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GenX Kids’ Rides

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About This Episode

It’s common knowledge that our GenX youth was a free-range childhood – leaving the house & the morning and back before dark. As we spent our unsupervised days roaming the neighborhood, our modes of personal transportation were as varied as they were awesome. From Big Wheels & bicycles to go-karts & skateboards — in this Backtrack, we’re hitting the road and remembering all the ways we got around as kids!

(May contain some explicit language.)

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Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker Transcript
Jon Welcome back, Gen X Grown-Up Podcast listeners to this, the backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown-Up Podcast.
Jon I am John. Joining me as always, of course, is George. Hey, man.
George Hey, how’s it going, guys?
Jon You know it’s not of show without Mo. How you doing, Mo?
Mo Doing good, man.
Jon You know, in this episode, we know it’s common knowledge that our Gen X youth was a free range childhood, leaving the house in the morning and back before dark. As we spent our unsupervised days roaming the neighborhood, though, our modes of personal transportation were as varied as they were awesome.
Jon From big wheels to bicycles to go karts and skateboards. In this backtrack, we are hitting the road and remembering all the ways we got around. as kids We’re going to jump into that in just a second. But first, it’s time for one of my favorite parts of the show, and that is fourth listener email.
Jon It’s not one of the three of us. You are the fourth listener. And we have, coincidentally, two emails that both came from recent postings of these podcasts on YouTube. Now, most people listen on their podcast aggregator, but we started cross-post over there, and we’ve heard from some of you.
Mo No.
Jon So first is Roberto S., who dropped us a line about the 321 Contact backtrack.
Mo Hmm.
Jon And he said something I was not aware of. I didn’t grow up with 321 Contact, the series. I grew up with 321 Contact, the magazine.
Mo Huh?
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo don’t remember that.
Jon did yeah yeah Yeah, I didn’t know. Children’s Television Workshop shows.
George It was in my dentist’s office all the time, so.
Mo Oh, OK.
Jon Was it? Like with highlights and whatever those other kids’ magazines?
George Yeah.
Jon I didn’t know. He says that Children’s Television Workshop shows had a companion magazine for most of their series. After aging out of the Sesame Street and Electric Company mags, my parents gifted me a subscription to three…
Jon My parents gifted me a subscription to 321 Contact. Like the TV show, each issue focused on a science topic, had a section of silly jokes, a bloodhound gang story, my favorite part, and an experiment to try at home.
Mo Yeah.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Getting that magazine in the mail was the highlight of the month. That reminds me of my feelings when I would get either Atari Age or I would get, what was it Dynamite Magazine. had a subscription to that, and I love those kind of things.
Mo she
Jon And the other email also, I’m sorry. And the other fourth listener also coming from YouTube was William B. And he dropped us online on the Berserk episode. We just recently did like it was a 40th anniversary or something of Berserk, right?
Mo yeah
Jon Or 45, maybe. I don’t know. It an anniversary.
Mo Too big a number.
Jon Big number. Yeah. And William says, awesome episode. I have a month long retro video game challenge with my daughters and we’re currently doing Berserk.
Mo That’s fun.
George Yeah.
Jon That’s neat. Yep. I am appreciating Berserk all the more now, thanks to this episode. And then he starts referencing the the high scores you told us about, George.
Mo Yeah.
Jon They’re over at Twin Galaxies. And he started talking to us about the high scores. You you talked to us about Twin Galaxy, George. And he says, 400K is an insane score.
Mo Yeah, it is.
Jon Half the time, I start a board surrounded by robots that can barely move before getting zapped. And then part of me wants to map out the rooms now that I know it is a complete non-random maze that you shared.
Jon Mo, thanks.
Mo she
Jon This episode made me smile.
Mo That’s awesome.
Jon Oh, that’s what more could you ask for?
George Mm-hmm.
Jon yeah. So if you listen on a podcast, Aggregator Gate,
Jon Great, but we also are now over on YouTube as well. go Check us out there. So thanks to William and Roberto. Look, if you want to have your email feature here on the show or your comment, of course, you could comment on the YouTube video. We’ll take a look over there. Or you can hit us up at podcast at genxgrownup.com. read every single one and most of them, like Williams and Roberto’s, will eventually make the show.
Jon All right. With that good business in the rearview mirror, it’s time to jump on our ride right after this quick break.
Jon As we said in this episode, we are talking about how we got around the neighborhood as kids. As we got older, that may have changed. But look, when we were little, our kids…
Jon Look, we were little, our parents took us everywhere. you had to get in the car, maybe a car seat, maybe a booster seat or whatever. That’s how you got somewhere. Or they’d drop you off for a play date or something. And then when we get much older, well, we can, you know, we have a car, we can drive around. But in that middle, in that sweet spot as kids,
Jon We had all this independence and you never just sit around the house. You had to get around the neighborhood. And that’s what we’re talking about is all those different modes of transportation we enjoyed as kids. And as we were preparing for the show, we were trying to decide how to organize this show. And George, you had a great idea that we’re adopting and trying out in this episode.
George Yeah, so we normally try to break up these backtracks in pretty straightforward terms. If it’s an album, we do side one, side two, the artists that were involved, that kind of stuff.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm hmm. hmm. Yeah. Yep. Yep.
George If it’s a movie, we’re going to talk about how the movie was made first, then we’re going to talk about the cast, and then we’re going to talk about our favorite scenes.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yeah.
George ah But in this case, um talking about Gen X Kids Rides… trying to group them into categories that made sense for segments was a little difficult because they all have wheels essentially, or, you know, they’re, it just, to me, it kind of broke itself out more by our age ranges of when we used these different modes of transportation.
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George And in thinking about that, I was like, well, there’s three easy age ranges for generation X kids and pretty much any kids of any age to figure out. And that’s when you were in elementary school,
George when you’re in middle school and when you’re in high school, because each one of those is kind of like its own epoch for a kid, right?
Mo e
Mo Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
George A new era dawns every time you level up and go to your next school.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo she
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mo Cross that threshold.
George um ah So I thought we would break it down by that. And then that way we can just talk about the general ah items in each section. And then if each one of us or one of us or two of us or whatever, have an anecdote about,
George an item from that particular ah group ah and time zone of transportation, then we can do that.
Mo Oh, cool. Mm-hmm.
Jon Yeah. Yeah. So in this first segment, it’s great idea. We’re starting with elementary age, which kind of is that part where now you can go out on your own, right? you You’re eight, nine, 10. You’re getting to an age where yeah we are free range. That’s where we had that free range childhood. And and we have things in that that are…
Jon i We were going through lists of like, like Mark’s had like the big wheel and the green machine. And then you had more generic things like ah the roller skates and maybe as even littler kids.
Jon Remember the, the bouncy springy one looked like a, maybe it’s called inchworm that had like the yellow saddle.
George Yeah.
Jon Like you rode this giant worm.
George yeah
Mo Oh, and you had to like bounce it to make it move? Is that how it moved?
Jon Yeah, yeah.
Mo Like you go move up and down?
Jon Some kind of a friction thing in the wheels. Yeah, and you might have gotten it for Christmas or your birthday or maybe you got a good report card or something and you’d get some kind of one of these things under the tree or for Easter or something.
George Yeah, you know, the one of the ones that I, or two of the ones that I got, I’ll say, the first one, Crazy Car, i just want to mention because that one was kind of the hard one that we had to figure out.
Jon Hmm.
Mo What was that one?
George This was the one that had the two giant wheels that were on opposite sides of your body, and you sat in between them, and the inside of the wheels had these handles that you would rotate, right?
