For you old farts like me.

Dean

Dean

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Dean
I got this in an email today, thought I would share it with you.

"Born before 1980
TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !!
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank
while they carried us.
They took aspirin, ! ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can,
and didn't get tested for diabetes.
Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright
colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets
and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special
treat.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO
ONE actually died from this.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop
with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we
were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then
ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games
at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there
were no lawsuits from these accidents.
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not
live in us forever.
We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays,made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the
door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those
who didn't had to ! learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was
unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem
solvers and inventors ever!
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new
ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS!
Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors,
doesn't it?!:D
 
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and in that era, mothers could only expect to raise 3 out of 5 children to maturity with out something happening to them.

but Yes, we some how got carried away.
 
Dean said:
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Click to expand...

Garden hose? We drank from the streams and ponds with fish, salamanders and unidentifiable green slime in them. No one ever got sick.

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, knew how to swim.
Dinner meant everyone sat down at the table with no interruptions until dinner was done. It could take hours. After an appropriate time period, you politely asked permission to get up. A denial was accepted honorably. First ones up volunteered to take plates and wash dishes. It was fun.
We had real board games and puzzles...for rainy days.
If we made a scene, we got to measure our length on the ground in the middle of the store in front of everyone. It was imbarrasin' and hurt so you never did that again. No one ever called the cops.
When we got hurt, we just kept on playing hard. You learned not to report scrapes and bangs to parents. Emergency room? Whatzat? They just dumped rubbing alcohol on it, wiped with a rag, slapped a bandaid on it and you were good to go. Out the door you went to play hard like nothing had happened.


Leaky half sunk rowboat; check.
Paddles; only one, cracked, check.
Crew; 8 kids, check.
Supervision; none, check.
Destination; island across deep water, check.
Life jackets and emergency floatation devices; somewhere in the barn, too much trouble, check.
Power system; paddler, standing up, check. (Try not to hit anyone in the head with the paddle while switching sides)
Emergency procedures; what if it sinks or flips over? swim for it.
Allaboard!

We lived.
 
Ah...the go carts we made. Yep, didn't learn about brakes until too late. Coming down the hill in front of our house going to fast, look ma no brakes, couldn't make the corner, got launched off the bicycle ramp, upon impact the whole cart just exploded into a bazillion toothpicks. Get up and do it again.

I was about 8 when I decided to start my own bike mx shop. You could tell who's bike I worked on by how it wobbled, wouldn't stop, wouldn't start, or handle bars always sliding down and forward. I was coming down the big hill when my handlebars twisted freely because I forgot to tighten the nut at the gooseneck. Suck it up, lesson learned, do it again.

I salvaged a 1935 Schwinn from a creek and with new tubes and tires declared it good as new. Any tree substituted for brakes. Rode it every day for 3 years. People learned to carve a path when they saw me a-comin'.

Me an Ti, a big Tahitian friend, were always battling for the tetherball poles. We drew more red than a blood bank just getting to the poles. A ball in the face intentionally just made the game more interesting. Not a teacher in sight.

Every teacher and every principal had a paddle with holes drilled into the business end. Didn't whine about it 'cause we knew it was just punishment. God forbid anyone should tell their parents they got whacked by the teacher, doing that would guarantee a 2nd round.

Using someone's donated belt (who wore belts? any kid who showed up wearing a belt was automatically the donor) we would tie any and all comers to the merry-go-round by their back belt loop. Round and round, faster and faster all the kids pushing as hard as they could, we'd see how fast we could get it going before centrifugal force won. It's how we learned physics. They don't plant trees next to merry-go-rounds any more.

Going on impromptu campouts was okay because someone was a boy scout. Now that I think about it, maybe they used to be a boy scout, maybe they had thought about being a boy scout, who knows, it didn't really matter. As long as we had blankets and some rope we were going. Never heard of a sleeping bag. Length of campout determined by how much food someone brought. Marshmallows and oreos counted as food. It was the first time I actually cooked and ate a rattlesnake. We all became boy scouts when it was time.

