Dangourous Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s

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Back in the 60s a teenaged Michio Kaku played with antimatter in his parents garage and he turned out fine.

I wasn't around for the 60's, only late 70's and onwards, and i miss the relaxed easy going times we had then

Chasing After DDT Trucks On Your Street
Never even heard of that. On my way to elementary school I once saw an older boy grab the tail of a car and hold on and get a "hike" until the car reached the intersection and he let go.
I've never done anything of the sorts - I was traffic safe from an early age.

Eating Endless Amount Of Sugar
Not even close. Chocolate and the like were usually for Saturdays and birthdays and Christmas and Easter. It was allowed for other occasions too if something popped up (like a surprise cozy afternoon or a chocolate advent calendar), but those were the exception to the rule.
It was reasonable and neither too strict nor too lacking in rules

Not wearing a Helmet when riding bike
True. Also when skateboarding
I'd still feel silly using one.

Being A Latchkey Kid
Nope, my mother was usually home. But on days when she had worked her nightshift I would lock myself in and be quiet so she could sleep (as it was her 'night', having worked all night).

Never Wearing A Seatbelt
Correct

Having Fun In Reckless Playgrounds
True that playgrounds were fun, but they weren't reckless. It was just normal climbing things and slides. Yeah, slides could get hot in the sun, you just had to be smart about them. They were fun and we all survived. Big deal

Playing With Hazardous Toys
Not even sure what they think count as dangerous toys here.

The article shows a dart game. I never had one.

Taking A Ride In A Ford Pinto
No

Passive Smoking
Yep

Nabbing The Front Seat In The Car
No, my seat was in the back, and I stayed there. No sibs, no radio.

I wasn't driven to school though, I walked like a normal person.

Being The Best Babysitter Ever
I'm an only child.

When I was about 5 there were 2 girls that used to babysit me, they were 9 and 10. They did a fine job. I particularly liked the 9-year old.
There was also another girl who sometimes babysat me but she was weird. In her late teems (ca 7 years after she babysat me) she ended up setting fire to her apartment.

Summer In The ’60s and ’70s
Yeah, we could be out for hours on end, and we all came home.

Gad, I am so glad I got to experience a real childhood and the freedom that comes with it. Things today are so hysterical!

I wouldn't trade my childhood for anything, on the contrary, I miss it. Overall, it was a good childhood

I don't understand how 70s kids ate fruit loops and coco pops every day yet they never got fat.

Dangers of global warming today....maybe there were more of 'other' dangers back then, but our environment was not as in the dire straight it is now back then.

Cause that was all they ate, along with powdered milk...at least according to my mom fruit loops or cereal( I wonder what horrible brand of generic 'cereal' it was she gave them with the powdered milk when it wasn't fruit loops). She did not seem happy about mentioning the cereal so I imagine it was a gross one.

More exercise. They did not spend all day on the computer because there were no devices so the kids ran around outside all day and got dirty. Thier parents did not drive them everywhere. They walked to school and to the store to get those fruit loops etc.

I grew up in the seventies as did my wife. I grew up in the country, she grew up in a large city.

She and her friends freely walked all over the neighborhood with no fear for their safety and never experienced anyone intent on harming them.

I rode my bike for endless miles from a young age far from home only to come home for meals. I never experienced anyone intent on harming me.

Our parents certainly loved us, but I can't figure out exactly what the reason is, aside from plain fear, that such unsupervised activity is unthinkable with our kids. One major difference is the internet since it can be used as a pipeline and conduit of pure evil for those who embrace.......pure evil. I believe that it's inaccurate therefore for anyone to say things haven't changed in regard to safety and only our perception has.

End of an era. I loved growing up in the time period that I did and I'm saddened that my own children can't experience the same thing.

They had a segment on the news where kids were getting burned on playground equipment.I don’t ever remember that happening when I was a kid and playground equipment was all metal then and really hot in an Arkansas summer.
We had no ac in the schools and you weren’t allowed to have a bottle of water like kids today.You had to suck up all you could hold at the water fountain.The equipment was also taller and the swings all had chains.Most playground and ball courts had asphalt which made the playground even hotter and everyone had scraped knees and elbows.
Candy was cheap, a piece of bubble gum a penny so you could get a bag full for a quarter.We likes now-or-laters, it was a big deal to hide them in your tube sock at school.
We rode bikes everywhere, didn’t matter how hot it was. We wanted to be outside. Once it was so hot we soft cooked an egg on a man hole cover.
Dogs ran loose and it was a challenge to out pedal some of them but burned all the bubble gum calories off.
When I think of dangerous toys I think of clackers,they could have been used as a weapon.
We did crank calls, something kids can’t do today because of caller ID. We also liked to ring doorbells and run and hide.It had a politically incorrect name that ended in”knocking.”
We could wear T-shirt with tobacco logos or alcohol brands on them to school.Later on we could smoke at school, most has a smoking hole area.
We never wore seat belts and I never saw a bike helmet.My friends mom used to drive us around in a big old Lincoln,she always had a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other.If she got mad at my friend she would turn around in the seat and whale on him with one of those giant black purses ladies used to carry.
The local theater has movie specials in the summer, Godzilla and Elvis flicks.We walked there and back in the heat and never thought anything of it.We ate our fill of movie hot dogs and candy.
One little boy told some others that Elvis was his cousin and was going to pick him up after the show. He was told that if Elvis didn’t show he was in for an ass beating.
It was also a time of big hair,bee hives and Afros.Anyone with big hair was fair game in the movie theater.We’d try to land popcorn on their heads.They didn’t feel it and would walk out with their hair adorned with pop corn kernels.
The mosquito truck sprayed some areas,I never rode my bike behind it.Had a friend from Florida that did,now she has MS.
We spent hours in the creek and pretty much had free range all over the neighborhood.We climbed into backyards and used people’s swimming pools when they were out of town.
Everyone ate peanut butter and there were peanut butter cookies regularly served with school lunch and I don’t remember one kid with a peanut allergy.
Halloween was better, you went after dark and no one was afraid of eating a cupcake a neighbor gave you.

