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DPChallenge Forums >> General Discussion >> When did the world become stupid?
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09/05/2011 02:36:59 PM · #1


This was taken sometime in the mid 60's (in Australia - Gold Coast)... best guess is circa 1965 - no NOT by me... While I feel older then dirt, I'm not quite that old... my negs and slides start in the 70's [and no this would not be digital :-)].

I LOVE this image but nothing to do with ascetics (it's just a holiday/vacation snap shot).....
- The woman feeding is allowed to walk out on a plank (the guy didn't hold the men's hands by the way :-) ).
- The pool does not have a 10 foot razor wire fence around it as today.
- The kids are bunched on the left on the edge of the pool having fun.
- The teenagers on the right have their feet over in the pool just casually watching.
- The kids on the right 2nd layer are not behind wire and OMG could fall if stupid.
- The husband is allowed to take a pic of his wife from a good location without been seen as a terrorist.
- My father thought nothing of taking a pic of some stranger and OMG their kids.

Probably other things..... Anyway just wandering thru these old slides shows me how the world has changed - I see similar things from my images from the 70's but it more pronounced from the 60's for whatever reason (and maybe that's true the further you go back from your perspective). This place has long since closed (I used to go ever family vacation) but it was a family sort of business and was wiped out by Sea-World e.t.c. that is now not far down the road.

On with your lives now :-)
09/05/2011 02:40:06 PM · #2
Yeah, but that dolphin didn't have an iPhone.
09/05/2011 02:44:43 PM · #3
If the place hadn't been shut down by Sea-World ir would probably be a victim of PETA, Greenpeace, or the SPCA ...
09/05/2011 02:58:13 PM · #4
I hear you Rob. I long for those days as well. Life was simpler in MANY ways, and most of society got it right. I was born in 1963 so I have my memories of the 60's as a child, but the 70's were my most impressionable decade and it still wasn't much different from the times before. A lot has changed in 30 or 40 years. A lot for the better, but frankly IMO...a lot more for the worse.

Dave

Message edited by author 2011-09-05 14:58:45.
09/05/2011 03:03:56 PM · #5
Very good points! The world has changed a lot and we seem to have to be careful of doing almost anything.

This video from the 60's shows Ross Allen's 15 year old son wrestle an Anaconda! VIDEO Although it's not safe for anyone to wrestle an anaconda, especially a 15 year old, it does show how times have changed!

09/05/2011 03:09:50 PM · #6
this was before someone got hurt and sued the park. now they need to protect themselves. yes the world got stupid but our fears, greed and lack of personal accountability made it this way.
09/05/2011 03:11:09 PM · #7
It's not the whole world, only the countries where people are scared of getting sued.

ETA: Looks like Mike just beat me to it :)

Message edited by author 2011-09-05 15:11:41.
09/05/2011 03:11:14 PM · #8
I have a picture of me as a kid in the very early 80's riding an elephant with my brother and sister at the local zoo. I was probably 5 or 6 at the time, I don't suppose anyone does that anymore.
09/05/2011 03:21:05 PM · #9
Look at this picture from my Jr. High yearbook. Good clean fun. Now, that teacher (I can't remember his name) would be up on some sort of sexual abuse charges.

09/05/2011 03:45:34 PM · #10
Gone are the days when you can strap your two year old to the back of your motorcycle with bungee cords.

I was talking with friends last night about this kind of thing - I walked a couple miles to kindergarten by myself or with siblings when I was 5. It was probably a mile & a half. One day, I decided not to go and just walked downtown instead. I spent most of the morning going into stores and looking around and then decided to take a few things with me as I left. It was then that I learned the difference between legitimate commerce and petty theft. I did at least get a ride home. ...from *gasp* a stranger.

