40 and Over Club Meeting

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Where I live everyone is required by law to wear a helmet.

Even adults? You're in Australia, I presume. Is that a local, state or nationwide law?

Yes. Required to wear by anyone riding a bicycle since 1990 in my state and other states followed shortly after.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmets_in_Australia

Some exemptions apply and apparently in 2014 in QLD you can have an exemption on religious grounds! WTF that is I do not know.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Religious grounds most often refers to Sikh men whose religious beliefs mean that they have to wear a turban.

 

[RyanKCR]

In 1980 when I was recovering from my total correction surgery that went wrong, I was transfered to a regular room and given paints to paint my window. I did this:

What you can't see in the picture is the left side of the window. I painted the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard in front of a house and the house had a flag pole that I put the rebel battle flag (as seen on the car.) This was in center city Philadelphia and this room was in the middle of the hospital when looking from the outside.

 

[scotpens]

Got that beat. My parents had only a pickup truck with a camper top on it. We rode in back on a bed made of plywood. On cross country trips. Seatbelts? hehe, at least you had seats.

When I was going to summer day camp, they'd pack 8 or 10 kids in the back of a station wagon with the rear seat folded down. We sat cross-legged on the bare metal floor. Seatbelts? Hell, no seats!

Nowadays we're afraid to let our kids walk two blocks to school. Ridiculous.

 

[RyanKCR]

I used to sit on my grandmothers lap in the front seat a lot.

 

[marksound]

One of the funniest things I've ever heard was Howie Mandel in a cable special in the 80s ...

"We didn't have a Mr. Potato Head, so we'd just stick shit on my grandmother's face."

 

[Miss Chicken]

Sadly I knew a couple of kids from my childhood who did not survive their childhood.

 

[marksound]

Sadly I knew a couple of kids from my childhood who did not survive their childhood.

Me too. Sadly, there's always gonna be that, but you can't dwell on it. If anything it makes you appreciate the people around you, because they could be gone tomorrow.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Two words: Rumble seat.

 

[scotpens]

Two words: Rumble seat.

Those were even before my time. And yours too, I suspect.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ My grandparents had several cars that had them, which I rode in.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I had to look up what a rumble seat is. They were known as dickey seats in British (and Australian) English.

 

[Leith Jones]

Everybody said "eenie meenie miney mo" when I was a kid. There was no "tiger" in there anywhere. Now I wince when I hear the words.

Candy cigarettes? Of course.

My dad had a convertible. He would take us kids for rides on the new freeway (speed limit 75 mph according to the signs, but nobody really cared). Once he got the car to 90 mph, we stood up on the back seat so that our hair would blow in the wind.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

In Australia our candy cigarettes were called Fags since that was slang for cigarettes. They changed the name to Fads in the 90's. You can still buy them. (And fag is still slang for cigarettes).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADS_Fun_Sticks_(candy)

 

[Miss Chicken]

Yes, but Fads (Fads Fun Sticks) lost their red top so that they no longer look like cigarettes. Does anyone actually buy them?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Since they have never had any flavour and are the texture of gritty chalk I've often wondered that.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Actually, I completely screwed up with that last one. What I had thought of as a rumble seat is actually nothing of the kind. I was thinking of the armrest that folded down from the back seat of the car (which, as a child, I thought was an actual seat) Somehow I thought that was a rumble seat. My bad.

 

[scotpens]

Actually, I completely screwed up with that last one. What I had thought of as a rumble seat is actually nothing of the kind. I was thinking of the armrest that folded down from the back seat of the car (which, as a child, I thought was an actual seat) Somehow I thought that was a rumble seat. My bad.

Yeah, I was beginning to wonder if you were like 90 years old or something.

In any case, rumble seats definitely wouldn't pass today's safety standards.

BTW, in America a rumble seat was sometimes humorously called a "mother-in-law seat."

 

[rhubarbodendron]

[...]We had metal slides, we walked to school, we skinned our knees on the pavement and we fell off our bicycles and SURVIVED!
[...]You need to hurt yourself a little bit so you develop the common sense not to eventually do something moronic and hurt yourself A LOT.

I do agree, except for the seat belt thingy. You'd be surprised how horrible the injuries are even at such a low velocity as 12 mph.
When I was a kid, seat belts for normal cars were not invented yet. Only racing cars had some. IIRC the first ones in normal cars turned up in the 70s. Today I feel naked without a seatbelt.

 

[marksound]

If I remember correctly, seat belts were available as optional equipment in some American cars going back to the 50s, maybe further. My dad's 63 Corvette had them, and so did the 64 Impala and 66 Chevelle.

You can still buy candy cigarettes, and a lot of other cool candy stuff, at www.nostalgiccandy.com .

Oh, yeah. Almost forgot Space Food Sticks. I loved those things. www.spacefoodsticks.com