Lawn Darts are / were awesome!

Much better than those plastic upside down pac-man ghost lookin' things they tried to sell in place of them.
Freekin' things bounce like twenty feet.

I still have my Red Ryder.

Original lawn darts ruled.

best bud and i would powder up m80s and run a "fuse" a good 20 ft. away from the pile of powder. light that baby and you get a fireball with a 5 ft. radius. one time the fuse got wet so I got the genius idea to just stick a match in the powder. lost my eyebrows and all the hair on one arm, lol.

Anyone else ever make tennis ball cannons?

if it's like a potato gun, then yes.

Hmm, not sure what a potato gun is, but a tennis ball cannon was accomplished by using the cans they came in (before they became plastic). You needed 3 cans, removed the bottom from one, put holes in the bottom of another, and put a small hole in the bottom side of the other. The one with the bottom still in went on bottom, next the one with holes in the bottom, and the top one had the bottom removed. You could tape them together or whatever. You put the tennis ball in so it was on the bottom of the middle can (where the holes were), used a propane torch to fill the bottom can full of gas through the side hole, then light the torch, point it in the hole and BOOM! high velocity tennis ball.

I loved those things! About once a month or so, me and my dad would go launch those puppies. The multi-stage was the most fun... I think I just about put one into orbit!



I think I still have a set. Soooo much fun. Now, the next best thing is bocce ball. Not quite as dangerous, but those balls have some heft.




I think losing hair due to flames is a requirement of being an old monkey!



Fun times were had by all.

how about a morter in a watermelon?

Seat-belts used to be optional, and the buckles were made out of metal that burned you when you tried to use them after they sat in the sun for awhile (not to mention the vinyl seats).

G@$ D@&^ nanny state....





not much has changed there!

Cars used to have a hump down the middle for the drive shaft, my brother used to use it as a pillow while he slept. But that was when he wasn't sleeping in the back window ledge.

At least now the buckles are covered in plastic versus steel. I remember my Dad's 1970 Ford Galaxy 500 with black vinyl seats (don't see vinyl used much for the main seating area anymore); pretty sure it didn't have air conditioning either.

Ah, I see what you mean about the buckles. I thought you were talking about the actual "insert this" part of the seat belt, which has burnt me plenty of times, even in my newer car. Yeah, at least there is less metal involved these days.

Did any of you ever make the old CO₂ cars out of balsa wood? The kind that you carved by hand with a knife? Those were a BLAST!

Does Pinewood Derby cars in Cub Scouts count? Balsa wood would have been easier.

Sure they count! You haven't lived until you've try to set one off using a hammer and a nail, rather than the official launcher thingamajig.

pinebox derby! I still have a couple of my cars!

LAWN DARTS WERE THE BEST!!!

Also shooting pop cans, fishing, hiking, burning stuff....

Scott I so just thinking the same thing about cars. We use to sleep all over the car. But this was when cars bumpers were about 3/8 thick. You could jack them up using the old kick out jacks and the bumper. A finder bender was any wreck that was under 45 mph. You only totaled a car if it fell off a cliff, or was hit by a train. Oh boy did those 1 lb belt buckels burn. Do you guys remember when the sholder strap could be tucked into the little gutter up on the headliner. You have not lived till one of those buckles has swung out and smacked you on the side of the head. Our old Pontiac had those things. Vinyl seats were teh shigznic. From pop to poop you could just hose it down and go. Try that with you civics seats.

Ty we use to have a co2 canistor launcher. It was a piece of pipe that the canistor would just fit in. It had a plug in the bottom with a finish nail drove through it. Drop the mortor in and FISSSSSSWOOSH. INCOMING. Then we would go get them, drill a 1/8 hole in the neck, fill it with 250 grain of Black Powder, a few inches of canon wick. Seal it with wax. Insto sticko of BIG BOOM!

Meh, after getting burned one time those seat belts were buried so far down the seat cushions you would find ten bucks in change and a happy meals worth of old fries before ya dug 'em back out

Tennis ball cannons - check.

Sleeping all over the car- check.

Getting burned by the vinyl and the buckle- check.



How about watching the movie at the drive in from the hood of the family car- in yur jammies- and under a blanket.

( yes, jammies wit da footies )


*sing along* Let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby, let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a treat..." dancing hot dogs-popcorn-soda yup.yup.

With the speaker you hung on your window...yes! Funny, we did the drive-in thing after prom too; it wasn't quite the same thing.

Estes FTW!
anybody remember the 5ft tall 3-stage monster rocket???



