A light hearted look at growing up in the 70's and 80's as a kid.

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#2807164 4-Nov-2021 08:38

MileHighKiwi:

As we were browsing Netflix on the weekend I told my kids about driving to a video store and selecting films from a shelf and that was all you could watch for the weekend. No Netflix, internet and mobile devices with endless options back then. They were mortified, lol.

The SO and I were talking about this not too long ago, and how much we actually miss it. Going to the video store on a Friday night and coming away with a stack for the weekend was an adventure in itself!

9/10 when we are looking through Netflix for a movie, we end up not making a decision, and watching whatever TV series we were already watching.

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#2807166 4-Nov-2021 08:38

The year after they were banned, I expected to get fireworks for my birthday (which is near Guy Fawkes) as usual, but got told nope, nothing this year. I was gutted... went out with some mates and picked up some anyway with whatever funds I had.

On the day of my birthday, my parents gave me a "foodtown" bag full of something. It was absolutely full (and I mean full) of double happy's :D

Turns out, a friends son worked for an importer of various things, and they had shipment of Double Happy's arrive although they were cancelled - so gave them to family/friends :) I had a blast (pun intended).

Few years earlier, a cousin moved to Australia - he took with him on his hand luggage, a large jar of Double Happy's. Noone questioned him over them and he flew from Auckland to Sydney with these things....... maybe he said they were sweets or something. I do recall my Aunty saying he has having a lot of fun going round dropping DHs into ant hills :)

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#2807178 4-Nov-2021 08:58

Grew up in the 70's in a small town just outside Wellington.

Surrounded by bush, large firebreaks to ride trolleys and bikes down, get lost in the bush and go "pig hunting"...we never saw any pigs but all carried large and dangerous knives just in case.

Jumping my Raleigh Twenty bike at Devil's Ditch and deliberately riding full-speed downhill on my Edwards skateboard into garbage bags lined up to see who could crash the most spectacularly.

Guy Fawkes was also awesome - the usual (Double Happy's, Thunderbolts and skyrockets so powerful you could launch Jimmy from no.50 to the moon), but having big "organised" Guy Fawkes nights with the local Lions Club: Big Ray would give the kids a pack of ciggies and a single lit one; and basically tell us to chain smoke all night to have something to light the crackers with - safer than using matches, kids.

We'd disappear into the bush at 8.30am and not be back until tea time.

We would go eeling with broom sticks, with nails hammered in the ends and filed to a sharp point. We never caught any eels, but often stabbed each other by accident.

We'd come home, with no idea what mum and dad had been up to - assuming it was dad at golf all day and mum doing housework.

All the golf dads (which was most in our town) drove home drunk from the course each Saturday night. Nobody died. The cars were so old and crappy, they weren't fast enough to cause carnage. Still surprised nobody died.

I don't remember anything about money - who (if anyone) had more than the rest. We were all just kids having fun and we all shared our stuff and had a great time and lived "on the edge".

We listened to Kiss, Abba, BeeGees, Helen Reddy, Dr Hook and Led Zeppelin.

We had these weird brief cases made of a kind of cardboard, which we would keep our "spy equipment" in - we used to like being spies. Not sure why. Or what we were spying on. Perhaps Russians? Or maybe back then it was people from other towns...

We would dress up in Cowboys and Indians gear, or English vs Germans and we'd shoot each other with cap guns that were surprisingly realistic.

Parties were commonplace at the parents' houses - usually held in the large double garage outside with someone's massive stereo hauled out there to provide ambience. All the adults got on the booze and we kids sneaked some dregs to sip on.

Overall, looking back as a man in my fifties, it was equal parts awesome and awful, but I only remember it being the greatest time to be alive.

What a trip down memory lane.

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#2807179 4-Nov-2021 09:00

Teacher : Why did you beat that boy up and give hime a bloody nose.

Child: Becuase he called me Black " N" word.

Teacher: Ok then, just tell me next time, I will deal with it.

eracode

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#2807180 4-Nov-2021 09:03

MileHighKiwi:

As we were browsing Netflix on the weekend I told my kids about driving to a video store and selecting films from a shelf and that was all you could watch for the weekend. No Netflix, internet and mobile devices with endless options back then. They were mortified, lol.

