things that intruigued and inspired you as a child

[Ted Hoppe]

I saw mechanical marvels, space rockets and Hollywood movies.
I recognized I could be part of something that we could build or dream to make. it has never stopped.
Landing on the moon. apollo 17 launch from my front porch.
a beautiful blonde girl same age as me (5) playing doctor under a banyon tree.
The locks and ships through the panama canal.
Seeing Lawerence of Arabia on the big screen. Star Wars too.
Tarzan of the Apes books.
My father racing his fast cars on the track.
My sunfish trolling catching groupers and barracuda over the sandbars and reefs.


This is a post Jack would expand exponentially.

[S.V. Airlie]

reading and or discussing Am history.
trying to be a taxidermist
Working with Roger Tory Peterson and others on osprey.
Collecting historical maps, etchings book and in some comparing those thing portrayed in them to the present.
Some movies.
Drawing pen and inks
photography and developing B&Ws
My neighbor, aged 10 or so, who was allowed to drive the tractor. Oh, I used to go next door and just stare at him driving it.
Thinking, aged about ten, how to catch a muskrat bare handed. The planning took a week, getting bitten, oh about 40 seconds.
Listening in on part lines (telephone) me bad
watching serious craftsmen at work( shoeing horses and making the shoes)
being left alone at Mystic Seaport a lot and able to talk to those who often sailed some of the boats there as crew
Having lunch aboard the HMS Victory.
Long list as I spent a lot of my time alone.

[Flying Orca]

Jamie, did you grow up near Mystic? My uncle lives quite nearby, in Haddam. Um, maybe East Haddam, IIRC.

[S.V. Airlie]

Orca..My father was Director of the Seaport. I grew up in Old Lyme. My school bus often dropped me off at the museum to allow my father to drive me home usually after 8pm.I spent 4 hours/day on a bus every friggin' day. A car ride was shorter and a luxury. Lots of time to just hang out at the museum though... Haddam is a hop skip and a jump from Old Lyme..

[Donn]

Watching my Mother's Gladiolus emerge from those ugly bulbs and turn into gorgeous flowers. She stored them in the basement all winter, and I got to help plant them in the spring. It always amazed me to watch them grow and bloom.

[Flying Orca]

Orca..My father was Director of the Seaport. I grew up in Old Lyme. My school bus often dropped me off at the museum to allow my father to drive me home usually after 8pm.I spent 4 hours/day on a bus every friggin' day. A car ride was shorter and a luxury. Lots of time to just hang out at the museum though... Haddam is a hop skip and a jump from Old Lyme..

That is stupendously awesome. I had a pretty darned cool childhood, but yours sounds mighty fine too. I love Mystic, and have done since my first visit when I was 12 or so.

[S.V. Airlie]

What I really loved was talking to some of the crew members who actually sailed/fished on the L.A. Dunton in the 20's and eating salt cod and playing checkers around the pot belly stove. the stories of going around the Horn... It was great fun being ten!

[McMike]

Man Jamie, that sounds like my ideal childhood.

[George Jung]

Some of you were truly blessed as kids.... color me green!

I grew up on a Nebraska farm, so I was involved in farming/livestock from the time I could walk. Driving tractor by age 6, truck by age 10. Townboys were envious (I learned, many years later). Motorcycle age 12, Mustang age 16. Good times, a bit of freedom. But no water to speak of, v. little hunting (though I tried). Where i live now is prime fishing, hunting country - but the allure isn't what it was when I was young.
I read voraciously, any/everything, absorbed it all. Not much mentoring when I was a kid - had to be a self-starter. Took apart/reassembled any/everything I could get by with. Everything was interesting - that's the beauty of being a kid. And anything is possible. Don't know how I'd have turned, growing up today, with the internet but more PC/less opportunities (re: farming etc). Incredible transformation of this country over the past 50 years.

[S.V. Airlie]

Yup I was lucky. Now doubt about it. Mystic and Old Lyme and the eqiv of Mayberry in the summer.And I do mean Mayberry.. If anything that could be a neg. a lot of time alone. Siblings older, other kids non existent. That's why I only relied on myself for most things.Dring.. age 6 yes. Tractors no, milking cows once in a while for fun except for the later pain it caused in my hands. looks like fun but...

