At 16, I worked the counter at a smoke-shop, selling magazines and tobacco product. There by myself, locked up at 9, and opened weekend mornings.
When I was in grade school, kids got paddled all the time (yes, including me).
Once a kid didn’t want to eat his green beans at lunch, claiming he was allergic. The teacher made him eat them anyway, and he threw up in his plate. She made him eat that too.
It was a religious school though, so maybe they could get away with doing such crazy things.
Yah, sure. Go dahntahn to the Jantiggle for some chipchopham!
My parents went into Pittsburgh a lot for Pirates and Steelers games. They were at the last Pirates game played at Forbes Field, when fans were encouraged to bring hammers, prybars, chisels and other instruments of (de)construction and take away whatever they wanted before the ballpark was torn down. They extracted an authentic Forbes Field three-folding-chairs bleachers unit that they still have.
Yes, looks like in 1997: Opryland USA - Wikipedia
Heh. When my sisters and I were particularly ornery and/or wired, my dad would tell us to go outside and run around the house. Literally. How many times we were told to go around depended on just how much of a pain in the ass we were at that moment.
I made my kids run around the house a few times too! They thought it was hilarious.
Yes, we were usually laughing too. It was a purposefully silly (although effective!) order from my dad.
There was one occasion when my father and my older brother had a back-garden experiment making gunpowder.
Just the one occasion, though.
Yinz’re speaking my language! Now stop being nebby and redd up your rooms n’at!
I work dahntahn and there’s no Jine Iggle there!. 
No Jantiggle dahntahn?!? What kinduva jagoff decided dat?
At the indoor 70s family gatherings, by early evening there would be two foot of smoke hanging from the ceiling. So my mom would light some candles, to help with the smoke 
And ashtrays everywhere but especially memorable was the two foot wide blue freak-deeky asymmetrical ceramic communal ashtray on the living room coffee table.
One neighbor down the street every summer would be visited by his father from Tennessee (I think it was TN). He had a small pick up with a camper that he never locked. Rather stupid of him because though he was visiting his son, he brought a his truck from TN filled with fireworks to sell. Well, once we realized he wasn’t locking it, we would grab some fireworks almost every day. Not alot, we didn’t want to to kill the golden goose of fireworks fun. But we did have lots of “fireworks wars” throwing firecrackers and jumping jacks at each other, shooting bottle-rockets and roman candles at each other.
Grew up by railroad tracks and did lots of incredibly stupid things on and around the tracks and on and around the trains. The wooden railroad bridge was one of our regular hangouts. From the bridge, we could just reach a couple of houses with the bottle-rockets and roman candles. One side of the bridge opposite from the houses had a very steep incline with mature trees with lots of vines. When being chased by cops or railroad employees, we would leap off this incline, swinging/rappelling into the brush. No one ever followed us into there.
Construction sites became the new play area once they left for the day and on week-ends. Coming home filthy dirty, mom asking if I left any dirt out there. Trick or treating, solo and in hordes, never accompanied by an adult. Some years, I would do a quick run through the neighborhood solo, change costume, meet with friends on bikes go to other neighborhoods and do one last loop in the neighborhood when we got back.
You had to wait until 15 to hunt by yourself with a shotgun? I was allowed to at 12. I don’t have the stomach for hunting now, though, although I don’t oppose it if you eat what you shoot.
I might have you all beat. Along with all the requisite play outside all day, drink out of garden hoses stuff…
My Dad was a dentist. He let my brother and me play with mercury that he used to make fillings. A small pool about the size of a quarter in our hands. This was in the late 60’s.
Yes, I’m fine. Not too sure about my brother! 
Michael Dirda, a book reviewer who I know somewhat, talks about the following incident in his memoir An Open Book. Mike is not particularly adventurous, incidentally. When he and a friend were both 14 (so this must be in 1963), they hitchhiked east from their homes in Lorain, Ohio without telling their parents that they were going to do it. They traveled several hundred miles, found some sort of temporary jobs that they could work at for a couple of days to earn some money so they could eat, and then hitchhiked home. (Yes, their parents were not happy about it, but they didn’t call the police.)
Somewhat similar… my best friend’s father offered to pay us $50 to fully remove a rather large tree stump from the back yard. He didn’t say how we should remove it.
The hole was about 6ft deep after our chemically enhanced removal and it was probably more work to refill that hole than it would have been to cut the stump out with hand tools.
Child in the fifties and 60’s. Born on a farm then moved to the city. I was pretty free range on the farm. But someone was really always keeping an eye on me–equipment, cattle, running water, stock ponds. We moved to the city and a truck driver tried to snatch me out of my front yard. My mother came out of the house when he was about to pick me up and tore into him.
Things were NOT better back then. No one called the cops as far as I know.
All I got was a lecture about getting into cars with people I didn’t know and life went back to normal.
gee whiz…all these childhood memories…and nobody has yet mentioned:
WE USED TO EAT THE RAW COOKIE DOUGH in the mixing bowl !!!
come on, folks…'fess up. We all loved it. And nobody died. (as far as I know, anyway.
Raw Cake batter - still do this , raw bacon - still do this, raw ground beef - do not do this
My mom up until she moved into AL, defrosted everything on the counter. raw meat all kinds, cooked leftovers like casseroles these I believe we’re the reason I suffered frequent stomach upsets living at home.
Used to light M-80s. Lots of them.
My dad assembled them. 
Oh, yeah. I remember when there was no age requirement for buying fireworks, so they’d sell them to 8-yr-olds-- matches too. And we could buy things like saltpeter, gunpowder, and all sorts of stuff that went “BOOM!”
At my girl scout camp bats lived in the tents (we gave them names), rattlesnakes crawled out of the woods (a counselor almost stepped on one on the way to the latrine), ticks lived in the brush and carried Rocky Mountain Fever (we learned to check for them after a hike), and yellow jackets were everywhere (the leaders always had an epi-pen.) Poison ivy and sprained ankles were a given as was getting lost on hikes and getting rained on. We spent a lot of time learning first aid and how to handle emergencies. I guess it was just assumed that shit happens and you need to be prepared.
Born in the early 50’s so just about everything I did as a child wouldn’t be allowed today. We were free-range kids; as long as we were home for dinner it didn’t matter where we went. The street I lived on was only one block long, with a city playground at one end and a cemetery at the other, so the only traffic on it was the people who lived there. Which meant we all played in the street. I was into model rocketry for a while, and worked on designing a rocket car which I would try to shoot the length of the street.
There was a decommissioned(?) section of cemetery a few blocks away, which was a vacant lot with pits and a trench, as well as all kinds of trash. Great for playing soldier. As far as I can remember, no one ever got seriously hurt, and I’m not even sure my parents knew that I played there.