Re: Children having much more sheltered and safer lives...
Our summer season started off with the spring thaw bringing in the annual Redmud Bowl. Several days of playing football in a soaking wet grassy field that turned into a big pit of red mud by the end of the first day. Generally followed by several days of small classroom attendance as everyone was out with a cold.
Warmer weather brought the annual old bike cleanup where bicycles that were no longer much good were sacrificed in an acrobatic, ramp jumping event over the lobster wharf into the water. Fo those of you thinking the water made it easy, water landings while still attached to the bike can be very 'hurtful'.
Another popular sport was climbing up spruce trees and rocking them back and forth until they would slingshot you through the air to the next tree. Summer wasn't officially started until my Buddy Daryle broke his left arm from this or some other questionable activity.
Spring thaw also brought in Iceburging season. A section of beach would always melt open in a big semi-circle of open water full of different size ice cakes. Just about every clothesline pole in town was then stolen to pole along the various iceberg battleships that went to war trying to ram the enemy's iceberg hard enough that it would split or it's sailors would fall off.
Wasn't a big risk of drowning or floating out to sea as it was very shallow there, never over your head (much) and if you floated out past where your pole could reach, you eventually reached the solid ice where you could just run around back to shore.
Ya, this was all relatively stupid but we are all still alive today and we kept busy enough that the worst drugs we took were aspirin for the pain.
