Good ol days of Alaska..... AND any where(for those who survived 1940s'to 19-80's.

[snowcreature23]

o Those of You Born

1927 - 1979

At the end of this email is a quote
of the month by Jay Leno.
If you don't read anything else, please
Read what he said
Very well stated, Mr. Leno.
TO ALL THE KIDS
WHO SURVIVED THE
1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's!!

First, we survived being born to mothers
who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing,
tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes.
They ate stinky fish heads, semi-dried squirrels,
porcupine called ‘Qanataqs’ with seal oil, herring eggs,
wild quaciq agutaq, boiled King heads and eggs,
boiled herring fish and herring eggs (Yum)…..

Then after that trauma,
we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby
cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints.

Some of us slept in furry caribou mattresses,
used flour sacks for pillowcases…

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles,
locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes,
we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats,
booster seats, seat belts or air bags.
We rode in dog team sleds to get to town to watch the
Beaver Round Up Native dances, community events,
ice fishing, hunting, trapping…


Riding in the back of a pick up truck
on a warm day was always a special treat.
We drank water from the garden hose
and not from a bottle.
We drank water from our spring wells in dippers
made from cans with wooden handles…
and drank water from freshwater lakes
and rivers with no additives…


We shared one soft drink with four friends,
from one bottle and no one actually died from this.
We had sourdough hotcakes with slab of bacon on the side
and a hot cup of cocoa before running out the door
to walk a mile to school…


We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon.
We drank Kool-aid made with real white sugar.
And, we weren't overweight. WHY?
Because we were always outside,
playing...that’s why!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day,
as long as we were back when the streetlights came on..

In the Winter we slid down the hills with cardboard sleds,
“gagluq”-snot running from our noses,
with pelatuqs (cloth scarves),
and home made gloves or hats…

No one was able to reach us all day..
and, we were O.K.
We played meatchy
(almost like baseball, but two teams,
one team bat and try to run across without getting hit!)
We played kick the can, sardines, andy I over
(throw the ball over the roof and someone try to catch it
on the other side of house), potatoes,
finger games on wall after dark…

We helped pack in chopped wood for the wood stove,
got buckets of water from spring well and other chores….
We watched our parents cut up fish, moose, seals, belugas,
pluck ducks, skin fur bearing animals after trapping,
and they let us learn by helping them,
little by little and told us ‘You’re doing good!’
We would spend hours building our go-carts
out of scraps and then ride down the hill,
only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the bushes a few times,
we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations,
Nintendo's and X-boxes.
There were no video games,
no 150 channels on cable,
no video movies or DVD's,
no surround-sound or CD's,
no cell phones,
no personal computers,
no Internet and no chat rooms.

Instead our parents told us Native traditional stories
which taught us traditional values,
respect for our traditional Native ancestral hunting,
fishing, camping, berry picking,
duck and habitat areas in the land and the sea…

WE HAD FRIENDS and
we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut,
broke bones and teeth and there were
no lawsuits from these accidents.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt,
and the worms did not live in us forever.

We went down the beach in early Spring
and rode on ice cakes with wooden sticks for oars,
We picked stickleback fish in the Spring
dodging ice needles and put in mayonnaise jar
for an aquarium home for our ‘pet’ fishes…
We swam in the lake, listened to the loons singing their tunes,
heard sea gulls squacking as they fought for fish eggs
thrown in the lake during fish splitting time…
We played with home made grass balls filled with tiny pebbles,
played with home made cloth dolls…
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,
made up games with sticks and tennis balls
and, although we were told it would happen,
we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house
and knocked on the door or rang the bell,
or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not
everyone made the team.
Those who didn't had to learn
to deal with disappointment.
Imagine that!!
We had no sense of time, because outdoors was our home!
We heard the songbirds greeting us every morning,
robins, swallows, varied thrushes, white crowned sparrows…

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law
was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the
best risk-takers problem solvers and inventors ever.
The past 50 years have been an explosion
of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility,
and we learned how to deal with it all.
If
YOU are one of them?
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others
who have had the luck to grow up as kids,
before the lawyers and the government
regulated so much of our lives for our own
good.

While you are at it, forward it to your kids
so they will know how brave and lucky their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through
the house with scissors, doesn't it?
~
The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:

'With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control,
mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms
tearing up the country from one
end to another,
and with the threat of bird flu
and terrorist attacks,
are we sure this is a good time
to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?'

For those that prefer to think that
God is not watching over us...
go ahead and delete this.
For the rest of us...pass this on.