Mo he
Mo Oh, and you…
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And yeah, exactly. And you could do it.
Jon Yep.
George It’s the game I joked when we were talking about it. That kind of got me good for battle zone later on when I got to my arcade years, because it was that track driven kind of feeling driving motion.
Jon The left and right steering. Yep. Mm-hmm.
George But um the thing that I um also got at this age range was the thing that pretty much every kid in our generation got or had a friend who had one.
George And that was a big wheel.
Mo Hmm.
George ah Big wheel was arguably one of the most popular trikes ever.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George ah When anybody thinks of those things, there was the green machine that was sort of like a big wheel, but everybody knows the term big wheel.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mo There’s Big Willow Shkan too, right? Yeah.
George That was the thing. Had the commercial with the kids skidding out, you know, as he came and well, I had a big wheel.
Mo Oh, yeah. yeah
George And um we would ride it up and down our little dead end street, Homewood Drive. I’ll never forget. It was just ah like probably a 500 foot street full of duplexes. it was very small, tiny little community. We had four or five kids on the street and we were all roughly in the same age ranges. And,
George And I had the big wheel, so we would take turns. And the way we would do it so that we could get more people involved, because big wheel is a one-person thing, ah one person would sit in it and drive.
Mo e
George And the other person would stand on the crossbars of the two wheels in the back and hold on to the seat and just kind of be there and maybe add a little extra but boost by pushing with their foot like you would on a skateboard.
Mo Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mo Pushing. Yeah, yeah.
George Well, I was playing with my friends and I couldn’t have been more than four or five or six or something like that at the time.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And we were all out there.
Jon A babe.
George I’m sure we were shirtless and shoeless only had shorts on or something. Cause it was summertime. And I was on the back as one of my friends was driving my big wheel and i had been pushing with my foot and i guess I was just having so much fun and laughing.
George I didn’t look back and I wasn’t paying attention.
Mo Okay.
George Apparently, i was just I had my right foot just kind of dragging behind us, right? So the top of my foot dragging across the ground, if you can imagine that.
Jon Taking
Mo Oh, okay. This doesn’t sound good.
Jon turns.
Mo Yeah.
George Well, I was a kid. didn’t feel it. I was having fun. You know, the laughter and adrenaline and everything else.
Mo Yeah.
George You’re not, you don’t notice that kind of thing. I certainly didn’t. Anyway, um we got done running that route all the way down the street and back. Cause that was the rule.
George The two guys got to go all the way down the street and back before you swapped out.
Mo Okay, fair enough.
George And when we got off, I looked down and there was blood and I’m like,
Jon taking turns
George the hell did this come from? you know, I’m a little kid.
Jon Who got cut?
George I’m like, blood. And I looked down and my foot has like, you know, some scrape marks along the top of my foot.
Jon Yeah.
George And I’m like, oh, but I didn’t notice any blood until I looked at my big toe.
Mo Uh-oh.
George The toenail on my big toe was completely gone.
Mo Uh-oh. Oh, God, I’m not to like this.
Jon Oh, how could you not know that already? Yeah.
George I didn’t even feel it.
Mo oh Oh,
Jon well
George Now,
Jon would I got to put a trigger warning on this episode. Yeah.
Mo oh my God.
Jon Mm-hmm. oh
George So my mother, you know, she’s in the house because we’re kids outside playing. And as we’ve talked about, you know, parents didn’t hover over you when you were doing the stuff.
Mo Right.
George You were on your own.
Jon yeah
George So I just casually walked back to my house, blood trailing behind me, I’m sure. And I, you know, go up to the screen door and knock on the door because I knew enough not to walk in the house with blood dripping everywhere.
Mo Oh, okay. That’s good.
George And so my mother came to the door. And ah to hear her tell the story years later, which is where I’m getting some of the memories from, i know they’re conflated with her story, but she opened up the door and said, yeah, what’s up?
Mo Okay.
Jon but no mo
George And I just looked down and said, i have some blood. And she looked down and ah just freaked out, just screaming and about to pass out as a mother would do when her child is horrifically injured.
George And I’m apparently just standing there like it’s no big deal. I’m like, can just get a Band-Aid or something so I can go back out and play?
Mo Ugh.
George But I don’t know. It was just, it’s an indelible memory, probably passed along, not because I remember most of it, but through the stories my mother and father would tell me about it.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George later on but boy i loved that big wheel i’ll never forget that memory and to this day it was definitely one of my favorite modes of kid transportation
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Holy cow. It’s funny hearing you guys talk about this stuff because, you know, maybe I wasn’t quite as feral as you guys were, apparently.
Jon We live in the city.
Mo Yeah, well, the city.
Jon Yeah.
Mo And so things that we didn’t have, like a lot of grass or dirt road, obviously, that kind of thing.
Jon Hmm.
Mo So things like big wheels were rare. I mean, super rare in my neighborhood.
George sure
Mo Like one kid had one.
Jon Oh, no.
Mo Like I remember that as growing up um and he played with it for a while.
Jon ah
George yeah
Mo We take turns, but it was like mostly, like said, very little, like big wheels or roll skates or maybe roll skates were a thing for a while. So of kids had roll skates and they do it. But yeah, generally speaking, like we didn’t have a lot of that stuff and when I was that young.
Mo Like, you know, once past that tricycle phase, it was this whole like kind desert time of like nothing. you know, to until you got old enough to get bicycles and that kind of thing. So it’s kind of interesting hearing your perspective on this.
Jon You know, when I was preparing for the show, and wasn’t before I knew what angle we were going to go, I was reading about… you know, some of these ride-ons like the big wheel. And they said it was actually so popular, the kids thought it looked awesome.
Mo hmm.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon It’s basically a tricycle. It’s a plastic tricycle, but it’s low to the ground.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
George It is.
Mo It’s cool.
Jon So it’s much safer than a tricycle, actually.
George Yep.
Jon You pedal the front wheel, you steer like a tricycle, and you can stand on the back like a tricycle.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon All that’s there, but it was safer.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo Oh, plastic, too.
Jon But yeah, right. And cheap. Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon yeah I was looking at an ad and they were like $9.99 was what you paid for it when it first came out.
George All right. Yeah.
Jon But the one that I always wanted, never owned myself, but many neighborhood kids. And that was the green machine. Now, first it came out in 1969.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon It was the evolution from Mark’s.
Mo Really? That long ago? Wow. Wow.
Jon This was the opposite of the big wheel. Steering was in the back. you had these two levers that you moved because it was like a pivot steering in the back.
George he
Jon So you cut it really hard and you could fishtail around, which was awesome.
Mo Jeez.
Jon ah Foreshadowing for fishtailing stories later in this episode from me. But I enjoyed the fishtailing of kind of swerving around. And you pedaled the front, but all the steering was in the back. So it was like a like a forklift.
Jon You know, if you look at a forklift a warehouse and they can spin around really tight.
George Yeah.
Jon And so when people had them and I would get to ride on them, it was all about like, how fast can you go and cut that thing super sharp and whip around sideways and like run into each other.
Jon And that one, they even had the big wheels pretty much like red and yellow looking, you know, always, but they had like a Batman green machine and a Spider-Man green machine, all these different ones.
Mo e
Jon They had one later, like a, had up a spoiler on the back, like it’s a sports car something. Yeah.
Mo Craziness.
Jon And it just looked so much cooler and it was somehow even lower to the ground. ah And I guess, and what was the brakes? I guess the brake was just steer backwards. I think it’s all you had for braking, just like the big wheels. all yeah but Or no, no, no.
