“Nice thoughts of a forgotten time; however, they don’t put away the perverts or the criminals anymore...”
They didn’t put them away then either. This guy is telling us the days of Charles Manson, John Gacy, Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, and the The Hillside Stranglers was a pristine time.
Jimmy Carter was president. Jerry Brown and Rose Bird were freeing criminals as fast as they were arrested, and I couldn’t let my wife and baby daughter go to the market at night without me. I love history revisionists.
By age 10 I was living in a rural community. Same thing only better. At age 13 I was camping out alone in the summer on the lake with boat, motor, rifle and dog. Dad checked on me at least every other day brought ice food etc.. No phone. Nearest one was a 20 minute boat ride with an old 7.5 early 50's era 7.5 hp Evinrude.
In the mid 1970's changes started happening. Places I would go to at night in downtown Knoxville like to the theatres to see a movie when riding to town with my dad on his way to work were no longer safe for a kid and my dad who worked evening shift for Ma Bell started carrying. In 1976 I left for Basic and my dad drove my old 61 Chevy to work one night. Some one stole it LOL. It was parked right underneath I-40.
But yes I do remember a safer nation and a time when certain behavior wasn't tolerated by society nor our judicial system. We did have one major scare I can remember a killer on the loose. It was about 1960 or 61 and a man escaped from a county courthouse and was involved in a shootout there and later killed two more men on the lamb. That was his second escape his first was from a penal farm ran by a sadist. After the guy was killed in a shootout the area returned to normal.
Yes - I was writing about MY childhood, waaaay before Carter.
The 1960s and the 1970s were two different eras, although the late 60s could be said to have lasted into the early pre-Ford, 70s.
In big city Houston before forced integration took hold and mass immigration kicked in, and the mental institutes were emptied, we really did live leaving our keys in our cars, windows down, and I never owned a key to my mother’s home that I grew up in, coming home from school to an empty house with an unlocked front door.
The large house windows were left up except when it rained, we didn’t have bicycle locks and left our bikes out, kids lived and played all day, outside, on their own and unwatched, going where they wanted.