The time I snapped a mango tree and fell 20 feet or when Dean got glue in his eye trying to patch an over inflated tire or how Dale impaled himself on a bamboo stalk or when Robert fell 30 feet onto sand in a lava tube with no way out but by a rope held with all the might of two other boys it didn't even occur to us to tell our parents or any adult for that matter. If you could get back up, you got back up. If you couldn't get back up we first thought of getting our story straight--then, maybe, we'd tell our parents. We got real inventive at hiding cuts and bumps. A shiner pretty much meant the gig was up.

Swamped rowboat? Heck, I had a whole fleet of them. Try two kids, he bails I row, trying to row a mile against a 15 kt wind an hour before sundown and one kid whining that we'll miss our ride to tonight's valentine party where that girl you've always wanted to meet will fer sure be there.

3 kids canoeing in the coastal swamps miles from anywhere with one P&J sandwich between us. A water moc drops into the canoe and it's like the 3 stooges trying to swat the beast without hitting each other or breaking the paddle or puncturing the canoe.

Treeforts were are specialty. An hour walk past all signs of humans through a forest, up 30 feet, foot rungs nailed with a single nail all the way up, fort made with whatever we could find. Quality of wood? No such thing! Everything can be used.

Thanks for the memories....
 
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Richard said:
merry-go-round
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:eek: :eek: I forgot about those things. Elementary school playgrounds were more dangerous than king of the hill on the upper unloading ramp in the barn or building huge (to the barn roof) haybail castle walls.

The big merry-go-round could hold at least 150 kids. How we killed ourselves propelling that monster. You'd grab a bar and pushed until you fell or struggled up on it then someone else would take your place until they fell. Getting drug around after falling was considered poor form. No wimpy wood chip surface for panzy kids to fall on. We were real kids. We had concrete with partially embedded loose gravel for a high abrasion surface to fall on.

The small merry-go-round would hold about 35 kids. Of course we tended to not load it up most of the time. It was officially an astronaut training tool. NASA has a similar device called it a centrifuge. The bearings were very well greased and it had 4 hold bars on it in the general shape of a Gemini capsule. We would load 12 kids on it (3 per bar) and put the biggest kids we could find on g-force duty and spin it up. The first 8 were allowed to wimp out. #1-4 usually got off safely though moderately dizzy. #5-8 were very dizzy and we consistently got at least one yakker out of the batch. #9-12, simply held on for dear life..it was just survival at that point. Walking was near impossible for several minutes afterward. Occasionally we would lose one of the 4. Falling off was almost a guaranteed trip to the nurses office and usually took down one of the g-force spinners. It was considered an honor to be one of the remaining two for the high g ride to the end. It was brutal.

The big steel pipe teeter-totter... Did you know one of those can hold about 15 kids per side during an outmass the other side game? Of course the winning side would often bail out leaving the other side in freefall. You did NOT want to be on the low side when everyone else bailed particularly if you were in the seat on the end of the stick...it was a catapult at that point. Holding the handle once you were going up simply meant you were in for an extremely violent landing when everyone on the other side slammed into the ground and fell off. More than one ended up in a handstand on the handle when it stopped going up. It was safer to get thrown off at the top.

The big swing set was obviously parachute landing training. Beginner stuff.

We were all future astronauts destined for the moon so we started our training early! I'm still surprised no one ever got seriously hurt. Winded good and skinned alive but never really injured.
 
Oh, I forgot about the really big merry-go-rounds. What were they thinking when they came up with that? You could fit the whole school on those. IIRC, it took too many kids to get it going so it sat mostly unused until we could gather enough daredevils to make it worthwhile. I did see some vivid green stuff come out some of the weaker kids.:vomit:

Getting drug (in the dirt, stirring up a cloud of dust) was really bad form. If you can't figure out it's a lost battle to climb back onboard and you still hang on, well, you're dumber than a box o rocks....