Jon The green machine, I think, had a pull brake. I think it had a lever on the side, maybe, that would brake.
George Yeah, there was a, because the big wheel didn’t have a brake.
Mo Like a friction thing, right?
George You just, you just stopped the wheel.
Jon Right. it was up but but It was a pedal backwards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Green Machine, though, and of all of them from that elementary school age, was the one that I enjoyed playing with the most and actually spent the most time on, unlike a big wheel.
Mo Yeah. So and the thing that always got me, though, so you see the commercials for these big wheels of stuff as a kid. You see these kids doing these, like, 180 spins and all these amazing things on it.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo And I remember Limited playing on a flat relatively flat surface. It was really hard to get fast enough to do those things. Like, you need someone, like, to push you, basically, is what I remember.
Jon Right.
Mo Now, is that…
Jon You need somebody kicking their toenail off on the back.
Mo Yeah.
George Right, exactly.
Mo Now, was that the general, like, were we just, like, really slow in my neighborhood? Like, was that the general…
George I mean, we didn’t have, I remember we didn’t have too many problems doing the fishtail spin out maneuver and everything, but it was because we had, you know, a road that we drove it on.
Mo Right. Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And because it was a dead end road, we didn’t have to worry about as much car traffic because it was only the people who lived on the road that would go there.
Mo right
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And at one end of our road, because of where it dead ended into some trees and woods, essentially, it was really caked heavily in dirt because every time it would rain, the dirt from the woods would kind of wash over the road.
Mo he
George So that area was very slick. So you would ride your big wheel as fast as you could toward the trees and then cut it hard, hit that brake, you know, reverse your pedal and slide.
Mo Oh, nice.
George And you could slide all the way around, do a full 180 and come back the other way.
Mo Nice. Okay, that sounds more fun.
Jon See, you just, you lived in the wrong place, Moe, was your problem.
Mo Yeah, apparently.
George yeah
Jon Okay. All right. We get back from this break. We’re to get a little older and move on to some other modes of kid transportation.
Mo cool
Jon I think we were done there, right?
Mo but be Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jon I didn’t jump anybody.
Mo You want me to jump in this one?
Jon Okay, All right.
George yeah
Jon Please do. Yeah, anybody.
Mo Okay. Middle school, five, four, three. Let’s move on to middle school. Like, a little older.
Jon Yep.
Mo ah won’t say wiser, but thought we were wiser. you know, for sure, right? And related to that is the things that we had to kind of play with now were a little bit more…
Mo You could hurt yourself a little bit more.
Jon yeah
Mo like We’re talking about like bicycles, now skateboards and go-karts and you know skates and those kinds of things.
Jon Yeah.
Mo right
Jon Yeah. Right. Stuff your parents would always say when you’re older, you can have one of those.
Mo Right. Right.
Jon Well, we’re here now.
George right I mean, what I had even before the plastic ones was a wooden one with metal wheels.
Mo And that’s where you get them.
Jon Gimme.
Mo Right. So do you remember when the first skateboards came out? There was those like plastic skateboards. They weren’t very big either.
Jon Yep.
Mo They were like kind of small, like maybe 18 inches.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Oh, wow.
George It was shaped like a surfboard, but it was tiny.
Mo But with the old roller skate wheels on.
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It was made out of a plank from the outhouse.
Mo and
Jon Mm-hmm.
George It wasn’t far from it. Yeah.
Jon I
Mo I remember just that, like, it was one of the few times, like, all the kids in my neighborhood had those plastic skateboards. Like, they were just, everybody had them.
Jon i had had one.
Mo And that’s the one thing, being the city, it was, like, flat asphalt, perfect skateboarding kind of thing.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo And my mom actually let me get one because they weren’t terribly expensive.
Jon Mm-mm.
Mo You know, um and there was just fun. It got me out of the house. Right. And so I got that sucker. Man, we just go start a day to end a day. We’d be on that. Those things like we would just be just going crazy.
Mo We weren’t really into like the tricks so much, you know, as we’re maybe going up and down a curb as about as far as we went. But it’s one of those things that you learn as a kid. It’s like I was getting really of like, okay, i know how to do this thing. i We had to race around the block. That was a very popular thing in my neighborhood, race around the block.
Mo And i was racing this other kid and his skateboard, and we were just cruising down this part of sidewalk. And what they don’t tell you or what you don’t realize that all it takes is a little pebble, a little tiny pebble to just completely –
George Oh, yeah.
Jon Right. And the smaller the wheels, the worse it is. Yeah.
Mo Oh, yeah. To literally lock your wheels, lock that front wheel. And that’s what happened to me. I just hit that pebble. I mean, it stopped. I went flying forward.
Jon Superman.
Mo Yeah, Superman. Elbow came down a bottle and shattered it. Shattered the bottle.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Oh.
Mo Shattered the bottle, right?
Jon Oh.
Mo So I was like, oh, man.
Jon Oh.
Mo I was like, oh, I mean, you know, it stung. I mean, elbows stung. Like, I felt like it’ just like the the worst Funny Bone hit ever in the world of man, right? So I said, oh, man, my knee got a little scraped up. So I picked up my skateboard. I’m walking.
Mo And I’m walking from my building. And my friends were like, holy shit maurice what the hell and i’m like what i’m like looking like what what i looked at my hand blood is dripping off my fingers and so um now i’m like sitting there now of course i’m like panicking because now i’m bleeding right and my brothers were outside and when my brothers saw me first i was like running up to him and he was like what now he’s playing basketball he turns around sees me he goes oh shit also which doesn’t make me feel any better because now like two of us have said it
George Right.
Jon Oh, man.
George Hmm.
Mo He grabs you go upstairs and I just totally tore my elbow. Just tore it up.
Jon Oh, ow.
Mo Blood was just just pouring down my arm.
Jon Oh.
Mo Went upstairs. Of course, you know, back then you didn’t go the hospital for stuff like that. You know, it’s like it wasn’t broken. you know, my dad.
Jon Put some dirt on it.
Mo Yeah, my dad looked at it. He said, OK, let’s wash it off. He washed it off. And, you know, he put some. something that stung like hell, but killed it and wrapped it up.
Jon yeah
Mo but that was, and then, and then literally sent me back outside, like said, okay, go. I’m like, get your ass outside. Adults are up here talking. you know, you don’t need to be here. But, and I was, that was just one of like many, many injuries. And the thing is that as a kid, that did not stop us or slow us down, which I thought was pretty cool thinking back on it.
Jon Yeah.
Jon it’s It’s occurring to me that this backtrack about the things we wrote as kids is turning into injuries as kids because they all seem to be connected, but that’s okay.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah, for sure.
George Well, I, so I saw you put your hand up when he started that story and I was like, John’s going to talk about how all these stories are injury stories.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Well, that’s part of it. Yeah.
George And so there’s no need for me to comment because he’s already going to do it.
Jon Yeah. Well, I also had one of those and they were like, it was almost like not pure plastic. It has some kind of fiber in it, maybe fiberglass or something to make it more rigid.
Mo There’s something, yeah.
Jon I had one at the time at that age in middle school, I lived in a yeah ah trailer park that was on a hill.
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon You see where I’m going here. So you go to this.
Mo yeah
Jon And so, but it was ah it was like on one side, it was like a long, gradual hill. So you could kick your way up if you want the long way around. then you got to the top of the hill, it was very steep to come down the other side of the park. And I knew about the problem with rocks.
Jon And so I found out that the way you could control your speed, like if I want skis, you know, you you pizza slice, you know, French fries, pizza slice. you know you can the way I found to slow down the skateboard was I would do this like you roll on just the back wheels and the back fin and like grind your way down the hill.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo Oh, okay, okay.
