"JJ" wrote in message
...
Jerry Oxendine wrote:

I have to agree with you! How did we survive the '50s,
even the '70s without socialists like Hilary Clinton "protecting" us
from
ourselves? We misbehaved, we got
paddled by a teacher and Dad gave you a "whuppin'" when you got home!
GASP!!
HORRORS! We rode our
bicycles and didn't know what helmets were? You're KIDDING! We climbed
trees, fell out, had the breath knocked out of us, got up and kept
going.
HUH? Why,
we'll have to make trees illegal!! We sent each other flying high in
the
air by jumping on a short plank in a modified game of see-saw; sometimes
the
plank skewed
to one side and we broke arms and ribs. Let's SUE somebody! We got up
again
with skinned knees, and when it quit smarting, we got back on the board
and
did it again. In high school, we drove school busses at 16!
WHAAAAAAAAAAT??????? We even had bus drivers' club! What, that's CRAZY!
No
it wasn't. At that time, North Carolina had one of the safest school
bus driver programs in the nation! We drove tractors as
soon as we could reach the pedals and Pop-popped (John Deere) our way
down
the highway with no supervi-
sion going from one field to another. YIKES!! We drove farm pickups
(off
road) as soon as we could shift
gears, too! HORRORS! GASP! CALL THE LIBERALS!

You bring back a lot of memories Jer. A poppin Johnny was the first
thing I learned to drive 10 years before I would be old enough for a
drivers license, that hand clutch really made it easy. Ever start it up
without removing the tin can off the exhaust stack first?

We expect to remain
free, yet we quietly
surrender our rights to the left wingers who represent one
of the greatest threats next to our external enemies. That is because
it is
creeping socialism" and slips up on us one right at a time. Like the
seatbelt issue, the liberals couch their agenda in issues that seem to
"be
for the good of all".
They know that they cannot suddenly, for example, take
away guns (well, there's that pesky Constition thing they'd
like to get rid of); it would set off a rebellion.

We used to take guns to school. Hear that anti-gun liberal nuts, yes,
real guns at school. Even carried them on the school bus. We never had
any thoughts of shooting up the school, and certainly no thoughts of
shooting someone. We would leave our rifles in the prinipal's office
until after school, then walk home through the fields and pastures
looking for varmits to shoot.

And I long for those days that will never come back. I just wish my
daughter could see how happy and (WHAT?) free we were We wore the same
clothes until they couldn't be patched anymore. Were we poor? Moneywise,
yes. But we didn't KNOW we were poor.
We farmed, raised our own vegetables, chickens. What
we didn't need for the root cellar, Mom canned and put up for the winter.
We picked blackberries and made jelly for sweets, or Mom made cakes or
cookies from scratch.
For a treat, she would bake yeast rolls----MMMMMM!
You could smell them at the back of the garden and out to the wheat field.
We sold eggs we didn't use ourselves
with a route in town, and frequented the farmers' market.

We knew nothing about pocket games. Computers were something that we
couldn't imagine except those huge Unix things with the multiple tape reels
seen on our black and white TVs. We couldn't believe it when we heard about
Sputnik Do you remember the International Geo-
physical Year?


Toys? We got a few things at Christmas, the rest we scrounged up wheels and
steering wheels to make "go" carts that coasted down the highway--YES! It
was the highway, or rural route, dodging cars or running in the ditch if
they got too close. We carried pocket knives and thought nothing of it! It
was a rite of passage for boys with which we carved whistles--which, in
turn, were confiscated by the teachers who spied them. Which, in turn, we
made more whistles, which..........you know! NO one ever thought about
shooting anyone. We boys had arguments and met out behind the ball field
and duked it out. Afterwards we pouted at our opponents, and gradually
started speaking again. Dads taught their kids how USE a gun, when, where,
and why. Not to murder someone. Never, never, never point a gun at anyone
unless you meant to use it. By 5th grade, I was moving Dad's guns around
the house, FIRST making sure there was no round in the chamber. I was taught
when hunting to break down your shotgun and carry it that way until you
intended to shoot at that prey, or keep the safety on at all times. Because
Dad took the time to teach me to respect the power of a gun and to NEVER
become careless, I never had an accident, and to this day, if I pick up my
Dad's old shotgun, the FIRST thing I do is to break it down and check to see
there is no shell in there. Now kids have to have police roaming the halls
and metal detectors. A girl somewhere was expelled (an honor student)
because she unthinkingly brought a knife to school as part of a school
science project. What has become of us? And the older kids make fun of us
for being "old fashioned". Give back the school's authority to discipline
kids ( yes, corporal), stop dumbing down education, and kick out the
liberals that are slowly ruining this country.

The poppin' Johns? Oh, yeah! Every year, I go to at least one "Old Time
Threshing" convention in my state
just to hear that sound.


Jerry