Ok, I took a jab at all the AI photos showing up and suggested that we post some real photos along with the story behind them so here goes.




This is yours truly around 1976. The age seems right and all the mines shut down unexpectedly then and everyone lost their jobs. Mom took to making our own clothes and apparently bought the material that wasn't suitable for inmate uniforms or something. I am sure my Dad caught the rat and I was just tagging along. The photo was taken on my Grandparents place back on the "Little Field on the Crick". We have no creeks in these parts, only cricks. I have only caught one black Beaver in my life and I caught it at this same spot. There has been a Beaver dam here forever, even back when Beaver were rare around here in the 50's. Someplace I have a picture of my Dad (about the same age as me in this picture) along with my Grandfather and a family friend with 3 Beaver in one day. That was quite an accomplishment in the early 50's around here. In this spot for all of my life the family goes back and dip nets suckers in the Spring. In the mid 70's when times were REALLY lean, we took 3,500 suckers one spring. We smoked them, canned them, ground them up into patties.........I don't think I actually enjoyed eating fish for many years after that stretch.
I remembering "finding" a few Victor #4 DBL LS hidden on the crick bank many years ago. After looking at the tags, they were Dads and he just hid them back there each year so he didn't have to carry them a 1/2 mile each way.
My parents own that property now and Dad and I both still set a trap or two back there each year for old time sakes. Anyway, real photo and a real story.

Great story and I love those britches. Only a real man could pull of wearing pants like that

It was that or nothing! I mean we were BROKE then. We went to town once a month and if we forgot something, it had to wait until the next month.

Them style of pants were all the rage back in '72. I sported me a pair at that time. I was done growin by then, so they never became highwaters like yourn. I wiped out on my bike and ripped a huge hole in the knee of them. I almost cried because that meant that I had to go back to wearing hand me downs, but all I had was older sisters...

Awesome story rob

Dang! I bet your buddies made fun of you when you showed up wearing blouses and underwear with a little red rose on the front.

I had a pair of pants just like that.. probably 1969.

Our little town ..had what they call ..a sidewalk Bizzaah.

Which was ...all the clothes that did not sell in the stores..

Was set outside on a table...and heavily discounted...

So us not so well off...could have some new clothes.

… good post partner

… but y’all hadn’t discovered blue jeans back then ?

… looks like Saturday night fever meets Jeremiah Johnson

This was the most popular masculine/rebel icon of the Soviet cartoon universe. This particular episode first aired in 1976.

That picture brings back memories. And yup had a pair of two of those britches in the early 70's.

Hey Rob I even sported a nice pair of pants like that back in those days. They were hip!

Great photo and story

Mom made a lot of our clothes too.

Tatiana thanks for posting that cartoon to give us a look into your world.

Great story and great picture!!!! We were so poor never had a camera. Thanks for sharing that and a great thread.

Nice picture and story.

That photo is also AI. 160 ain't never caught a muskrat in his life.

I had a pair of britches exactly like those in 1972! Only I had them purely by accident. I have a photo of me in them as I'm holding a dead rooster pheasant in one hand.....while the other held the rock I killed it with........that was a bigger accident than those britches. I literally just went through my one old photo album and couldn't find the picture. Saved you folks the agony.

"but y’all hadn’t discovered blue jeans back then ?"

Things change....... At one time "jeans" were not looked upon with approval in some circles. I remember being sent home from school because of wearing blue jeans. That was '68 or 69. Just gave me another way of getting a day off when I wanted it. A dab of skunk essence on the bottom of my shoe worked well also. Only teacher that caught on was Mrs. Savu, her husband bought my fur

I shudder when thing of all the Levis big E and Selvedge jeans I trashed from logging. Worth a small fortune now but weren't back in the day. I remember having a winter Carhartt that had no material left from the chest down in front from hugging trees hooking up- just the zipper swinging around. Kids that dont work anymore buy them up giving them the illusion of "working".

Pants like those were my dress up for game day pants in the early 70s. We had to wear a dress shirt, tie and nice pants on days we had football or basketball games.

I graduated in 1976, bought my first deer rifle with my trapping proceeds from the winter.

I bet there is a black & white polaroid pic...of me ...in a

Pair of those pant....somewhere .

160...your folks must have been well off...with a color photo..lol

The Mines paid quite well in the late 60's and early 70's. My Dad was into photography. After the mines shut down lots of "toys" were put up for sale cheap but no one could afford to buy them.

Cool picture and cool stories, 160.

How did you go from poor prison pants kid to wealthy retired govt. Worker?

What kind of mines,Iron ore?

I just gotta know...... what was that rabbit singing about??

