What's The Most Memorable Experience Of Your Youth?

[Wyatt Burp]

I mean the one that won't get you banned from the forum. Here's mine. In 1976 when I was 19 I flew back east to Alexandria Virginia with a freind who was from there. We stayed a month at his freind's house for the 4th of July bicentennial celebration at D.C. Skinny dipped in Gerald Ford's pool. He was renting it to my freind's pal because he was living in the White House at the time. Then we hitchhiked cross country back home to the Bay Area(Ca.). I was never in a plane or back east before. What a blast thumbing it across the country. We would get a map of each state we hit. Stopped in Aspen and camped on the hill over looking town then at an apartment of some girls we met. We got rides real fast until the edge of the salt flats across from a big truck stop place where we were stuck for a few hours until a guy gave us a ride to Sacramento. Then I eventually got a lift right to my door.
I can't describe how fun this was. Meeting people from different places, sleeping on their floors sometimes. Never crossed our minds they could be serial killers or worse. Now I wonder how I could have done that without any concerns like I tell my kids to avoid now. Here's a shot of me somewhere in the midwest. What's your most memorable youthful experience. I think on this forum it might actually be Viet Nam. I said memorable and really meant happiest but anything goes. Merry Christmas.

 

[Andy Griffith]

Uh...nearly drowned once because I overestimated my ability in trying to swim 1/2 mile across a lake.

Believe me, I'm glad I'm here with you guys!

I'm certain you mean positive memories- but for some reason this one gives me flashbacks just like it happened yesterday.

Other than that- going to Murphy to get someone or something from the train depot- I remember the train vividly and the bug bit me.

 

[mg357]

my most memorable experience was in 1992 i was 7 or 8 years old at the time my mom and i went to disney world in florida.

 

[Bob R]

Getting on the grayhound bus about 4 months before my 18th birthday in 1971 and heading to Oklahoma City for induction into the USN. Then the real adventure began!

I did the hitchiking thing from Oklahoma to San Francisco and back again in the summer of 1970. What a trip that was!

bob

 

[Gutpile Charlie]

My most memorable experience of my youth was when I soloed a Piper J3 aircraft, N3590K at the old HighWay Airport, Dewey, Oklahoma in September 1956.

I had only had three "official" hours of dual instruction (not counting previous "stick time" with friends....all of which were teenagers)

I went around the pasture once with the instructor and he said "pull over and let me out. Show me a couple of take off's and landings."

The thrill was immediate. I taxied down to the end of the pasture, advance the throttle and ...."Look ma!...I'm flying."

There has never been an experience like it.

 

[brick]

My most memorable experience was in 1969 when I somehow got my foot under the lawnmower. It was a miserable summer.

 

[crowtree]

Debbie Crow!

 

[cowboy117]

Many experiences,but the one that sticks out in my mind was when i was 10 years old.We went from Kansas to Los Angeles,Ca.,to see my newborn niece,in my uncles new '53 Chevy on Route 66.Mexican food,the motels in NM and Az.,the freeways in Ca.,the palm trees,the sports cars,the Pacific Ocean and it was warm at Christmas time!I got hooked on the west coast coast then and still love it!"The west is the best,get here and we'll do the rest"![from The Doors]

 

[deadin]

Living through it!

 

[willy]

I was 19 years old and working for Uncle Sam and ....ah,,, never mind

 

[deralte]

The Korean War, er Police Action. Thats a hard way to get a teen ager to grow up.

 

[tennexplorer]

Of my youth youth, watching a 15" X10" rock fly over the house from the back of the house where my dad and I had dynamited a much bigger rock into the driveway in the front of the house. It missed the '64 Pontiac Bonneville by about 2 feet. Mom has never been told about that one.

In second place, sliding down the side of a house after falling off a roof and landing in a big bush. Scratched but nothing broken. Still do not like heights.

Of my later youth, staring at North Vietnamese patrol boats at a distance of about 50 yards while on an ARS escorting sweeps. Haiphong. Thank you Henry Kissinger.

 

[DeathGrip]

Lots of good memories but this one stands out.
I had been hunting with Dad a couple of times in N.Ga.but never saw dear until one day when we were walking back to the truck.We were cutting through the same corn field we went through earlier well before sun up.Out of no where we spooked a couple of dear. It must have been about noon.My Dad had the lead one in his sights in an instant,I was expecting him to shoot but he didn't.I asked him why and he told me he thought he saw spikes but wasn't positive and would rather see him next year.A couple of minutes we heard Bang Bang.The "Hunter/Farmer" across the street got him.Dad said to me,"I sure hope that POS was hungry.A few years later I learned what dog running dear was about and understood why my Dad and his buddies didn't like him.Shortly after that there was no more Dogs.

 

[vytoland]

helping my dad around the house or at his work. he always made it fun.

 

[smith17]

Having some cavities filled without any local pain killer. My dad didn't have the money to spring for it.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

I saw LBJ at a campaign rally in NYC in 1960, that sticks in my mind. Some experience with young ladies but this is a family forum...

 

[judge]

My years of experience with the Boy Scouts, USA. I learned the important things in life which helped me to this very day. After Scouts, I wound up in the Air Force. The ability to hike, shoot, mark a trail, tie knots, etc., all were helpful in the military. I will be eternally grateful to the BSA for all I learned and for their ongoing work with todays up-coming citizens.

 

[Gun Smoke]

Thought of this one last Tuesday....When I was 13 my Grandmother found out she had cancer and wanted to go to Hawaii before it was too late, she asked if I wanted to go because she didn't want to go alone....I gave it a nano seconds thought and we were off....That was the first time in a plane for me and the whole trip was like being in a dream world...I tried to surf (disaster) got the worst sunburn of my life, fell in love with an older woman (14) and had a total blast but the thing I really remember most was the trip out to the U.S.S. Arizona memorial and standing on that arch looking down on the remains of that battleship and seeing the fuel oil bubbles coming to the surface....I also remember 2 Japanese kids about my age leaning over the rail laughing and throwing pennies down to the deck but a Navy Honor guard promptly and firmly removed both by the scuff of the neck...I became a WWII history buff after that and am very thankful for the experience...I'm 53 years old now but still remember it like it was yesterday and only hope I will be lucky enough and live long enough to go back again....

 

[ACP230]

Living for eight years on islands in the Pacific.
One of the houses we lived in was 20 yards from the bay where ocean-going freighters would anchor while waiting to be unloaded.
All the snakes were poisonous including the sea snakes we saw swim by the dock where we used to swim. (After that we stopped swimming off that dock, for the most part.) Finding a Japanese helmet with a hole in it in a river a few miles from our house. Finding an unfired 20 mm artillery shell in a crab hole 40 yards from our house. Sitting in what was left of a Japanes zero with the jungle growing around and through the cockpit.
Etc, etc.

 

[venomballistics]

my least memorable was the discovery of 100 proof whiskey and why women are different.