The way it was.

[hurleyjd]

When you get old and in your twilight years you get to thinking about your youth. In 1950 I was 9 years old. My cousin lived about 300 yards down the road from me. Even at the young age we would prowl the banks of Little Caney Creek which is now in Lake Fork. Nothing to leave out with the dogs and be in the woods all day long our folks I quess did not worry about us. If they did they did not let on. For fishing tackle we had some string from a laying mash sack you could find string because my mother kept all of it. Then a cork out of my grandmothers snuff bottle. A hook or two with some lead we removed from the roofing nails on the barn. No pole as we would cut a green switch cane for pole. We always had a pocket knife and some times a hatchet. To use that tackle you would cut a slit in the snuff bottle cork to slid it on the line. You would find anything you could for bait find a nice pool of water with a mossy bank and start fishing. Cherry bream and large as your hand, a goggle eye every now and then. We were sport fishermen back then as we did keep any of the fish. We could catch the top water minnows with nothing but a pole and some more of the laying mash string. Just rub the string about an inch from the end with a fat pork rind and lay the string on the water where the minnows were and they would swallow the string and you could pull them out. Here I am going on eighty two year old and James one year behind. I retired as an aircraft engineer and James an Air Force three star general. Both of us get together and talk and agree we grew up in the best of times. What both of us would give to have a week as young lads on Little Caney Creek. Just wish my great grand kids could experience my child hood.

 

[Ouachita]

Mr. JD,
I don't agree with your political view, but I'm certain we could get along next to a campfire.
Casting a line and telling lies is something men can do well.

 

[bbirder]

Hurley
Our Memories run along the same lines and I would wish the same for my grandchildren, but I'm afraid those memories will die` with us. I often think that we lived in the greatest generation. We saw the industrial revolution transform the way we lived without stopping our freedoms ++although change is in the wind++How many can say that they used a phone that you cranked to call the operator then she connected you to your party. This has become a mini computer in our pocket that can connect you anywhere in the world.
Last summer at a family gathering I found myself in the company of several young children 8-20 yrs old. I posed a question to them and watched as they all looked around but none could answer yes. I asked "How many of you have ever climbed a tree in your lifetime?" I felt sorrow for every one of them.

 

[wbvs58]

I grew up in suburbia in the 50's though we were lucky because there were lots of pockets of bush around for us to explore with creeks to paddle our homemade corrugated iron canoes and we always had a campfire down the back yard. My mate David would always have to help do the dishes before he got out to play. I remember his father saying David, come here and going whack across his earhole, David said, what was that for and Les said well that's for what you are going to get up to today in advance, and yet David was very close to his father later in life.

Ken