Where in the hell?

Todd Duncan Tennyson

Todd Duncan Tennyson

Well-known member
When I was a youngster, I liked air rifles.
I remember I had a crossman 760 and shot it every day.

It was what we did when we were kids.

School all day,
then ride the bike home with 10lbs of books, and then slam down some food
and grab the rifles with my best friends.

Go out and assassinate starlings and English House sparrows, and then come home and study.

In this day and age, if someone drove by 3 youngsters with pneumatics, the cops would be called.



Where in the hell did everything get fouled up?


I had a spanish gun in the early 80's a "Gamo" spring piston rifle.

I even used masking tape,
and colored it all in with camouflage to make it a bit better for blasting covert cans.

Where in the hell did everything get fouled up?
 
That's funny, I just cleaned up an air rifle today to leave in the outhouse so people can shoot mice while dropping a deuce. I sighted it in off my deck shooting at horse flies.

I was like you - home from school, out the door and out hunting snowshoe hares with my pellet gun until dark. I was late for supper for years.


Mike
 
Times sure have changed. Now all I see are kids walking around with their eyes glued to their phones.

I would come home from school and grab a fishing rod, pellet gun, shotgun, or .22 depending on the season. Nobody in the neighborhood said a thing when they seen me walking through the neighborhood towards the river. Provided the family with many catfish, squirrels, rabbits, doves, pheasants, and ducks for dinner.
 
Let's see if I can take it a step backwards first----I remember going to grade school and all of us carried pocket knives. One of our favorite games was trying to make the other kid have to do the splits when we would attempt to stick the knife into the ground and your opponent had to stretch his leg out and step on that spot. We never had a teacher walk up to us and tell us that we could not do this. Of course you have to realize that we were using desks that still had the ink wells in them.

My first group of 4th graders are now 60/61 years old and my last group of them are just entering their senior year in college with a few of them now having spent 3 years of their lives in prison. There are a ton of reasons why things seem to have gone to hell. We can go all the way back and begin dissecting it but that becomes boring for some and for others down right maddening! Do you want to begin with when mothers first began working outside of the home?
Al
 
Al,

I remember playing the same game with knives in the school yard. Teachers didn't think anything of it. The most you would get was a comment to be careful and watch your toes.
In high school we would openly discuss guns and hunting while talking with teachers. Now the mear mention of the word "gun" will likely get the student suspended.

How about reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Seems like more and more schools no longer do that because it violates the students first ammendment rights.

When my wife and I first decided to have kids we discussed her working and we decided against it. Times were tough but we wanted our kids raised by us and not someone else. Although our lives would have been financially better it was worth the sacrifice to have them raised but us and to follow our values.

Although we are not wealthy financially our wealth is measured in the fact that we raised our kids on our own and instilled the values in them that we hold dearly. They are now 19, 20 and 24 and they now understand what we had sacrificed to make sure one of us were always home with them.

Enough with all this reality TV crap which is far from reality and teach our youngsters to be responsible for them selves and their actions. Making a TV reality show about a bunch of drunken young adults who just party, party, party and don't work is part of the problem but there are many other contributing factors.

It is time for some personal responsibility to be dished out.
 
I was taught as a child (by three WWII veterans) to NEVER point a toy gun, BB gun, Pellet gun or any gun, at a Human Being, or there would be HELL to pay, and NO guns of any kind in my future. The rule was firm, and I obeyed it.

My cousin and I were taught gun safety as very young children, by very responsible Adults. The very same men who taught us marksmanship groundhog hunting, and that Game was never to be wasted, or put on this earth as just targets.

As children, only after we were deemed responsible, did we get to use BB guns & Pellet guns. Which we did everyday after school, and all summer long. I can't imagine growing up any other way?

The Greatest Generation not only saved the world, but they brought up a darn good generation of hunters, fishermen, conservationists and outdoors men and women. For that, and more, I am forever grateful..........

Those days, for the most part are gone, and not coming back anytime soon, and that IS a damn shame. I mean who goes anywhere without a pocket knife? Certainly no one on duckboats!
 
I got a frantic call from my wife a couple of years back. The local cops had my son and a couple of his friends held for questioning. Guns were involved my wife said. I calmed her in no time and made her angry a minute afterwards.

My son and his buddies all had airsoft guns. I had dropped them off earlier in some woods so they could go shoot stuff. Seems someone saw them and called the cops fearful for her life. Cops arrived and detained the kids until the parents could arrive, lecture them, and take them home. I don't think I made the cops happy as I did none of the above.

Seems the law that was broken was that our town has a zero tolerance policy against having anything that discharges anything out in public. It's OK in your own yard, and it is OK in the limited areas where hunting is allowed but otherwise zero tolerance. I had to ask:

1. No airsoft guns that can't hurt anyone? - Nope
2. How about Nerf guns - nope
3. Ping ball guns - nope
4. Water pistols - nope
5. Plastic dart guns - nope
6. Spitballs - nope


And so it went. Some may say I was belligerant and others may say disrespectful of the police but I was neither. I wanted to understand what stupid assine laws we pass around here.

