Home on the (free) range

“Growing up in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, things certainly seemed more simplistic and easier to digest.” — American actress Sandra Bernhard (1955-)

Taking a retro-nostalgic mental time-traveling ride in Mr. Peabody’s WABAC Machine of Improbable History the other day, a nostalgia-themed online page I follow asked the question of whether parents in the 1970s and 1980s really allowed their kids to roam freely.

Growing up Gen X from 1965-1983, the answer in the ever-lengthening memory in my mind, with some qualifications, is that yes, at least in my “Sandlot” circle of friends, we were, for the most part, free-range kids — often latchkey — in the simpler era before video games, social media, smartphones and GPS trackers.

Especially during summer vacation — vacay in today’s vernacular.

Yes, Virginia, we kids used to run free range wild all day until the street lights came on at night waaaay back in the day — and we knew which street lights in our neighborhood on Milwaukee’s far northwest side came on last, our way home lit with bluish mercury vapor lamps and flashing fireflies. And we did that all day, every day, from post-breakfast sunup until the sundown parental curfew call of the street lights or the bloodthirsty mosquitos drove us indoors — whichever came first.

Unless it was beastly hot or there was a torrential thunderstorm, you could get into trouble for being in the house, our parents making us go outside into the fresh air to play. There was no sitting around in the house watching TV all day — there was one TV in the house with three channels to choose from, and all the moms were watching talk shows like Phil Donahue and Merv Griffin, game shows like “Password” and “Let’s Make a Deal,” and soap operas like “As the World Turns” and “General Hospital.”

You were only home briefly for lunch and dinner, with every family eating at the same time and every kid getting the same simultaneous mealtime call. After waiting a spell to digest your food, you were back out the door ‘till the crickets chirped.

Life was simple and free — shooting fireworks, group bike riding, skateboarding, reading comic books and trading baseball cards and Wacky Packages in our communal treehouse, gathering hickory nuts from the trees along the busy Chicago and Northwestern mainline, lazily hanging out in the shade, playing tag and sandlot baseball, building go-karts, cooling off jumping over the lawn sprinklers, and exploring among the cattails for snails, fish and crayfish down at the nearby urban drainage ditch that ran adjacent to our townhouse complex — the “crick” we called it.

Playing hours for hours on end making our own fun, day after day after day from June through August, our summers were set to the soundtrack of opening and closing aluminum screen doors and groovy AM transistor radio tunes of the ‘70s, the best musical decade I’ve ever heard.

Hearing Earth, Wind and Fire’s jazz and R&B June 1975 single “That’s the Way of the World” mentally transports me back to the faces and places of those days.

Despite our juvenile freedom, we were all pretty good kids for the most part, taught from the get-go that respect, discipline and good behavior were among the cardinal virtues, alongside common sense back when it was, well, common. We all, admittedly, had our moments when we fell short of the mark, the human condition being what it is, but all and all, we were fairly well-behaved.

Besides, there was at least one or two moms always keeping an eye on us from a distance through the Venetian blinds, keeping us out of too much mischief — flatting pennies on the railroad tracks notwithstanding. If someone did something wrong, a watchful mom was on the phone, and boy, did you get it when you got home. Grounding — kiddie house arrest — was the worst punishment one could get, watching out the windows at all of your friends playing while you awaited parole from your bedroom prison. It was a lesson learned, among others, in those free-range summers of yore.

Looking back a half-century to 1975, beyond the cherished memories of spending fun time with my Sandlot friends — Ken, Brian, Brad, Ron, Mike, Dawn and Matt, among others, that made up our roster — we also learned important life skills like self-reliance, how to problem-solve, and how to get along with others and be good friends and neighbors.

Being free-range shaped our lives — and for the better, in my book.

News-Review freelance columnist Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.