Good stuff John, my younger brother and sister both logged their fair share of test pilot/crash dummy hours also.

Here's a few
 

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059524.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059547.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059564.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059581.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059598.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059625.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059642.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059657.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059671.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059689.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059747.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059766.gif

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059781.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059793.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059840.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059898.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180059933.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1180060019.jpg

Thread hijack continued:

cash and Tim,
Thanks for the posts! One of my first real bikes (after the '64 Honda Trail 90 that I had to straddle) was an MR50. '74, as it turns out, with red tank and fenders. The coolest thing about it was the two stroke engine and clutch. The other thing I liked was it allowed the whole family to spend time together at my grandparents place on Lake Havasu. Good times. :)

Oh, I liked Legos and Lincoln Logs, too.

Austin, what were the horses called. It is driving me nuts as I had a couple of them along with the western action figures.
I wonder if my GI Joe stuff is still in my parents attic? I also had that helicopter....that was an awesome toy at the time!

Your favorite toys as a child
 

59 – pogo stick (I was good at this and could jump around the block and down town without stopping – later, in 1975, I won one of the Hop Rods (gas powered pogo stick) from Oscar Koveleski of AutoWorld at the SCCA Runoffs in a jumping contest. I had never seen one and on the first try rode it out of gas and kept riding it all around the paddock up and down hills for I don’t remember how long until the crowd chanted give it too him – and he did. I have a picture of this and will try to scan and post it later. Still have the pogo stick.

Fire crackers, baseball, golf, hunting - destroyed my share of what today would be valuable baseball cards in bicycle spokes.

My wife, from Ca and years younger, says I (from eastern NC town of 800) grew up in Maybery RFD . No locked doors, played chess and ping pong if bad weather. Took my shotgun to school in the 6th grade for a report. Blew up the science lab mixing rocket fuel causing evacuation of the school (1 thru 12 grades). Did not get sent home but after the fire trucks left and classes resumed I was warned to not mix rocket fuel again unless the science teacher was in the lab with me, My mother, a teacher at the school, was mortified and later had what must have been a conniption fit. My partner in rocket fuel went on to MIT and beyond. I ended up a race car mechanic.

The details of my life are quite inconsequential.... very well, where do i begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

Anywhooo...... you asked about my childhood....

It was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.

Here Tim
http://users.vance.net/grayarea/marx/marx.html

Ahhhh you guys got me on the bb gun wars and the bottle rocket fights - we used to line up in teams across the golf course fairway - 10 to a team and you couldn't cross midway. I was a terror because i fashioned a piece of copper pipe and would light a dozen at a time...

The BB gun wars - there were four of us - all had crossman 760's - we had a one pump rule - but someone would get pissed off - thinking that there was more than one pump in the bb that hit them - and it would escalate. Before long all you'd hear were kids running to the house (with the bb's rattling around in their stocks)

Amazing I'm still alive...

My favorite toys - would be my bike - a Schwinn Lemon Peeler

http://www.firstflightbikes.com/_borders/73lemon.JPG

and my bb gun

http://www.airgunsbbguns.com/photos/CRO760b-2T.jpg

Anybody build rockets?

not mine, but I'm guessing some of these will be recognized...
http://www.rocketroberts.com/rockets...ckets_1973.jpg

43/13
 

I had a bike like that except green and with a sissy bar. A Crossman 760 that I had bent the barrel so I sawed it off and put a pistol handel on it. Couldnt hit a barn with it but it looked cool. Had the small black rocket(forgot the name) in the back of the picture. The first time I launched the rocket it never came down. I started making them after that and painting them red or orange.

Oh - forgot my age - physical age - 44 - mental age - still holding around 14...

The green one was called the pea picker - the orange one was the orange crate - I wanted an orange crate at the time...

I've got a Daisy lever action BB rifle around somewhere. My brother bought it for me in 1966. Twist the barrel nose and pour in the whole box of BB's. It is a very short rifle.

Maybe Tabs will make me an offer on it. LOL

Along with the Pea Picker, Orange Krate, and Lemon Peeler, I remember...

Apple Krate
Cotton Picker
Grape Krate

Re: 43/13
 

I too had a Peeler (got stolen) and the same Crossman with the same rule:)

I forgot about my Corgi & MatchBox Batmobiles, batboats & bat chopper, as well as my old James Bond cars, as well as the Corgi, I had a bigger one too, boy do I with I still had them.

3 posts above yours for rocket experiments.

we used to scape the "fuel" out of a few rockets engines then light it - used to blow up real good!

I'm 29 and my favorite toy has got to be a wiffle ball and bat.

http://www.theconnecticutstore.com/balls.jpg

The old line was "When I was a child my family was so poor they didn't know whether to buy me clothes or something to play with, so they bought me trousers and cut the pockets out of them."

A good friend of mine burned his face (had no eyelashes or eyebrows for awhile after this little stunt) and had to go to the ER to get his eyes flushed out from emptying model rocket engines into a bowl, then lighting it with his face obviously too close. I think he was about 10 or so when that happened. Of course that did not stop him from making pipebombs with me a few years later ;)

We used to pour gasoline on ant hills and light em up, played with WD40 torches, in the early years we would empty .22 cartdridges to play with the gun powder.

I also remember breaking a bunch of thermometers open to play with the "funny" little liquid mercury balls on the floor of the garage.

We also thought it would be "cool" to jump over a burning ramp IN his dad's home business shop one late Friday night after wathcing the Dukes of Hazzard, so he got to be first. I stood next to the ramp with a lit paper towel having just dumped a soup can of gasoline on the plywood ramp. As he approached, I was to light it off. Man it was HUGE fireball he rode thru and we learned how to use a fire extinguisher that night. We also were reminded how burned hair smells.

One night we poured oil on the concrete floor to make our indoor bmx races in the same shop a bit more fun. We figured we would simply wipe the floor up after we were done and the workers the next day would be none the wiser. Of course it ended up everywhere and my buddy caught some huge shiit over that one.