We ran all over the woods behind our neighborhood with BB guns and were fishing and swimming in a strip mining lake that was probably 150 ft deep in the middle. It scares me now to think back about it. LOL! We rode our bikes a half mile up a 4 lane highway to the Neisner’s five and dime to buy candy. Nobody died, nobody got snatched. No problems. But it was a different time.
There was once when I was about seven or eight years old my friend and I were walking along and a car stopped beside us on a rural road. There were four or five older men and women in the car and they asked where such and such road was. Just up that way, we answered. Get in and show us, they asked, so we did. I remember sitting in the back on an old man's lap with an old woman beside me who was holding my my friend. They wore old clothes and had an odd accent and kind of odd mannerisms. When we got where they wanted to go, they didn't want to let us out. I started to climb out through the window and my friend pushed the back door open and somehow we scrambled away. Thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure they were Gypsies