I’m 67 and life was MUCH better 50 years ago...
Kids could play all over the neighborhood and you didn’t have to worry about some pervert grabbing them...We used to hitch hike to the mountains, even though we had licenses and cars...We did it for the fun...We could carry our rifles in the truck to school and deer hunt as soon as football practice was over...
We knew ALL our neighbors and cooked out with a crowd quite often...
Yeah...Things were MUCH better...
“I’m 67 and life was MUCH better 50 years ago...”
I remember leaving to go on vacation in 1960 and my mother asked my old man if the door was locked. The old man said “we don’t have a key, haven’t seen it for a couple years. Think we should get one made?” She said no, we took off.
I think that people tend to look at the past through rose-colored glasses. In this day of rapid communication, news of a kidnapped child can spread throughout the world in minutes, whereas in the 1960s, the same news could take days to spread throughout the community.
As a child, I managed to fend off three kidnapping attempts, in the 1960s and early 1970s. My mother let me play all over the neighborhood, but she had also told me to never take candy from strangers. And it is that advice, as dumb and cliché as it sounds, that saved me from being kidnapped and murdered.
I think that helicopter parenting, where kids are NOT taught to look out for danger and their parents are always nearby, is certainly not better than it was 50 years ago. But I don't think the dangers have significantly changed.
My Mother in Law told me that back then they used to take their kids out and watch them baseball and then have a laugh and drink on the side.
Said life was much more simple, and people felt more free.
Today she said you can’t take a drinkl to a kids soccer game as it is frowned upon, you can’t do a lot of what they could back then and they certainly did not have perverts, homosexuals, cross dressing in your face.
Dad comes home from work, meal on table,. kids at table, mother and father relaz while kids then play out.
Perverts don’t grab kids today, or at least any more or less than they did 50 years ago. That’s just hysteria and a rationalization for helicopter parents to justify their overprotective ways. Let the kids play. My childhood was joyfully free of video games, play dates, organized sports, clarinet lessons and other structured activities. All I had to worry about after school was getting my homework done and being home when the streetlights came on.
They sure were better! You could walk into any place of employment, fill out your application and walk out hired, then and there on the spot! AND be paid more than minimum wage to start! You didn’t have to wait a year for benefits, either. The kicked in immediately except for vacation..you had to accrue time for that, and profit sharing was automatic.
You could afford to purchase a home AND a new car, all of the required insurances, and still have money for groceries, entertainment, as well as savings.
I remember those days. Our parents bought a 13 room house on four acres of land in the middle of town for $4,000. Three years later it sold for $20k which was significant bucks then!
We were able to ride our bikes on the street around town without worry..yes, we had to use safety rules. Police cars were privately owned vehicles with a bubble stuck on top during duty hours.
About the only time the police were needed was if there was a house fire or an accident down the road. The worse things the teens did in those days was putting the picnic tables in the lake water just for haha’s.
I remember one time a group of teens broke into the laundromat...not to steal the coins, but because a couple of them couldn’t go home (unfit parents were rare, but they existed) to do their laundry. They were let go without any charges filed against them, and all of them turned out well as adults.
We used to hear about sit-in protests, and sometimes the riot police used excessive force, but those things usually happened in big cities, not in our small rural towns which is what most of the country was made of.
It was a big deal to go to the city which was usually a very significant drive, to see a hippie. That’s not what we went to the city to do, but it was a thing for a kid to do when we did go there, which wasn’t often.
Our house was well filled with food as were the homes of all our friends. We all had good clothes, up to date and in good condition, so were our shoes.
Sure, there were a few ‘poor’ kids, but you could count them on one hand. They were the ones who didn’t get regular hair cuts, and who came to school dirty. They were so few that they stood out.
Sometimes some of us girls would befriend the poor girls, invite her to our house after school, scrub her up, do her hair, give her some make up and an outfit so she wouldn’t feel so self conscious at school. They wanted to be liked too. They wanted boyfriends, and they wanted to be part of a group...to be included.
I also remember teachers who didn’t take any guff. They’d throw erasers and pop the one who was giving the class problems with lightning speed and accuracy, even with their backs turned to the class. These teachers were usually Vietnam vets. It was usually the greasy, pimply guys with the black leather jackets and the cocky attitudes who got nailed.
A teacher who couldn’t control his/her class room was usually driven out by the class itself. We needed to respect our teachers, and we needed to learn. We wouldn’t accept anything less.
Ya, I remember those days, I remember them well. They were the turning point for the crap we have going on now.
My mother used to go to school meetings and she tried so hard to convince school personnel that you don’t bend down to children, you BRING THEM UP to you. She was right, and they didn’t listen.
Now we can all cry 96 tears.