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.
Much of mid-America well into the 1970s hadn’t really succumbed to the stark big-city/crime/dope cultural chaos that the nightly media presented. I’m guessing a lot of people who grew up in the urban coastal regions had different, more soured experiences of the era.
I didn’t venture much in Houston proper during that era, but I do have nice memories of week-long summer visits with my grandparents at their home in the rural outskirts of Baytown. Feeding goats, chickens, and manipulating the tv-antennae to pick up “Highway Patrol” reruns on channel-26 as late as 1974.