Remembering life in the 60s as a child...

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I'm from the U.S. During the summer we would be outside playing with our friends all day. We would rarely check in at home. We were very active. We played hopscotch, jump rope, double dutch, volley ball and so many other games.
We'd go to the park and play on the swings, monkey bars, teeter totter, etc. During the winter the park would be flood for ice skating. We would go into the field house once in a while for warm up.

I lived about a mile from my school. I would always walk to/from and usually meet up with friends along the way. We were able to go home for lunch. Sometimes my mom would give me a nickel or a dime to buy penny candy on my way back to school.

I lived in a very working class neighborhood. We didn't have a lot of material possessions, but we sure had fun. I miss those days. Fond memories.

As Mary Hopkins would say………… those were the days..?.. Born in 1953 and so grateful now for the child hood I had compared to the childhood my grandchildren have now…

MO, poppits beads were around in the early 1950’s too. Remember embarrassing an honorary Aunt at a family party by pulling hers suddenly when she was dancing past very elegantly with a man who collapsed laughing and called me a little moo-er. Suddenly realised many years later that he was calling me a little cow.

My childhood was the 50s. Calamine lotion for sunburn, if you were lucky.Blackcurrant , gooseberry, strawberry and raspberry jam from the berries grown in the garden. Roller skates with metal wheels, what a racket! Chalking on the pavements to play games (hopscotch?) with an empty shoe polish tin. Clothing parcels from America, loved those as usually a toy or string of lollipops inside too. Yes, sorting out the button box basically making up sets and then putting them all back in the box, absolutely no purpose other than to keep us quiet. In the winter waking up and snatching clothes from chair then heating them up in the bed before getting dressed for school. None of your clean clothes everyday, had to wear everything for a week with a bath and hair washed every Sunday night. Ah the good old days.

Lovely thread I left school aged 17 in 1979 immediately travelling to Southern Germany to work as a mother's helper.
Riding pillion on a motorcycle with a very dishy tanned German boy I'd met, in the warm evening sunshine. Drinking beer in huge steins, eating frites with mayo walking around Munich, chatting with American airmen.
I was there about 4 months before being called home because of a serious illness in the family.
Then settled in to work and poof adulthood began. Early mornings long hours at the hospital where I worked.
Where have all the years gone ?

I am 70 and still have my mum's button tin and enjoy seeing my grandchildren playing with them, not every thing is electronic!!

This thred brought back so many memories! THANK YOU!!! I grew up in Long Island, NY, USA. I have very similar memories. My knee socks were held up with rubber bands! I remember listening to the Beatles with my friends and our older brothers. Also remember playing stickball and kickball in the street until it got dark and spending the whole day in the summer playing in the woods. Ice Cream truck came around everyday. At that time, we were told to go outside and play. Today that would never happen. I feel that the 60s and 70s were the last of the good eras to grow up.

Jam sandwiches. Even sugar or syrup ones occasionally. We'd be horrified if we saw kids eating them now. Carnation milk on tinned fruit for pudding. Loved elastic skipping and hopscotch.

This is making me feel very old. I left school in 1962. The 60s was a significant decade for me - leaving home to go to university in London, marriage and motherhood all within the space of a few years. I had a beehive hairstyle throughout this period and trendy specs with swept-up sides (think Edna Everage but without the diamante decoration). A quirky early memory of starting university was the existence of a "milk machine" in the street near to my rather seedy student hostel in Bayswater. I'd never seen one before - coins in the slot and hey presto there was a carton of milk. Across the road from the milk machine was a laundrette where my roommate and I spent many a Sunday afternoon writing letters home to our parents (it was warmer in there than in our hostel room). We knew how to enjoy ourselves in those days - a carton of milk and a cosy afternoon in the laundrette. The telephone box down the road was the only way we could communicate with our friends across town - oh the hours I spent queuing outside that box waiting to make a call to my boyfriend. Readers, I married him..... and he's just come back home from the allotment and is wondering what I'm smiling at.

I too loved all the freedom. I left the house on my bike with friends on theirs and we would be gone all day. We would pull some rhubarb and take a poke (paper bag) with some sugar in.
I remember the beads, Clark’s sandals, jam sandwiches, Liberty bodices, garters, chilblains - so painful. Izal hard toilet paper at our house and some of my friends had squares of newspaper hanging in their toilet. Going to pictures on sat mornings. No telephone, no car, no fridge, one coal fire. Having huge games of rounders, hide and seek. Brilliant time!

AussieGran59

Yammy, you mentioned gammon. My friend served this when we stayed with her in Cornwall. Loved it but can’t seem to get it in Australia. Nicest meat I ever tasted. I miss so many foods only available in the UK.

But you have proper joints of corned beef which have to be cooked!
I've never seen them in the UK, our corned beef is completely different.