+1

also, speaking of tinker toys... anybody remember Capsela??? i loved these things...

how bout watchin a movie at the drive in w/ a girl....

Yes! not quite Bose quality were they?


Not quite the same, no.
Still did the drive in thing in one of my custom vans back in the day.
Didn't see much of the movies though.



First things first BC, first things first.

If I recall correctly it was called the Big Bertha. My favorite Estes rocket was the one that had the little payload area you could put bugs and stuff in before launch. We sent many a field mouse into orbit with those things!!! F'd the little buggers up pretty good i am sad to say.......

We used to make a different sort of potato gun. Same design but scaled back using 1.5" pvc and a larger combustion chamber. We used starter fluid (ether) as the propellent. Ammo was old golf balls. You could shoot a freakin golf ball through a 55 gallon drum filled with water with those things!

Yard darts were the best. Had a very Darwinian factor for the kids that played with them. The smart kids lived to play another day, the dumb ones who couldn't seem to get out of the way didn't

I used to sleep on the back shelf of the old Thunderbird every summer when we went to my grandparents farm. Mom and Dad up front chain smoking with the windows rolled up, my two sisters and brother in the back seat ####### and moaning and me racked out on the back shelf. I would fall asleep in Virginia and wake up in Florida sunburned on one side of my body! Good times.......We also would ride in the camping trailer playing poker, while it was being towed.

Anyone here remember flying a kite?

-Prof

Once I tied together 3 spoons of string together before it finally broke. Must have chased that kite half a mile before I found it in a tree.

this was a few pages back but...

gars-
have you ever noticed that gars are the dumbest (or smartest) fish on the face of the earth? You can catch them, throw them back and they will wait to be caught again. Not sure if they are too dumb to get away, or smart enough to know I will release them, but that fish.... Snapping turtles are the same way...Personally I am no fan of gars, if I had a dollar for every gar "school" that decided to congregate around a fishing spot and ruin the afternoon I could buy you all one of the E&J cigars described below.

video games -
oddly enough my youngest brother plays video games all the time, but then goes and works out for 5 hours a day. It makes picking on him hard when he can lift you up and throw you in the pool. I might go over there later tonight to get him back for that....

cigars -
try E&J in Stuart Florida. Awesome cigars, get the house brand.

E & J Cigars
6582 S Kanner Hwy, Stuart, FL
(772) 463-2100‎

outdoors - i am not much into guns because they don't work in water, but fishing, swimming, hiking is a lot fun. spear fishing, if any of you have missed out on that, is the most fun you will have with half your clothes on. especially if you snorkel, because the fish tend to spread when you descend, and you don't have all the time in the world down there to setup the shot. Makes it difficult to get snappers, sheepshead still swim too slow to get away. I generally go for large adult porkfish though, porkfish tastes amazing.

Mmmm.........Cigars.

I have had E&J Brandy before but never E&J cigars. Do they sell on the net? I like Luna de Luna's myself.

-Prof

no i dont think so. the guy who runs it is an 80 year old cuban man. (not the same company as E&J Brandy) he was a foreman (?) at Romeo and Julieta(?). He doesn't speak much English, but his son is fluent and handles phone orders. Great maduro, their 50/50 is great, that is the house specialty. For regular occasions or special, they roll a good cigar.

Calling all old monkeys! So judging by your acct of presents were you a good monkey or did you throw a little poo this year? I hope that all of you got at least one good thing that you can use. I for one decided to go the I dont want anything route this year. Well I needed four new Klein tools and some salt. Got the tools but not the salt. lol. I am a little bummed though. My Christmas box of cigars didnt come in and prob wont. GRR. But... good times to all.

I never built the Big Bertha but I built a lot of em. I built one of the size A little guys that went so high, I never saw it. In my mind I believed that God saw it, bent down, picked it up and kept it. I believe it was the AWACS or IWACS Corporal, or something. It was a really sleek one with a pointed nose cone. I couldn't believe one of the A size could go that high.

Found an MP40 upgrade kit and a Reefkeeper lite under the tree this year.

I guess I must have been a good boy.

Sorry to hear bout the Christmas cigars. Isn't that the way it works though, you get what you weren't counting on. As the wise philosopher Jagger once said, "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime you find you get what you need."

I probably fall into the good monkey category. I got a heater/uv filter/humidifier for my house (a hint that my family thinks 62 degrees is too cold), two new suits (it was BOGO) and some new decorations for the house. Oh, and cash. The cash will go toward livestock for the 29g.



Yeah, I'd say the upgrade kit and the RKL DEFINITELY qualifies you for the good monkey category.