Safety sucks

[mscard88]

If I remember they offered all sorts of prizes for selling subscriptions.

I had a paper route for 5 years. Every so often they would have a subscription drive and offer so much money for bringing in a new subscription. Something like 5 bucks for every 10 new subscribers.

But, I was 10 years old clearing 30 bucks a month.... man, I was raking it in..!!!! Still, it was enough to buy my first vehicle. A 1970 C-10, 6 cylinder, granny gear 4 speed tranny, two windows, heater and no radio. A 4 year old vehicle for 700 bucks..!!!! All my friends first vehicles was usually grandpas old truck.

My first was a POS '56 Mercury 2-door, black and white. Had fun in that big back seat though. I paid either $60 or 80 for it 1967. Something like this without the skirts and continental kit on it. On the two doors buddy and me painted the band name on it in psychedelic lettering, "The Psychotics". Man my old man was po'd and wanted it out from in front of his house. Went into the military soon after.

 

[Paulie]

During the summer it was "be home for supper" as we took off on our bicycles. Seven years old up to our own devices all day, no adults.

 

[Bill]

During the summer it was "be home for supper"

That, and after supper it was, "Where ever you are when the street lights turn on, start making your way home."

 

[1600vw]

When integration started, a couple other guys and me still rode our bikes to school all the way across town. After school we would head to the train tracks and there would be an empty flat car somewhere in the train. We would throw our bikes on the train and ride back across town. The guys in the caboose would yell at us... "Get offa da trane..... we gonna call da po-lice....get offa da trane..!!!" But they never called the "po-lice" and never got out of the caboose.

I guess we were lucky that the train didn't throttle up to 50 or so and take us to Mexico.....

A few years ago I told my mom what we did back then. She told me we knew. Someone saw you on the train and told us... And yet my parents did not tell me to stop.

We walked the tracks into town all the time. One day we were at the switch as the train was switching to the track that took it north towards our homes that was maybe 10 miles away. We stuck our thumps out. Some dude sticks his head out of the locomotive pulling this train. He had a camera around his neck and told us to jump on the caboose as it came by. As the caboose approached the train started to slow so we jumped on and walked into the caboose. The man in the caboose looked at us from around a corner in the caboose yelling at us boys. What in the he## are you boys doing here. I said a man in the engine told us to jump on, he had a camera around his neck. The man in the caboose told us boys, he said, do you know who that is? Of course we did not. I said no. He said that is the president of the railroad. He radios up to the locomotive. He asks where do we live. I told him my home was right next to the tracks about 10 miles ahead. As we approach my Italian mother was out in the yard in her bikini hanging close on the line. The dudes in the locomotive just keep blowing the horn trying to get her attention. We exit and I run up and tell mom we just hitched a ride on a freight train and they stopped and let us off. She said I wondered why they kept blowing that horn. I was 12 when this happened in 1972.