Did I lecture my son - nope. Didn't punish him either. I asked if they were shooting each other which he was taught he could never do and he said they were stalking birds and other animals. My son has never lied to me before then so I had no reason to not believe his story. I told him his job when he grows up is to prevent stupid laws such as this from becoming law.

You should see the new anti skateboard law they are trying to pass now. God forbid some kid might get hurt falling off one.

Mark W
 
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I'm still a pretty young guy, but I had a similar childhood...summers, weekends and afternoons were spent in the woods with a handful of best friends from the same neighborhood. Beginning around the age of 7, our bikes had gun racks on the handlebars for our pellet guns, and PVC rodholders on the rear frame for our fishing rods. We would enter those woods in the morning with wagons so loaded down with hammers, nails, hatchets, bricks, cinderblocks and wood "borrowed" from nearby construction sites that the bottoms would rub against the tires, and then we wouldn't come out until it was too dark to see, or someone's parent rode down to the woodline and yelled to come home. We fished, hunted, trapped, built forts, caught frogs and snakes, built fires, rode bikes, fought, swam-often by accident, climbed and cut down trees and all-around enjoyed the outdoors. I can't recall coming out of those woods as a child where I wasn't soaking wet and muddy, cut up from briars and getting an earful whether it be from dragging home a dead cottonmouth to skin out or because some tool of my dad's or a kitchen knife of my mom's had gone missing.

At 23, that time in my life wasn't all that long ago, but it seems everything has changed for kids nw. Fastforward 10 years from when it was me in those woods, and now there are no kids running around, terrorizing critters with BB guns or fishing in that creek. I don't know whether parents have become too protective or if kids just have no interest in the same stuff I was obsessed with, but it makes me shake my head to think about it. Most of my fondest memories of growing up were made down in those woods. What kinds of memories are these kids going to have looking back?
 
I got a frantic call from my wife a couple of years back. The local cops had my son and a couple of his friends held for questioning. Guns were involved my wife said. I calmed her in no time and made her angry a minute afterwards.

My son and his buddies all had airsoft guns. I had dropped them off earlier in some woods so they could go shoot stuff. Seems someone saw them and called the cops fearful for her life. Cops arrived and detained the kids until the parents could arrive, lecture them, and take them home. I don't think I made the cops happy as I did none of the above.

Seems the law that was broken was that our town has a zero tolerance policy against having anything that discharges anything out in public. It's OK in your own yard, and it is OK in the limited areas where hunting is allowed but otherwise zero tolerance. I had to ask:

1. No airsoft guns that can't hurt anyone? - Nope
2. How about Nerf guns - nope
3. Ping ball guns - nope
4. Water pistols - nope
5. Plastic dart guns - nope
6. Spitballs - nope


And so it went. Some may say I was belligerant and others may say disrespectful of the police but I was neither. I wanted to understand what stupid assine laws we pass around here.

Did I lecture my son - nope. Didn't punish him either. I asked if they were shooting each other which he was taught he could never do and he said they were stalking birds and other animals. My son has never lied to me before then so I had no reason to not believe his story. I told him his job when he grows up is to prevent stupid laws such as this from becoming law.

You should see the new anti skateboard law they are trying to pass now. God forbid some kid might get hurt falling off one.

Mark W


Mark,

I had a "Spud Gun" when I was a kid. If they "ate" the ammo, would that be legal?

Times have sure changed..... fishing and hunting license sales for are way down, as the kids nowadays don not want to really do anything that gets in the way of their social life. I think that the video games and cell phones have caused this "couch potato" behavior. Also lack of "chore work" that we all had as youngsters.

Art
Click to expand...
 
I think Robby has it nailed with parents are more protective. I have a 6 and 13 year old and I hear it all the time. I think my wife is to protective but it is the norm. Most parents are to scared to let there kids run around and be kids. If they do let there kids be kids they are gonna hear about it from other parents. I believe this just promotes the "couch potato" "gaming" "computer" loving generation. They are not allowed to do much else becasue "something might happen to them". With the social media and the internet news travels faster than ever and you hear about every bad thing that happens accross the country which breeds fear into the hearts of well intentioned parents.
 
I had a very similar childhood of shooting sparrows with BB guns and hunting and fishing until it got dark. I grew up on a farm and we had plenty of chores and we also had summer jobs which kept us busy. The sad part now is that kids don't have the summer jobs like I used to have. They don't "buck" bales anymore because they just make large round bales now. They don't walk beans and cut out the weeds because they use a boom with Round-up to kill them and they dont detassle corn anymore since they have machinery do that now. My oldest wanted a paper route and the company said it was bewteen 60-80 mile route that would need completed before 6 am and he and I BOTH had to sign on since he didn't have his driver's license. So much for the paper boy riding a bike anymore. As far as guns, I hope I'm wrong, but it sure feels like we are slowly being squeezed out of the future landscape.


dc
 
I'm from what they call the Greatist Generation and it's about time you all woke up and did something about the situation if it isn't already too late!!!!!!!!
wis boz
 
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Back in the sixties I lived in Tacoma WA and was a member of the Stadium High School rifle team. I would take my cased rifle on the city bus to the Point Defiance range and nobody batted an eye. If I tried to get on a city bus today with anything that resembled a rifle they would call out a swat team. You're right parents today don't get it at 16 I was back packing alone in the Cascades mountains and canoeing in the MN Boundary waters. I had a talk with one of my friends last summer when he wouldn't let his 17 & 14 years old daughters paddle a kayak with other family members.
........
Average 20 something can't make anything, fix anything or get dirty - but they sure can use a keyboard and an I=phone.
Enough of my soap box
........
 
