Before that, everybody shopped on the high street and everyone met everyone at the shops or at the PTA, and nobody worried about kids. Malls were built so that busy women could drop in on the way home from work, find an instant parking space, pick up some food, the dry cleaning and the youngest kid from the nearby preschool and be home before the older kids had killed each other. When women went to work (and men didn't stay home instead) the whole idea of a neighborhood could not help but go into decline. They may not have been specifically looking out for you, but you knew you could access them if needed.
So your own mom didn't have to worry about you because there was like this Neighborhood Watch on duty all the time. There were also corner stores dotted all round the suburbs and you knew the proprieters, who also worked in the store, and you could go there. So kids could roam the streets all day in groups or pairs, but everywhere they went they were only a short distance from Pete's house, or Susie's house, or somewhere else where a mom or a kindly old lady they knew would be home in the event that someone broke an arm, or a stranger offered someone candy, or you ran into one of the dogs that were always prowling around without their owners and you didn't like the look of it. Add to that, there were a lot of kids because it was a Baby Boom. When boomers were kids, mothers were nearly all married and at home during the day. That all ended when women went to work, at least in the cities and suburbs. Anyone hear a mother standing outside yelling "Dinner!" anymore? You just don't see kids having the run of the neighborhood like they did decades ago. Watching Clint Eastwood film a scene from the first Dirty Harry film in the Financial District, San Francisco.ģ wars, 34 days under bombardment, one plane crashįlying around the world in both directions several timesįucking while going round and round on the revolving sign on the roof of the Jack Tar Hotel, San Francisco. Smoking a joint with Carlos Santana at the Family Dog.Īn earthquake while on the 42nd floor of the Bank of American Building, San Francisco. The Summer of Love, 1967 and concerts at Speedway Meadows, including Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Greatful Dead,
No checking in with parents every 10 min, and the only question asked was "Did you have a nice day, dear?". Walking out the front door in the morning, wandering around all day discovering the new, the unusual, returning home just before it got dark.