Jon and it would keep you from going too fast. Unfortunately, that’s like putting your plastic skateboard into an angle grinder. So after a while, the skateboard was getting shorter and shorter.
Jon And the angle at which I had to pop it up because the the back fin has a little angle. But when that was ground down, it was just flat. And so the angle had to kick up until eventually I went through three of those plastic skateboards at that park because I ground them into oblivion.
Jon but then the cool thing was you have parts like, Oh, I have blue wheels. I can swap out with the red wheels and whatever.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Cause I had three different ones that I would swap out. But yeah, they, they would get torn up coming down the hill because of my chicken shit way of coming down the hill. i don’t want to go too fast.
George I think it’s awesome that you guys had skateboards with fins because mine was so goddamn old. It didn’t have a fin on the back of It was, it was just a board on some wheels, but just to tell my own injury story in the middle school segment.
Jon Just a board. Yeah, yeah here we go.
George So The one great thing about having a neighborhood full of kids, especially during this timeframe of America, is you are invariably going to have at least one kid on the block, maybe more, but at least one kid on the block who came from a divorced family.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Let me tell you why that’s fucking awesome.
Jon double everything.
George Because better gifts, right? Because each parent is trying to outdo the other.
Jon Yeah.
George Now, I’m sure it sucked for him, but i didn’t give a shit. I got the benefit of him getting the really great gifts, but And one of the best gifts he ever got from his father, who he didn’t live with, he lived with his mother, ah Gene, I’ll never forget him. If he ever listens this podcast, Gene, thank you so much for living next to me because this was the best gift that anybody outside of myself got in that neighborhood.
George His father got him a go-kart.
Mo Oh, wow.
Jon Oh, yeah.
George So we didn’t have to go to Panama City to ride on a go-kart track. His father got it. Now, it wasn’t a super nice one like you might see at the places these days with the cool designs and the graphics and everything.
George This was just a metal tube design with a lawnmower engine on the back that had a chain connected.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Oh, powered go-kart. Oh, my God.
George It was very type of cheap thing, but it was a two-seater go-kart.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo sweet.
George back when and they would do bench seats for the two-seater thing, as opposed to individual seats.
Jon yep
George And, you know, now go-karts are almost all exclusively single-seat things.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George But anyway, we did the same kind of… like system that we had for the big wheel. Instead of on our little dead end road, though, we had to go around the whole neighborhood, which was the road that was shared with cars. But on the weekends, there weren’t, a there wasn’t a lot of traffic. This was not a big thoroughfare. It was a small neighborhood in a suburb of a shitty little town. So nobody, there wasn’t a ton of cars. So we could literally just drive this go-kart in the middle of the road going around and around and around.
George And the deal was you got to one lap, the two people, and then the person in the passenger seat would move over to the driver’s seat and a new person would get the passenger seat and you just keep rotating.
Jon Oh.
Mo Okay, fair enough.
George And we did that all day.
Jon Oh, so you really get two laps each turn. That’s pretty cool.
George Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George It was fun. Um, however, there was a problem because not everybody had the same driving skills.
Mo Okay.
George And one of the best driving skills in a go-kart is knowing how to apply the brakes.
Mo Yeah, that’s important. and
George And I knew how to apply brakes and Gene knew how to apply brakes.
Jon Okay.
George Some of the other kids didn’t necessarily know how to apply the brakes. So Gene started off driving and I was in the passenger seat. So we went around his lap. Then I moved over and one of the no brake kids got in the passenger seat. I drove my lap and then That kid moved over the driver’s seat.
George His brother, who also was a no-brake kid, got in the passenger seat, and Gene would have been the next person up because the rotation had moved around.
Mo What?
Jon good combo.
George They go around, the two brothers, they come back around to the stopping point, and they had been used to, and we had been used to because we knew how to apply the brakes, to just standing in the middle of the road at the stopping point.
Jon Oh, here we go.
Mo what
George So Gene was standing there, They come around and you can tell right away they’re not going to stop. they’re not They don’t understand even feathering the gas pedal. They don’t understand the brake, nothing.
George Well, Gene instinctively does the thing to protect himself. He stuck his arms out to just grab a hold of the go-kart, the front bar part of it, just put his arms and his arms just locked, right?
Mo Whoa.
Jon Mmm.
George You know, like when you stick your arms straight out and the elbow just locks.
Jon Oh.
Mo Oh, oh, oh, this doesn’t sound good either.
George Well, ah that right arm, that little humorous bone shot straight past his elbow, right out of the, like, two, three inches past his elbow, hanging out there.
Jon Mmm.
Mo Oh.
Jon Oh. Oh, God. Right
George Yeah, he noticed that injury, unlike my toenail one.
Jon away.
George He knew that it happened.
Jon Oh.
Mo Yeah, yeah, can’t really, yeah.
Jon right away
George Right away. So, uh, that was the end of those two individuals driving the go-kart ever again.
Jon ge
George Jean was in, uh, cast for the rest of the summer.
Mo Oh, I imagine.
George Uh, but I, I was kind of, no, no, no, no.
Mo Oh, ouch.
Jon Please tell me you rode the go-kart to the hospital. Please tell me you rode the go-kart.
George Parents took him to the hospital.
Jon Okay, dunk on it.
George But i did I did get an ancillary benefit because for several of the weeks of the summer, he was really in pain and the fresh of the brake and everything. I was allowed to drive the go-kart whenever and wherever I wanted.
Mo Oh, nice.
George The other two kids couldn’t touch it.
Jon Oh, nope.
Mo Good friend.
George Our third friend who we liked on the, on our road was gone to like summer camp or something somewhere. He wasn’t there that year. And so I was really the only one he trusted and allowed to drive it.
George So that whole summer, I was just freewheeling that go-kart all over the place, driving down to Jerry’s little grocery store, getting myself some Coke.
Jon You had a go-kart.
Mo yeah. he yeah
Jon Man.
George Oh, I had so much fun. Thank God they broke his damn arm. Woo.
Jon So I just have a small follow-up question because I think about when kids are doing taking turns, things like this. You know, I think about like, I’d be at my friend’s house playing Atari and like, well, it’s his turn to play adventure.
Jon What am I going to do? You know, I’ll play blip or I’ll play, you know, whatever.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon I’ll play with whatever toy he has. When two guys were off on the go-kart or on the big wheel, for that matter, what, because, you know, you got it around the block, probably takes three or four minutes, right? What’d you do to kill time?
George Yeah, I mean…
Jon What was the, what was the secondary thing that you did to kill time waiting? Did you anything?
George I mean, I’m sure there were a lot of things like I remember doing slap palm games when you’re standing there waiting, you know, or you know, just pushing the other kid or telling mama jokes or some shit, you know, just, just kids stuff to mess around and everything, because you really just, like you said, you were waiting for your turn to come up.
Jon There we go. Yeah, sure.
Jon the
George So yeah, it was just something to bide your time in line.
Mo Right.
George We didn’t have cell phones that we could watch Netflix on for damn sure.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Well, I figured as much because that that’s the beauty of our childhood, which is we just made fun out of whatever the hell was handy.
George yeah.
Mo Sounds like.
Mo Yeah.
Jon You know, if you’re just killing time and mama jokes are a viable thing, an activity.
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
George Sure.
Jon What’d you do? Oh, we were just ripping on each other all day. Mamas were on the table. We had a great time. Well, and there’s time to ride a go-kart. That was next.
Mo yeah
George Yeah.
Jon So great.
