Ah, and “your town” of “6000 souls” never have migrants or people passing through, I take it. The entire town was a gated community?
Nice!
Not at all. The closest thing to “gates” we had were some stone pillars in front of the fanciest houses that you’d try to climb on as a kid and get yelled at to get off of.
Toss a dart at a map of Trump Red Country and you’d probably hit someplace similar. It was the 1950s and 60s, and as I said, mostly long-time residents with little reason for anyone to move there other than a handful each year to work in a local company. New kids in school were a rarity. I’m not saying it was perfect and to be honest, I couldn’t wait to get out of there and experience a bigger scale of life - but I’m saying that safety of kids whether in cars or left to roam the neighborhoods til dark was not a big concern for parents because the entire community looked out for kids - their own and otherwise - which meant we (the kids) really were under the same scrutiny everywhere as we were at home since the values held by essentially all parents were the same. If you heard of a parent letting their teenage kid dring a beer, for example, that was bigtime scandal. It was a mostly Republican area but the values of the Democrats were still very conservative and nothing like today.
I don’t deny the reality of today at all, I just take exception to broad statements that it was always the same way, because it wasn’t.
People forget. Our world has been subject to violence throughout time.