This bears emphasis. We had toys which were apt to expel flying shards of glass!
Oh, and Soccer-Boppers! Great big inflatable boxing glove-type things. They didn’t last, but while they did my sister and I wailed on each other with those things.
Age 6 – wandering around in the woods on my own and with friends from after breakfast until dinner time.
Age 13 – unsupervised extended wilderness white water canoe tripping
Age 14 – unsupervised extended winter wilderness skiing (one time with half a pound of bacon and an envelope of Lipton Cup of Soup between the two of us for a ski hike of over a week – eat what you catch)
I’d forgotten about that… I got set to work mowing the yard at 8 or 9, and moved up to the weedeater when I was about 11 or 12.
If the community pool in my neighborhood had a rule about how old you had to be before you could be there by yourself, it wasn’t enforced by the neighbors. I was regularly there by myself from the age of 10 when we moved into the neighborhood.
When I was 8 and 11, I spent summers in Iceland where I distinctly remember being allowed free range of the city and country. The only stipulation was that I left a note telling my relatives where I’d wandered off to, or if I had specific plans for where I’d be when I left. Before this, I would spend my summers at the house by myself from around age 7 or 8 onward; I have vivid memories of staying up late, watching QVC celebrate Bastille Day.
I’ve also only ever worn a helmet while horseback riding. The reason? The countryside is full of volcanic rock that could very easily split your head open, and the one time I fell from a horse, I was VERY lucky to fall on the soft cushy moss rather than on the other side, which was full of jagged rocks. I still managed to injure myself a couple of times while in Iceland as a kid-- I’d climb down cliffs to collect driftwood by myself, then return with it in my arms. Somehow I could do this without hurting myself, but running across the gravel road resulted in me tripping over a larger rock and spraining my wrist as I fell. :smack:
I was given chores while spending these summers abroad, including mowing the “lawn” with a reel mower and restaining the deck on the summerhouse. I’d also regularly cook for myself without supervision, including going to the corner grocery (about a mile away) to pick up ingredients.
Well, I was born in 1987, so the Safety Freakout was already underway for most of my childhood (seat belts, helmets, etc.) but I do recall, as a very young child. . .wait for it. . .eating raw batter. GASP! Then all this mumbo-jumbo about salmonella and raw eggs started coming out and they didn’t let us do that any more.
I was also only in a booster seat up through about age 6. Nowadays it seems like they’re trying to keep kids in booster seats until they get their driver’s license.
So many of these are my memories from a childhood in the 60s.
– Riding bikes without helmets, setting up jump ramps, and imitating Evel Knievel.
– Riding in the back of station wagons and pickup trucks, never belted in.
– Being allowed to take the subway by myself when I was 11 years old.
– Walking nearly a mile to school, the same distance home for lunch, then back to school for the afternoon, and home again at the end of the day. Nobody rode a school bus, nor were they driven by parents, nor did they eat lunch at school. Heck, my school didn’t even have a cafeteria or a lunchroom–students were expected to leave the school and walk home for lunch.
– Perpetual clouds of cigarette smoke. Adults could smoke nearly everywhere (the only exceptions I can recall would be around gas pumps, in classrooms, or during church services), and they did, regardless of whether or not kids were present. If a kid complained, well, tough.
– Chemistry sets, woodburning kits, BB guns, pellet rifles, pocket knives, and slingshots were fine gifts for boys.
– In winter, we turned a local hill into an ice slide, and happily slid down at top speed. The more adventurous of us would attempt to slide down while standing up on toboggans or sleds, or simply a broken-down cardboard box–were we the first snowboarders? 
Sometimes somebody would build a jump ramp out of snow at the bottom, and we’d hit it and fly. All without helmets, of course.
Hooray! There’s hope for the species.
To clarify, when I said they didn’t last, I meant they’d pop easily, not that they were of a bygone era. But I thought they were, and it’s cool they’re not.
Summer after 7th grade–learned to drive “just in case.” No ambulance service in home town, nor a doctor.
Jarts.
Again, Vacuform/Thingmaker.
Playing with mercury in the pharmacist’s house. Being all depressed when it went down the cracks of the hardwood floor.
Working in a factory in the summer using pots of molten solder.
Glass shampoo bottles.
Using industrial chlorine based sanitizers to clean the basement after a sewer backup.
Hand carrying buckets of said sewage out of the basement when the power failed.
Sharing a pound of steak tartare with my mother–raw beef, raw eggs.
I remember taking a header into the handle above the glove box in a Volkswagen my dad was driving (b/c no seat belts of course!).
