Didn’t you guys play with each other outside and ride bikes, hunt for snapping turtles and shoot BB guns and throw rocks and play baseball and football with each other and have rock fights, play marbles and trade baseball cards and coins out of your coin collections and climb trees and swim wherever there was water, play army?
Those were Boomers, but they were not the Latch key kids. That was a later group to which the article is referring.
Boomers did all that play outdoors and went home to a mom, and usually dad, in the house. We were very independent on one hand, but someone was there if we needed them at home.
Those in my neighborhood surely did, and more besides. Some of that taught caution through pain.
“Didn’t you guys play with each other outside and ride bikes, hunt for snapping turtles and shoot BB guns and throw rocks and play baseball and football with each other and have rock fights, play marbles and trade baseball cards and coins out of your coin collections and climb trees and swim wherever there was water, play army?”
Yup! No helmets, either. Broke some bones; so what? Fixed our own cars. Rode minibikes like we were crazy. Lit bonfires. Slept in the woods. Etc.
Damn, you must have grown up in my neck of the woods. That describes my growing up to a tee.
My brother and I certainly did. Every kid in the neighborhood did the same, and everyone played together, whether friends or otherwise.
A drainage ditch split the neighborhood, with 20 yards on each side of the ditch. We had dirt clod battles, one side against the other.
“Didn’t you guys play with each other outside and ride bikes, hunt for snapping turtles and shoot BB guns and throw rocks and play baseball and football with each other and have rock fights, play marbles and trade baseball cards and coins out of your coin collections and climb trees and swim wherever there was water, play army?”
My boomer life.
lol. Us kids loved it when we were alone. I loved being alone. All you hear today is the need for “me time”. What kind of kid pines for mommy or daddy when the are by themselves? The ones who are raised by helicopter over protective parents.
Of course it was a miracle any of my younger siblings survived this alone time.
Yes. All those things. In retrospect it was a fun childhood. The only thing I regret is that I never took up karate or became a black belt. That would have helped out.
Ride Bikes
Work on Bikes
Steal’em strip’em
Yes I’m a Rebel Dottie.
Well, no snapping turtles. Only iguanas, tarantulas and pythons. And we played Marines instead of Army, living on the GITMO naval base. But most afternoons, I took off on my horse through the hills of GITMO for hours all on my own.
Didn’t you guys play with each other outside and ride bikes, hunt for snapping turtles and shoot BB guns and throw rocks and play baseball and football with each other and have rock fights, play marbles and trade baseball cards and coins out of your coin collections and climb trees and swim wherever there was water, play army?
Growing up in a city, we have a river running along active as well as derelict/abandoned factories and warehouses. The area was wooded and for us it was “the wilderness” even though you could still hear traffic.
We had our bikes as well as Basketball hoops at the school yard. We would play games like stickball and “four square” in the street.
We’d also go exploring the ruins of the abandoned structures. Our parents didn’t particularly care what we did; but they still would have come down on us like a ton of bricks if we were caught somewhere we shouldn’t be and they got called in by the police.
You detailed my youth pretty closely. Up until the teen years. Then it was mostly about finding, you guessed it, GIRLS.