiding behind the box.
I know
it, yeah.
But we had plenty of BB gun fights as kids.
And
what's the one thing your parents would always warn you about?
You're going to shoot your eye out.
Remember that?
Oh,
yeah.
Sure.
And we get playgrounds.
Yes.
Before you start the next topic, did you ever see the Andy Griffith show episode where Opie
kills the
bird with the slingshot?
Yeah.
And I never killed an animal.
I would never do anything there.
But the kids used to aim their guns at these birds and try to shoot them
for no reason.
The cats
running by, they'd shoot at the cats.
Yeah.
They don't sell BB guns for kids anymore, do they?
I don't
know.
I
don't.
I don't think
any parent would
buy it
for
her.
My mother wouldn't do it.
She wouldn't let me get in trouble.
She put me in a cocoon.
We are talking to Jim Messier, Carol G and Forte, and we're talking about the dangers of growing up in the 50s and 60s everywhere, not just for scene and dangers we didn't know even existed.
And here we are.
We were so innocent.
How
did
I ever survive?
Yes, we are survivors.
I guess that
little tick I have.
The arm that broke but was never set because you didn't tell your mother.
There is one time, we used to make these go-karts.
They had no motor on them, but you have to push them with a stick.
Oh, sure.
And my brother put me in the go-kart.
I could have, I'm about eight, nine years old, put me in the go-kart.
Not strapped in, by the way.
You're just sitting on a plank of wood and you can steer it with your feet.
You know, as you go down the hill, and we raised somebody down the hill.
And if down the hill was a curb, you had a quick turn.
Well, I quick turned the thing flipped and ripped open the whole side of my leg to this day, my whole side of the leg is scarred.
And I went home crying, screaming.
I didn't get in trouble.
My brother got in trouble for letting me do it.
My mother, how did you let him do this?
I was fine.
But he
got screamed at.
That poor brother.
He
got
screamed at.
He was six
years older than me.
He should have known
better.
Pushing his baby brother down the hill in this unstrapped piece of wood.
He wanted to be an only child, it's obvious.
Yeah, get rid of you.
Man, now you got to wear helmet straps.
We just went down there, hit your hand on the curb, get up and stop crying
like
a baby.
But my brains are coming out.
Put them back in.
And don't tell your mother.
Don't
tell mom.
Go ahead.
Well, all around Racine Gym, we loved our playgrounds.
Oh, and they were so great.
I mean, in the park, some with pavilions, some with park leaders for activities.
But now we're talking about our actual equipment that was on those playgrounds.
And when you and I were talking about it, well, we did not have those beautiful rubber type.
current, locked together, beautiful, cushy surfaces of our playgrounds.
We had hard dirt or we had asphalt or concrete is what we had.
So anything that if you fell off of a swing or was flying off the merry-go-rounds, it was onto a very...
hard unforgiving surface.
Yeah, just call the janitor out at school.
Come on, mop up the blood.
We got
another class coming out.
Yeah, there's nothing to see here.
Let's move on.
Close it down.
Yeah.
And what about now, did a lot of guys do the monkey bars or was that more for us girls?
I think it was mostly for us guys, you know.
It was easy to fall off of and if you were on the high level,
you would fall and hit some other bars.
Yeah, the multiple.
You hang by your feet upside down.
Yeah.
And then when
you try to reach, get yourself straight in it, you'd fall ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, go right to the bottom.
And the teacher who was monitoring the playground sitting there smoking, you know, paying no attention.
I mean, you just fell down, you're crying, come
on, get up.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, that's right.
Remember those hot metal slides?
Carol
yes merry-go-round and the slides were very hot.
Oh,
yeah
Now when I've been doing my research on this I would look up on Google were high chairs dangerous in the 1950s and I put down like we're playground merry-go-round dangerous in the 1950s and they must have known that we were doing this program because these write-ups fell right in with us Jim
And what they said about the merry-go-round, it was called the murder-go-round.
Very extremely dangerous.
The hard surfaces that you were flung onto, and the jumping on and off, how dangerous it was.
We had one
at the drive-in theater.
They had a playground at the drive-in.
Sure, yeah.
And you used to, one, you get some of the big guys are there.
push it around, all the kids are in the middle, and they're hanging out with you, and this is going faster and faster, you
jump on, and the
kids start flying off
like n-pong balls all over the place.
Like little lotto balls flying in
missile directions.
And then you had to, come on, it's time to watch the movie, and you're limping
back.