I was a kid in 1950s and that was before TV in NZ, let alone video tape. We used to listen to the radio in the evening. Monday night was a favourite because we could listen to Life with Dexter, an Aussie sit-com. In the school holidays we would listen on 2ZB to the womens' programme Aunt Daisy at 9:00 am followed by 15-minute morning soapy radio serials from the US and Oz like Doctor Paul and Portia Faces Life - A story taken from the heart of every woman who has ever dared to love.

Really funny thinking about all that now because the shows were rubbish by today's standards but we thought they were great at the time.

Sometimes I just sit and think. Other times I just sit.

trig42

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#2807241 4-Nov-2021 09:37

Ahh Double Happies and Moon Travellers.

I was at boarding school, we had Moon Traveller wars on the school fields. We had pipes we used as moon traveller bazookas.

I do remember one day during one of these wars, I had a pack of double happies in my pocket, unwrapped. I was wearing those old school adidas trackies. the friction of the nylon in the pocket lit the fuse. I escaped (somehow) without any damage to myself, but a large hole where the pocket was.

In the 90s, probably just before skyrockets were banned (my second year of University, so 1992) we laid skyrockets down on the road and raced cars with them. I think we even had some fire starting gel which we laid across the road as a 'fuse' to light the rockets. This wasn't a sleepy suburban street either. We were flatting on Sandringham Road. Fools.

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#2807313 4-Nov-2021 10:23

Handsomedan:
All the golf dads (which was most in our town) drove home drunk from the course each Saturday night. Nobody died. The cars were so old and crappy, they weren't fast enough to cause carnage. Still surprised nobody died.

You were just lucky that's all. Before we started driving a friend of my parents was killed when his car hit a pothole on a corner while he was DUI and the driver's door popped open and he fell out. The others in the car were lucky. Many older cars had door latches similar to what you'd get in a house. It didn't take much flexing for them to fail. Most of us that knew that story were more likely to wear seatbelts even before they were mandatory.

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#2807333 4-Nov-2021 11:02

Waking up on a sunday morning with a crystal set I had built and listening to the kids story time they used to play.
Some Sunday's were special as the whole segment was Bad jelly the witch, So loved that story.

Other stories that used to play that I can remember.

Little toot.

Dianna and the golden apple.

One with the train talking to the kid about a wheel falling off, can't remember its name but it was a good one.

Not far from where we lived was a quarry surrounded by bush, There was 4 of us that would meet up on a Saturday morning around 7.30 and off we would go, Stole boards and such from a local bowling club that was being built to build our tree hut , Well it was some boards nailed in a tree you could sit on.

If we were lucky one of us would sneak their dad's penthouse for us to look through hahahaha

We would usually make it home in time for tea if not it would be in the oven for us.

So many other story's I will put in other posts but they were the best times of my life.

Oh and stealing milk money from down the street to pay for our ciggy's which the local dairy owner never queried us when handing over fist full's of wet coins hahah.

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding : Ice cream man , Ice cream man

Handsomedan

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#2807336 4-Nov-2021 11:06

JaseNZ:

Waking up on a sunday morning with a crystal set I had built and listening to the kids story time they used to play.
Some Sunday's were special as the whole segment was Bad jelly the witch, So loved that story.

God! I'd forgotten about the crystal radios that we used to get from Dick Smith (or was it David Reid?).

Such a great time to be alive

The train one was "Sparky", I think

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JaseNZ

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#2807339 4-Nov-2021 11:09

Handsomedan:

The train one was "Sparky", I think

Yeah Sparky good memory.

Help me Sparky, Help me Sparky, Right front wheel, Right front wheel lol

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding : Ice cream man , Ice cream man

trig42

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#2807342 4-Nov-2021 11:13

And Bad Jelly the Witch. great story.

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#2807364 4-Nov-2021 11:53

Spacies Parlors - i would spend HOURS in these whenever possible and funds would allow. Most were fine but a few in Auckland central were rougher than others, in hindsight I realise there were some dodgy goings on (and plenty of huffing). All 70s-80s kids know what gizza twenny means

I imagine kids like me would have loved to have grown up today with all the gaming stuff that is around now.