Throughout my youth, we rode without helmets or seat belts, had free reign to travel the neighborhood and beyond. We got hurt, got in trouble and had fun. Life is very, very different for my kids than it was for me. I have a hard time figuring out if it is better overall, or worse. It seems worse to me, but I am part of the problem in that I can't imagine letting my kids have even half the freedom I had. ...maybe in my case, it's because I remember what I did with it. LOL
09/05/2011 04:06:28 PM · #11
Some things, like bike helmets and seat belts make a lot of sense -- I remember we had to install them in our 1964 Ford van ... but my dad also put in a third one which let us sit on top of the mid-line engine housing between the front seats. :-)
09/05/2011 04:09:35 PM · #12
After fifty years you would expect some changes...and really look at those clothes OMG!!
09/05/2011 04:16:13 PM · #13
i also walked the 20 blocks or so to kindergarten with my older (9 years old) twin sisters every day. we walked along a busy street under the "el" in queens and saw all manner of characters daily. i used to ride my bike to forest hills park with friends when i was 7, and stay out all day and be in by supper.

i think it's a lesser world now. being outside is a thing of the past, replaced with computers and video games, walking and bike riding around town is unheard of, facebook and texting have replaced the old fashioned (much more personal)phone call

holy crap i'm getting old.
09/05/2011 04:19:56 PM · #14
I don't care when the world got stupid, but these are the most awesome photographs I've seen in a while. I don't want to be creepy, but totally post some more, they're mind boggling!
09/05/2011 04:22:54 PM · #15
All the lawsuits have not made anything better or safer, they have only one purpose and one effect: To Make Lawyers Richer - and they do...
Added: I do love the kid bungeed to a motorcycle, and I think the dad was paying more attention to his kids safety than a texting mini-van driver.

Message edited by author 2011-09-05 16:26:35.
09/05/2011 04:24:36 PM · #16
lol - Good to see some resonance :-)

- Art - That bike is just funny.... My parents owned a motor cycle shop so I completely understand having grown up in that world (I THINK helmets might have been technically required but in a country town most didn't wear them and no one cared much either way... might have been legal dunno but my dad had them on display to buy :-) ). I have memories of my only "seat belt" as a kid been a 6 foot long strap with a harness that clicked into the belt... I think it was mostly to keep the body with the car in a serious hit... cause it was long enough that I would have been thrown out of the car then pulled back in :-) but it let me wander around the car on long haul drives (did a LOT of them).
- Marc - Yeah... official investigation with suspension and the whole deal :-/
- Jen - I am pretty sure that's not happening now days..... Now you can hardly find a CIRCUS with an Elephant let alone a zoo letting a kid play with the dangerous animals..... I took the kids to the zoo recently and they are behind HUGE steel wires and supports... impossible to get any decent picture :-(
- Iain/Robin/Mike - Yeah no doubt... and I agree completely... "we" have to look in a damn mirror.
- Dave - Yeah, you got a couple of years on me at 67 but similar memories.... I am torn been a computer programmer... would prefer starting now for that and yet the rest (including music) I would far prefer the 70's and even 80's in a few ways. I agree the world is better in a lot of ways but it's become so damn up tight and the US especially (compared to the other 3 countries I have lived in as an adult) politically correct. It's staggering to me what is tolerated in the pretense of safety for <fill in the blank>. When I broke my arm falling off the neighbors roof I/ME got into trouble for been stupid enough to be on the roof.... and rightly so.... It was my dumb-ass mistake not the neighbors :-) EDIT: To be fair the other kids got a hiding for been on their own roof as well, it's too easy to damage stuff up there apparently :-)

Message edited by author 2011-09-05 16:29:51.
09/05/2011 04:27:56 PM · #17
Heh... Man, I was given an 80cc three-wheeler for my third birthday. Even in the 80's the neighbors were pissed!

I upgraded to a 200cc by the time I was 10. :) You can bet I did plenty of crazy shit on those things, but even then a helmet was critical (thank goodness too, I'm pretty certain I would have actually died a few times without one.). That's not to mention the games of kick the can (the can was, of course, filled with gas and on fire - and gas was cheap too!), home-made and commercial fireworks, driving real cars, buying cigarettes "for mom", swimming in the irrigation ditches and river, walking around town all night at 14 or so, walking around with every manner of firearm imaginable (from about 8 years old), procuring beer from the neighbor's extensively stocked shop refrigerator, and 1000 other antiquated deeds that children today simply aren't allowed to do.

Not sure if I'd want my kids growing up like me or not... It was a good way to grow up, I certainly learned a ton of valuable lessons that kids today don't get, but I paid for it a few times too, and today, the parent would be in deep-shit for letting a kid do most of those things, back then it was just ... well, almost... normal.
09/05/2011 04:29:30 PM · #18
Lawyers
09/05/2011 04:46:19 PM · #19
Whenever I read comments such as this I am reminded of the old adage that common sense is not all that common.