George I mean, one of the best ones, I remember one of the kids said to the other kid, he’s like, Ooh, I’m glad to get on this go-kart. Cause I just got off your mom and boom, he was off driving.
Mo Oh,
George and
Mo Oh, awesome.
Jon ah and But then he had three minutes to think of a comeback.
Mo Yeah,
Jon So yeah that was the benefit.
Mo yeah, yeah.
George Right. Yeah.
Mo oh awesome
George Well, the final age range that we want to talk about, as you probably have anticipated, is going to be the high school age range.
Mo Yeah.
George Now, we had a little bit of a discussion.
Jon Hmm.
George We’re not going to include cars in this segment, even though a lot of people in this age range, when they turn 16, they’re
Mo Yeah. Mm
Jon Yeah.
George get either gifted a car or allowed to drive the family car as they get their licenses, right?
Mo hmm.
George But we want to stay away from that and keep things a little bit more on the same level that we’ve been talking about. So this is going to include things like mopeds. That’s okay, I think, because it’s…
George You’re not really going to go on the highway with a moped necessarily, especially mopeds back then.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Right.
George They get up to like 20 miles an hour and stuff.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yep.
George um Ten speed bikes, right?
Mo Mm-hmm.
George I mean, it was kind of an evolution from the little dirt bike that you might have had in middle school.
Jon Right. ah Better bikes. Yep.
Mo Yep.
George um And at that time, ten speeds were kind of new. So a lot of people, when I was young, really, really wanted them. There was even a ah moderately decent movie all about people riding 10 speed bikes at that time called Breaking Away that starred Dennis Quaid, very young Dennis Quaid.
Mo Oh, yeah, yeah. Break it away.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Yep.
Jon Yep.
Mo You’re a young discreet. Yeah.
George So I’m just curious, Mo, what stories do you have around anything like that?
Mo Yeah, because I actually, it’s funny, I didn’t learn how to ride a bike until was in high school. Did not know how to ride it, did not know how to ride at all.
Jon Oh, really?
George Okay. Okay.
Jon Huh.
Mo um And as’s one of the things that you get to that age, you’re kind of embarrassed to admit it. You know i mean? Like, you know because most of the other kids my neighborhood knew how to ride a bike. I had no clue. they ever been on a bike.
Jon Yeah.
Mo So my dad was very, probably, probably.
Jon Because, Mo, it’s because you missed out on all the big wheel practice. so you did not ride a bike.
George Right?
Jon Yeah.
Mo So my dad had a friend that was getting rid of a bike. So he got the bike and he actually took me like, We went out at like six o’clock in the morning and he would, he taught me how to ride a bike basically at that point, you know?
Mo So it was like, so I learned, but once I learned how to ride a bike, then I was like, holy crap, this is amazing. Cause he used to walk everywhere. Now I get there twice as fast. um And riding a bike through New York was an experience that in hindsight, I would never have allowed my child to ever do that ever.
Mo Cause didn’t have a helmet.
Jon Why?
Mo no helmet, no safety things.
Jon Okay.
Mo I was weaving in and out traffic. I was jumping up on sidewalks, driving outside, jumping off the sidewalk, going through red lights.
Jon Oh.
Mo It’s, it and pet but everybody was doing, it wasn’t just like, just me being like reckless, but everybody, everybody who rode bikes did exactly the same thing.
Jon That makes it okay.
Mo There was one story. It was like me and my friend, Chris were riding bikes and we’re riding down, you know, down the road, you and this park cars. And he sees a woman, my friend, Chris was ahead of me. He sees a woman, like getting out her car.
Mo So he, as he passed her, he said, there’s another bike coming. She opens door says what?
Jon Okay.
Mo I
Jon e Oh, oh.
George a
Jon Oh.
Mo i was the other bike.
Jon oh
Mo ah So I broke her door, which now also guess I’ve remembered like this, the 10 speeds back then was a Panasonic.
Jon Oh, wow.
Mo I think it was the thing. It was literally steel. It was made out of steel tubing. The thing weighed like 80 pounds. You know, it was a tank. It broke her door. My bike was fine, actually.
Jon Wow.
George wow
Mo um She was very upset. But Chris is like, I told you somebody else was coming. What are you doing on the bike? I’m like, I don’t know. We just got bikes and rode off and didn’t tell her. It didn’t say anything because this is New York. She’s not going see her ever again.
Mo You know, without seeing that same person, like almost zero. but um But yeah, just in respect, though, but and after that, mean, I just rode bikes just from that point going forward.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo Like, that was like my my favorite way of getting around because I thought running just sucked. And so riding a bike is way, way better.
Jon yeah
Jon So with once we moved up to like the 10 speeds and stuff, what kind of shifters did you have? Because I know there was the one that had the shifters like up on the the steering wheel.
Mo Yeah, the handlebars.
Jon And then later I had one that was like a like a kick shifter. There was like a go kick down on something almost like a like a motorcycle would have like a kick shifter, you know, like one of those things.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Did you have any what kind of shifter did you have on your 10 speed?
Mo Oh, mine just had the the levers that were on the tube, the main tube that was, that’s all I had.
George Yeah.
Jon on the tube.
George Yeah.
Jon Yep. Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah. I always wanted the kick shifter one because ah one kid had one. I’m like, that’s like a motorcycle. It’s so cool, you know, because it was, but then you had to, you had to like become a low key engineer to figure out how to, the, the linkage and all the parts when you were greasing the chain or chain would come off is what would happen to me all the time.
Mo Yeah.
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Nope.
Mo Yeah, I mean, I learned a lot about just how to take care of it, you know, how to fix things when things got broken. you know, again, it was like, and those and the nice thing is those are things you could do yourself without too many issues.
Jon Mm hmm. Nope.
Mo Like, you know, as long as it wasn’t like a major repair or something like that.
Jon Sure. Nope.
Mo The only thing I remember is that when it rained, your bicycle brakes were pretty much useless. Like, they just didn’t work.
George Oh, yeah.
Jon because they’re just They’re grabbing the wheel.
George yeah
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah, they just did not work at all.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Did that stop us? No.
Jon No.
Mo And again, hindsight, I’m surprised I survived. had no idea how I did manage that.
Jon Go through the puddles. Yeah. All right. Well, let’s move us on to the next injury. So for me, so go karts were actually, I didn’t have that in middle school. I didn’t have the the buddy next door, but look, I grew up rural. So I was driving young.
Jon Like I was driving my dad’s like old beater farm pickup.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon around our property when I was, you know, 12, 13, whatever, because what am I going to hit?
Mo Yeah, that’s pretty normal.
Jon And this truck is a piece of crap. The tree stumps are a piece of crap. It doesn’t matter. Right. And so I learned how to drive somewhat. um And so one summer I got almost, it’s funny, George, you almost exactly described is just junior high. This is like there are the ah middle between middle school and high school.
Jon I got go-kart almost exactly like you described, right?
George Ah, yeah.
Mo oh nice.
Jon The old one. It’s the rod iron.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It’s the Tecumseh one and a half horsepower, two-stroke motor on the back.
Mo Ooh.
George Right.
Jon like the And there’s nothing on the motor. It’s just a motor bolted to the wheel is all it is, you know?
George Right.
Jon And so the road that connected everything was what they call shell rock road. So if, if you didn’t grow up in the South, you might not know shell rock is basically they crumbled up shells from the beach and from around.
Jon And it makes this very, very fine powder. The cool thing about it is when you go down it on a bicycle or a car or a go-kart, it leaves a dukes a hazard cloud of dust behind you.
Jon Like you would never seen.
