I grew up in a friendly little town in northern Idaho. There were about 5,000 people, and life was pretty laid back. We never locked the house door, and my mom usually left the car keys in the ignition. I guess that there was probably some crime there; but it could not have been very much. Kids were safe out on the streets until all hours of the night, and that is where we uually played at night because we could see better under the streetlights. The "10 o'clock whistle" told us when it was time to quit playing and go inside for the night. On saturdays, it cost 35 cents to go to the theater and watch the afternoon matinee, and you could stay and see it over if you wanted to sit that long. On Halloween, they always had a special scary movie for the kids to go to after we finished up traversing the town with our grocery bags and collecting candy, apples, and an occasional home made cookie. Sometimes, we had to sing a song to get that cookie; but it was worth it. No one had ever had anything bad happen to them while out trick-or-treating at that time, and the older kids watched after the younger ones; so we all had a good time. Sandpoint was on beautiful Lake Pend O'reille, and the summer was usually spent at the beach by most of the kids. I (of course) was usually out riding my horse. It was a great place to grow up in, and I had no idea how lucky I was until I did grow up, and lived in many other places.
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, it was cold and windy during the winters. The one thing I miss that our kids will never experience is the block parties we had. The whole street would be closed off with all of the residents of the street getting together to have a good time with each other. One of the things that really trouble me is the need to have police officers in the schools. When I went to school it was the safest place to be now we have to worry if our kids will come home when they leave in the mornings. I always put a protection pray on my kids when they leave the house.
I grew up about a mile and a half from a small unincorporated town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The population of the township that it was in was less than three hundred, and I was related to nearly everyone I knew through the eighth grade, and have since learned that I was related to a few of the people who I thought I wasn't related to at the time. My road was about three miles long and there were six houses on the road, since most people farmed and lived on large tracts of land. There was a house right across the road from me, where an elderly couple lived. They had the same last name and were related to me but I never did figure what the relationship was. Their granddaughter was the same age as me exactly, as we were born on the same day, and we called ourselves cousins, although I know we weren't first cousins. Her mother was a missionary to Mexico though, so I saw her only in the summer months when her mother would visit her parents. Just up the hill from us, on the other side of the road, was the church that we attended, the Bethel Covenant Church, which was an Evangelical Covenant Swedish denomination. Although we were in church whenever there was a service or program going on there, I never really understood what it was that we believed because a lot of it seemed contradictory to me. I learned later that this was because we had never had an Evangelical Covenant pastor. The church was never locked, and I don't think we even had a key to our house. Car keys were always left in the ignition where they belonged. Because the church was always open, I would go there late at night sometimes and read pretty much everything in the library, which were mostly Bible resources, but there were plenty of novels too. Foxes Book of Martyrs was my favorite. Later, I would run the bulletins on Saturday nights, in preparation for the Sunday service, cranking them out on the church's mimeograph machine in the basement. Late at night, it was very spooky in the church. Often, I would think that I could hear someone walking around upstairs or, if I was upstairs, I might hear someone in the basement. Across the road, and south of our house, out in the woods, was the original townsite, which had burned the same summer as the Great Chicago Fire. When people rebuilt, they rebuilt a couple of miles away, where the main line of the railroad had gone through, as well as the state highway. Abandoned and, by the time I came around, in the middle of a woods, there were the foundations of houses, parts of a few walls standing, and a portion of track from a railroad spur that had apparently once come through town. In some bushes, we found a railroad handcar. Since everyone's orchards had gone wild, that was a magical place to play as a child. There were wild apple trees, cherry trees, pear trees, and even grapevines. When we build shacks in the woods, we could build them on a foundation.
I grew up in the north of England, where I spent much of my childhood being outside on my own. I had a dog that I took for long walks that lasted all morning or all afternoon. I lived in a short 'dead end' street which ended in a high stone wall, and I played outside with boys of various ages. My best girl friend and I used to have picnics in the local woods on our own. There was no school bus to my junior school. I was taken there by car in the morning, but at the end of the day my school friends I would walk half a mile and then get a bus home. Years later I found out that a notorious serial killer lived in one of the streets I passed on my way to the bus stop.
