I like this thread and some these posts are great but I'm starting to get the "my dad/granddad/ was brought up harder than yours" vibe. it's an endless cycle. One day your 1 year old child will say the same thing to their grandchild, just different circumstances. But yea, I wish it was as simple and kind time as you all talk about. At hazel green high school in 2004 we could still have shotguns in our vehicles, now, you'd be expelled, I'm a bit jealous of you older folks.

Oh and I was told by a teacher, coach Giles, to straiten my belt buckle before, there are still good people out there that are not liberal pussies that are not afraid to hurt feelings or push people's buttons.

I don't know how to explain how much different it was growing up when I did and where I did to the younger folks on here.

I live on the same piece of dirt I grew up on. I grew up, moved off and moved back with a family in tow. The road is much different now. We use to live out in the country. Our road has always been paved but when I was a kid it was more potholes than pavement. The road was so bad that every time we went to town, our parents and everybody else, drove in the middle of the road, not in a "lane." We'd just move over when we passed somebody. So when I started driving I drove in the middle of every road no matter how good it was. I just thought that's the way it worked.

The youngest person in the room was always the channel changer on the TV. I remember the first microwave oven my mother got.

I could swing a hammer and read a tape measure like a grown man by the time I was in 5th grade. We grew up poor and built everything. One winter we spent every Saturday tearing down condemned HUD houses to have the lumber to build a barn. I was about 10 at the time. My dad and I tore the roof off. My brother was still too little to get on the roof. I fell through the ceiling and landed in the floor of two different houses that winter. Both times my dad looked down through the hole, asked if I was alright, then told me to "get back up here and get back to work." LOL

My parents built chicken houses when I was 14. My brother and I worked them every day. We picked up the dead chickens when we got home from school. We never questioned being told to do something like that, we just did it.

In the summer we hoed the garden and listened to how much better we had it than my parents who grew up hoeing cotton. I'm sure we did have it much better.

When we weren't working, we played and played hard. We had wooden cutouts of machine guns and we played Army nearly every day. We spent all the time we could in the woods, whether killing Russians, or catching crawdads or shooting skwerls. If we weren't in the woods we were on our bikes riding up and down our long chert driveway. I've spent more than one evening sitting on the long gone utility room cabinet having gravel picked out of my knee by my mother. I've had enough stitches to sew up a tent.

We rode in the back of the truck every where we went if it was warm enough. We drank Cokes out of glass bottles. It was the good life and those days are gone forever.

I'm only 42 or I'd be sure you were my brother. And when you heard that skinny leather belt popping through the belt loops when dad took it off, you knew chit was about to get real!!!
My first job was at western supermarkets also. Well first tax paying job. I cut grass and all I kind of other stuff from 11 yrs old on up. You don't see 11 yr old kids pushing a lawn mower around the neighborhood to cut grass anymore.

I remember when the June Jam was the biggest event in north alabama. Every one who was anyone came to share the stage with the group Alabama. Getting in and out of Fort Payne was like Talladega on race weekend.

Can you imagine if that was still going on? It would probably be one of those 3 day multi stage festivals by now.

Fur mentioned glass bottle cokes. I remember the glass bottles with th he Styrofoam label. And 2 liters back when they had the plastic cup glued on the bottom to make them stand up. I knew some older boys who used the cups to make clorox bombs every now and then.

I remember when we had either 2 or 3 TV channels and one of them was PBS and I think all three of them went off the air at about 10pm with the playing of the national anthem. If you were watching TV on Saturday nights at our house, you were watching Hee Haw.

I remember the fist microwave in the neighborhood. The Finches got one. The Finch boys were friends of my brother and I. They called me and I ran down to their house. It was an impressive sight. built like a space age tank with a big chrome lever that latched to lock in the deadly microwaves and a thick round window in the front to peer in. Chrome numbered real push buttons, a dial, chrome trim. It was an impressive and formidable sight.

Raleigh scrambled an egg in a little custard cup and said, "Watch this!" He carefully stuck the cup in the Amana Radar Range and closed the door tightly behind it. We both peered in the little round window as he keyed in the sequence. We both stood there looking in in awe as seemingly instantaneously the egg just went poof and rose up out of the cup. I then stood there and ate it with a fork as Raleigh watched the poor kid up the street that didn't have a microwave. I was sure that we would soon be riding around in flying cars...