[Phillip Allen]

don't know what age you refer to but for me it was everything from bed springs to dust motes... I was pretty young yet

[Garret]

The first day (age 4 or so?) I could cross the stream out back without help from my dad. This was so we could go out to cut wood.
Crawling around on barn frames as my dad tore them down. Mom was never happy to pull in & see me traipsing along a beam 3 stories up.
Handing my dad tools & learning from him as he fixed & built things.
Mecanno (precursor to Erector & IMO much better) & building all kinds of stuff: cars, bridges, etc.
Victorian age mechanical stuff. My great grandfather had all sorts of patents on telegraph equipment & we had lots of samples of that stuff. My grandfather also had many (as did my dad) so there was their stuff around too. My favorite was a portable telegraph machine (in brass & ivory with a Bakelite case) that had wires you could clip on a telegraph wire & send from wherever you were. 1890's version of the cell phone I guess! I wish I still remembered Morse code.
Playing in my grandmother's greenhouse (the tubes for keeping cut flowers fresh do look like rockets after all)
Hiking the woods for hours & hours. Camping out - even if only 1/4 mile from home.
Working on the boat with dad - though I so hated sanding/scraping the bottom.....
Driving the tractor for mowing & the Jeep for plowing
Buying my first car @ 13 (TR3) & tearing it apart & (eventually) getting it back together right.

I had an amazing childhood & was very, very lucky to get all the opportunities I did.

[S.V. Airlie]

My dad was only available for sailing . It always seemed that he was working.Nothing against that. Kinda like that old song."When I grow up I'm going to be just like dad or something like that..My truly fond memories with dad were always boat related. We never went fishing, cut wood, we went to I think 3 movies with together( I can remember all three: The Sword in the Stone, Downhill Racer ( that was a real kick ) and the Charge of the Light Brigade) never ate Chinese food or go to a fast food joint, never shared a pizza. I never saw him even eat one., never came to a game, wrote me two letters when I was away at school.But all in all. I sense that my father being an only child who had his mother run off with a French pilot just after WW1 made him uneasy to show a lot of affection and was actually slightly afraid of his kids to boot. He loved us in his own way and we knew it even if he didn't express it. I mean, he was 10 when he wrote a letter to his mother to as her "to Come Home Please."
Dad's idea of teaching me how to drive was
Me...Get in the passenger side(kinda an order
Then drive a fair distance in the woods, stop and get out
followed by, "get behind the wheel!" at age six and old enough to drive.
then tell me to get it home. he'd see me there later. Swimming? Lordy, he threw the dog in the water and then me!!!Theory I suspect " he will sink or swim." belief.I grabbed the dog's tail until the dog got out...

[Phillip Allen]

Mom said that by the time I was 7 years old I had already started noticing the flies buzzing around my crib

[S.V. Airlie]

I'd be more worried if you didn't notice them in the oatmeal Phillip

[Gerarddm]

The Hayden Planetarium.

[Garret]

Yup - had forgotten that. Best school trip of the year.

[Y Bar Ranch]

I lived under the traffic pattern for the local navy jet airbase. Could identify all of them just by their sounds.

Grew up hearing tales of derring-do from my Dad and compadres about flying around "on the ice" in Antarctica, on the Navy mission. C-130s doing bush flying all over the continent. Whiteout landings. Emperor penguins.

[B_B]

Intrigued & Inspired by (in no particular order)
Nat. Geographic,
The Hardy Boys,
Claire,
my friend's dad's Bob Dylan,
my first Walkman and the one tape I had Queen Greatest Hits,
my uncle's opera and classical music collection we inherited when he passed,
chess,
mecano,
lego,
Encyclopedia Britannica,
World Book,
my super lightweight Kuwahara BMX that I bought with my own cash (well used, but who's counting),
planes (balsa models and the real deals - Tomcats and Phantoms fascinated me to no end),
house design,
motorcycles

[stevebaby]

My dad was only available for sailing . It always seemed that he was working.Nothing against that. Kinda like that old song."When I grow up I'm going to be just like dad or something like that..My truly fond memories with dad were always boat related. We never went fishing, cut wood, we went to I think 3 movies with together( I can remember all three: The Sword in the Stone, Downhill Racer ( that was a real kick ) and the Charge of the Light Brigade) never ate Chinese food or go to a fast food joint, never shared a pizza. I never saw him even eat one., never came to a game, wrote me two letters when I was away at school.But all in all. I sense that my father being an only child who had his mother run off with a French pilot just after WW1 made him uneasy to show a lot of affection and was actually slightly afraid of his kids to boot. He loved us in his own way and we knew it even if he didn't express it. I mean, he was 10 when he wrote a letter to his mother to as her "to Come Home Please."
Dad's idea of teaching me how to drive was
Me...Get in the passenger side(kinda an order
Then drive a fair distance in the woods, stop and get out
followed by, "get behind the wheel!" at age six and old enough to drive.
then tell me to get it home. he'd see me there later. Swimming? Lordy, he threw the dog in the water and then me!!!Theory I suspect " he will sink or swim." belief.I grabbed the dog's tail until the dog got out...

Did you never wonder why your father was trying to kill you?

