Remember When Back in the day.............JFF

I remember playing jacks outside on my front driveway and the mailman who used to walk his route would always stop and play a round with me. Now days, you'd see that as a child pervert. I also remember being young and walking or riding my bike everywhere. Now days, kids are abducted from their own yards. I remember renting the large pavilions at the park for huge neighborhood gatherings. Those large pavilions just don't exist anymore.

It's still around. But, the icecream truck in the summer time. The bells would jingle and all the kids would run like crazy nuts to get money from their parents. The icecream truck doesn't come around the blocks anymore. It's parked either by the park or on the avenue. I guess people got annoyed by the noise of the bells, or parents not finding icecream "healthy' anymore.
Nice question.

I grew up being OUTSIDE all day, like another poster said, until it was a mealtime or dark. Out with few *props* just playing. Free-range before it was in vogue.
But, I disagree with your overall thought. I don't think the world is a *more dangerous* or judgmental place today. I think it's basically the same with dollars to donuts, the same amount of wingnuts that it's always had.
I can and do, trust my neighbors.
People pander to the media that hyper-focuses on the negative, when really, it's a small part of the world.
Life IS what you make it, what you make of your relationships with friends, neighbors and your community. Warts and all.

*ETA* I've gotta say, I find these responses amusing, considering some of those responding are under 30! Is 15 years ago really the "good old days"? LOL I'm sure it was SO much safer 10 years ago!

Opps, I forgot the remember when part. I remember playing freeze tag in the my front yard until the street lights came on. Putting a penny on the train tracks to see it flattened. Spaghetti and pancake dinners were the only fundraisers we had to do.
I agree it takes a village and not to sound preachy, but, YOU have to be the change you want to see. You Know? What makes our community a family is my choice to make myself a part of it. My neighbors and I have a great relationship. I have made an effort to reach out to them. The ice cream truck still drives down my street. I socialize with people when I take my kids to the park. We are members of a church right around the corner from our house. We are members of the YMCA right down the street. I shop at all the local mom and pop stores and restraunts. I have taken the time to get to know the cashiers at the convenience store. Now, after only living here 3 years, I feel a strong sense of community. But it took action on my part. I had to be the one to volunteer for PTA and the kids sports teams and to find a church. I know I sound very cliche and not every neighbor is somebody you want to befriend. But I'm glad to be living in this day and age. Those good ole days were segregated. Crosses were burned in yards. Women had no say in the world. Child labor was perfectly acceptable. We have a tendancy to remember wistfully for days gone by, but I am glad to be raising my kids in America 2011 not 1950.

I remember walking two blocks to go to the corner store, when I was four. They sold penny candy (actually it was 2 for a penny!) and sometimes my mom would give me a NICKEL!!! Oh, my goodness! 10 pieces of candy just for me! (My sisters were all in school) Red hot dollars, caramels with the white cream inside, flying saucers (wafer shaped UFOS with little beads inside - melted in your mouth), the "dot paper" (little candy dots you ate off the paper), candy cigarettes, wax Coke bottles............ I can remember them as if it were yesterday.......... And one time, walking to the store, I found a quarter! Oh, I was rich that day! I bought 50 pieces of candy, and my sisters and I had a feast! : )

And, I remember when I started school, and had to walk 7 blocks, past Dillon's Bakery, where it smelled SOOOOOOO good every morning. And sometimes, not very often, but sometimes, my mom would give us each 7 cents to buy a donut on our way to school.

Hmmmmm.......all my good memories seem to involve food....... no wonder I'm so fat!

I have a different spin on "back in the day". I remember when you couldn't leave your abusive husband because you would be ostracized in your community for being a divorced woman. My mother was! Apparently her neighbors would have rather she be an abused woman than a divorced one.
Also, I remember how children who were molested were encouraged to keep silent and forget about it so that the offending adult wouldn't lose face in the community.