I saw a many a kid get hurt on the see saw. I saw a girl get tossed like a rag doll when everyone on her side bailed. She went up, went weightless, came back down, and went back up, and then SMACK into a hard landing. The whole time she held on even though at times she was only connected by one hand. I remember laughing 'til it hurt. Then I saw how hurt she was and I felt real bad.:(

Jumpin' off the hay loft was basic training.
 
Richard said:
Jumpin' off the hay loft was basic training.
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Floor to roof peak in our barn was about 30 or 35ft. We built some seriously fun huge castles in there. Turrets to the ceiling were dirt simple no brainers. We also built walls two bails thick to the top. Tie bails between the two bail walls were critical. When you were touching the rafters and the wall you were standing on shifted, it either stopped in some precarious position or you knew what was going to happen next. Drop the bail you're holding and ride it down until it started breaking up then jump and hope for the best. The kids building down at the bottom ran for their lives. We dug ourselves out from under hundreds of pounds of hay and started rebuilding. That would kill any kid nowadays.

King of the hill was a rough game in our barn. You would climb up the hay pile to the unloading ramp on the 3rd level. The kings would grab your arms and haul you across the top and throw you off into space on the other side. Usually you tumbled down the hay pile, occasionally you fell to the single layer of loose haybails on the floor. Haybail whips (a loop of bailing twine around a handful of hay) stung something awful when delivered across your shoulders.
 
Pigpiles, horseback rides from Dad, driving the car! on Dad's lap, airplane rides, tree swings, tag and hide and go seek till way after dark.
Different times back then.
 
My parents wouldn't allow me to have anything with a motor. So now my kids have go carts, snowmobiles, motorcycles, an old jeep, and an airplane to play with. Video games and TV never really caught on at my house - we'd rather build stuff and drive/fly it.
 
fgcason said:
Floor to roof peak in our barn was about 30 or 35ft. We built some seriously fun huge castles in there. Turrets to the ceiling were dirt simple no brainers. We also built walls two bails thick to the top. Tie bails between the two bail walls were critical. When you were touching the rafters and the wall you were standing on shifted, it either stopped in some precarious position or you knew what was going to happen next. Drop the bail you're holding and ride it down until it started breaking up then jump and hope for the best. The kids building down at the bottom ran for their lives. We dug ourselves out from under hundreds of pounds of hay and started rebuilding. That would kill any kid nowadays.

King of the hill was a rough game in our barn. You would climb up the hay pile to the unloading ramp on the 3rd level. The kings would grab your arms and haul you across the top and throw you off into space on the other side. Usually you tumbled down the hay pile, occasionally you fell to the single layer of loose haybails on the floor. Haybail whips (a loop of bailing twine around a handful of hay) stung something awful when delivered across your shoulders.
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Like, wow! Our king of the hill games I often thought were brutal but nothing compared to yours. I never thought of whipping the 'serfs'.

Since the subject is now competitve team games I'd like to turn your attention to playing war. Strategy and tactics and types of armaments and style of bunkers and tunnels were only limited by our imagination. We had very active and devious imaginations. Treatment of prisoners was inspired by WWII movies. The kids that cried were the easiest to break but their commanders knew that so made sure the wimps didn't know anything.

If we had enough kids some games would last for weeks. Going home for dinner or coming home after school you'd have to be careful to avoid enemy patrols or booby traps.
 
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All of this before 12; driving the tractor plowing, discing, spring toothing and then planting the fields. Many days riding bareback accross the farm on a horse that you could ride forever. Never coming home until the sun set and hunger in the stomach.
Riding bikes 10 miles to school and not ever worrying about cars running you down.
Playing baseball with 5 kids on a home made diamond with 2 gloves. The game went on for days and the score, who could remember.
Swim across and back the river, that was a mile wide at age 10. Watch out for the grain and fishing boats.
Reading books under the old willow tree on the bank of the river. Riding steers when no one was looking, just don't grap the horns.
Playing king of the mountain on piles of new mown hay. Build leaky boats and sail 7 miles down the river and camp out for 4 days eating what you caught on the end of a line or crabs caught by dip nets. For back up lots of Chef Bordee, Oat Meal and Bake beans. Building camp fires and sleeping under the stars.

