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

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JaseNZ

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#290332 3-Nov-2021 20:46

You name it we blew it up and if they were duds break them in half and burn stuff.

Dad can I have some miniature dynamite , Sure son just don't blow up your sister. (awwww Dad ok then)

Can I fire these bottle rockets at her though, Ok then son don't forget to aim them at your mother as well.

Growing up as a kid in the 70's was so much fun its a wonder I still have all my appendages and am alive.

A few broken bones but I am alive and I loved every minute of the hijinxs we used to get up and into.

https://www.outsidethesquare.net.nz/portfolio/poha-famous-double-happies/

Regale us with what I would say is non osh approved things you used to get up to in your younger years.

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

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#2807025 3-Nov-2021 21:04

Putting double-happies in a piece of pipe with ball bearings, and breaking windows several houses away.

Using tennis rackets to launch hundreds of feijoas onto neighbours' houses' roofs.

Tying bicycles together end to end and riding them down one of the runways at Whenuapai, while the MPs chased us in Landrovers yelling that an Orion was trying to land...

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#2807039 3-Nov-2021 21:48

I remember making Bolt bombs using match stick heads

Dial111

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#2807048 3-Nov-2021 22:20

Laying moonwalkers (sky rockets) flat on the footpath and watching as they raced cars going up the road.

Jousting on our bikes with thick bamboo (aim was to stick it through the front wheel)

Full contact bullrush on the road with all the kids from the block.

Life as a kid was far better before the age of the internet took over, I wouldn't trade my childhood for an ipad & TikTok that's for sure!

vexxxboy

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#2807059 3-Nov-2021 22:39

i grew up using the Whenuapai Air base as my play ground. We had the entire underground Water pipe system mapped out and could travel the whole base underground from one end to the other . The Saturday matinee at the cinema where every week we would have a massive lolly war and sometimes watch the film . And the swimming pool where i learned to swim and where i almost drowned every week jumping off the diving board . Fun childhood.

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driller2000

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#2807062 3-Nov-2021 23:24

Holding dbl happy's in your finger tips to show you weren't scared. (You were.)

Dbl happy's dropped into cesspits / manholes / letter boxes so they are louder.

Lighting a whole string @ once if you were feeling rich.

Light....... and ....wait..... and...... wait - and throw it quickly in the air at the last second to get a louder aerial boom. Shit yourself when it was a fast fuse and blew up early! Idiot mates who would throw them at people!

Mini sky rocket wars i.e. light and aim at mates. Ditto roman candle wars. And both done at the school fireworks party and parents / teachers all good with it - and doing the same - LOL.

Guy Fawkes was also a large extended family gathering for us 5 families - 20+ cousins + mates and every house in the street going hard - good 2hrs+ of fireworks - and neighborhood drenched in smoke like a mini warzone - awesome fun!

And this is what i reminisce about and wish i could re-create for my kids - but it is nothing like that anymore ie. less than 1 in 10 houses in our neighborhood do it + short duration.

And lots more people anti now - which on one level i do get re scared animals - so yeah - i purchased $100's worth a few years back when it looked like they were going to ban Guy Fawkes - and I am still going through them slowly. Suspect I won't buy anymore and will do public displays instead which are great too - and Guy Fawkes as I remember it will just be a fond memory :)

driller2000

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#2807064 3-Nov-2021 23:36

JaseNZ:

You name it we blew it up and if they were duds break them in half and burn stuff.

Dad can I have some miniature dynamite , Sure son just don't blow up your sister. (awwww Dad ok then)

Can I fire these bottle rockets at her though, Ok then son don't forget to aim them at your mother as well.

Growing up as a kid in the 70's was so much fun its a wonder I still have all my appendages and am alive.

A few broken bones but I am alive and I loved every minute of the hijinxs we used to get up and into.

https://www.outsidethesquare.net.nz/portfolio/poha-famous-double-happies/

Regale us with what I would say is non osh approved things you used to get up to in your younger years.

Nice one.

Step dad used to make blackpowder back in Aus and tried to convince my mum to let us make it - but she wouldn't let us :)
So we made homemade cross bows instead which were freaking effective, dangerous and fun :)

As were the home made slingshots.

Also once we heard petrol vapour was highly explosive - came up with a design to create a vapour bomb in an old petrol can - fuse wire etc. Sanity reigned on that plan, so even though we dug a trench to put the bomb in - we didn't follow through, thankfully!!