I to remember the days when I was the dashing hero who fought off the invaders with a sharpened stick ... err sword, used a slingshot to ward off intruders and sat on the inside of a large tire... waiting for someone to push the tire down the hill.

All factors considered, it is a wonder that most of us survived some of these adventures and while I can appreciate our desire to protect people, I truly believe that we have gone slightly overboard.

This is a photo taken at Niagara Falls (Canadian side) and it amazes me that we actually have to post signs like this one. How many of you don't know that being swept over the falls could be dangerous.

Ray
09/05/2011 04:49:58 PM · #20
Cory - lol... Are you my long lost brother :-)

- I had one of those 3 wheeler things (Honda 75cc) with great big knobby tyres... Made a HELL of a mess on the grass (such as we called what we had... really just a thin cover over the red dirt)... so my father let me ride around the airport fences (grew up in a small country town)... It was cleared from the airport fence for fire breaks all the way around and had some side detours with some make shift tracks. I suspect hooning around the airport fence in a US city now will get you a free tropical vacation in Cuba or a desert country nearer to the oil :-/
- I had to live with the ubiquitous 125cc aig bike as the upgrade from the 3-wheeler..... a dirt bike workhorse those things but fun non the less :-)

- For the record... I have no idea what your talking about with fire, fuel and fireworks ;-)
09/05/2011 05:05:15 PM · #21
Ray - You know what cracks me up about that sign.... Yeah it's stupid cause anyone could figure that out and it's no doubt for the liability insurance not any sensible reason..... but the thing I love is the word "DANGER" written in English. I suspect the falls are not unknown to the global tourist trap... So people not able to read English (or the US/Canadian version of it anyway :-) ) are out of luck and have to reply only on the graphic :-)
09/05/2011 05:07:14 PM · #22
Originally posted by RayEthier:

Whenever I read comments such as this I am reminded of the old adage that common sense is not all that common.

I to remember the days when I was the dashing hero who fought off the invaders with a sharpened stick ... err sword, used a slingshot to ward off intruders and sat on the inside of a large tire... waiting for someone to push the tire down the hill.

All factors considered, it is a wonder that most of us survived some of these adventures and while I can appreciate our desire to protect people, I truly believe that we have gone slightly overboard.


See, I am a good 40 years younger than you, and yet I did all of those things you mentioned.
Rolling down hills in Tractor tires was definitely a favorite past time when I was around 10-14.

I really don't think times have changed as much as you think.
Nostalgia always makes things seem better in the past...
And the funny thing is, it does so even for bad things. My grandma does the whole "When I was your age I walked to school in the snow barefoot, uphill both ways" thing. But she talks about it as if it was awesome.
09/05/2011 05:08:31 PM · #23
Ken - Yeah... and while the old joke about a 40 seater bus with 39 lawyers going over the cliff is a waste (of the empty seat)..... It's has to be the collective "us" that has to be doing it otherwise the suits would be out of work and do something more productive.
09/05/2011 05:19:06 PM · #24
Originally posted by amsterdamman:

All the lawsuits have not made anything better or safer, they have only one purpose and one effect: To Make Lawyers Richer - and they do...


Then for you we can put lead back in your house paint, asbestos back in your flooring, we can get rid of crash test requirements on your car, stop testing you clothing for flame resistance, tell the inspectors they don't have to inspect your meat. You can go back to those carefree days of old, when people who were harmed by the avarice of companies selling dangerous goods had no recourse.

Of course if you really miss those days, you can move to a third world country where DDT is a common household spray, nine year old children smoke, cars don't have seatbelts, and lawyers wont get involved when you get mangled. Enjoy.
09/05/2011 05:29:03 PM · #25
Originally posted by robs:

Ray - You know what cracks me up about that sign.... Yeah it's stupid cause anyone could figure that out and it's no doubt for the liability insurance not any sensible reason..... but the thing I love is the word "DANGER" written in English. I suspect the falls are not unknown to the global tourist trap... So people not able to read English (or the US/Canadian version of it anyway :-) ) are out of luck and have to reply only on the graphic :-)


No..we need the text in addition to the graphic. Without the word "Danger" I would have thought the sign meant "Absolutely, under no circumstances...NO BALLET!" ;)

Dave
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