LOL I'd forgotten about cutting grass. Before Western my mother would drive me to folks houses and drop me off to cut the yard and do yard stuff. I had maybe 7-8 yards I did weekly. I was maybe 13-14.

You guys just jogged my memory. I used to cut yards during the Summers, picked up aluminum cans, soda bottles for deposit, raked yards. I knew we didn't have much but I wasn't going to sit around and pout about it.

.....I will give you a whooping boy if you....! Or none of this I won't tell you again stuff, again was an arse whooping. Didn't get many of those I learn quick. No calling twice to come home before dark if you forgot you got your arse busted. Respect has gone bye bye with arse wboopings. Respect is when you now silently thank your parents now for those whoopings.
Was in a store recently the mom told her daughter old enough to walk in store, "I am not telling you again you not getting anything don't ask again". Little girl ask again and got a hand spanking right there. Way to go mom!
Cowboys and Indian game (can I still call it that?)with hand pointing would get you sent to principals office now. My son got a bad note and sent to principals office for this!
Back then a gay was called a queer..lol! Sorry I know I justed offended a queer!

I remember buying gas for 18 cents at PAK A SAK in Mobile, during gas wars around 1970. I cut grass and raked yards, till I was old enough to bag groceries at Winn Dixie. Yes and after mother whipped me she would say "and when your daddy gets home you are gonna get a whipping" What the hell was that ???

My dad bought a pressure washer one summer when I was about 13, I did our driveway which was first house in the neighborhood. It was basically a billboard, I did most houses in the neighborhood that summer. I thought I was a millionaire. Pulled that pressure washer all over behind my dirt bike

Perch, my teachers at school would whip our butts, send us to the principles off if that didn't straighten us out for another whipping. Then...mom would whip our butts when we got home. Made us go pick a switch off the weeping willow tree in the front yard....I hated that tree. Then we went to our room to wait for dad to come home and whip our butts AGAIN.....dangit, thats enough. Wonder I got any hide left on my butt and legs.

there were four of us boy children and I bet we got 575dozen million butt whippins growing up....I , being the oldest, got the most.

There was 4 of us too. And after you got the whipping at school and the whipping when you got home, dad was likely going to whip all 4 of us just on principle. "I'm sure y'all did something I didn't find out about." I can tell you one thing, you didn't want to be the one that got in trouble because you were going to have 3 brothers waiting to kick your butt too.

Troy I was the oldest too ! I assure you I got paddled at school. Any time they ask note or paddling, I took paddling. No way I wanted a note to take home. Now way !!! LOL

Considering all these memories about whippings and discipline, maybe we can explain why some of US are more personally responsible. Responsible, instead of shifting blame to someone or something else. The generation that was undisciplined and told that their behavior and lack of respect was the product of some other phenomenon does not seem to correlate that into personal RESPONSIBILITY. The idea of " Actions have consequences " seems to have been lost or replaced with "Its not your fault", and "Everyone deserves a trophy"

My mother was an elementary school principal and I tell her that my brother and I were her stress relief. She came in the door swinging! Whatever she could get her hands on, belts, hairbrush, hot wheel track, switches..... And if one of us got an arse whooping, the other would too, because we were going to laugh at the one getting his arse whooped. If we told on one another, she would whoop both of us, one for whatever we were doing, and the other for tattling.

Daddy didn't whoop us too often. Didn't have to. You didn't want that man on your arse!! Whatever he said, you did it then!

We use to gather up Coke bottles to make enough money to buy another Coke.
The AG teacher and principal would make a brand new paddle each year and show everybody. They started drilling holes in them so they could swing them faster!

You haven't lived if you haven't had whelps on your arse from hot wheels track! Man I don't know how I forgot about that.

I've picked up coke bottles before as well.

My Momma told us that if we didn't get up in the morning when we were called the first time, our bed time would be reduced by 30 minutes per offense. We always jumped up at the first call.

If we got in trouble at school, we were in bigger trouble when we got home.

The rule was if Momma had to come pick us up from school because we were sick, we were going straight to bed when we got home.