In “These Happy Golden Years” Laura Ingalls Wilder talked about how Almanzo courted her. Mind you she was about 16 and he was 26. When they did finally she was 18 and he 28. Their courting was mainly buggy rides (just the two of them) on Sunday and him escorting her home from church. Kids today would have found that kind of date quite boring.
I remember that. Nowadays, would a girl of 16 and a man of 26 just go for a buggy ride, and she comes home untouched? Erm. We’re back to your observation that everything is different when Pa and the brothers have shotguns.
I watched a movie last night, filmed in 1942, starring a teenaged Shirley Temple. She met a young man because the boy she was with rearended the other boy’s car. What would I say if a strange boy brought Elen home from a party, saying, “We met in a traffic accident.”?