I grew up in inner city Chicago ( near Humboldt Park) in the 60’s, same thing. Just check in for lunch, and be home when the street lights came on.
Also why I moved my family from Sacramento to Neenah Wi, so my kids could know some of that freedom.
That's amazing. I raised mine in the mafia-protected Italian section of Philadelphia, no lie — it was the safest part of the center of town. But the first time I let my 12-year-old son go a half a block unattended to get a slice of pizza, he was robbed on a side street by two kids from the projects 4 blocks away.
In the preceding 20 years, I had been shaken down on the street for money several times, had a car stolen, had my residence broken into twice and my parking space vandalized twice, my bike and my car license plate stolen, our bowl of Halloween candy robbed out of our hands, the flowerpots on the front step and decorations on the front door stolen, and was once robbed at gunpoint while sitting in my car at a Burger King drive-thru, during which time I was just lucky they didn't hijack the car with me in it. But when they started on my kid, time to leave. We arrived in the suburbs not long after.