When I grew up in the 1950s, there was no such thing as a play date. We kids roamed the neighborhood backyards or up and down the side streets to visit the other kids, roller skate, ride our bikes, or hang out inside on rainy days playing Monopoly or Chinese Checkers.
Most of the families knew each other; the mothers knew every kid, and we kids knew all the mothers and brothers and sisters of our friends. The dads were at work so they seemed mysterious, except when they were mowing the laws on the weekend. But the moms were always close to home, finding new recipes from the Betty Crocker cookbook, doing the laundry and ironing, going to the hairdresser for a weekly set, but always there with a fortifying snack when we came home from school. Even so, we left the house to wander through backyards, some with flower gardens and nice landscaping, others minimally maintained, mine with a pink cement patio built by my grandfather, a mason, and a beautiful surface to roller skate.
The hilly, vacant piece of land diagonally across the street took up an entire block, with scruffy or fallen trees, lots of milkweed and poison ivy, and most importantly, a crater about ten feet in diameter in which we played fort, both the boys and the girls. We climbed in and out, mostly playing Cowboys and Indians, using sticks for rifles or bows and arrows. Once we found a heavy board and made a bridge to walk across the diameter.
I do not recall ever seeing a parent come to the lot to check on us.
One afternoon, riding my second-hand Ross two-wheeler down a side street, I must have hit a pothole and flew over the handlebars onto the pavement. I noticed a deep gouge one inch wide across my right shin but managed to walk my bike home. I don’t recall getting stitches – I surely would remember if I had. I figured the scar would stay with me for life, but looking at my shin now, there is no evidence of it.
Our way of life growing up in the 1950s may seem risky to modern parents who follow their children’s whereabouts on cellphone GPS or drop them off and pick them up to organized sports or lessons instead of allowing them free time and free rein in the outdoors, finally arriving home at twilight on summer evenings. I remember many a sunset at the fort in the vacant lot, our signal to come in for supper and say hi to Dad.
Cars didn’t have seatbelts or bucket seats. On our visits to the north shore of Long Island, Grandpa squeezed me and my cousins into the Buick every day after lunch and drove us to the beach. The Buick was like a tank, probably a lot safer than the new cars that dent and crunch at the slightest touch. The little cousins got to sit on grandma’s lap up front.
Despite the freedom I had to roam, stay out late, ride in cars without a seatbelt, ride a bike without a helmet, play on undeveloped land strewn with rocks, ditches, broken bottles and brush, I survived my childhood.
But there was one situation which I now realize was terribly unsafe.
In my elementary school, it was an honor for selected sixth grade students to serve as crossing guards. At age eleven, I was assigned to patrol duty at a four corner intersection to oversee the kids walking home for lunch.
I ate my own lunch early and reported to the corner at 11:30. I was given a heavy white strap that clipped around my waist, with an extension that crossed my shoulder. When a student approached the corner, I walked into the street and looked in all directions.
If no vehicles were approaching, I give them the signal to cross. If there was a car in the distance, I was to put up my hand to stop the car and then wave the student across (stock photo from internet – not me)
I never felt a sense of danger because I figured that if you put up your hand to stop a car, it would do just that, what it was supposed to do.
I can’t figure out what possessed the adults in charge to allow this! No parents or teachers questioned the practice.
I have my own theory to explain this lapse in judgment. Suburbia was considered somewhat of a paradise in those days, where families lived a charmed life in post-war split level, cape, or ranch developments with new shopping centers, schools, and playgrounds.
It felt safe to live in America in the era after the dads returned from fighting the war in Europe, and that feeling translated into everyday life. General Eisenhower, who looked like our grandfathers, would continue to take care of us as President. School principals would keep us safe from the atomic bomb by conducting air raid drills and have us hide under our desks. The milkman would deliver two quarts of chilled Borden’s milk in the galvanized bin by the back door, without fail. Drivers would look out for children.
We trusted the institutions, government at all levels, newscasters, and corporations to know how to take care of us. The traditional family with its passive acceptance of gender roles formed the bedrock of American life. Social change, questioning of long-held values, and political unrest were a long way off – and unimaginable.
For me, an epiphany of change abruptly occurred in 1963 when Betty Friedan introduced her book, The Feminine Mystique, and her radical feminist thought at an assembly at the women’s college I attended. Come to think of it, that was only eight years after I had served as an eleven year old crossing guard.
I left my safety patrol days behind me and threw myself without hesitation into the times that were a-changin.’
The first part of your story reminded me of my own experiences in the empty lot down the block and across the street from our house. There, amid huge piles of dirt, we played war, which started with close fighting with sticks as swords or guns, but quickly moved to the dirt hills, from which we threw dirt balls at each other, imagining them to be grenades and bombs. It was in one of these battles that I received my first stitchable injury — a gash next to my right eye that required five stitches — when the other side upgrade their ammo to rocks, one of which just missed my eye.
Crossing guards were older men and women by my era — perhaps not as old as I am now, though.
I wonder if it was actually a safer time, then, for kids, or if we were more accepting of danger as part of life. Polio and smallpox were only recently tamed, the Cold War loomed, and WWII and the Holocaust were recent enough to be memories, not just history. I’ll have to think about that more
“The hilly, vacant piece of land diagonally across the street took up an entire block, with scruffy or fallen trees, lots of milkweed and poison ivy, and most importantly, a crater about ten feet in diameter in which we played fort, both the boys and the girls.”
I remember it well, Barrie, playing there (probably with you sometimes) until the sun went down and we had to cross the street for dinner. You are right: no one worried about us. How times have changed!
Do you remember catching fire flies in jars and the Good Humor man who came in the gleaming white truck, wearing his white cap, with the welcoming tune he would play to tell us he had arrived at Orchard Terrace? I moved when I was 10 so those are my last memories of Linden.
I also grew up in the 1950s. We played outside for hours up and down the block until my mother ran a large pewter bell out the back door to signal I should come home to eat dinner. (When my mother died I kept the bell because of the fond memories). My own children grew up in the 1970s with very similar play rules. Several years ago I found a blog that supports parents that want to give their children more unstructured and unsupervised time.
https://www.freerangekids.com/
Nice memories, Barrie. As a kid in Pensacola, I was a “patrol boy,” with a flag & a white belt like yours, except mine had a badge (like the cops). At whatever age this happened (elementary school, I think), I recall feeling it was appropriate for me to stop cars and make it safe for kids to cross. Such power (it’s amazing that I’ve never run for congress)!
I have the same memories of my ’50s childhood–all the kids playing together, all the parents knew each other, our parents letting us roam wherever we wanted. The only fear I remember is during the Cuban missile crisis and worrying that the Russians would drop the atomic bomb on us. It seems like we’re back to where we started.
Barrie, I enjoyed being one of the cousins squished into grandpa’s old Buick. That was the car with the rusted through front floor boards.
Barrie, I enjoyed being one of the cousins squished into grandpa’s old Buick. That was the car with the rusted through front floor boards.