Oh, so innocent, but boy, were we victims.
And then the one that was really a...
A bump, so to speak.
Oh, the teeter-totter.
Or did you call him seesaws?
What did you call him?
Seasaw.
Oh, really?
I never heard
that.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Sometimes it would get violent.
If you didn't like a kid, he was on the other end.
dangling way up there.
You're on the bottom.
You just get off.
Or you
get a big fat kid
who pumps on you.
That guy
goes flying in the air like you're right off the.
That's
right.
Fat kid jumped
off.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I can still remember Albert and state, my playground, that old teeter totter that was there.
Yeah.
50 years old, painted dark green with peeling paint.
They all were dark green.
So it's probably lead paint.
Now we were not going to lick the paint.
But splinters!
So not only the bump, but the splinters and the look of the
thing.
Sure, yeah, yeah.
Remember some of those unsafe carnival rides when the carnival would come to town?
You wonder how those rides were held together.
Yeah, 20 minutes ago it was in pieces
on the freeway, now put together by some
guy missing an arm and an eyeball, looking out for the police because he wanted.
Now he's running your ride.
Would you want to go on a carnival ride that was probably put together like Don said a few minutes ago, maybe by some drunken carnies?
That was on America's Most Wanted.
Really, it was just a given.
It looked pretty shady.
They were notorious for low
safety and no seat belts, high thrills, but they let them many injuries.
Now, another thing that I looked up, I was taking the subject of roller skating.
So I looked up on Google, was roller skating dangers in the 50s.
And first of all, it told us,
Roller skating was wildly popular in the 50s.
Not just popular, but wildly popular.
And you know what our skates were like?
The clamp-on skate
key.
That would come off.
And so that would be a sprained ankle.
I don't know about too many broken ankles, but skinned knees.
All of a sudden you'd be without a skate.
No helmets.
No helmets.
And then Carla, where I lived with the big old trees,
This was quite common that we just skated anywhere, including cracked and uneven sidewalks.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So a big thrill of my life was three homeowners, us and two others in a row got our sidewalks condemned.
And so we had to get new sidewalks.
So Jackie Olson and I had three properties to skate on.
All smooth.
Yeah, so that that avoided some of our danger.
You could even go
fast in those metal skates.
You can
go as
fast as you can.
I'm just walking
in
those things.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I was in a big skater, but I had a pair and I tried it a few times and yeah, my balance was very good in them.
Just like now you're not standing on your one leg.
Yeah, but I'm a lot of older now.
I probably could have done it back then.
But I just didn't like them.
They kept coming off because
sneakers,
they
had
a clamp on in the front and my sneakers
didn't clamp right.
And you go flying, you're skating me.
Wipe up the blood and
get off.
Kids everywhere were skating in our front sidewalks.
I
remember as boys, on our bikes, we would be chasing these trucks that was really emitting these poisonous vapors.
like for killing mosquitoes and, you know, things like that.
Now, what were you chasing?
Was it your bikes?
Bikes, yeah, yeah.
We were attracted to the dense fog.
Oh, no!
Yeah,
yeah.
And then the smell of that poison
was very alluring, you know, so we would, you know,
just follow the truck engulfed in this dense fog, breathing in all this poisonous vapor,
not thinking anything of it.
Well, Jerry Seinfeld does a bit about the ice cream man.
And the menu on the back of the good humor truck, everybody's all the kids were looking at the menu.
And there was the exhaust right
there by the menu.
And you
see
all this carbon
dioxide
coming in there and just breathing it in while you're checking the menu on the good humor truck.
I mean,
that's the
best place to put it right in the back of the exhaust.
Yeah, yeah.
And many of you guys will remember Racine's South Pier, where they had huge open areas in the center.
You'd be walking on the pier, going to the end, and you have to bypass these huge holes in the center of the pier.
And a lot of times, you know, you could slip easily and just go right in.
Jim, Monsieur, Carol, Gianforte here, talking about those dangers in the 50s and 60s.
We got tons of them.
Oh,
yes, yes.
We say we are survivors.
You just
kind of blew over the hot slides, those metal slides you went down.
Yeah.
And in the summer you went down, your thighs were burned by the
time they got done.
Yeah.
And all of a sudden.
and screaming and they were just hot.
That's
where they
built them.
Right, right,
right.
And then new playground, they have the lakeside.
Oh
yeah, wonderful
playground.
What a beautiful
playground.
Oh, wonderful.
Great.
It is just, I'm looking at those things.
I wish I could go on those rides.