The school play ground was a magic place where seesaws needed 10 kids a side and watch out for the bail out. The slide we would use up many rolls of wax paper launch ourselves into imaginary space. Contact with the ground resulted in skinned knees and backsides.

What a time it was and it was great.

John
 
Learned to drive on a tractor. 8N ford. Drum brakes (with a separate pedal for each side, and try hitting both at the same time with a 12 year old size foot) that could stop the thing, assuming firm, level ground about as long as a decent runway. Downhill, forget it. Better be geared down before you crest that hill. Manure bucket on one way hydralics at the front. The better to stop any car coming at you down that steep, gravel road at full speed. Seatbelts and a roll bar? Yeah right. Had a "hot seat" for snow plowing use though! Dang that was a cold ride in the winter. I was probably 12. I still prefer a standard shift. The modern synchro shift transmissions though are a piece of cake. No double clutching or missing gears. And those old clutches would wear out if you rode them. It was the kiss of death to be seen with a foot sitting on that clutch pedal. I was pretty well ready to drive by the time I got my learner's permit.

Working for dad (the frustrated farmer) on construction sites from the time I was 10. Up on roofs (including 12/12 and 14/12 pitch) from the time I was 12. Never was afraid of heights. We'd hang over the peak, nailing trim on the side, 3 stories up, 95 degrees and humid in July. You worked. 10 hour days in the summer and you went home when the job was done. Period.

You weren't a kid in my school if you didn't learn to shoot by about age 11. Owned a .22 at 10. Bow hunting by age 15. I still have a scar on my knee from brushing against a broad head tip while stalking a doe on the first day of the season. That'd be a products liability suit nowadays. My dad just said "yeah, there sharp, aren't they?" Yup, they were.

Still have a scar on a thumb from skinning a deer when I was about 15. Knives were sharp too! Learned to use a whet stone early, and I still sharpen mom's knives when I go home.

Growing up in the country, in the days before product's liability, was a great thing. I still remember when I bought my little Ruger Mark ! target pistol and laughed at all the liability stuff written on the barrel. No laughing so much any more though...

Jim G
 
grattonja said:
Learned to drive on a tractor. 8N ford. Drum brakes (with a separate pedal for each side, and try hitting both at the same time with a 12 year old size foot)
Click to expand...

Grandpa Buck taught me to drive on the Allis Chalmers B he had. Seperate brakes, except they were hand brakes, one lever sticking up just inside each fender. Looked just like this bad boy.

http://www.threeoakstractorclub.org/2005%20tractor%20fixed.jpg
 
When I think back on the things I used to do I am amazed that I survived past my early 20's.
 
GaryO said:
When I think back on the things I used to do I am amazed that I survived past my early 20's.
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Maybe that's why kids are dying due to little trivial harmless stuff nowadays. A couple generations went by with nothing more than the occasional disaster. Then one day the law of averages sat bolt upright in a cold sweat and said to itself "WHAT THE #$(& IS GOING ON HERE??? THIS HAS GOT TO BE BALANCED NOW!!!" Suddenly a bunch of kids walking down the street totally safe in perfect health just keel over dead for no apparent reason.

Other suppressed memories to wake up at night screaming in terror about: Self taught aerodynamics with home made kid size gliders that got better after each crash, range increased, safety didn't. Umbrella parachutes. Zip lines that sometimes turned out to not be tight enough resulting in near vertical descents due to stretching rope. Toboggans on wheels, no brakes obviously then go find the steepest hill you could find. Real razor blade leading edge kite combat. Sled with limited steering, no brake, ice, big high mixmaster with no traffic. Free climbing steep rocks, get scared rigid, calm down and self rescue yourself because nobody else can help you. Severely custom estes rockets, that misfire, with not so safe payloads. Weighted plastic bag submersible domes for breathing underwater. Helping dad put antenna's up on rooftops at 10-12 years old squatting on the edge of a roof screwing in standoffs 30ft above flat hard concrete with no safety gear.

