My husband always says we lived in the best of times. We could play outside dawn to dark—our parents never had to worry. Every Saturday I’d take a bus into town—we lived in the country—my best friend would be waiting—we’d go to a double feature movie and have ice cream afterwards. We couldn’t afford the most expensive sundaes—$.30!!!!
I was 9 1/2 first time my parents left me home at night to babysit my 5 year old brother and 6 month old sister. I worried Germans were parachuting nearby! The volunteer fireman were cooking a spaghetti dinner for their wives. I kept calling asking when they were coming home—I was a bit scared. My mother told me to turn on the radio and bring the dog inside. It worked! She was so wise! She was only 18 years older than me! When they came home I had 3 pies I’d baked sitting on the table. Just a radio, no tv, party-line phone—how did we survive?? :)
The best part of being a kid when we were is that we were strangers to the word “worry”. Except for the news on the radio, or the newsreel before the movie in the theatre, we weren’t burdened with the cares of adulthood. Our parents cherished our childhoods, and our growing-up days were sweet innocence. The only concerns I remember were that the Nazis might come goose-stepping down our street, and of having to stay in our own yards to avoid being exposed to infantile paralysis when it appeared in the town.
The joy of life was that we neither knew, saw, nor heard of life’s mysteries or trials until we had a need to know.