I was born in 66, and in winter my Mum put her old fur coat on my bed, as we didn't have blankets or heating. She always put it skin side down which I hated, so waited until she tucked me in so I could flip it to the comforting furry side...Dreadful thought now. It was so cold the inside of the windows iced up with marvelous patterns too.

Sunday tea could be tinned salmon, but with lots of pieces of bones in, which I hated, and homemade cake. She wouldn't often buy shop cakes as it had to go round six and they were tiny. My older brother worked for Kraft headquarters for a while and they had a staff shop. He'd buy 5kg blocks of cheddar. I'm sure it really helped Mum's housekeeping, but I grew to hate cheese as every day school lunch was a cheese sandwich...from aged 9-16. I asked for tomato sandwiches instead, but Mum said I needed the cheese for protein...so many ended up in the school bin uneaten as I got to the point of preferring hunger to cheese ?

I was having lunch with my youngest daughter (38 years old) a few months ago and we got talking about this. She told me I ought to write my life story so she and her sister could read it.

I am now up to page 36 and approaching the most recent couple of years. The first ten pages cover the 50s and 60s and I have been surprised how much I remember.

I think (hope) that my daughter will find it interesting.

I specially remember my Clark’s sandals from the late 1950s. Usually they were tan, but I remember a beloved pair that were cherry red. We bought special red shoe cream to polish them with. They probably sparked my love of nice shoes which remains to this day.

I grew up in the 40s so my memories are different. I won’t list them here except for one. Wearing wellies with short socks. The socks always worked themselves into a ball in the toe of the wellies and we always had a chapped ring around our calves where the top inside of the wellies got wet and rubbed against our legs. Painful.

Born in 1947 some of my memories from the fifties are similar to yours of the sixties. My memories of the early sixties:

Sitting at the kitchen table doing homework when the news came on the radio of Kennedy's assassination

The Archers every evening

Listening to Childrens' Favourites on Saturday mornings and Two Way Family Favourites on Sundays, waiting for the few pop songs that were played

Getting a record player for my 11th birthday and passing the 11 plus. I bought 3 singles.

When I was about 16 I couldn't go on a school trip because of German measles. My dad bought me a transistor radio with the refund and I remember listening to Radio Caroline.

Laying on the floor listening to Saturday Night Theatre. 1 1/2 hour long dramas. Sometimes falling asleep if the fire was on.

I was born on Scotland in 1941. I remember gas masks ( especially the peculiar smell if you had to put it on. ) I played out on the street around the air raid shelter. Skipping ropes, peevers, but my favourite was my whip and perrie, with chalk designs on the top. Gas lamps on the streets and I had to go home when the gas lighter man came round. Oh I forgot the sound of air raid sirens and watching planes go over. My mum and dad had cousins who were pilots, so mum and I used to go outside to the garden and wave to planes that we heard flying over. We lived only a few miles from Glasgow.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202208/medium-261459-1432c93c-40bc-41fd-8c5d-e0c585eec841.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/202208/medium-658724-512be9bd-0bae-4488-a669-55d7d8f505b6.jpeg

Also always having Clark's sandals with a diamond cut out pattern in the summer

Were they Joyance by any chance, GrannyRebel17?
We used to get these every flippin' summer, alternating red one year, blue the next!

lindiann

I remember Daleks- my big brother received a battery operated one for Christmas one year, along with meccano.

I was scared of Daleks. When I was in hospital having my tonsils out one of the boys had a Dalek outfit, he woke me up and seeing this Dalek I screamed, got in trouble with the nurse the boy disappeared but bumped into Matron lol. End of Dalek outfit.

I can remember hiding behind the sofa when Dr Who was on, when I was about four. I had nightmares about them for years!

I remember Daleks- my big brother received a battery operated one for Christmas one year, along with meccano.

I was scared of Daleks. When I was in hospital having my tonsils out one of the boys had a Dalek outfit, he woke me up and seeing this Dalek I screamed, got in trouble with the nurse the boy disappeared but bumped into Matron lol. End of Dalek outfit.

I fell in love with an older boy of 21 when I was 15. He was doing his PhD at London university. We have been married 55 years on Friday!

i;ve found what i mean ! it's called scooby-do.
from wikipaedia,
Scoubidou (Craftlace, scoobies, lanyard or gimp) is material used in knotting craft. It originated in France, where it became a fad in the late 1950s and has remained popular. It is named after the 1958 song of the same name by the French singer Sacha Distel.

never heard of popper beads either.
i remember in late 60s some kind of tisty thing with two lengths of different coloured plastic strings, they were woven into a short length. not sure if they were for a purpose, maybe a key chain, or just decorative/ something to do.
i also loved those stripey elastic belts with a sideways S as a clasp at the front.
i'd love one of those now, so useful, but can't find them.