The 17 year old neighbor girl.
Works and aluminum foil in mountain dew bottles
Quit turkey hunting
Helped neighbor girls dad turn a Ford probe into a truck bed full of parts.
Learned how to solder copper plumbing, by being thrown into a soon to be orthodontist office with a pocket full of caps, a torch, and a spool while the plumber screamed at me that I should only need 1/2" of solder for a 1/2"pipe.
Nothing special that I can recall. Just did things a 14 yr. old would do.
Legos, Star Wars and matchbox cars!
Well, and studied. A lot.
But I was starting to race my radio-controlled car. Won some trophies.
Patrick said:Mndsm said:Stuff I probably shouldn't talk about here. Also, super nintendo.
Playstation and something else that ends in -ation?
Indeed.
My parents were still together and my father smoked a lot of weed.
I honestly don't really remember a lot of being 14.
Mndsm said:Patrick said:Mndsm said:Stuff I probably shouldn't talk about here. Also, super nintendo.
Playstation and something else that ends in -ation?
Indeed.
Afer many cases of Mountain Dew and Pepsi killed trying to get a no-deaths Contra run, I assume the best nation in the world is URI-nation.
(I have beat Contra on one life. More than once. Not braggin', just truthin')
Skateboards, dirtbikes and lots of associated pain (Loving something doesn't necessarily mean being good at it.)
Raced the family go kart against my brother On the local city dump’s access road. Went squirrel and pheasant hunting. Chased girls. Played sports. Stole an occasional beer from my dad’s fridge. Read every single thing that I could get my hands on that even mentioned cars. Normal stuff.
Raced District 17 AMA Hare Scrambles. Drew motorcycles every single chance I got.
1963
My older brother somehow talked my parents in letting me go to the Sebring 12 Hour with him. He went on Wednesday. I wasn't allowed to miss school. So I got to ride a GreyDog and get dropped off at midnight Friday at the Publix out on US27. He picked me up and took me into the encampment in the infield by the hairpin near where the horeltis now.. (Green Park was not open to spectators back then,)
Hung on the fence for the whole twelve hours in awe. Rushed over the fence to storm the pits and ceremony at the finish. Changed my life forever. A road racer ever since. Attended something like 27 straight Sebrings after that as both spectator and working crew.
Worked at Columbia Speedway during the summer. Most folks nearby now refer to it as the "Historic Columbia Speedway". At the time a half -mile dirt oval running NASCAR Late Model Sportsman races every Thursday night.
We would start watering Wednesday afternoon just before sunset. Thursday morning at sunrise you started putting water on the track. The surface was graded while watering. About halfway through grading the packer went out around mid-afternoon. Water truck and packer ran until practice at 7:30. I was the 14 year old in either the water truck or packer until time to clean the restrooms. When practice started I moved to the front gate and remained there until the feature finished around 10:30. You didn't get by without a pit pass.
In 1969 we were the first Grand National race on the schedule (As I recall) after the Talladega boycott. I had to tell Bill France Jr. that he could not enter the pits without a pit pass. Took him about 30 seconds to get one.
Great fun. The $5.00 I got paid each week bought a lot of model cars, paint, and glue.
Rebuilt my first motorcycle ('72 Honda SL125)
rode the wheels off of it. Wash, wrench, repeat...
fixed lawnmowers for cash. Started mountain biking seriously. Broke a couple of ribs...
ran a couple of 5k races. Wrenched on the bikes some more...
Driving my dads sandrail as often as I could on and off the street. Moving appliances for a used appliance store for 5 bucks each because my family didn't believe in allowance and chasing the easy girls in my high school. 14 year old me had a blast but I certainly didn't help the world
At 13 I started working part time at a full service gas station pumping gas, but only got to work when someone called in. By 14 I was working part time at a different station probably 20 hours a week. I also bought my very first new vehicle that year, a new Honda NX125 dual sport and used it to get my motorcycle license. It was awesome to be 14 with my own bike and license!
Learned to surf. Slot cars. Sailing the pram. Swimming and snorkeling. Fishing. Driving when I got the chance. Starting reading car magazines.
Read three books every day, but almost no schoolwork and even less homework.
My county decided to send the white kids to the new high school and the black kids to the old school.
Ever the activist, my dad and his friends rallied the communities across the county. The school boycott shut down the schools for 3 1/2 weeks. The school board backed down.
Started paying attention to girls, looking at girls, thinking about girls...
Skateboards. Guitar. Probably 3+ hours a day each. I remember complaining about being bored a lot. I wish I still had that problem.
Freestyle BMX, skateboards and probably too much time staring at a Samantha Fox poster.
Edit for clarification: that would have been my buddies poster. My mother would never have let that in the house. She was caught up in the 80's "satanic panic " and overcompensated trying to raise us in a more wholesome manner
I spent the summer of my 14th year racing sunfish at the local yacht club. My 15th year I spent half at school and half at the hospital as it was my first flare up of my crohn's disease and it took them all school year to finally diagnose me. I was down to 90 pounds at 5'11".. yes, I almost died
Geez, I turned 14 in 1969 - that was a looong time ago and lived in West Los Angeles. Friends and I rode minibikes around the hills up near Mulholland. Minibikes were my first experience with turning wrenches. Rode bicycles to Santa Monica airport to check out the planes. Still mostly a dork but was becoming less so because girls.
At 14 I dropped out of 9th grade and lied about my age to get a full time job at a fast food joint that was, shall we say, lax on employment screening. Parents were going through bankruptcy after mom suffered a debilitating head injury at work and her employer wiggled out of worker's comp. We were facing homelessness. Good times.
I worked and learned to drive heavy equipment around the farm, bulldozers, rollers, loaders, backhoes etc.
I grew up in a sports car repair shop, so cars were a given. Raced slot cars a lot, still do. Bought my first car at 14, a $35 Ford Anglia 105E. I seem to have no photo of it
. Just after turning 15 in 1967 I sold it for $100 and bought an MGTD. Photo with me in the family shop.
Skateboard!
This was '77-'78 - dad's Mobil Chemical plant poured a large concrete "doughnut" for a ground-level water tank.
I got the concrete forms - 2' x 8' curved sections - 4-5 P/U truckloads.
I designed and build the rest from 2x4s.
Was the coolest thing in the world until I could drive, and then got a V-8 Vega.
Forrest in Atllanta
That would have been 1987 for me. I spent all my time working on an old Karmann Ghia getting it roadworthy for when I got my license.
1960: Raised on a small farm in Iowa. Crops, livestock and chores kept me busy. In spare time, my father told me I could get the 28 Model A running and drive it around the farm. First car I worked on. Also helped my friend up the road remove the engines from a 28 Dodge coupe and a 49 Ford. We installed the flathead V8 into the Dodge with a 39 Ford transmission. All work was done under a large tree in his farm yard using basic tractor box tools. We were reading Hot Rod and other car magazines.
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