So True. The 50s and beyond I simply can not relate to. Art, popular culture, politics–may as well be a different planet. I’m sure the rift has something to do with a Nietzsche-esque death of faith as the power of the transistor gave us what is approaching God-like omniscience (at least compared to what quill and parchment had to offer). The 60s? Very pretty, but gawkish and awkward like a 12 year-old trying to make his way in the world alone after the sudden death of his parents.
The 70s? I remember hope and dreams the like which haven’t been nurtured since the U.S. put a movie star in the Oval Office. We dared to hope for ETS, for Psychic Powers[sup]®[/sup], for Bigfeets, Yetis & Nessie. The only poison food was Milky Ways & Butterfingers we got on Halloween, and my mom dutifully protected my brother and me from them. There was an ongoing bounty placed on new blacktop in the area; whoever found it and reported to the rest of the kids in the 'hood received glory for a day while we skateboarded ourselves into hamburger on the oily satin.
Monster movies were scary! Jaws made me pee(I was 7), Alien made me cry(I was 12…Hm, my oldest daughter is almost 12).
I think a lot of people on this thread don’t realise what kids get up to nowadays. Kids still play outside, they still go off on their bikes for miles, and hours, on end. They still build dens in the woods. They still talk to strangers. They still go places, and do things, they shouldn’t. They’re not, contrary to popular belief, all murdered or carted off into basements by paedophiles.
The world hasn’t changed as much as you might think.
(PS to the OP… 300 yards? Is that meant to sound like a long distance to walk? Even nowadays I’m sure most children walk further than that to school!)
Here in this town, the school discourages kids from walking to or from school. The probable reason is that the kids are not under their control during that time. It’s not the school’s fault entirely, though - over protective parents helped create that scenario - where the kid is under the control of the school up to the very minute that he/she is under the control of the parent. That way, the parents can’t blame the school if something happens. It’s sad, really.
This is the sort of thing that should have parents giving the school hell! Oh well, hopefully one side benefit of the $5 gallon will be parents refusing to drive their chubby offspring two blocks to school.
I gladly washed my hands of the whole lot of them last year, since the youngest of my children graduated high school. I don’t know which is worse, the school board or the helicopter parents! Perhaps they’ll eat each other. They can do it without me.
I was born in 1951, so I “grew up” in the 1950s and 1960s. Living conditions, before I was a teen-ager, were a lot like what **Inigo ** described. I shared an attic bedroom with my younger brother. Pop was a policeman, we lived in a town of about 2,000 in the middle of all-white farmland, eastern Colorado, so there wasn’t much money. Mom and Pop made sure Christmas was magical – not a lot of gifts, but high quality and long-lasting, and my best memories are of the inexpensive things – making ornaments out of construction paper and white glue, Mom making candy, Pop putting the lights on the (real) tree. I learned to shoot a rifle when I was 8 years old, joined Boy Scouts when I was 11. To get to school I rode my bicycle the better part of a mile across town in good weather; hoofed it in winter. I didn’t own a car until I bought my own after high school, working at a little TV station in my home town.
Summers my cousin Bill and my brother Tom and I bicycled all over town, mostly just screwing off. We played hide-and-seek in the dark (I learned from Boy Scouts to wear dark clothing and stick to the shadows). We went on Scout camporees and hiked out to the local cemetery (a mile from town) and ate a lot of balogna sandwiches.
It wasn’t exactly Norman Rockwell, though. I was physically and verbally abused by teachers in fourth and fifth grades because I had trouble with math and because my father was a cop. I try not to dwell on that now.
Back in the mid 40s to early 50s I lived in a small town just south of Dallas; we walked to and from school every day unless it was raining; then a neighbor lady took us. I never attended an air conditioned school, not even in college. My high school chemistry lab had a window unit but that was it. I didn’t live in an air conditioned house until I was 17 and didn’t own an air conditioned car until I was 21. I was also in my 20s before I owned an FM radio.
Sunrazor, I remember “back in the day.” My mother married my 1st stepdad in 1960. He worked for a major oil company, so we followed “the pipeline.” Early on we moved to first, Houma, then Chauvin Louisiana. Halloween in Chauvin was interesting. $$ was scarce, so we got boiled crabs in our Halloween sacks.
A few years (& moves) later, we landed in Satanta, a small western Kansas village. I remember that when my 4th grade teacher called me “pipe line trash”, the only thing that kept my mother from decking her was the fact that teach was noticeably pregnant.
There were no African-Americans in Satanta; there were, however, many Mexican-Americans. I never learned Spanish, but I still remember a little “Mexican.”
The high school full back was also the basketball star – he was all of 5’11" & must have weighed all of 150#. This was the school stud.
If I wanted to go somewhere, I walked. I knew my town like the back of my hand – which houses had mean dogs, which people would yell at you for cutting through their yard, the nice ladies who’d let you pick a lilac and the ones who’d buy the potholders you made from those little metal looms.
Kids in cars? Maybe if you were going out of town to visit grandma.
Target shooting was a regular pass time. Weather bad? Open your bedroom window and shoot from there. Skeet shooting in the back yard.
40 minute school bus ride to school. 10 minutes to get home (big circular route. I was first to be picked up).
Mini bike at 9. 100cc dirt bike at 11. We had a track on our 5 acres around the house. Must have driven my mom nuts circling the house like that for hours.
Worked at the Mobile home park we owned from about 10-15 yo. Driving trucks and tractors. Mostly I mowed grass though. I never want to mow grass again.
when I was a little girl - I burned down my house in a 7-alarm fire by accident. The burnt garage fell on the garden - and all that ash made the best fertilizer you wouldn’t believe. We had zuccinis the size of baseball bats. And at the end of the summer, we gathered up the cornucopia of veggies and used them to play the messiest game of veggie baseball you have ever seen.
When I was 12, I and a friend of the same age set off on a week-long canoe trip. No adults nearby the entire time. When we were near a town we called home (collect) to reassure parents.
It warms my heart to hear so many of you have fond memories of your childhoods. I do my best to make sure the children I am around get these kinds of memories. I hope someday they will recall them the same feelings that most of you have spoken of here.
I visited the police station and it’s jail cell with the family friend…the local police chief.
I rode in his cruiser, and went around town, on more than one occasion. I wore a play police uniform. I remember the radar gun and reading it as we drove along.
I got to hit the siren at the local reservoir parking lot.
I have to disagree. Your father was not a gun safety advocate - a gun safety advocate wouldn’t have left unsecured guns and ammunition where an unsupervised twelve year old had access to them. I was a twelve year old boy myself and I can remember all the stupid, irresponsible, and dangerous things I thought were great ideas back at that age. All twelve year old boys are like that. We survive to get older because of luck and because of responsible adults keeping an eye on us.