George yep
Jon And it’s it just it looks like you’re laying down smoke out of Spy Hunter. You know, it’s just like a special skill. And that was one of the coolest things when I would drive this thing around. Now, my some of my buddies had like those big ATV three wheelers and stuff.
Mo e
Jon We couldn’t afford that. But my dad was able to get me this used go-kart. And so the trick that we would do that I loved this is the payoff for the green machine with the fish tailing, right?
Jon Is the, ah the brake on the, uh, the go-kart was one wheel. And so it was a back, wheel it was the the drive wheel.
George Right.
Jon when you hit the brake, and so you could slide real hard in one direction. If you cut the steering wheel left and hit the brake, you’d spin around.
Mo okay
Jon And, you’re already a cloud of dust. When you spin around, it puts up this giant plume of dust. And so we were doing this trick where we were going back and forth up the road, trying to lay down the most clouds of the shell rock.
Jon It’s not smoke. It’s just, you know dust.
Mo Yeah, yeah, just…
Jon Uh, to be impressive. And so he would take his ATV down and do a spin around and come as, oh, that was good. And I would go down. And so the story then, like we got your mom’s perspective on your toe, George, is the story of my buddy on the ATV said, so the one time you went down the road, you were barreling down there, this giant cloud of smoke, and you didn’t come back out of it.
Jon like
George Oh.
Jon The dust cleared. And he’s like, well, where, where’s John? So I drove up there. So I fishtailed, I cut it really hard and it went flipping, nose over ass.
Mo oh Oh.
Jon Now, in my mind, I flipped 20 times. Probably I flipped once, I don’t know. But it was enough that my elbows, my face ground on this Shell Rock Road.
Mo Road Rash.
Jon the The spark plug broke off even with the top of the motor.
Mo Oh, right.
George Wow.
Jon because it was exposed, right? And that go-kart was never the same again. i had to go to the doctor and I had i’d wear an eye patch for a while because it was like my eye was okay, but all around my eye was swollen and everything.
George Yeah.
Jon But I didn’t care. The only thing I cared about was when can I get the go-kart fixed?
Mo Yeah.
Jon I want to go again.
George yeah
Jon Because you borrowed the one from your buddy. you know There’s something about it’s almost a car. It’s motorized.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I can hit the gas. I’m not pedaling. Like you said, Mo, you know can I get enough momentum on this big wheel? well You don’t have to. As long as you got… and And mine, I think, was like a mix of oil and gas.
Jon It was like like a chainsaw motor or something.
Mo Yeah, like a chainsaw.
Jon Yeah. ah but It was so freeing. So, and I can only take it up and down the road.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I couldn’t take it out in the woods. It wasn’t an all, you know, a four wheel drive or anything, but that, like you said, you can go down the road in two minutes and get so much farther away. Like you were riding your bike and getting there.
Jon I loved it. I didn’t even care that it nearly killed me. I loved it. And it was never the same again. We got the spark plug out and got replaced, but like it kind of sputtered a bit and, probably Probably the next year or two that I got my first vehicle to drive and I forgot all about it, but it was awesome.
Mo Yeah, I know what you mean, though, about having that freedom. Because that’s learning how to ride a bike really did. Because, yeah, mean, New York had mass transit.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo It had all this stuff. But it was like me my friends would, like, get on our bikes, and then there was no limit.
Jon Sure.
Mo Like, didn’t have to worry about train stops or bus stops or whatever. You know, we wanted to go to this store. We could just ride to that store, you know.
Jon Where you want, when you want.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo We go when you go when we wanted to, you know, all you do is you had this big ass U-locks because, pipes you know, stealing bikes was a big deal in New York.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Like that.
Mo So you had to have this like, even though my bike is not worth anything, but still, you know, you didn’t want to stuck without it. so you know, but we even had like, ah we brought like patch kits for our tires and things like that.
Jon Yeah, sure.
Mo So like, you know, if we got flat tire, we could fix it in the road, you know, and they said it was just that idea that, you know, I’m independent and I could do what I want.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Yep.
Mo That was the biggest thing about it.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jon I could throw to you there. Is that easier to crash into?
George Yeah, yeah.
Jon the Yeah. to Yeah. It’s hard to overestimate the value of that independence that you’ve got.
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jon I mean, you’re at that age too, where you’re allowed to have that independence. It’s not weird that you’re young. It’s like, oh I’m in my early teens. It’s cool. Did you have any experiences like that growing up in your high high school years, George?
George I mean, yeah, we did. um you know, that… For me, it was, um, high school was, I got a, so I started, I learned how to drive a car very early on, like nine years old, 10 years old, something like that was when dad, uh, let me actually drive it younger ages.
Mo she she
Jon Okay.
George He put me on his lap and I would steer.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George And then as I got tall, I could reach pedals and stuff. And he always let me drive. Um, well, he probably, he was drunk at the time as far as I can remember, but, uh,
Jon You’re the best choice.
George In high school, there was still that age when i wasn’t quite old enough to drive by myself yet because I couldn’t afford couldn’t you know age into a license.
Jon Okay.
George ah So I still needed transportation. And um as I’ve talked about on the podcast in the past, we did own a small convenience store sized grocery store.
Mo yeah
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George And I fully understand that when I tell this story about the emotional trauma that I suffered from this, it’s going to come across as a, um, a snooty well-off person complaining about shit that they should not complain about given the situation.
Mo First world problem kind deal.
George Yeah. Not just first world. like stupid world problem, but, um,
Mo Okay. sir All right I’m okay with that. Yeah.
George in this grocery store, the one thing my father started very early on was doing a neighborhood Christmas party. Now, part of the Christmas party was for the employees.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Like he would have a big buffet and all the employees and their families would come to the store. We would lock the doors and they would get to eat and celebrate together, you know, for that.
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George Cause he only closed the store on, um, for part of the day on two days of the year, Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was it.
Jon and
George Uh, so The other part of it, after all the employees got their meals and were happy and everything, well, then we would have a Christmas party for the neighborhood, the families and the kids.
George And very early on, one of the things my father arranged was somehow he got some local business or something to donate 10-speed bicycles, a boy’s and a girl’s 10-speed bicycle to do giveaways for during the party.
Mo Nice.
Jon Oh, nice.
Mo Sweet. hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George um And that became the highlight of the Don’s Grocery Christmas party for the neighborhood.
Mo Oh, yeah, I can imagine.
Jon Heck yeah.
George ah He would also have a Santa Claus out there and we’d give out little baggies full of candy and stuff for the kids, you know, that kind of thing.
Mo Nice.
George But the 10 speed bikes, that was it. um At the time, I still had my original middle school dirt bike, which was a Kmart Huffy dirt bike with a little number 10 placard on the front of it.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo <unk> yeah Oh, wow.
Jon Yep.
George Banana kind of seat, but not the banana seat, just the like the wider, longer kind of foam seat, not the triangle bullshit. I hate those seats. Anyway, I rode that thing so long that by the time I finally had to get rid of it, the metal frame of the seat had broken because it had just rusted out for years.
Jon I can picture
Mo oh wow
Jon Wow.
George And the reason why, and this was where the emotional trauma came in for me, My dad gave away two 10-speed bikes every year for my entire life that we owned that grocery store, and I never once got a 10-speed bike, no matter how many times I asked for one.
George I wanted a 10-speed bike so desperately that i would i would any little ploy or scheme or anything I could come up with, trying to use my mother to get it or my half-sister when she would come visit on vacation or you know show my dad that Breaking Away movie or so anything I could think of,
Mo Mm-hmm.