Oh, that's scary. Several years after I moved from Michigan, they had the first murder that had occurred in the county in more than fifty years. A teacher killed one of his students.
I've lived in South Africa my whole life and I've seen a lot of change. We didn't get television here until the mid-seventies, so everything was a lot more social when I was a child. We were free to wander around the neighbourhood during the day, though we never went out on our own at nights. And nobody ever felt it was safe to leave the car keys in the ignition as others have mentioned. I miss those innocent days. A few years ago a friend I've known since my school days mentioned that she wouldn't even allow her children to walk from their home to her brother's house, and he lived on the same block as they did.
What? No TV until the 70's? How could you keep up with Tarzan if you didn't have TV in the late 50's and 60's? Terrible thing! Sorry Michelle, I just couldn't resist the temptation to do a little teasing. Actually, the "Johnny Weismuller" type of Tarzan movies were mostly shot in Morgan City, Louisiana. I used to work out of Morgan City when I worked on the off shore oil rigs and later managed the Dixie Grill. The city used to be a tourist stop when they gave guided tours through the swamps and the Tarzan tree house. Other than that, it is pretty much a rough old town with a lot of extremely hard working people involved in the oil industry living there. There isn't too much crime and very little need for police other than for traffic tickets and bar fights. They are very protective of the citizenry especially around schools, so even 1 mile an hour over the 20 miles an hour speed limit will get you a $200 ticket. If you are the friendly type, you would be more than welcome and treated as a queen or king. But, those who would choose to be "unworthy" of such treatment find the swamps are a little menacing and far from any jail cell.
@Bobby Cole , I wasn't even born in the late 50s! And no, I never did get to see Tarzan. The thing is I'm actually glad that we didn't have TV when I was a kid. We were forced to make our own entertainment and were a lot more active than the kids of today. And we were probably more creative too.
It's strange... I grew up in a small town in Ontario, Canada, and now I live in the second largest city in the U.S. - Los Angeles... I'm still not sure how it happened, but I definitely don't complain when there are snowstorms in Canada and the East coast, and it's 80 degrees here.
I have lived in Ontario Canada all of my life but in a few different cities. I live in a border town (bordering the USA) with a population of about 200,000 people. Because we are a border city we see quite a bit of crime but we do have a lot of pluses in our city. We have a beautiful waterfront which allows me to pursue my love of photography and nature and when I tire of the city life, I am only a few miles away from the country where once again I can enjoy nature and the quiet the country offers.
Diane was just asking Ken about statistics on which countries we had people from; and I was going to start a thread for that. Then I discovered that we had one hiding out down here in this sub-forum; so I am bumping it back up again. We have had a whole lot of new arrivals since this thread was last active, so it will be a great place for everyone to just share at least the country where you are from, and maybe where you live now, and whatever other interesting things you have to say about either of those places. I have already mentioned that I was raised in northern Idaho; but want to add that I am now living in northern Alabama; so that I can live closer to where my daughter (Robin) is at. There are many wonderful things about the South that I have learned to love, not the least of which is Sweet Potato Pie.
Born and raised in Norwich, NY. Now spend 5 mos. in small town, picture enclosed, and 7 mos. in Palm Bay, FL.
Born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. Still here. I also have seen lots of dramatic changes in the Gem City. I don't think I could settle anywhere that didn't have all four seasons. I love the history the Gem City has experienced with Mother Nature, the great flood in the early 1900's to the blizzard in the 1978. Sometimes it would get so hot that I always had a bad hair day. Once when I worked downtown I had to hold onto a pole to keep from being blown into the street, literally because the gusts were so strong. I also remember the sun shining bright as I entered into a CVS and when I exited being accosted by a downpour of heavy rain. And then there's Spring watching all of nature take on another season of life. It's just awesome!!!