Being a kid in the 70's was awesome........I'm very lucky........those were completely different times for sure.....kids went out in the morning and didn't come back till dark......plenty of adventures.

vetmxr wrote:

Being a kid in the 70's ...more

vetmxr wrote:

Being a kid in the 70's was awesome........I'm very lucky........those were completely different times for sure.....kids went out in the morning and didn't come back till dark......plenty of adventures.

I can remenber refilling my gas tank 3 or 4 times a day riding. Never had to worry about that when I started racing.
As kids on the farm, we started riding in the morning and like you said, didn't quit until it was too dark to see.

vetmxr wrote:

Being a kid in the 70's ...more

vetmxr wrote:

Being a kid in the 70's was awesome........I'm very lucky........those were completely different times for sure.....kids went out in the morning and didn't come back till dark......plenty of adventures.

Much of the time in summer I was up before the sun, jumped on my Stingray and was outta there. Id head for the T-heads and hang out with shrimpers coming in at sun-up cleaning out the by-catch. They'd give me free shrimp and Id head to the jetties and catch croaker and gaff-top with my trusty Zebco 202. Like you said, no way we would go in before dark, and even then we did it under protest. Parents had no clue what we were doing, and didnt care either.

vetmxr wrote:

Being a kid in the 70's ...more

vetmxr wrote:

Being a kid in the 70's was awesome........I'm very lucky........those were completely different times for sure.....kids went out in the morning and didn't come back till dark......plenty of adventures.

It wasn't all that different in the 90's, well at least for me anyway haha
Used to leave for school in the morning go surfing after school and not get home till 8 or 9 haha
No bloody phones to always have to check in on

JAFO92 wrote:

tp4 wrote: I looked up to ...more

JAFO92 wrote:

tp4 wrote: I looked up to Joel...

In the 5th grade? Evel Knievel and Kelly made me wanna ride. Wasnt until '77 that I discovered DeCoster. Kelly was a rebel and not afraid to go for the older chicks too.

Girls hitchhiking certainly brings up a memory. 14 years old, hanging out in the pits at Rio Bravo one Saturday night before a Sunday race, I meet a couple girls that said they'd come visit me in Beaumont (about 90 minutes from Rio) sometime. I didn't think much of it; just hoped to see them again at another race. Two days later, some friends pulled me out of class, saying some chicks were there to see me. Sure 'nuff; they had hitchhiked from Houston to Beaumont with no way to warn me in advance. Crazy times.

And speaking of parents dropping off their kids... mine dropped me and two buddies (with our motorcycles!) off for a couple of WEEKS of the summer when we were all about 13. We slept in a pop-up located in a campground that was part of a retirement community, complete with lake, golf course etc.. We were the only ones in the campground during the week, so boredom set in quickly and the shenanigans got out of hand, especially in the middle of the nights with our bikes (and a few of the residents' boats). Good times. We would have stayed longer, but our parents started hearing news reports about Dean Corll and Elmer Wayne Henley serial killing boys about our age in the Houston area. They quickly came to get us without telling us why; we just thought the community had asked them to remove us!