George To get him to understand how much his son not only wanted but needed 10-speed bike, I was willing to try and do. It never happened. And I’ll admit, i hated those fucking Christmas parties every single time because I was a young, selfish child who only saw everybody else getting the thing that he wanted.
Jon oh
Mo No, you’re normal kid. all kids think that, you know.
Jon Right.
George Eh, I was an asshole. There’s no going around it. I’m still kind of an asshole today. I’m just a little bit slower on the draw. But I think…
Jon No, no.
George Yeah.
Jon Oh, come on.
George i I think that ah to this day, if I remember correctly, I don’t think I’ve ever had a 10-speed bicycle. So I still have that baggage like in the back of my mind somewhere.
Jon Still.
George I’m too old and fat now to ride one anyway. But… I always wanted a 10 speed bike. So that’s my high school Gen X ride story.
Jon Oh.
George I didn’t get injured on a toenail or friend with a broken arm. I just was emotionally traumatized, maybe self-induced, but still it it was rough.
Jon Right.
Mo I mean, it must be tough, though. Yeah, I can see as a kid seeing your parents giving away something that you want year after year.
George Yeah.
Mo I can see how that would get to you as a kid.
Jon Right.
Mo Yeah, I totally see that.
Jon Right.
George Yeah, it definitely did.
Jon Right. Now they couldn’t give it to you. It was a free promotional thing, but you, he could have bought you one is what you’re you’re like.
Mo Right. It wouldn’t look right to give it to him.
George Right, no, I couldn’t, I wasn’t eligible. I just wanted to, yeah.
Jon ah You see how you know, these kids want one. I don’t want one too. cause I’m a kid. Yeah.
George Just tell whoever the bike guy is, give us three that year.
Jon Yeah. One more.
George That’s all. Nope.
Jon Oh, I still, you should go get yourself a 10 speed. At least rent yourself a 10 speed. You should, you know, get that out, get it out of your system.
Mo And pretend you’re breaking away, you know?
George i think I think I’m good not being on one. I don’t need any more.
Jon Okay.
George At this point, I don’t know how fast toenails grow back. So I’m good.
Mo Ah, good point.
Jon ah You might be worse than a toenail when you’re riding 10-speed today.
Mo Yeah.
Jon All right.
Mo yeah
Jon We have gone through the the level ups, you said, George, of of our youth as we were you know elementary and middle and high school years and junior high, talked about and And this last segment is before we wind it up.
Mo She, she, she, she, she.
Jon We want to talk a little bit about kind of what kids get and have as ride on vehicles today. what how much of those How much of those things are are still around or how they changed or what is new?
Jon And i mean, it starts with a general Gen X old man shakes fist at cloud thing, which is I think that probably kids just don’t go outside as much to need or want these things.
Jon Not entirely, not completely. I still go out, you know, in the afternoon on Christmas day and still see kids on their bicycles running around the neighborhood. But then I don’t see them the next day is the thing. I don’t see them out there on those, on the, on those bikes or whatever that they get. And I wonder how it’s changed now from when we were kids.
Mo Yeah, I’m looking at now, like, with especially with the kids with the e-bikes and scooters are a huge thing, on and motorized scooters and all that stuff. It almost seems like those are more a to B point things and go have fun on them sort of things. Like, they seem more utilitarian to them, perhaps.
Mo Like, you know, this is to get me to…
George Well, it depends on the age range you’re talking about too, right?
Mo That’s true, that’s true, that’s true.
Jon yeah
Mo you know, if you’re a little kid, it’s all fun, right?
George Yeah.
Mo It doesn’t matter.
George And I think when you’re a little kid with the way parenting is looked at today, it’s a lot more difficult for the kids because as John, you said very early on, it was our world.
Mo Yeah.
George End of school, start of your evening, get the hell out of the house as Mo’s father made him do and go live your own life and then come back at dinner.
Mo Mm-hmm. Yeah.
George Now, The only way the kid gets to go out with the bicycle or the skateboard or the skates at those younger ages is with the parents in tow.
Jon Yeah, right.
Mo True, true.
George And parents are very busy and they’ve got a lot of stuff to do. So I don’t think they put as much time into going out with those kids. Our parents didn’t have to put it in that time. They just literally, here’s a skateboard, get the fuck out.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George ah These days they don’t have to do that. So I think, John, that may be why you don’t see it as much.
Jon Probably, yeah.
Mo it could be
Jon A lot of the ones that I see almost are status symbols for the parents instead of the kids.
George e
Jon Like, I remember, not not super recently, but in the last 10 years or so, I’d go to a park or whatever.
Mo like what oh yeah
Jon I’d be out geocaching. For a while, I was super into geocaching, so I’d be in a lot of parks. And there would be parents out, and they would get their kids these elaborate, motorized, ride-on,
Jon Escalade or Hummer or whatever.
Mo Yeah.
Jon And the kid is like four and they park the kid in it and they’re not even sure where to push the pedal and they don’t understand that it’s a vehicle they can drive.
George yeah
Jon But it’s like the parents got it for them because they wanted the other parents to see they got them this fancy ride on.
Mo Maybe.
Jon Or maybe they’re remembering what they had as a kid and trying to project that onto something that their little kid doesn’t want.
Mo Yeah.
Jon ah But the the trend is most of the ones I see these days are motorized or a motor you add to a bicycle or like you said, the moped is a thing.
Mo Yeah, my dad, that was like one of his things that he would be damned if he was going buy us unmotorized anything.
Jon Really?
Mo Because he says the whole purpose is to get outside and get you exercise.
George Sure.
Mo You know, he sees little kid riding on a little motorized Jeep thing, and he’s like, when they, at the back, when we were kids, they went ridiculously slow, right? i mean, they they were not like as speedy.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
George sure
Jon And super expensive.
Mo They were super expensive, and he’s like,
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Get off your ass and go put some effort into this here. you know, I mean, it’s it’ not that hard. And you’re at the age where he’s like, you should this is you should want to do this. You shouldn’t want a motorized thing. But but you agree, though.
Jon I
Mo You do see a lot of motorized things. um Also, I think as society, we’re getting more spread out, too. So maybe the motorized needs to help kids, people get further than they used to have to go. I don’t know.
Jon don’t know if I buy that, but maybe.
Mo I’m i’m a little speculating a little bit here.
Jon Could be.
Mo know?
George Yeah, I don’t know where they’re going, but I do know we but we bought our son one of those motorized Jeep things.
Mo Yeah, that’s true.
George Now, we didn’t get the blinged out Escalade-like version.
Mo Hmm?
Jon Mm-hmm.
George We literally got whatever the the Sears Roebuck catalog thing was. And it was, I remember it was a blue and it was kind of styled like a Jeep a little bit.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And he rode that for like, a Christmas season and a summer season. And then it sat in our little storage shed in the back of the yard for the rest of the time until I got rid of it.
Mo he
George And I don’t even remember how I got rid of it, but I think that’s part of the problem is when I got my big wheel, we rode the shit out of that thing for like two years until it broke.
Mo Yeah. Do you actually wear the where the tires out? Wear the plastic on the tires out?
Jon Wear the wheel.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah. Like the back of my skateboard.
Mo It’s all cracked.
George When I had my
Jon Just wear it down.
Mo Yeah.
Jon because the wheels were plastic, too.
George Yeah, my Huffy dirt bike, you know, rode it until the seat broke, right?
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo No.
George And I think now things are just a little bit more transitory and the kids get distracted a little bit easier and they find other things. And even to this day, they’re mostly inside anyway because the electronics take them to that direction.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George So… Yeah, i mean I don’t think we’re going to see the renaissance in that area like we have with, say, retro gaming, where now not just we love retro gaming, but even the younger generations are really drawn to it.
