UtahRich,
Read your post, my past sounded 98% just like yours. Wow.
Have to say it was a blast to do all those things.
We even made go-carts with bed sheet sails. That moved us slowly down the street.
We had a small airport near by and we would go watch the planes, Cessna's, bi-planes etc.
Plus we raided the farmers fields and orchards, some in the middle of nowhere. Lots of abandoned farm houses and barns to play in. I knew a 5 mile stretch of creek that we fished in, can still take you to the spots. Google is wonderful for this. We were a busy group of kids. The most fun back then, until some one cried was having dirt clod wars. In the subdivisons they were building in the late 60's, where we lived was mostly a two lane country road. Well, they dug out the cellar holes. There would be a mound of dirt on each side of the holes. The dirt mixed with clay well dried up some into clods. We would throw them at each other from either side. When they hit the ground, they sort of made a poof of dirt smoke. You hid behind the mounds. The bigger the clod the bigger the explosion. Throwing rocks was not allowed, you would get your butt kicked. Mind you only throwing at the legs was allowed. Sometimes got out of hand.....
April 1st, trout opener we would ride our bikes 10 miles to fish a stocked stream. Always got skunked.

I look back today on google earth and its unbelievable how much development took over everywhere we used to have fun. When I visit my parents, can see how the area sure has changed.

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I dig it with a Nokta/Makro product.
And then some.. Blisstool V5, White's IDX