(no subject)

triplemare asked her readers who grew up in the 80s for outdoor games they played when they were kids, and my comment turned into enough of a trip down memory lane that I thought I should re-post it here:

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My sister and I lived in RURAL rural Maine* on property that had two little apple trees that produced sour green apples about the size of a plum...pretty useless as fruit, but as projectiles they were brilliant. We'd play 'chase tag' where a thrown apple counted as being tagged.



*So rural that another game we played was imitating Radar on M*A*S*H by seeing which of us could hear a car coming down our road first. Whoever did would yell "CAR!!!", which was our cue to run behind the house as it it was a monster coming, and hide until it went past and there was no danger of it seeing us. You got bonus cred for how far away you could distinguish the sound and know whether it was a logging truck, a dump truck** or a car.

**There were a lot*** of dump trucks on our road because the biggest industry in our town was the gravel plant.**** Yes. Our local industry was making gravel. We used to love playing in the gravel pits, some of which would collect rainwater in the spring and become homes to hundreds of tadpoles, others of which would stay dry and look like the sort of desolate craters where you'd expect to see Captain Kirk fighting a lizard man.

***Relatively.

****Once the sawdust plant closed down, anyhow.