Jon No, probably not.
Mo no
Jon Sure. Yeah.
George I don’t think you’re going to see ah big resurgences of scooters or big wheels or green machines coming back into the marketplace.
Jon Hmm. Yeah. i I went looking because I’m like, oh, can I still get a green machine or big wheel or whatever?
Mo Can you?
Jon You can get a big wheel, a 50th anniversary big wheel, run like a hundred bucks or more.
Mo What?
George Wow.
Jon I told you the big wheel when it came out was like $9.99. Like I saw um a magazine ad, right? Even for inflation, that’s like $35 today. No, this is still triple that.
Mo wow
Jon hundred bucks
George Yeah.
Jon $100.
Jon It’s almost something that someone would buy and put in their man cave in the corner and go, oh, here’s my trophy big wheel that I want to remember.
George Right.
Jon not something you’re but hundred bucks. You’re going kid to wear down the wheels. I don’t think you are. i don’t think, I think the fact they still make them is because we remember them not because kids want or need them or are going to ride them.
Mo Yeah. Yeah,
George Oh,
Mo can’t remember the last time I saw a commercial for one of those.
Jon Yeah.
Jon No, no, no, I don’t think so.
Mo You know, for anything, anything like that. you remember those hoverboards that came out?
Jon Yeah.
Mo And they’re not really hoverboards. There’s just like just two wheels on the sides and you stand in the middle and you lean, I guess, to do it.
Jon yeah
George oh yeah, yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah. A lot of fun on YouTube videos, those things.
Mo They used to catch fire or something like they had some issue with them.
Jon Yeah. Like you couldn’t take them on a plane. Yeah.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George Yeah.
Mo um And those things, don’t know, I see a lot those, like the hardware, I saw one that’s like a big, giant, single wheel that the person like straddled almost and rode.
Jon Yep.
George Yeah, the Uniwheel.
Mo You know, we’ll, that’s the one.
Jon Yep. I saw somebody riding one of those down the side of the highway two days ago. I’m like, and it’s funny.
Mo Yeah. One, they go just, yeah, and they go fast.
Jon We’re about to do this episode. I’m like, oh, coincidental.
Mo Holy crap, those things can move, though, and those things.
Jon Yeah. It’s going like 25 miles an hour.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah, look a little scary.
Jon It’s cooking.
Mo And but now it’s like you also see like e-bikes on the streets.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Now you could rent, you know temporary rent them to get around.
Jon Mm-hmm. Birds or whatever.
Mo They even have the electric scooters you could rent to get around cities and stuff like that.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo So, you know, it’s it’s different.
Jon Yeah.
Mo ah I mean, John, you went to Europe like for conventions, right? You went like Amsterdam.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Do you remember the train station there?
Jon Yeah.
Mo i remember the train station had this place you could lock your bike up and it was the size of a football field.
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo This thing was huge.
Jon That’s right. Yeah.
Mo And at the multi-level and
Jon Multi-level, multi-level, ground level. And then there’s like a four foot deck where there’s more bikes because it it wasn’t enough.
Mo Yeah. And every day it was just hundreds of bikes because people rode the bike to the train, took the train to work or school, came back, got back in the bike to ride home.
Jon Yeah. Hundreds, hundreds of bikes. Yeah.
Jon Yep.
Mo And I’m like, don’t know, just seemed like a much healthier lifestyle, I guess.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo ah Because they actually had like these bike lanes that were like separated, that had their own lights.
Jon Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Mo And I mean, they were, they were they seriously.
Jon Well, they plan for it because yeah the like the urban planning, they plan, well, we have lots of bikes.
Mo Yeah.
Jon We need lanes for them. Yeah. You know, i often thought Segways, you know, those weird ride on inertia.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon I thought those came around probably because Gen Xers were getting out of an age where they missed those ride on toys because they never seemed particularly practical or operable, but they looked
Mo Oh, I see.
George Oh yeah, probably.
Mo Yeah.
Jon the kind of fun I remember getting on a green machine or getting on a go-kart or something, you know?
Mo Right. Well, didn’t the guy who invented segues die?
George Yeah.
Mo Like, his segway went off the edge of a cliff?
Jon is that right?
George I mean, there’s so many urban legends around that damn thing.
Mo Yeah. Oh, that’s true.
George Who knows what it has?
Mo I’m gonna look it up, though.
George I mean there’s the Paul Blart movies that highlighted them so well in the early 2000s or whatever.
Jon right. Yeah.
Mo Mall Cop.
George yeah People, certain cities, I think even still today have Segway tours where but everybody gets on a Segway and goes around a small part of the town or something.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George I think, John, you’re probably right that they tried to tap into a nostalgic itch for our market because they knew we were getting to the disposable income ages.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George i I just think that, like I was talking about, I don’t think we have as much nostalgia for for those items to be owned now as we do for other things like our toys, like the, the retro video game, Atari 2600, or maybe the rock’em sock’em robot game that you might’ve had as a kid or something like that.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Yep.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yep.
Mo Yeah.
George ah For some reason, those things feel more natural to want to reacquire more so than a conveyance when we were a young person, like a bicycle or a big wheel or a scooter or a skateboard or anything.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Maybe it’s just because we graduated to cars and cars are now that thing for us like they are for pretty much every other generation.
Jon Yeah.
Mo yeah
Jon Mm-hmm.
George But it doesn’t mean we can’t.
Jon We don’t need some ride-on toy.
Mo yeah
Jon Yeah. to To get us around anymore.
George Yeah, doesn’t mean we can’t spend an hour enjoying talking about those things.
Jon Yeah.
George I just don’t want to buy another one.
Jon Hell yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah. Fair, fair point.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I’d be curious to hear what our fourth listeners have to say.
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon You know, are there any particular ride-ons that, that we didn’t talk about that you remember that was,
Mo I’d like to ah he hear some good injury stories. I me come on. That’s what we were talking about.
Jon well, I’m sure those are coming.
George yeah
Jon That’s a, we’ve certainly inspired some injury stories. Yeah. So drop us a line and let us know podcast at genxgrownup.com. We love hearing and from you. I think though, I think we’re all recovered from those injuries before we get any new ones. I’m going to wrap up this episode.
Jon ah Don’t worry. We’ll be back in two weeks with another one though. Next week is a standard edition of our show. I fucked up because i didn’t do the patron patrons.
Mo yeah did do You think Todd, right?
Jon Yeah. Yeah. I forgot to do that. ah But that is going to wrap it up for this episode. Before I leave, I want to thank another brand new Patreon supporter, Todd H.
Jon Another fan of the show who went over to GenXgrownup.com slash Patreon, opened up his wallet and his heart, filled out a few fields and gave a regular monthly contribution.
Mo Very cool.
Jon As little as a dollar a month is all it takes. It really keeps us cooking, keeps the wind in our wings as they have a good song in there somewhere.
Mo ccc
Jon Is there song? We thank you, Todd. We certainly appreciate you and everyone who is one of our generous Patreon supporters. ah Couldn’t and wouldn’t do it without you. So much, much appreciated.
Jon With that, then put a bow on this episode. We’ll be back in two weeks with another backtrack. Of course, next week, the standard edition of our show. Until then, I am John George. Thank you so much for being here, man.
George Yes, sir.
Jon Mo, you know, i appreciate you.
Mo Always fun then.
Jon Fourth listener, you’re the one we all appreciate most of all, though. We can’t wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.
George See you guys.
Mo Take care, everybody.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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