Hell, I lived in the West and that's what it was like. We didn't lock our doors until '67 and when I was 10, I rode my back across the entire city of Tucson!
My mother was a bit tweaked about that, but she was worried about car accidents, not molesters...or gang bangers.
The former ended up in Ol' Sparky at the State pen and the latter didn't exist.
Kids now live choreographed lives run by their parents until they are in their late teens. Or else they end up in something bad.
Thanks, Baby Boomer idiots (i'm one, so I get to say that).
It was not just baby boomers though.
The men who fought in the second world war for the most part participated.
Many actively so.
When I joined the Marine Corps during the Carter Administration I heard stories told uniformly of the often vitriolic rejection the men who came back from Korea and Vietnam recieved at VFW posts and Foreign Legion halls around the country. Veterans of those wars still serving told us of the hometown receptions they got from the WWII vets who had been greeted with parades at their own returns.
When I left the service in September of ninety one after the Soviet collapse,
the veterans organizations in the area where I grew up had deteriorated from the active social centers of my youth into booze filled bars for the most part. I don’t think there is a single one still sporting a cafeteria or hosting an annual BBQ for the comunity. But the old hangers on sheepishly admitted that the tales I had heard were an accurate description of the fifties through the seventies there too.
America changed for the worse and sadly those one would think most likely to have preserved what we had helped things along.