If you stayed indoors, something productive (read: unpleasant) would be found for you to do and you were under the control of mom and/or dad. Outside was freedom. Freedom to make your own decisions, good or bad. Freedom to create. Age 16, and the opportunities to do even more forbidden stuff, couldn’t get here soon enough.
It just wasn’t possible for me to ever be “friends” with my parents when my youth was spent largely escaping their control.
This is true. Nowadays, there are so many preservatives in dog food that the poop doesn’t decay naturally. The BARF (bones and raw food or biologically appropriate raw food) dog food movement encourages people to feed their dogs just that. Even raw chicken bones, which the dogs can chew easily and safely. Cooked chicken bones are very dangerous and will splinter. Doggies have died from perforated intestines. But they do love raw chicken wings. If you switch your dog to a diet like this, s/he will indeed produce the old-timey “chalky poo” that eventually turns white and disintegrates.
Mrs. Plant (v.2.0) fed raw chicken wings to her dogs, and I do not recall their poop being chalky, not that I paid a great deal of attention to it. 
Lots of truth here, so here are some additions:
A pregnant teen-aged girl would either get married much too young, or disappear for six months, from the time she started showing until she delivered. She’d be at the Catholic home for unwed mothers, and when she returned no one mentioned it again.
Not only were golf clubs made out of wood, but tennis rackets were also made of wood. Hitting them (in anger) on the court would demolish them.
My aunt had one of the first color TVs that we knew of, but the only thing that was in color was Bonanza and Disney. Those two shows were a special trip to her house to see color. (Come to think of it, the local diner had a color TV to when the Minnesota Twins were in the World Series)
Turn lanes were unusual, as were left-turn signals. Right-turn on red? Radical!
Drum brakes (in cars) didn’t work really that well. If the brake pedal went all the way to the floor, it was time to stop and add brake fluid.
Every Labor Day we watched the Jerry Lewis MS telethon. I’m not sure why; we never contributed.
That family that never went to (our) church? We didn’t associate with them.
Long distance phone calls were delayed until 7:00 PM, or the weekends, or holidays, when the rates were much much cheaper.
I always cut grass (with a manual rotary mower) and shoveled snow for spending money. When I was 14 (1967) I got my first job working as a bus boy in an Italian restaurant. By the time I was 15, I was in the kitchen as a line cook. OSHA would close the place up today.
I started smoking when cigarettes were thirty cents a pack.
American League teams played other American League teams. National League teams played other National League teams. The only time there was not true was during Spring training or the World Series.
There were some pretty powerful Jewish males around at the time as well, especially in NY and Jersey.
Nothing like nostalgia about dog poop from the ‘good old days’.
And we hardly see iron lungs anymore either!
Yeah, my dad’s cousin died in one. Kids these days won’t ever get to experience that. Sad!
I’m really curious about this one. My daughter and her baby are currently living with us. The little guy is getting on toward a year old, and it seems like every time I take him anyplace strangers start admiring and cooing over him. (Usually they are women but not always).
He and I went to the grocery store late this afternoon, and two women, at different points during the trip, spent quite some time grinning at him, telling him how cute he was, and otherwise interacting with him.
Now the boy is very sociable and perhaps unusually…interactive (he does a lot of grinning and cooing back at people who engage him), and I am not a mom but a grandfather, and maybe that makes a difference–but in my experience this cooing over babies of strangers is very common these days, certainly not “unthinkable.” I’m wondering why you see it as otherwise!
Or Methodist.
And younger.
Ulf, your experience with your grandson sounds very nice, I hope that is more the norm. Maybe I extrapolated too much from a couple of experiences where new moms did not seem at all happy to have their baby noticed (you will just have to take my word for it that I am not weird or scary looking 
and did nothing but say something like “cute baby”), and seeing many comments on other boards in recent years where young moms complain about people coming near their babies - they all seem to particularly hate their in-laws. Anyway, it all seems kind of weird and overwrought to me, I just steer clear.
I remember that news arrived once a day on our doorsteps and in the 30 minute network news each evening. Amazingly, both Republicans and Democrats got the same news.
This especially. Newspapers were important and relevant, and published four or five editions a day, just to keep up. There were morning papers, which hit the streets starting at maybe 3:00 am and published until about noon; and afternoon papers, which hit the streets at maybe 1:00 pm, and continued through the afternoon and evening. Anybody remember “Late Markets” and “Late Sports” editions?
TV news came on twice a day: at 6:00 pm and 11:00 pm, and lasted half-an-hour. You got news, weather, and sports in those thirty minutes. There was no celebrity news of any sort; at least not like we have it today: marriages, divorces, breakups, and pregnancies of celebrities were not reported. A famous rock star busted for drugs might make the news, but that was about it.
Thought of something that I don’t think has been mentioned yet: station wagons.
Not very popular nowadays, though many of today’s SUVs and crossovers would qualify. Still, you didn’t have a real family car in those days unless you had a station wagon. Fold-up seats in the back for extra passengers, but the kids didn’t care; they piled into the back end, and sat on the floor. If Dad rolled down the back window, so much the better. No seat belts, of course; kids hung out the back window and waved at other cars.
I remember one trip to and from a buddy’s summer home for a weekend, when I was 13 or 14. Two adults and eight kids in a 1971 Dodge Polara station wagon. I was one of the guys who got to ride on top of the luggage in the back, with the ceiling three inches from my face. Good times then, but I don’t think it would work now.
We had two sanctioned smoking areas when I was in high school. Our lockers were in the basement, boys and girls in mirrored areas. Both the outside and inside entryways were the smoking areas. If the weather was bad we could smoke in the locker room itself if nobody was around, but it was discouraged.
The kids who didn’t smoke learned early on to use the entrances from the first floor (down the hallway and down a flight of stairs). They spent very little time there. As a result, if you were a smoker, most if not all of your BFFs were also smokers.
Environmentalism did not exist. Hell, even the word “environmentalism” did not exist. People gave no thought to reuse, reduce or recycle. There were no anti-pollution laws, and cars and factories could dirty the water, air and ground as much as they want.
Women had to put up with unwanted attention from men. There was no such concept as “stalking.” Even if a man killed you, it was viewed as “she probably asked for it.”
Female people of any age were called “girls,” and colored men of any age were called “boys.”
Bullshit. The EPA was created in 1970. The first Earth Day was that year, too.
More bullshit.
Maybe in some places. Not where I lived.