There are wonderful things about our childhoods that seem so simple and how we wish we could recapture that for our children, but in truth, there is no such thing as "a simpler time". It just seems simpler to us since we had the beauty of seeing it through the eyes of a child.

I am glad that I live now! In light of the Sept. 11th anniversary I think of how the Japanese Americans were marched off to internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Can you imagine? That would be like us now uprooting every person of Middle Eastern descent or Muslim faith and stuffing them into camps just because of ignorant fear. Yet that's what our nation did to the Japanese....... back in the day.

Edit* I just read Tracy K's response. Excellent!!!!

I remember when you didn't come inside during the summer unless you needed to use the bathroom, eat or it got dark.

Hmmm, I must live in a very friendly area, because I would trust both of my next door neighbors with my and my children's lives. I live in a very diverse suburb of Chicago, and most of my neighbors are either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, and they DO have a very community-oriented mentality.

What do I remember from my childhood neighborhood? A bunch of latchkey kids who were always trying out dangerous/slightly illegal things and had no stay-at-home-parents in the area to check on ANY of us.

I remember when I would be ashamed if another adult reprimanded me. This weeked, my husband had an 11 year old tell him, "My mom says if you don't like it, YOU can move [they were throwing footballs and actually HITTING people (8 week old was on of those 'people', a 70 year old couple was another (they were trying to walk through the corridor)] when my husband asked him and his friends to move to the open, uninhabited part of the space. What happened to the parents asking their kids, "What did you do?" instead of getting up into someone else's face before getting the whole story? HELLO!!!!! I don't care who you are, your kid isn't as innocent as you think he is!!!!!

I guess what I'm saying is I remember a time where kids were respectful and considerate, and when a child got 'in trouble' by another adult, the question was, "what did you do?", not a parent flying off the handle because their kid was called out for being a little S***.

***SIGH**** There is no such thing as the 'village'. I miss it!

Oooh, yeah, I also remember being able to hop on my bike and ride without being bogged down with a helmet and 50 different kinds of knee pads!

And, having to memorize my home phone number instead of having it programmed into a phone. My son's best friend doesn't KNOW his home number or his parents cell numbers. What the heck happens when/if he loses his phone (he's only 7 for crying out loud!) or gets lost when he doesn't HAVE his phone?

I remember reading the 10 commandments in class in a public school. I remember if you misbehaved in class the teacher would ask you to bend over before you recieved the impact of the "bored" of education. I also remember that students respected their teachers and that profanity was "unheard" of in school.

I remember when the only time high school students "slept" together was when the boy scouts went on a camp out and every one had their own sleeping bag in a camp ground.

I remember when girls valued their morality and virginity. Then it was unheard of for a high school girl to be pregnant.

I remember neighborhood schools where everyone walked to school.

I remember when a nickle would buy a candy bar and the candy vending machine would give you a treat for a penny.

I remember when you could go to the movies for 50 cents and that would get you in and a coke and a bag of popcorn.

I remember when if you did something wrong, your parents would hear about it and you would probably get spanked for it.

I remember when teachers didn't have sex with their students. And if you even thought of living an "alternative" life style, you kept those feelings deeply hidden.

Good luck to you and yours.

I remember my brothers and I and another 30 or so kids from around the lake being out from sun up to sun down... as long as we were around the lake, someone had an eye on us, although it was rarely our own parents! We literally had a huge dinner bell my dad would ring that we could hear clear across the lake (we were rarely IN a friends house, always outside)...

We used to play ice hockey on the frozen lake before school, and stash our gear behind the dumpster at the bus stop. In the winter, our parents could always find us playing hockey on either our lake or the neighboring larger lake, because Mrs. Pisani used to block off and spray a section outside of her house on the lake, so we had fresh ice :)

We would go to the neighbors houses and play without our parents worrying if the neighbors they've known for years are suddenly going to feed us a poison apple and lock us in the basement, LOL!!

