Pfft.
I had a park to play in.
It was the multiple acres of woodland behind the house.
Flipside, these days you don’t know if some creeper is in that park hunting your kids.
The creepers were there back then in about the same quantity as now. Only now have we been trained by the social-hypochondriac state and media to suppose that they're everywhere, and Action Must Be Taken. A people in constant fear are a people easily controlled.