Done.
You should.
And you know what's great?
It was packed with kids.
You know what they were
doing?
They weren't on their tablets.
They
weren't on their cell phones.
They weren't
watching TV.
Yeah.
They
weren't doing, they were on rides out in the fresh air.
There
you go.
Good idea.
David
Mack was one of the people who helped put that
together.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Great, great.
Another thing we used to do was play on the train tracks.
Now, back then
we had... Jimmy, you were such an intelligence.
Oh,
that was like
the
movie
Stand By Me.
Yes, yeah.
Right.
We had back then we had the high speed, you know, passenger trains.
We had freight trains going by constantly.
Now there's hardly anything on our railroad here.
But back then it was a different story.
We would place pennies on the tracks.
And then when the freight train came by, we'd pick it up and it'd be the size of a small pancake.
What a delinquent.
Oh, you know, yeah.
Walking on the rails, you know, trying to get our balance, you know, on the rails.
And like Don said, taking shortcuts to school.
We did that.
I've talked about this before.
The Long Island Railroad had a third rail.
They were electric trains.
And the third rail was in the center of the two tracks going in this direction.
You touch it, you're dead.
I mean, so
they had a piece
of wood on the top of it.
And going to school, we used to either hop over or jump on the wood.
It would bounce, and then you'd bounce over it.
And they did that for four years, going to high school, because the alternative is walking a quarter mile down,
a quarter mile
back, and didn't cross at the train tracks where the crossing was.
And so we used to just jump over, and I told you, one guy, Joe Cicino, going out for lunch,
didn't
make
it,
he tripped, and that was the end of that.
It
was that
quick.
Yeah, it's still there.
But now the tracks are raised.
So you
can't
you can't get over.
OK.
Now, if there was a boxcar in the way of going to school, we would just walk or crawl underneath it.
You know, hobo gym.
Another thing we did was we rolled down a hill using a burning barrel.
That was a lot of fun.
Just going
to barrel and and roll down the hill.
Sometimes you end up in the street.
Sometimes you crash into a tree.
But hey, that was fun.
What hills would you do that on?
Oh, down by the beach.
Oh, down by the beach.
At least that was grass.
Well, sometimes.
At the bottom, maybe not.
My wife and I rolled down the hill several years ago by North Beach.
And it hurts.
It's not a fun role.
You're rocks in there and everything.
Are
you returning to your childhood?
Well, now I'm going to switch us to...
a phrase, latchkey kids, they jump here.
But again, looking things up here, it was the 70s where latchkey kids supposedly really became part of our culture.
But in the 50s and 60s, mothers were beginning to go to work.
And so we know that children left at home, it might be experimenting, smoking or having the stove on, things like that.
But the one fact that astounded me,
about latchkey kids in the 50s.
I had certainly never heard of this.
Would you believe there were a sizable number?
I didn't write it down, but of children who died, they were climbing into refrigerators.
And so, there is a refrigerator act of 1956 that says a refrigerator must be able to be opened from inside.
Also, if you put a refrigerator out,
You have to take the door off the refrigerator if you leave it on your curb.
You can't have the door attached to it.
Okay, another safety
measure.
Yes, yes.
Jim, too, what about our famous shoe stores?
Oh
my gosh, we talked about that earlier, those x-ray machines at our local shoe stores.
You can get your foot bones inside your new shoes, you know, examined.
Maybe
our bones are kind of liquid now.
Yeah.
Let me x-ray my eyeballs.
And
it was so fascinating.
You kind of step up by six inches or so and look down on that purple thing.
You can see your bones in there,
you
know.
But they were phased out in the late 50s due to radiation, obviously.
I remember
going to Stilbs and Laos shoe stores and they both had them.
And that was an adventure.
You couldn't wait to put your foot in there.
I never saw those.
They didn't have them in my shoe store.
Oh, really?
I
went to the safe
shoe store.
You went to
Stride Right.
Yeah, I think they were called a Braddock device, if
I'm not mistaken.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, they're long gone.
Well, and then after our long list here, we even have to throw in and talk about some of the discipline we survived at school.
Now, hard to believe.
But at Lincoln School, we had a beloved principal.
I'm sure everyone would agree.
His name was Mr. Temmie.
And Mr. Temmie, unfortunately, when I was in fifth grade, had a severe stroke.
But up until that time, he was legendary.
But there, in Mr. Temmie's office, hung what was called the paddle.
And boys would be sent to Mr. Temmie.
to get the paddle.