[S.V. Airlie]

steve..Nope! Regardinbg swimming lesson, he knew I'b bob to the surface like a bar of ivory soap.

[Paul Pless]

Pole and Bump Days at Indy. There is nothing like standing at the fence watching a turbo charged Cosworth, Ilmoor, Judd, Chevy or Buick powered car fly by at 230+ flat with not much wing in the car. And then listening to the exhaust dopplering around the track for the next 30 seconds. Getting to walk behind the pit wall and through Gasoline Alley, mere feet from giants like Mears, Foyt, Unser, Rahal, Penske, even Smokey Yunick and the odd F1 champ that's over for a ride.

Going to work with my dad at the forge shop he ran. (pneumatic and drop hammers and huge induction furnaces)

Playing and swimming and fishing in the river behind our house. There were and still are only about a dozen houses on the 51 mile stretch of river we lived on between public ramp access. Spending an hour or two or a day or even a few days on that river in a canoe or jonboat is liking stepping through a gateway and being miles from civilization. I still go there to escape and recharge whenever I can.

Visiting my parent's best friend's house. Lee was a WWII bomber veteran and was at the time I was growing up a history professor for the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama. He had the most amazing collection of model airplanes (in the hundreds), many scratch built. And his wife, Ruthie, had a small hobby farm with horses and goats and chickens and even a peacock. We'd go for walks in the woods and Lee would strap on a western holster with an old Colt and would sling a too large western holster with a Ruger .22 over my shoulder.

[ron ll]

Altho I've been citified most of my life, my early childhood was on small farms. I too started driving very young and by the time I was 14 I was driving dump truck between Kent and Auburn to help my dad. When I was five, our little farm house near Gig Harbor had a creek running thru the back in the woods. A few hundred yards downstream it went under a road thru a large culvert and into Wollotchet Bay. That creek was my playground.

Every fall my dad would show cattle at the Puyallup Fair. The fair would run about two weeks during which time my brother and I and dad would stay in the little loft above the pen in the cattle barn.

Later years growing up in Auburn my childhood was pretty much the Cleaver family. My dad died when I was in high school but my fondest memory of him is that he always let me play with his tools and help me build stuff. I would often catch hell for ruining his tools but he never deprived me of them.

[Mrleft8]

Pole and Bump Days at Indy. There is nothing like standing at the fence watching a turbo charged Cosworth, Ilmoor, Judd, Chevy or Buick powered car fly by at 230+ flat with not much wing in the car. And then listening to the exhaust dopplering around the track for the next 30 seconds. Getting to walk behind the pit wall and through Gasoline Alley, mere feet from giants like Mears, Foyt, Unser, Rahal, Penske, even Smokey Yunick and the odd F1 champ that's over for a ride.

Going to work with my dad at his forge shop. (pneumatic and drop hammers and huge induction furnaces)

Playing and swimming and fishing in the river behind our house. There were and still are only about a dozen houses on the 51 mile stretch of river we lived on between public ramp access. Spending an hour or two or a day or even a few days on that river in a canoe or jonboat is liking stepping through a gateway and being miles from civilization. I still go there to escape and recharge whenever I can.

Visiting my parents best friends house. Lee was a WWII bomber veteran and was at the time I was growing up a history professor for the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama. He had the most amazing collection of model airplanes (in the hundreds), many scratch built. And his wife, Ruthie, had a small hobby farm with horses and goats and chickens and even a peacock. We'd go for walks in the woods and Lee would strap on a western holster with an old Colt and would sling a western holster with a Ruger .22 over my shoulder.

The exhaust fumes, burnt metal gasses, and chicken...... er...... manure explain a lot.....

[Keith Wilson]

The enormous steam engine in the Franklin Institute in Philly.
Raising turtles.
Walking on Little Round Top with my father after reading Bruce Catton's account of the battle of Gettysburg.
Reading The Lord Of The Rings at age 12. I lived in Middle Earth for about a year after that.
Going to see dinosaur skeletons at the natural history museum, and then reading All About Dinosaurs by Roy Chapman Andrews, who knew what he was writing about. Starting to understand time; how long the earth had been here, how long people had been around, and how things change.
Traveling back in time when we went to visit my grandmother.
My parents reading us Kipling stories to keep us quiet in the back seat on car trips.
The idea of a geometrical proof. I realize I'm exposing myself as a hopeless nerd here, but the idea that one can demonstrate the truth of something carefully and precisely in steps, with the reason for each step carefully delineated, was a real revelation. It has a kind of austere beauty that amazed me at the time; I had never seen anything like it.
Building things, always building things.

[Flying Orca]

Keith - dinosaurs and geometric proofs, yes!!!

