There was a patch of woods near our house where we spent much of our time - climbing, building tree houses, playing with fire, etc. We had a basketball goal on the street where we played till the old lady across from it called the cops on us. We played pickup baseball and football in the school yards in the neighborhood. We rode our bikes miles away from home with little or no money in our pockets, just a backpack with some sammies and snacks. None of this was supervised, and cell phones didn’t exist yet - we all had curfews that we didn’t dare violate, if we were home for meals and bedtime we were OK. Somehow we survived and grew up into (mostly) responsible adults.
Now that my own children are adults, I see so many of their friends that have never grown up and have no clue how to deal with the world’s complexities. I see kids in their mid twenties that wouldn’t survive 10 minutes outside of their parents’ protective nest. And these are the leaders of tomorrow? Oy.
Just reminiscing this evening about those days and how we would build forts, tree house [without P&Z showing up w/ a summons], rafts that Newtoidaho mentioned above.
Dinner was always between 5 p and 5:15p ....you better be on time.
we built forts all the time...don't really know why....at least two brothers had hammers dropped on their heads from the treefort....at least a couple of kids stepped on rusty nails...we would have "wars" with neighbor kids and put little apples on pointed sticks and fling them at each other....
then again.....lightning bugs....who can ever forget running around a night with an open canning far trying to catch a lightning bug and keep it over night...only to find that it had died my morning...