It's the "Captain Song". A silly song that used to be a hit decades ago:


There lived a brave captain,
He's been to many countries,
And traversed the ocean many times
He almost drowned 15 times
and almost died among sharks
But never even blinked
In trouble and battle
He sang his song everywhere

Captain, captain, smile
Your smile is the flag of your ship
Captain, captain, cheer up
Only the brave subdue the seas

But one day the captain
In a country far away
Fell in love like a simple boy
He blushed 15 times
and stuttered, and went pale
But never dared to smile
He became sullen
He lost weight
And no one sang to him caringly

Captain, captain, smile
Your smile is the flag of your ship
Captain, captain, cheer up
Only the brave subdue the seas



The whole series was originally intended to mimic various American series such as Tom & Jerry, but in the USSR, cartoons and kids' movies/books were often the only type of art/creativity not subjected to heavy censorship, so the creators used the opportunity to put various subtle things and innuendos into them and touch upon forbidden things, and this series ("Nu pogodi", ~ Wait, I'll get you) is no exception. There are many allusions to the popular culture, musical bits, etc., but some things just don't make sense unless one admits that there's a ton of homoerotic tension between the two main characters. The bunny is not a girl obviously, probably a young male. The wolf always tries to catch and eat him, but on several occasions, it's shown that the wolf's stalking urges and aggression stem from chronic rejection frustration; the rabbit doesn't avoid the wolf and prefers to tease him for no good reason; in dire situations, they often help each other, and on several occasions, they spend time together and even go on a date (that goes wrong due to a cider bottle malfunction). And while the wolf is shown to have pictures of she-wolves a couple of times (a magazine centerfold, a picture on the wall and a sticker on his bike), he's never actually seen with any females. Also, the bunny is sort of artsy/bohemian, and the wolf, despite being seemingly unemployed, has a ton of skills and is familiar with various equipment/machinery.
low-key James Bond stuff.

Come to think of it, the choice of the song confirms it. The wolf is having a depressive episode alone in his bachelor apartment, lashes out on an inanimate object, sees the love of his life on TV singing the captain song, and next thing he's running around the Ostankino TV studios in Moscow looking for the rabbit which requires a lot of energy compared to his isolated degradation before that.

While the wolf is supposed to be mean, and often gets in trouble with the law, most kids always sympathized with him because the bunny is a stuck up narcissist (he's got his own portrait on the wall) who most certainly understands everything yet chooses to torture the poor wolf. There's a total of 17 episodes I think. It's culturally important because everyone in the former USSR who's now middle-aged grew up watching it. Most episodes don't even have any speech so they're universally watchable.

Good post. I love childhood trapping memories.

That is a great photo, Rob. It must have launched your career as a chick magnet!

Those were tough times when the mines shut down for everyone up there. Great photo, nice rat, interesting story. Thanks for posting it.

LOL Tatiana...... you put a lot of thought into analyzing that cartoon. How do you know the rabbit is not female? The rouge on its cheeks led me to think it was....

Haha, no, I just summed up the hivemind's ideas on the subject. Like I said, we all grew up watching it so there are opinions/discussions.

It's kind of interesting how the relative value/weight of individual creations (books, movies) and celebrities (authors, actors, ...) has been dropping so fast with how fast humanity has been generating and hoarding information lately. Takes much more to get noticed, remembered and discussed now. As for the bunny, it's easy, all nouns in Russian are gendered grammatically and semantically (Old English used to have it, too, but you guys got lazy), meaning that a hare (zayats) is always a he, and dependent words (adjectives, verbs) are inflected/conjugated accordingly. Plus he's dressed like a boy, sort of, and all other anthropomorphic characters are quite obviously gendered. And in one episode, he's a part of a "little bunny boy chorus" (khor malchikov-zaychikov). So the rouge is just gay.

Well then judging from the pics you posted above, that certainly is a gay cartoon. I don't recall us having any so obviously gay! At least not back then!! Who knows these days.... sure there is now.

Thanks for sharing the cartoon... enjoyed seeing something from a different part of the world like that.... pretty cool!

Besides.... it's only natural that a 160user post would turn gay, LOL.

Hey now! You mentioned gay so that gal from WI and the Canadians should be along anytime.

Tatiana I remember hearing about Volk and Zaetz when I took Russian in high school!

Your high school offered Russian??? All mine offered was Spanish and French. I was mad as I wanted to take Latin.

Ripple effect too. I grew up in the twin ports and railroad, ore docks, shipping were all affected. Great pic 160. Had similar clothes in our house too

Not until my senior year. I wish I had four years of it. I did pretty well with it. I downloaded Babbel and I tried but it’s harder when you’re older…

I was tapped out with a C- in English so I saw no sense in trying to fail in another language.