Alarming Tennessee Image Proves We Used to Just Throw Caution to the Wind

Safety, shmafety, right? WRONG. Safety, first, last, and always. Some things never go out of fashion. However, way back in the day, what was considered dangerous was, in certain cases, relative.

Let's start with lawn darts. We had them. Other households in our neighborhood had them as well. Talk about a cookout STAPLE. But the thing is, we were launching large metal-tipped projectiles through the air without a thought given to just how dangerous that was. And I'd follow that up with, "and IS," but there IS no more "IS" when it comes to lawn darts. After countless injuries and a handful of deaths, the once-popular yard game was banned in 1988.

I'm not kidding. We honestly never thought anything about how lethal a practice that could be. Isn't that crazy?

Maybe not, considering how we once blithely climbed aboard chair lifts that operated with ZERO restraints. Several decades ago, visitors wanting to check out the top of Snow King Mountain in Jackson WY had no issue with that fact at all.

I have a hard time looking at that, to be honest. The first time this image crossed my Facebook feed, it had been cropped. I thought to myself that it looked like that lady and her daughter were a THOUSAND feet off the ground. The full image shows I wasn't far off.

In Gatlinburg in 1963, tourists lined up for the Smoky Sky Lift despite the fact that it looked like this:

Does that child look frightened to you? Nope, he doesn't to me either. It's because he WASN'T. By the way, here's a little history behind the Gatlinburg Skylift, which now comes fully equipped with restraints.

Do enough digging and I would imagine you'll run into all SORTS of images that prove that back in the day, we used to just throw caution to the wind even if we didn't know that's what we were doing.