When children ran free

 

On the 40th anniversary of the movie “Stand by Me,” people are amazed that the kids never seemed to be at home. Four boys spent two days looking for a dead body and even camped out overnight.

What? Their parents didn’t drive them everywhere? No 3 p.m. soccer games, no 6:00 piano lessons?

Are the streets more dangerous now or do we just hear more about abductions and other crimes today?

The movie brings back memories of the 1950s, which it supposedly portrays. Here are some of my memories. If you were a kid then, do any of them match yours? I lived in the California suburbs. Maybe your experiences in a rural area were different.

--Riding a bicycle all over town. Freedom from your parents. Typically, the 10-year-old on the bike knows everything that’s going on.

--Baseball games in the street. At first you sit on the curb and watch the big kids play. Then you start street games of your own.

--Earning money on a paper route. Afternoons after school and Sunday mornings. Spending profits on ice cream sundaes when the route was over. (They only hired boys.)

--Walking to school with friends. The best social time of the day.

--Lemonade stands in summer. I guess that still happens. The kid down the street charges 5 cents less and you claim foul!

--Hide and seek from one back yard to another, both boys and girls. Neighbors thought it was cute and didn’t complain. Your parents were fine with it as long as you were home for dinner. But they never knew where you were.

--Tree houses and club houses, where you and your friends could meet in private. Since my dad built one in our backyard, the other kids came to us.

--Summer vacation lasting seemingly forever. When school finally resumed in September, you felt like a different person.

--One precious moment sticks with me: About six of us went to a mobile home dealer’s lot to inspect trailers. The manager let us in and we pretended we lived there. We tracked dirt onto a throw rug. When the manager saw it, he picked the rug  up and said, “Don’t worry about it, guys. I was a boy once too.”