[Todd D]

I was always interested in anything to do with chemistry, mathematics and nuclear physics. Later that morphed into inorganic and geochemistry.

[Garrett Lowell]

The Blue Angels. Evel Knievel. Classical music (as used in the Bugs Bunny cartoons). Boston (the band). The Atlantic Ocean.

[McMike]

Legos, the woods across the street, MASH, choose your own adventure books, NOVA, Calvin and Hobbes, Wild America, the brook beside my parents property.

[Gerarddm]

...O and I forgot: my Gilbert Chemistry Set.

[varadero]

Swimming in the Nile with our dog Thorington while dad watched for crocks, Khartoum.
Visiting "Uncle Don's mission in the "Vally of a thousand hills" looking down on a tribal skirmish and the river water turning red, S Africa.
Rourk's Drift, The Voortrekker monument, The Shark institute, S Africa.
Staying with my Grandparents in Belfast in the 70s, helicopters, armed soldiers on the streets, apprentice boys marching, The cinema and the pub getting bombed.
The Summer of 1977 at home in Scotland. Swimming, running, playing, long days, Feeling safe.
My Mother crying as she ran beside the train when I left home for the last time, I pretended not to look out of the window.

[AussieBarney]

Mornings, I have been an early riser all my life. The feeling of walking in to a brand new dawn cannot even be described. I normally get my best done before lunch.
I reckon most blokes need to slow down, smell the roses and get their feet wet taking a sickie and going fishing
I am of the opinion that work is highly overated and I will only do what I have to so as to survive.

Since I found that 1% get 99%, or some such obsene figure, I figgered, only enough to survive and not a drop of sweat more. They can take their work ethic and shove it.
Who cast it in concrete that I have to be a "productive" member of society? Hmmm???

[purri]

Watching whilst on a pedestrian overpass the "Royal Train" running through a local railway station with Betty Windsor (circa 1956) and thinking "how irrelevant and what a load of the stinking proverbial".

Doctor Who in 196...?

Fishing.

Realising that hunting and fishing have obligations.

Wimmins (some) that I was yet to understand what they was on about.

A dawn bodysurf in gentle yet adequate waves.

[botebum]

Hiding under our forsythia bush and watching the world go by at 4 and 5 years old.
Climbing on the trains at the Ford Henry Ford Museum. (age 6)
Catching water moccasins in NC. (ages 8 and 9)
Fishing off the docks in Rowayton, CT. (age 10)
Sailing alone all over Long Island Sound (ages 12-14)

Doug

[John Smith]

I enjoyed ice skating and sailing/running model boats at a nearby pond.

We mounted a .049 airplane engine and propeller on a model of the Arkansas Traveler real boat. It went it nice big, fast circles. Then it would go in very small, boat length circles and ship water. It would go back to the big circles then the little circles, then it sank.

I hated school. Which is strange, as I like learning, but so much of it seemed to be "busy work" rather than learning.

Along the way I developed an appreciation for things the mind of man has made/accomplished. I remember at whatever young age we learned of Columbus, I was the one who said his great accomplishment was not in finding some place he had never been, but in finding his way home and, in affect, building a bridge across the ocean.

I remember wondering how, when something like the radio was invented where there were two units; the transmitter and the receiver, how they figured out which one wasn't working.

Another thing that impressed me was the Parkway that was built and completed about the time I got my license. Several big highways have been built since then and I guess those born today take all this stuff for granted. I remember, in school, getting lessons on how to use the new dial telephones.

And, of course, Elvis.

[Ted Hoppe]

At 6, Climbing into the arms and lap of Lincoln, at the Lincoln memorial in Washington at 3a.m. sitting there and being told by my father that we have liberty because the acts of great courage and solid moral convictions of better men.

[brad9798]

Climbing the big sweet gum tree ... it was perfect for climbing.

Boats ... and riding on them.

My parents, and how awesome they were/are.

WWII books.

Airplanes ... drawing and writing about them.

Riding my bike.

Drawing pictures.

Playing with other kids.

Learning as much as I could about as much as I could.

Nice thread ... brings back some memories ...

[S.V. Airlie]

First long plane flight was with the local undertaker from Cooperstown to Boston and there were more than two paying passengers in the front of the plane Those in back were long past holding their breaths.. it inspired me to find faith that there might be a God. Aged 6.

[Bob Adams]

[Tom Montgomery]

I grew up in a small town in northern Ohio along the south shore of lake Erie.

Unlike most Americans I lived away from city lights.

I was fascinated by the night sky and the Milky Way.

It was, and continues to be, humbling.

I remain fascinated by astronomy and cosmology.

[The Bigfella]

Scot.... can I have special dispensation to post the Playboy centrefold that intruiged and inspired me?