I can remember walking down the street with my two friends early one morning to go crow hunting and being stopped by a police officer inquiring what we were up to so early on a Saturday morning. Then sending us on our way. This was aresidential communiy we were walking through with guns uncased about sixty miles from NYC. That would never happen now for sure.
 
I can remember back in the late 70's on friday mornings they had a church school class for kids that wanted to go. The others basically had a study hall until 9:00. some of decided that a quick hunt in the morning was time better spent and we would from the blind to school and we would bring our shot guns in to the school and put them in our lockers. try to get away with that now, teachers wouldnt even think twice about it, it was just what happened. They all but closed the school on opening day of duck season.
 
Top this one :^)

Age 15, so it had to be early 1972, I flew back from ST Martin - to a NYC airport w/ my mom, bringing my new spear gun back as carry on luggage. It was sticking out of a brown paper bag, complete, ready to function, one rubber gun that I used for the next 6 years. No security then and no one batted an eye.

30 years later, ST Louis, Security broke off the 3/4" long file on my finger nail clippers, so I could bring them home in my carry on. Most flipping stupid security thing I've run into to date.

Scott
 
Ten yaers or so ago (when i was 13)my mom got tired of driving me up to my buddies house. So i had to take my bike. Seeing as we could go fishing, hunting, hiking, looking for snakes, (you know the typical boy stuff) i had to bring almost everything i owned up to his house. I had a large camo duffle bag that contained a compound bow, air rifle, 22, my entire 80 lbs of fishing tackle, two one piece rods (2 piece rods arent sensitive enough)bathing suit, a few beers i stole from the fridge, a nudy mag, im sure im forgeting a few key componets to a boys checklist. Then i had to try to pedal the mile up hill to his house.


Im sure if i did that today i would be pulled over and put on the terrorist watch list. I cant imagine growing up now, i do wish i grew up 100 years ago to see America become the greatest nation and to finally see so many ducks that sky grows black.
 
The flip side.

I grew up in the same America all of your are reminiscing about and I can tell you that the town I grew up just outside of is no longer the same. We to carried our air guns down the street to our friends house or to the woods to go squirrel hunting. Carried out bow an arrows all over as well first the ones we made by hand, then the red fiberglass long bows, finally the compounds when I convinced mom to let me hunt. No one batted an eye. I feel for my nephew and niece growing up there now. Air conditioning in the house and not a single swamp within walking distance to catch frogs.

However, I can tell you that there are kids still growing up in that America or at least a very similar version of it. I moved to part of it 9 years ago. Its called Rural America and kids still ride there bikes to the lake with fishing poles, and strap 22's to the handlebars ( in cases) to go looking for partridge (grouse) in the fall. The bigger kids some call them adults carry there shotguns all over town or the woods in the fall strapped to the fourwheeler again in a case. Orange hats show up on every trucks dash board come September 15th indicating to anyone paying attention that there is also a shotgun as well in the truck. After all bird season is open. The police may stop kids carrying a pellet gun in town here but the conversation is different then you might expect. Something similar to "get anything?" Then again Bruce our towns cop. Raised a bunch of boys so he gets it.

So don't loose hope that America still exists, I have seen it in North Dakota, Ohio, Northern Michigan and even outside of America in Manitoba. we just have to look harder for it. Every time I have found it its been in a small town where the people have strong ties to one another. Family, God and community are valued in these places and it seems that fosters the America many of us remember growing up in. I don't know the answer on how to preserve these places but I am so glad they still exists and and even happier I am luck to live in one.
 
Its 1982, Im a sophmore in highschool. My brother and I are heading back to Tucson from a duckhunt south of Wilcox Arizona. I get pulled over for speeding as I was decending into the town of Bensen. BIG HILL!! I was speeding but hey....didnt mean too. Anyway on my dash I have a blackhawke 44 magnum with a long barrel. Really long! our shotguns hanging in the gunrack behind our heads. Police officer walks right up starts a polite conversation...gets my liscense etc. Goes back to call it in. He comes back and says I really like your dog. My chessie, Jessie was in the back of the truck. He told me to be careful and to watch my speed and have a good day. No ticket
Cant imagine what would happen today. I didn't think twice about having all those weapons visible. Now im nervous as a whore in church.

Played the same knife game growing up at recess......In-between football, soccer and baseball seasons I was out with my pellet gun until dark with my buddies. Times have changed. Feel bad for my kids but I make it a point to get them out as much as possible.
 
I'm younger than most here (will be 35 in September) but when I was in Jr high/high school in rural Utah half the student's trucks in the parking lot had rifles in the rear windows, and most boys carried a pocketknife to school. It's scary how quickly things have changed for the worse.
 
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