I recall an overpowered go-cart someone had with a broken throttle cable so we just limited the fuel quantity, tied the throttle wide open and yanked the starter cord. The left pedal didn't do anything useful either. Wheeee! One driver, one, sometimes two standing on the side holding on until bailing off. No helmets of course.

Yard darts were just tame. Try, NO on second thought, do not try this: Slowly increase energy/height over time and catching vertically fired arrows by hand. That just can't be safe no way no how even with the metal/wood roof structure to jump under when the arrow vanished on the way up.

I think we survived because we partially thought things through before doing it. We looked at what we were doing, planned on a crash happening, and said "I can take that hit" while expecting to hit twice as hard as anticipated. Scrapes were a given. We had a reasonable expectation of survival when things went wrong because we planned on something going wrong.
 
Born in 1964, still alive in 2006! It's amazing how many activities were adult-sanctioned:

Games at school--Red Rover, Sham Battle

Family road trips: 1st class seating--faces pressed to the window in the top of the cabover camper
Car trip--the back seat window (if you won the fight)

Winter games: Dad would pull us on innertubes with a rope tied behind the pickup.

Camping: Who knew it was called "rock climbing?" It was just what you did to get to the place where the fun was.

I still can't eat Ramen noodles. It was all I had to eat on a two-week backpacking trip when the "live off the land" thing didn't work out like I thought it would. Actually, we took lotsa food--canned chili, hamburger, food for the three dogs. By the time we got to the trailhead, it was dark but we took off anyway. We soon realized that 120 lb packs were too heavy for skinny kids. So we hiked 100 yards up the trail and ate all our food the first night. Everything except the Ramen noodles. The dogs were starting to look pretty good by day 10.

Swingset? Sure, we had one. Rarely were more than two legs on the ground at the same time. When I was 10, my parents bought us a trampoline. Need more bounce? Jump from the roof. Have a little sister? Let's see how high we can propel her.

The world was not a safe, sanitized place. It was wild and meant to be seen, felt, and tasted. The goal was to grow up, not be coddled from crib to casket.

Swimming was done in the canals. No surfing in Idaho, but we made "check boards." (See attachment--even the kids that were drowning were smiling:)) Not only did we learn to swim, we learned to swim with a current. And with dead cows, green slime, and the little worms that lived in the green slime. If mom said, "Don't drink the ditch water," you knew it had to be something good and immediately tried it. That, and the dogfood, catfood, and the berries off some strange bush.

How many wild, rabid animals were YOU able to catch?

What did YOU have to walk across to prove you had good balance?

Yes, we learned everything from physics to biology to war strategies while we were playing. We were all skinny, wiry little kids (with excellent balance) except for that one fat kid in class. Now, the skinny ones stand out. Most of us survived because that was the goal--we knew no one would bail us out.
 

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It may not be as bad as all you old guys think. I'm only 18 (19 in two weeks).

Overpowered go-kart with no throttle or brakes: done
Pulling said go-kart out of the mud with a Jeep: done
Four-wheeler backflip: done
Huge trampoline with various games involving closing your eyes: done
50ft cliff-dive into lake: done
Dodgeball in gym: done, but I was there during it's demise
Pretending a tree, a car, or a tractor was your personal starship: done

My mom was anti-gun, so we didn't get paintball stuff 'till I was 15, but that was pretty good.

I remember for gym class the teacher brought in an old parachute and some bouncy balls. Those were probably my second-favorite gym classes. Behind Dodgeball, of course.

Keep going, I like hearing all this stuff.
 
Todd, your parents done good. Right now it's our turn to sit around and talk about The Way It Used To Be. Just wait, one day you'll sit bolt upright in a cold sweat and realize that it's YOUR turn!
 
