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Free range kids
5 Ways My 1970s Childhood Was Better Than Yours
Did your parents let you play with axes?
My childhood was very different from the extremely protective version kids today live. After a certain age — 9 or 10 or so? — everybody was left to their own devices.
If we were not home by the time the streetlights came on, our mothers would yell our names, and this was just as effective as texting. Any kid who heard a kid’s mom yell would make sure the right kid got the message. We got our asses home quick when the parental yelling started.
Here are five things that seemed normal to me that don’t really happen now.
№ 1: We had a clubhouse we designed ourselves.
We lived in a trailer until I was in junior high. My parents were building a house with their own two hands. Mom designed it with a ballpoint pen in a school notebook, and she and Dad worked on it as they had the time and money.
They bought an old house — really just a shack — and dismantled it down to the foundation. Then they extended the foundation and built your basic shoebox-shaped ranch. The kitchen, dining room and living room covered the original footprint of the house. Three bedrooms, one bathroom and a utility room…