And my granpa taking me to his local (walking distance) bar and putting me up on a chair and saying “this is my granddaughter!” I think we both got a free beer.
I’m 42.
Yeah, Jarts, aka Lawn Darts.
“Excuse me, will you stand over there and be easily distracted while I hurl this 2 pound dart in your general direction? Oh, and not at you, but high in the air where it can come right down into your brain or maybe just peg your foot to the ground if you’re lucky.”
Cars: Exhaust seeping up through a rust hole by my face as I sat in the wayback (later covered by corrugated cardboard). Didn’t suffocate because all the windows were down. Mother smoked.
OH those were GREAT! Especially if you left them outside to freeze first…
Ditto on the Incredible Edibles and Creepy Crawlers - those things were wonderful.
When I was a kid back in the late sixties-early seventies it wasn’t unusual to see kids 13 or so and up smoking openly, including around thier parents. Both my parents smoked. I didn’t smoke (tobacco) until I was much older but if I had started smoking at that age (13-14) I probably would have encountered minimal parental resistance. It would have been mostly along the lines of “You bitched night and day about us smoking and now you’re smoking…HA!”
I live near a high school now and see many students walking to and from. Very rare to see one smoking. When I was in HS it would have been 30-40%.
This is why we need tort reform – so we can still have fun with wonderful deadly toys and the companies that make them won’t have to worry about the whiny family members of the dead people.
Wow you can REALLY hold your breath. Have you considered skin diving as a hobby?
Let’s see now
Chemistry sets? Check
Wood burning set? Check
Running all over the neighborhood as a kid? Check
They say that mountain biking was invented in Marin County in the late 1970s. Bullshit. We rode our Schwin 10 speeds down impossibly steep hills that had no trails in the early 1960s. No helmets of course.
Skateboarding down the middle of the street? Check
Erectors sets with a real screwdriver (which is a deadly weapon in the hands of a 4 year old) and motors and gears.
Oh and when I was 5 my father left me home alone because my mother was sick in the hospital and we were getting a console stereo delivered that day. COD.
So I answered the door showed them where to put it, watched them set it up and then got the check and gave it to them. Age 5.
I was little more than a wild animal in the summers. I didn’t wear shoes, ever. We rode our bikes to the lake 5 miles away at age 8-12 with no adults anywhere to be seen. We rode barefoot, wearing only our swimsuits.
We played outside until well after dark. It doesn’t get dark here, in high summer, until after 10:00 PM.
When I was 9, the 80 acres next to us was sold to a horse guy. He turned out 20 horses, from minatures to two Clydesdales. One day a pony was grazing near our fence, so I took my grandmother closeline rope, looped it around his neck, lead him to a nearby tree stump and climbed on. He ran and bucked a little, but I held on. I couldn’t steer him, so I put the rope in his mouth, like a bit and yanked his head around until he got the idea to go where I pointed him. I did this every day for over a month before I was caught by the owner. Instead of taking me home for punishment, he gave me a real bridle and saddle, showed my how to put them on and let me have free rein of the horses.
During that summer, I was thrown, dragged, stepped on and bitten. I spent that whole summer alone with my horsey friends.
There were boys in the neighborhood that were afraid of the horses, so, afraid of ME! 
It wasn’t until just before school started that my grandparents found out what I was doing. My Grandfather happened to drive by one day while Mr Reed was helping me saddle one of the bigger horses. Since he didn’t live on the property, they hadn’t met. They introduced themselves and chatted a bit. My riding came up in passing, but wasn’t a big deal.
The only thing I got in trouble for was the clothesline rope.
Not one thought of stranger danger.
I seem to recall there was a similar thread a while back, but I am too lazy to look.
How about slow, cable-driven, dental drills with no accompanying anesthetic? (not sure whether cable is the right word - the cord/cable/belt/whatever was passed over a bunch of pulleys until it got to the drill, which it spun slowly in comparison to modern drills).
Concentrated sulphuric acid, nitric acid, chromic acid, mercury, white phosphorous in a high school chemistry lab (pretty sure we had sodium as well, but since I don’t remember experiments with it I’m not absolutely positive we in fact had sodium)? The nasty stuff was kept in a separate room that I think was supposed to be kept locked, but often wasn’t.
Kinda related:
When I was in the military we had a pre-vacation safety briefing where they reminded the younger ones (we were all around 21-23 at the time. I’m 25 now) to always wear our seatbelts.
We laughed because we grew up in the seatbelt era. It’s second nature to us. They really needed to be talking to the 35 year olds. They’re the ones who don’t like to wear them.