{"id":56,"date":"2011-10-21T12:49:35","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T12:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dave0.nfshost.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2011\/10\/21\/ahh-the-dangerous-old-days\/"},"modified":"2011-10-21T12:49:35","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T12:49:35","slug":"ahh-the-dangerous-old-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2011\/10\/ahh-the-dangerous-old-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahh, the dangerous old days!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys | Cracked.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cracked.com\/article_19481_the-8-most-wildly-irresponsible-vintage-toys.html\">The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys | Cracked.com<\/a><br \/>\nI&#8217;m kind of divided here.  On the one hand, in the clear light of 21st C day, these toys are totally *insane.*  On the other, I was born in the mid-1970s and grew up in the suburbs outside Detroit, and I *remember* kids just a little older than me casting their own lead soldiers, for example.  As middle schoolers we&#8217;d buy calcium carbide (used to power the Austin Magic Pistol in the embedded video) from the hardware store and make acetylene lamps from baby food jars and fire-balls with party balloons and soda bottles (I haven&#8217;t the foggiest what the approved use of calcium carbide was in the 1980s; it isn&#8217;t like I grew up in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Calcium_carbide#Carbide_lamps\">coal country<\/a>).<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/assVXLQ2Lvc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nThe final bit of nostalgia: The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_Laboratory\">Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory<\/a>.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.americanmemorabilia.com\/pics\/31568_01_dt.jpg\" width=400 align=left hspace=10 vspace=15><br \/>\nDid I own one of these?  Sweet Monkey Jesus *NO*!  But I *did* take to rock collecting in early elementary, which lead to my mom giving me her old rock collections&#8211;mostly bought as little pre-boxed souvenir sets while on family vacations (she grew up in the West).  Right in the middle of these was a little off-white chunk of stone; it could have been an especially pale chip of concrete, except for it&#8217;s red, all-caps label: <B>URANIUM<\/B><br \/>\nNo lie.  Welcome to the Atomic Age in America.<br \/>\nI haven&#8217;t the foggiest where that rock set wound up.  Part of my *really* wants to know, but the rest just hopes it isn&#8217;t kicking around my basement office where I sit typing most days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys | Cracked.com I&#8217;m kind of divided here. On the one hand, in the clear light of 21st C day, these toys are totally *insane.* On the other, I was born in the mid-1970s and grew up in the suburbs outside Detroit, and I *remember* kids just a little &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2011\/10\/ahh-the-dangerous-old-days\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ahh, the dangerous old days!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}