My Dad's List for His Grandkids

My Dad made lists of lessons for his grandkids, including a list of things he did when he was a kid that he hopes they don't do.  He died September 16, 2004 and never got to deliver the list, personally, to his three youngest grandkids.

Things we could do when I grew up:

• Hitchhike.

• Ride your bike without a helmet on.

• Get a "skyscraper" cone from Isaly's Dairy for 10¢.

• Eat grapes from the neighbor's vineyard and not worry about pesticides.

• Go outside with your ball glove and have a pickup baseball game at any time.

• Go to a soda fountain in the corner drugstore and order a cherry coke or a vanilla coke or a chocolate coke.

• Make your bike sound like it had a motor using a wooden clothespin and a baseball trading card.

• Go to the grocery store and help people with their paper bags and get a tip (sometimes).

• Go to the gas station and get a Nehi beverage cherry soda for 10¢ and pull it out of the cooler filled with cold running water.

• Go to a junk yard filled with old cars and just walk around looking.

• Go to the bowling alley and set pins in the back for tips (most ofthe time).

• Ride your bike around the neighborhood selling your old comic books for a nickel.

• Get on the trolley bus downtown and ride home for free cause you came in the back door when the driver didn't see you.

• Put a penny on the railroad track to see what it looked like after the freight train ran over it.

• Build a fort in the woods out of discarded railroad ties.

• Get the orange crates from the grocery store and make downhill racers.


Things I did when I was a kid that I wouldn't want the grandkids to do:

• Hitchhike.

• Jump onto the side of a freight car on a slow moving train and ride in the gondola car.

• Hook onto a delivery truck's side rail to get a "free ride" on your bike.

• Snow surfing - Running behind and hooking onto the back bumper of a car going along a snowy or icy road and then riding along on using your shoes like skis.

• Walk along the outside of a bridge railing instead of the inside.

• Go swimming in a coal strip mine pool.

• Take truck inner tubes and an old door and make a raft so you could float down a flooded stream.

• Take a bedsheet and make a parachute so you could jump off the garage roof just like the paratroopers in the 101 st Airborne.

• Make an "iceball" and throw it at the Sheriff's cruiser and break his spotlight.

• Let the chickens out of the fenced yard and watch Mrs. Sullivan chase after them as they run amok.

• Throw a rock in the lake next to a couple in a canoe and laugh til your sides split when they capsized.

Miss ya, Dad.