We would pet strange dogs... and none of us ever got bit ;)

We'd play in groups... all of us kids always looked after the younger ones, and if anything ever happened, we could easily grab a grown up, ANY grown up, to help out... if we needed help at all. We all new CPR and first aid... by the age of 10, you could lifeguard at the lake.

We started babysitting at 10 and 11.

We were latch key kids. We were smart. Our parents trusted us. We knew which kids were trouble, and stayed away from them. We were GREAT, well behaved, polite kids... because if we weren't EVERYONE let us know it, LOL, we didn't just have one set of parents ;)

When strangers came in from out of town to vacation at the lake, we welcomed them, had them over for dinner.

When my family used to go camping, we'd get cut loose to go make friends.

We walked everywhere, and if it was too far, we rode our bikes.

We didn't have cell phones. If our parents needed us, they'd call the neighbors or our usual haunts, or go down to the lake.

We were allowed to answer the phone, and the door.

It truly does take a village, and I've seen my neighborhood NOW change from neighbors never speaking to each other for years, into everyone getting together for BBQS, babysitting, or just to borrow a cup of sugar, literally! It's a beautiful thing, to watch this unfold, and see everyone watching out for everyone else: )

We're taking our children's innocence away and scaring them, un necessarily, by holding their hands until they're married. It's so sad. I trust my kids... I know what they're capable of, and what they're not. I know their comfort zones. I love that they ask to go to the mailbox and take the neighbors their mail when it's raining (one's a widow, one has a 4 week old baby)... I love that they walk up and down my street to pick up garbage, because they love the earth and want to keep it clean. I love that I can go to our boat club with them and let them cut loose... they'll ask before they swim, and if they're out of sight, I know they're in the bamboo forest and will come when I call.

Great question :)

I remember being able to walk to the store that was two miles away from our house. At the ripe young age on eight.

They have candy ten pieces for a dollar. Oh we thought that was magic! being able to go as a group and get our own candy!! those are things my kids may never feel....until they are 16...I am sad for them.

I remember the freedom we had. I and a friend went into a canyon alone when we were 5, for example. It was pretty magical. I remember the milkman too, I also remember stealing a milk bottle when I was 6 for the 10 cents I would get at the store and the two candy bars I could buy with that. There are some downsides to free-ranging, unsupervised children....

I remember the first time I watched a VHS movie. My dad rented a VCR (big ole box thing) from the video store and we watched The Gods Must Be Crazy!!!!!!

The community part is kind of hard for me, we lived out in the country.

I remember riding my bike around town when I was a child. I wouldn't let my children ride around the BLOCK by themselves.

I remember when I was little and a peddler would drive down my grandma's street and stop. Everyone would go out to buy the fruits and veggies he had for sale. I can still see the truck and him with his hat on. If someone drove down a street now, people would panic and wonder why that person is selling foods--where are the food police? It is a shame.

I also remember and miss the ice cream truck. Granted we do have one but the one I grew up with is still there in the old neighborhood with soft serve ice cream cones and banana splits for $.50, $1 and $3. The same man selling to the same neighborhood. Now we get the commercial brands for 1.50 and up to $3 each bar.
I read a couple answers and for the neighborhood, you got away with NOTHING. If you went somewhere you were not supposed to momma knew. If you did something you really should not have, momma knew. You got home and mom asked you why such and such. No denying because every mom in the neighborhood reported on every one's child. Mom really did have eyes in the back on her head. Now, no one really knows anyone. i could not tell you who my neighbors are across the street accept we do say hi when we see each other. No one sits outside to talk anymore with each other.

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Im only 30, but i still recall walking/riding a bike/rollerskating through the neighborhood alone, buying candy from the store and going to the pool all by myself. Id get off the bus and go to an empty house. My parents werent neglectful, they just had jobs and things were different in the 80s.

Oh yeah...and i remember when in school they called sitting cross legged "indian style" not "criss cross applesauce" like they tell my daughter. It always makes me laugh when i see examples of the world being offended by everything, and everyone being ok with that.