The ice cream truck question made me remember how much freedom I had to run around essentially unsupervised as a kid, and when it was.
When I think of children’s books written before and around my time, I don’t think I’m misremembering. I think kids used to have unfettered freedom once upon a time, and it’s become more and more restricted.
I’m curious what people remember being able to do at what age, and at what year it was when they could do it.
I was born in 1967.
I could play in the building where I lived, and on my street when I was three, 1970. I wasn’t supposed to cross any streets, but I was on my honor not to. Sometimes my cousin who was four years older would be around, and then I was allowed to cross streets, and go anywhere she could go. I was even usually given a little money, so I could buy penny candy.
We played stoop ball, or stick ball in the street; also, kick the can, and war. Occasionally football, during the season. There was a brief “Planet of the Apes” phase when the movies premiered on TV. Drivers knew to look out for kids, it seemed, because I don’t even remember misses that were close. People drove really slowly through the residential areas when there was no school.
At four, I could cross some very specific streets after demonstrating I could follow the cross-walk signals. So then I could walk to my school. I went to a Jewish day school that went from age 3 (you had to be potty trained, but everyone was by 2 back then) up through 6th grade. It was a five or six block walk, but usually the first block was all I walked alone. I’d join more and more kids also walking there. There were a lot of Jewish kids in the neighborhood, and a few kids who went there who were not Jewish-- the school had a good reputation for academics, and it was a neighborhood school.
At five, I could go almost anywhere. I was not yet allowed to take the bus alone, but I never had money of my own, so, no problem. Occasionally, I was given money for something specific.
I should note that I wasn’t wandering around Manhattan alone. I was almost always with a pack of kids from my block, and my mother knew them, and knew their parents. We ranged in age from 3 to about 11. In other words, toilet trained up to the oldest elementary school kids. Once kids started to go to a different school, they’d hang out with a different pack. I was my parents’ older kid, but sometimes my older cousins were hanging out with this bunch.
Eventually, I was one of the older kids, and my brother was one of the younger kids. I never realized when I was younger how the older kids were actually looking out for me, but when I was older, I felt responsibility for the little kids.
At this point, 1972, my mother even began sending me occasionally down to one of the shops just below the apartment for something she needed for a recipe that she’d just discovered she was out of. She’d always write it down, and put the money in an envelop. I had trouble operating the elevator by myself, which meant walking up three flights of stairs if no one else came along, but I didn’t mind. I liked running errands. The elevator had a gate that had a hand-operator lever, which was really hard to open.
This was when people could still smoke while grocery shopping, and you could walk into a store barefoot. I didn’t go barefoot much in Manhattan, but I remember a couple of time when I wasn’t wearing shoes in the apartment, and I ran down to a store without putting them on, and no one said anything. I also wasn’t the only little kid getting a couple of things for parents. My parents didn’t smoke, but back then, parents thought nothing of sending a 6-yr-old down to the store for a fresh pack of cigarettes.
I started getting an allowance at six. It wasn’t much, but I did once in a while go on the bus some place with other kids. I’m not sure I was really supposed to, but I was always home by the time I was supposed to be. I remember saving my allowance for a cap rocket, which was a really popular toy. I haven’t seen one in a long time. I couldn’t get ice cream from the truck for several days when I was saving, but my friends took pity on my, and gave me licks of theirs (yeah, gross).
At eight, I was officially given permission to take the bus, and shown how to read the bus schedule. I was told to stay off the subway, though (not because of creeps on the subway, but because it was too easy to get on the wrong train, and end up in Brooklyn, with no more money). My mother gave me emergency bus fare, plus an emergency dime for a phone call, sealed in an envelop, with great stress that they were for*** emergencies!*** If the envelop was opened, I had better have had en emergency.
I also got a watch that Chanukah. At that point, I had to be home at certain times some days, and I was also allowed sometimes to be out after dark, with the proviso that I call by a specific time if I wouldn’t be home. I was eight, but just about a month away from being nine.
We moved to Queens around this time, and I got permission to take the LIRR into Manhattan for purposes of going to specific museums, et al. I always had to call when I arrived.
We lived in Moscow when I was 10. I didn’t speak much Russian when we got there, but my mother still sent me to the store for things. You could tell from what was displayed in the window if it was the bakery, grocer, etc., plus, she’d write the word down for me in Russian.
I went to the international school, which was a couple of miles from our apartment, and the bus stop was maybe three blocks. I often walked to the bus stop with a parent, because they were going out as well. Sometimes we got on the same bus, sometimes not. I knew where my stop was. And I knew how to walk back to the bus stop from school, get off, and walk back to our apartment. We were four people in two rooms, so my two hours after school before anyone else got home were my salvation.
After we returned, I got my paper route. Suddenly, it was 1978, and I had about $70 a month in my pocket to spend as I liked. I started a serious coin collection, the original coins of which I mostly still have, and are worth about $10,000 now. A lot of the money went into pinball machines, and some went to movie theaters, but it all went to legitimate pursuits. I was a pretty tame kid. I added babysitting a couple of nights a week to that beginning when I was 12, for another $20 a month.
We we’re shomer Shabbes, even if we did go to services a lot on Saturday mornings. Saturday afternoons, I’m 11, 12, 13 years old, I’d ride my bike to the LIRR, park it, take the train to Manhattan with a friend or two, and spend the day in the city. Depending on the time of year, I might get back after dark. By this time, I was taking the subway. I don’t remember anything ever being said, I just was. I’m sure my parents knew I was.
So that was the kind of freedom I had as a kid. We had a B&W TV, and no cable. Rainy afternoons were usually spent at the apartment of someone who had color TV and cable. But we also played lots of board games.
That was a 70s childhood in a big city.
Does that jibe with other people in similar times and places? What about other times and places?
