Another memory of the 1940s.
I hiked a mountain at age 6. Tried to reach the top. never made it. Was ordered by mom to eat my packed lunch when the sun was overhead and then head back home. So I did, usually on a large rock in a sheep pasture. That was in the Appalachian mountains of PA, so the mountains were grassy or wooded all the way up. No impossible cliff faces like in the western mountains. Yes, we all ran around a lot and only came home when the streetlights came on. (twilight)
This was before my youngest sister was born. Don was the baby and taking up all of Mom's time. Sandy a preschooler. We lived in Monroeton, PA and kids just roamed because parents were busy with other things or other children. They trusted us to have good sense and an instinct for danger and we usually proved them right. (I bugged her for some time before she let me go hike the mountain. And then it became something that I did, by myself, in the summertime. )
A few years before that when we lived in Towanda, she let me walk home by myself from kindergarten, so a friend and I took a shortcut that was an hour longer than our regular walk. We hiked through alleys and people's back yards. We collected empty pop bottles and turned them into the corner store for two cents each. (considering that recycling plastic bottles these days only earns us a dime, that sort of income stream hasn't risen much.) Yes, mom did panic when we didn't show up on time and forbade us to ever take THAT shortcut again. đŸ™‚
1 comment:
Ours was a childhood children today are totally clueless about. I rode my bicycle all over the southside of Jacksonville, Florida. All of us neighborhood kids played basketball at one family's home. There were elementary-school kids and high-schoolers, from four-foot-nothing to six-feet-wow all playing together. It was total madness and total fun. In high school, I would pick up a couple of my friends in my mom's car on summer days, and we would go to the beach. On balmy evenings, we'd go to another family's home on our block and take turns swinging on a bag swing, a burlap bag full of straw. It was all good fun.
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