My nephew was stunned when he learned that as boys, my brother and I actually rode our bikes without helmets. “Grandma let you do that?” he asked. “Grandma encouraged it,” I said, which is true, and I can still hear her voice: “For heaven’s sake, go outside and ride your bikes. Just stay out of traffic.” Looking back though, riding our bikes without helmets was probably the least risky activity we enjoyed. In retrospect, it’s a wonder my brother and I even survived into adulthood since 1960’s toys were often hazardous to life and limb.
Case in point: One of our favorite toys was the “Slip and Slide.” This was a long, slippery piece of plastic you laid down on the lawn and attached to the garden hose. There were water jets along the entire length of the slide, so that when you turned on the hose the plastic was as slick as a sheet of ice. Once the Slip and Slide was good and wet you ran at it full throttle, threw yourself on your belly and slid at warp speed down its length. Then, assuming you did not suffer a traumatic spinal injury you got up and did it again.
The problem was that after a couple of slides, this toy got really boring so we had to find ways to jazz it up. My idea was to try to stay on my feet, surfer-like, as I slid along the length, which is how I broke my arm. My brother’s solution was to lay the Slip and Slide over sprinkler heads, which had less potential for paralysis but a much greater possibility of bloodshed. And of course, showing a truly warped imagination, we would often position the end of the slide next to our neighbor’s gravel driveway. This was how Bobby Butler learned about “road rash.”
If we got bored with the Slip and Slide we could always attach the garden hose to our Water Wiggle. The Water Wiggle was really creepy: It was a plastic head, featuring cross eyes and a demented smile, attached to a long hose; it had a small nozzle at its base so that when you turned on the garden hose with a low flow, it would levitate and gently gyrate on the lawn, spraying the kiddies with a refreshing spray of water. (“Water Wiggle Makes You Giggle,” said the advertising.)
What my brother and I discovered within about thirty seconds was that if we turned the spigot on all the way the Water Wiggle became an Instrument of Death. Wielding the force of a fire hose, the Water Wiggle would levitate well above roof height, survey the landscape with its cold eyes and dive-bomb the nearest 7-year old, potentially wrapping itself, python-like, around the neck of an unlucky child. Less lethally, the head of the Water Wiggle could, and frequently did, blacken an eye or, on one memorable summer day, knock out a tooth. (“It was only a baby tooth,” my mother told a slightly hysterical Mrs. Maloney. “It was going to fall out anyway.”)
When we got bored with water sports, we could always make some Creepy Crawlers. This was a miniature electric griddle used to make fake plastic bugs to amaze your friends and annoy your sisters. The premise was simple: You would heat the griddle up to about 450 degrees, and pour a thick plastic goo, in the color of your choice, into a mold the shape of a spider or centipede; you waited about ten minutes for the goo to solidify, then another ten for the mold to cool and Voila! Bugs to order!
The trouble was, what 7-year old is going to wait 20 minutes for a bug? First we had to touch the molten insect to see if it was solid, then remove it from the red-hot tray. Third degree burns were common, not to mention getting dizzy from the fumes of the melted plastic. The bugs, by the way, had an oddly satisfying consistency if you chewed them, and resulted in a certain lightheadedness, which may have been the result of the lead based dyes we used.
Now, my nephew looked at my brother, eyes like saucers. “Uncle Guy is making this up,” he asked. “Isn’t he?”
My brother shook his head. “Not a word,” he said. “It’s what we call ‘the good old days.’”
