re: Watched Red Dawn (1984) for the first time

Wow, I like the movie, but love the thread.

quote:

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If you have Atari in the early 80's - you were pretty well off.


lol wut?

both the atari 2600 and sears branded versions were in every kid's house i knew in the late 70s and my dad made $9,500/year at the time as a telephone lineman.

we never felt particularly poor back then but we got an atari for christmas.

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you might have been in a fortunate group.

We also had an Atari. My dad was an engineer. We also had a pool. I remember one other kid who had an Atari and a pool in our neighborhood. Lots of kids came over to both our houses, both to swim, and to play Atari.

But yeah, we were much more outdoors-oriented as kids then.

I remember BB gun wars in the woods, most of us had Daisy's but some a-hole would bring a Benjamin pump... you think movie escapes are full of adrenaline? You don't KNOW adrenaline until Tommy starts pumping that pellet gun, and everyone is scrambling through drainage ditches and briers to get out of range. You knew he'd go up to 12 pumps if you'd nailed him, so that gave you about 25 seconds to get away.

We rode Schwinn Stingrays everywhere.

This was transportation from kindergarten, until you got your license and first car. All you did was raise the seats and adjust the handlebars.
Everyone stylized theirs; sand it down, mask and prime, a couple cans of paint. Mine was metalflake green, I remember others did gold, candyapple red, etc. Lots of multicolor jobs. Put the knobby dirtbike grips on them. Those bikes were indestructible. I remember us riding down a hill into a playground, going under the monkeybars at full speed and grabbing the bars, so you'd swing up and the bike would keep on going. We had to duck to avoid decapitation . You had to do it 1-handed to avoid getting the bar at the back of the seat into your butt. And no, no silly helmets.

shite, we did all sorts of stuff that would cause today's parents to scream neglect. At one point we had explored just about every inch of drainage ditch pipe in a 5 sq mile radius; the younger kids (maybe 10) would go through the pipes the bigger kids couldn't fit into.

We had swordfight duels on top of cinderblock walls, bamboo canes as the swords, 8 ft drop minimal, maybe 8 inch wide to stand on. most of us could not just do this well, we could hop around and pirouette without falling. I remember a couple kids could roll back and do somersaults while still maintaining the bamboo cane in a defensive posture (or attack mode).

In short, I'm pretty sure our generation was well-trained to become guerrillas. Hell, we WERE, we just didn't know it. The 70's were awesome to grow up in.