I liked reading this thread! MY PEOPLE! lol
My best friend and I were the neighborhood tomboys. My job in the neighborhood was to take snakes that were just caught and tame them so they wouldn't bite. We played baseball and football with the boys. Our mothers tried their best to get us to play with the girls that played with dolls and played store all day. We tried, but were bored to tears and kept getting into trouble because we didn't understand the rules for playing with girls.
We spent all day long playing outside too. When we went to a friends house it was to see if they could come outside to play.
My parents, like many of the people on thee rode, had huge gardens. We didn't go inside for lunch, we went to the garden and picked something to eat. My very old neighbor had a huge patch of red raspberries and I would sneak underneath them and eat as many as I could. I would get all scratched, but that was better than being caught stealing them.
No ones mothers worked. They worked in their gardens and canning and picking berriers in the fields. Washing clothes and hanging them outside to dry.
We caught frogs and crawfish in what we called, "the big ditch". When they started putting in the sewers we would sneak down the man holes and explore them.
I remember building a huge corral in the field with saplings for my invisible horses. We had tree forts and underground tunnels and warred with kids from other neighborhoods tearing each others forts up. They caught my brother once and hung him in a tree. He was there for a couple of hours before his buddies could rescue him.
Family vacations were the whole family getting into the car and driving either to Canada for camping or down south the see the everglades and ocean. It was the only time we ate in restraunts.
I first learned about racism on a vacation to Florida. We were in Georgia and a gas station attendant was asking about the "you know the word" that was elected mayor in Cleveland. He asked my dad if we were all crazy up there in Ohio to allow that. I heard the conversation but didn't quite understand it back then.
In elementry school I remember the principal using the pa system to tell us that President Kennedy was just killed. My teacher was crying and us kids felt sad, but again not really understanding what assasination meant.
Parents rarely went trick or treating with their kids. The older kids would take the younger ones. We also had beggars night and most people expected that kids would be out then too. No store bought costumes.
If we cried it had better be for a good reason. Parents let kids work out fights for themselves. We hung out in groups and it was within our group that we found protection.
Tv's were never on durig the day. Daytime was for being outside either working or playing. Neighborhood adults walked into each others houses without knocking. Nothing was ever locked and rarely stolen.
It was a different world back then. I wonder how we let so much get away from us. Didn't it seem like the days were longer back then?
