Without stating your age: How old are you?

Crap. Now this thread is spreading into the real world. I'm watching tv while reading this thread and they just did a story on electric football, the vibrating football game and then next up "Dark Shadows". I hated that show. It came on at 3.30 just as school let out and was boring as hell.To add insult to injury it was followed by reruns of "Peyton Place".
 
Hey Tom. If you got 3rd place in a monogram contest then you probably had these. Slot Cars! Every Fri and Sat night it was down to the
"Pit Stop", a local slot car track where it was every man for himself.;) I did this from 1964 to 1966 when Uncle Sam needed me more than I needed the hobby shop. Loved it.:thumbsup: Still got em.
slot cars 001.JPG slot cars 002.JPG slot cars 003.JPG slot cars 004.JPG slot cars 005.JPG
 
Trips from Michigan to Missouri to see Grandma and Grandpa in a 1960 Chevy on Route 66 in which Dad made sure he had extra set of points, coil, plug wires and distributor rotor. Ohh, and a tool box with which he could rebuild almost any part of the car if necessary. And for dinners, fried chicken which was reheated on the engine.
Our 50`s family vacations usually wound up in your neck of the woods. Trout fishing at Bennett Springs State Park. Good thing there were plenty of cafe`s because I don`t ever remember dad catching any fish. I went back in 2014 and other than a few paved roads it hasn`t changed a bit.
 
Slot Cars!
Those look like 1/32 scale cars. We had a place nearby called "The Miniature Grand Prix" from the '60's to around 1978(?) where people raced 1/32 and (mostly)1/24 scale cars. They had "the big track", an oval and a 6-lane Aurora HO track. I would hang out there, and a bunch of us had scratch-built drag cars (for the big track's long straightaway) and NASCAR style cars for the oval. Too much fun! You could spend a ton of money to be competitive in the various divisions of racing they had. Speaking of money, I wish I had the start-up money to put such a facility in the nearby (almost vacant) mall....
 
Last edited:
I still have dad's old J,C. Higgins bolt action .22. Only thing it needs is what dad called the clip but I guess the proper term, at least these days, is magazine?
Those magazines are still available (NOS?) at gun shows. We have one around here, twice a year, largest east of the Mississippi. 1,000 vendor tables, coming up soon. If I make it this year, I'll keep an eye pealed...
 
Remember Kmarts "blue light specials?" First rifle I bought... Marlin Mod. 60 22LR, 3X Tasco scope and a brick of 100 rounds. Blue light special... $29.95 for the whole package. Was 13 or 14. Didn't need anybody's permission. Took it home across the handlebars of my Schwinn 2 speeder.

Still own that same exact gun.
 
John F Kennedy was killed the year I was born. First job as dishwasher at local restaurant made a whopping 1.35/hour. Could buy pre-mixed snowmobile gas from local gas station for $1.25 a gallon for my 1969 Skidoo 12 horse.
 
This thread takes me back. I was born and grew up on a farm in North Wales, the rural areas were late getting electricity, we got ours in 1966 I think. Shortly after a B/W T.V. it was a "PYE". Before that it was the "wireless" run off a "wet" battery charged at a local Garage once a week. Our stamps were the infamous Green Shield Stamps. i can still remember the horrible taste of the glue, there always seemed like thousands of the bastard things that had to be stuck into the books.
Mechano was the make of our "Erector" sets. Yeh got a few scars too when the screwdriver used to slip.
Used to get toy Tractors with all the implements, can't remember who made them, fantastic things, even the triple hitch at the back worked the implements up and down. First bike was a Daws
Let me close before i slip totally into nostalga, so Yeh 50's and 60's, life seemed so much simpler then. Happy Days,
 
When I was in high school, there was a slot car track downtown, same store that I bought my model kits at.

Used to rent a car and play when I was flush (damned rare...) but never could afford to build a competitive car.

My best bud lived just down the hill from us and (looking back...) apparently his folks had money because he and his Dad built a complete setup in the upstairs of one of their outbuildings. Roadrace layout with banked turns and everything. We spent HOURS up there. Lot of drag racing on the straights, complete with "burnouts" to get the tires nice and sticky...
 
I also remember the slot car club I was in for a few years. They had a four lane race track, Auroa HO cars, in the basement of one of the kids parents house. I got into it as my mom worked in nursing home with one of the other kids mom. Wish I had some pictures of that track it would have fit in with Downeaster's farm. All the little houses trees and building. Recall the track was on a large table, an ell shape with each leg being eight to ten feet long and all kinds of curves. It had to be ell shaped as it had to be fit in around the large furnace in the middle of the basement.

I even played around with moding the little electric motors in those cars. changing the size of the wire and number of turns on the armatures. My biggest problem was my driving skills were not up to the point that having a faster car really helped, should have hired a driver and stayed in the shop!
 
I also had my own track, but for the larger 1/24 or 1/32 cars, in the basement. That one was a home built track I made using left over pieces of particleboard from when our kitchen got new flooring. It was an over-under 8 track on a 4X8 sheet of plywood! The power strips were made from an aluminum tape sold just for that I ordered through the mail. Power was the old HO train set transformer from years before. I think in one of the boxes in the basement of my house the couple cars are still sitting and the speed control I last recall seeing it out in the garage on one of the benches!
 
They're still around, here and there. Not as popular as they once were, but the hard-core racers are big ticket items. Check out this guy:
https://gerdingfasttracks.com/
If somebody had the wherewithall (not me! I don't have enough money to pay attention!), this is the guy that could hook you up for a 1st class model raceway. I even had dreams of a scale model Watkins Glenn road course (complete with scale elevation changes!). All it takes is money!....
 
Back
Top