We took the game of firing folded bits of paper from a rubber band up a notch by using fencing staples instead.

High school - engineering workshop - couple of kids fill a balloon using oxy-acetylene mix - and ignited it. Blew out windows of the workshop and several adjacent buildings - and could be heard across the school/neighborhood. The 2 lads absolutely packed themselves and they were expelled as well.

Edit: Same workshop class - 1984 was big year for making throwing stars/shurikens out of galv sheet metal - these were largely thrown at trees and fences - but a few were thrown at friends/enemies as well.

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JaseNZ

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#2807069 4-Nov-2021 00:18

Epic memories guys,

At 11 and 1st form would it have been ??? , We followed a group of glaziers around the school who were replacing a lot of the windows after they finished we took all the putty out for making projectiles for throwing in class.
Needless to say within a few days all the glass panes fell out when doors in the class rooms were being closed.

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

neb

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#2807071 4-Nov-2021 01:45

driller2000:
i purchased $100's worth a few years back when it looked like they were going to ban Guy Fawkes

Ah, so I'm not the only one who still has boxes of double happy's, rockets, and other fun stuff stashed away for gradual use.

To contribute to the "stupid things you did as a kid" list, if you stuff a butane canister inside a chicken and throw it on a bonfire you get an impressive fireball and the chicken mysteriously vanishes without a trace.

Bung

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#2807077 4-Nov-2021 06:43

@ShinyChrome your avatar belongs in this thread 😀

Lias

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#2807078 4-Nov-2021 06:45

Mum used to grow vegetables in the garden to save money. I remember gleefully using double happies to blow up her Silverbeet plants so I wouldn't have to eat it.

Putting double happies in the keyhole of the house (one of those old fashioned big round ones), lighting them, knocking on the door and running and scaring the shit out of mum as she answered the door.

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#2807079 4-Nov-2021 06:46

When your poo-ha turned into a dud, splitting it in half and lighting it to create a fizzer which spun around in circles.

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Mattnzl

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#2807149 4-Nov-2021 07:45

Finding bits of downpipe etc. to block off one end and make "rocket launchers" for sky-rocket wars.

Driving around Chch in my neighbors soft top bambina 500 with 4 of us hanging out the roof firing them everywhere. Even back in the 80's this got us a telling off & keys confiscated for the night by the local policeman - no actual consequences though!

ShinyChrome

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#2807154 4-Nov-2021 08:09

How totally rad of you @bung

While I barely qualify as a kid of the 80s, like any nerd of a certain age, I'm highly versed in 80s-90s pop culture. It truly was a golden era for film, with the greats of action in their prime: Russell, Stallone, Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, Willis...

Brings back memories of finding a good movie to tape off of TV to add to my VHS collection... and then being clever, I would try to edit out the ad breaks, but too often I would get distracted and forget to start again! It took getting the DVD release of Aliens before I saw the whole movie...

Funnily enough I just picked up Escape from NY last week, time to re-acquaint myself!

MileHighKiwi

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#2807159 4-Nov-2021 08:28

I grew up around Te Marua, a small semi rural community at the bottom of the Remutakas in Upper Hutt. My primary school was next to a nudist camp and we had a huge playground that wouldn't get built these days - lots of broken bones - and from the top of it you could see into the 'nudie camp' next door. We had loads of fun swimming in their pool in summer and evading the nudists when they invariably chased us from the complex, saggy bits and all swaying in the wind.

"Golf balling" in the river at Te Marua golf club, and selling the balls to golfers in the car park afterwards.

Playing go home stay home and spotlight at night with my mates.

For shits and giggles I enjoy looking at photos from this era in Upper Hutt libraries excellent online photo catalogue 'recollect'.

I feel very lucky to grow up when I did.

MileHighKiwi

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#2807161 4-Nov-2021 08:30

ShinyChrome:
How totally rad of you @bung

While I barely qualify as a kid of the 80s, like any nerd of a certain age, I'm highly versed in 80s-90s pop culture. It truly was a golden era for film, with the greats of action in their prime: Russell, Stallone, Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, Willis...

Brings back memories of finding a good movie to tape off of TV to add to my VHS collection... and then being clever, I would try to edit out the ad breaks, but too often I would get distracted and forget to start again! It took getting the DVD release of Aliens before I saw the whole movie...

Funnily enough I just picked up Escape from NY last week, time to re-acquaint myself!

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.

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