Dean said:
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
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My mother was an emergency room nurse, so she was always convinced that I was going to kill myself if I so much as got out of bed.

Two stories come to mind:

1) We (my whole family) went to visit some friends on their farm when I was about 5 or 6. The other mother was trying to convince my mother that it would be just fine if her son took me for a motorcycle ride. My mother was sure I was going to get hurt, but with the other mother's assurances and my pleading to let me go, she finally relented. About five seconds after the wheels started turning we went through a ditch and I got launched (no helmets of course). I don't remember getting hurt, just mad that I couldn't get back on the bike and keep going.

2) When I was about 10, I had a dirt bike (bicycle, not motorcycle!) and a friend of mine from down the road brought his bike down. We made an impromptu jump with four 2x6's (three of them stacked on the fourth on its side). Again, my mother was sure I was going to break my neck, but I was having all kinds of fun (again, sans helmet) even when the jump would collapse about every third attempt.

Meanwhile, my sister took the dog for a walk, tripped over the dog, and broke her arm (tibia AND fibula). :rofl: (OK, my sister breaking her arm wasn't funny, but the whole thing with my mom's expectations of doom being reversed sure was!)

My mother is just now beginning to accept that I'm not going to kill myself every time I go flying. She's even talked about maybe going up with me at some point.
 
broke her arm (tibia AND fibula). ?????
 
We lived in NC for a couple years. Those pines trees down there can grow pretty tall. Us kids thought it would be cool if we could tie a rope swing to the tallest tree in our front yard but none of us could get up to the first branch.

We called my father in on our plan. He was able to get a grappling hook up to that first branch but someone would have to climb a bit higher to get to the lowest subtantial branch. My older brother was picked. (Thank you, Lord) Dad's 24' extension ladder fully extended didn't reach even half way so my brother had to climb the rest of the way holding on to the grappling line as he went.

He was so far up there that he looked like a dot. He was higher than the telephone poles. I think our cheering or perhaps my father's admonishments propelled my brother to that branch. When he got to the branch that the hook was slung he stopped to take a breather. That's when he looked down. What's that? Is my brother shaking? Dad, it's warm down here, why is he shaking? Hey! is it cold up there? Don't tell me to shut up, you shut up.

A few choice words of 'encouragement' from my father got my brother to climbing again. He got the line slung and shipped the end back down to dad so he could tie the knot and send it back up again. After what seemed like hours my brother got up the courage to shimmy back down. Instead of the tree trunk he came down the rope swing. We enjoyed that swing all that summer and into the next. The arc of that swing was so long that you could start on a Friday after school and not come back until Sunday night after supper.;)


Speaking of school...My brother had put together a lawn mowing route. He was in 2nd grade and took me along thinking he could be my employer and get me to do all the **** work for a quarter a day. He was right! But it was his mistake. I wasn't even in school yet. So when he went off to school I borrowed the lawn mower and took his jobs. Barefoot with a can of gas I'd set off along his route.

Most people said they only let my brother cut their lawn...so I just moved on to the next. If I got one or two I was happy. He charged $2.00 so I charged $1.00 plus it was his gas (har har). I knew enough to not touch the spark plug and to stay away from the mower's business end. This went on for about a week. When my brother found out he was mad so he shot me with an arrow which he took the suction cup off. First thing he did was take the suction cups off all his arrows.

My mother got in on the squabble...first she said I was too young. I argued I cut our lawn why can't I cut other people's lawns? Then it was because I was taking business away from my industrious brother. I countered that he usually had me do all the work anyhow while he went inside to eat homemade cookies. So she told him he had to share. I stuck my tongue out at him...later, he shot me with an arrow again. Okay, forget the lawn business, I'll just go ahead of him on his route and eat the cookies before he gets there. And I did.

Sometimes I forgot and left the mower at the other end of the route. No one moved it, no one ever stole it, everyone knew who it belonged to.
 
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