Otherwise known as the board of education, right?
Jim.
Yeah.
Oh, that's good.
That is.
I never heard of that.
Oh.
And then, um, now I guess you've said Jim, part of the nuns' habit, would be a ruler?
Yeah.
They'd have him dangling on the side, just like, uh, in the wild west with their six guns.
You know, they'd have a ruler and they would whip that thing out and slap somebody's wrist, uh, you know, constantly.
And
I think we are glad that that does not continue today.
Yeah, but again, it's that we we survived.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah,
we survived.
Yeah, we
learned.
Now, next time, we're going to actually continue with things like the pranks that we brought on ourselves or jumping dangerous things like jumping off the quarry.
Oh, yeah, we have a lot more to talk about next time.
dangerous lives.
Yeah,
yeah.
I'm surprised
we don't have some kind of lawyer on the air saying if you had your foot x-rated as a child, you may be entitled to compensation.
Habish, habish, and habish, and habish, and
habish.
Habish, habish, and foot.
But yeah, we have a lot more to talk about, which we will next month.
So as they say,
Don't touch that dial,
right?
Not everybody survived these things.
We're joking.
No, I know.
But they're people that get seriously hurt by some of this stuff.
And that needs to be said, too.
That does need to be said.
You know, just
the other day, you know, my mother would let me ride a mini bike.
Just she did all the kids in the day board had it.
Yeah,
I'm not
getting it.
And
probably for good reason.
Yeah.
And just the other day in Kenosha, some person riding some kind of mini bike in the street, which it was not street legal, got run over by a box truck and killed.
Oh,
boy.
Yeah.
Wow.
And it happens.
You're not supposed to riding them in the street.
And you're not licensed.
You don't know the street signs
and stuff
at red lights and all this
kind of
stuff.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Maybe I was right.
You know, let me do anything.
Yeah, that's right.
Maybe one thing we'll be talking about was we used to play games in the street, you know, baseball, football.
I'm sure you did that, too.
And when an oncoming car was coming, everybody would stop, let the car go past, and then continue.
Well, my father actually
painted bases on the street.
No
kidding.
He did a good job of it
too.
He had a home plate, he had first, second, third base, and
we had painted right on the
street, and we used to play, and there was a lookout, car coming,
and we all had a move, car coming, we all had
to jump out of the sweat,
jump out
of
the
way.
Sure.
And another thing that we're going to talk more about is how we love this, really.
We could be gone all day long, walking, biking all over the city.
Didn't come home till the street lights came on.
And by and large, absolutely fine.
But we could find ourselves like walking on stones on the river and slipping off or climb, taking pairs out of the neighbor's yard and being chased or something.
I know
that's delinquent.
Yeah.
Stealing food out of the neighbor's yard,
huh?
Yeah, I didn't know that about you, Carol.
By the way, there's
no statute of limitations on that.
Okay.
I'm glad we moved out of the
neighborhood.
We can come after you.
Who remembers riding the city bus when you were probably, what, maybe six, seven years
old?
All
by yourself.
We like to do a whole session coming up on riding the bus.
It was part of our life, even as a kid.
I remember going to Manhattan when I was, I guess, 12 or 13.
And I just was walking around the streets of, you know, went through
Times
Square, went through all the
areas
there.
I didn't seem to be caring.
And I just was walking around the streets of New York.
I just
didn't care.
I went down to Greenwich Village for a couple
of
bites to eat, didn't care.
How old were you?
I was about 12 years old.
Okay.
Wow.
The freedom that we did have.
I mean, that's on a very positive note.
The freedom, the not fear of crime and so forth.
It was really a wonderful time to roam around.
Yeah, that's right.
That's my nice piece for the
day.
Yeah, I'm thinking about some of the things we used to do as a kid, even the stuff my mother didn't know about, but she didn't care.
Like riding the bike in the pit down that
steep thing, the bicycle falling
over and over.
And
if somebody got hurt, don't tell, don't tell anybody.
First thing you say, don't
tell
mother.
Bones hanging around his elbow.
Don't tell anybody.
Exactly.
How about
those fights after school?
Every kid would gather and avoid him.
Especially when the girls were fighting.
It was a big and
proud.
They started tearing their clothes off.
Jeez.
Jim Bezier, Carol G and Forte here.
We'll do this about a month from now or so.
Part
four.
Part 18.
In the meantime, be careful.
Don't do anything we talked about.
Be careful.
Thanks, Don.
Thanks, guys.