I do not remember it either. If we did burn themselves ointment was put on it and lawyers were not called


Today if it is hot they dismiss school at noon, that never happened then. And no matter how hot it was outside it was always felt hotter in school with no circulation. On the opposite end of the temperature spectrum, if it was 32F or above and not raining or snowing we had to go out in our gym tees and short shorts, no exceptions.


Who can blow the biggest bubble was always a thing.



No matter how hot or cold we went out. Bikes everywhere on Long Island too. No computers, and few channels on TV, what else to do?


Do not remember that



Clackers were a fad for about a year in Junior High(now known as middle school). I did a little bit of the mischief you mentioned. A lot of things were said that would be unacceptable today but were said said and thought to be funny then.


The high school bathrooms were for smoking cigarettes or weed not for bodily functions. They were jam packed in between periods and smoke wafted down the hallways. The gym bathrooms were for bodily functions. If you did not have gym that day you held it until you got home.


No seat belts or bike helmets. My parents drove me to doctors or family gatherings that was it.


As noted above since our parents did not drive us much above we walked, biked or took public transportation everywhere. Big tall cotten candy was a movie favorite.


Afro's on the white guys were not uncommon. There was no concept of cultural appropriation but it looked bad on them.


It wasn't "free range", it was being a kid.


I was the peanut butter kid. I do remember a few kids having allergies but it was seemingly a lot less common.


Halloween was a children's holiday only. Once we were past age 4 or 5 our parents did not accompany us trick or treating. You would never wanted anything resembling helicopter parents. That would be humiliating and get you bullied as a "mamma's boy" or a "sissy" or a "fa***t"

The fireworks were better,there was one that whistled and ran bouncing along the ground like a small missle.Another inappropriate name.
I’ll just call it a “honky popper”for fun.People really ran when one of those went off, no telling what direction it would go.
And cake batter, everyone licked the spoon, beaters and bowl and no e-coli or salmonella outbreaks.
In the South the schools closed if an inch of snow fell.School could be out for days.Sleds were brought out if there was enough and we spent all day sledding down the middle of hilly streets.
Later on my kids made do with an old hood off a Volkswagen Beetle.It would just go where it wanted.They ran into a tree a few times but that’s what childhood is all about.I made sure they had a real one.Dogs,dirt and bikes.
Kids might be treated for a sore throat with a shot of whiskey.You had to gargle it, not fun.
Scraped arm? Out comes the metholate.Orange splotches everywhere and talk about burn.
Don’t remember anyone ever getting staph or a bad infection and we were in the dirt all the time.
Say a naughty word? You stood a good chance of getting a soapy washcloth stuck in your mouth.

DDT Truck-no

Sugar-Rarely. Being of German and Italian heritage, I ate very healthy food. I find overly sugary food nauseating.

Not wearing a helmet-Yes

Latchkey kid-No

Not wearing a seatbelt-no

Fun in reckless playgrounds-Yes. I was very active as a child.

Hazardous toys-rarely

Ford Pinto-no

Passive smoking-not until the 1980s, when I was in college

Front seat of car-no, I was usually in the backseat

Babysitter-only once or twice, in the 1980s

Summer was always fun. I did a lot of reading, but played outdoors a lot as well.

1. DDT Truck: No

2. Sugar: Quite, quite often. At least three tablespoons in the Cornflakes was essential.

3. I didn't wear a helmet when I rode my bike.

4. I was a latchkey kid from the age of 9

5. I frequently didn't wear a seatbelt. A few cars had no seatbelts.

6. No rubber under the swings, monkey bars, and slides until the early 1970s. If you fell, you fell on concrete. I also played tackle football on the concrete.

7. I didn't play with very many "hazardous" toys.

8. One of my teachers had a 1971 Ford Pinto, with dungaree seats.

9. All adults smoked in my childhood. Much passive smoke.

10. Sat in the front seat sometimes; usually didn't wear a seatbelt.

11. Summer was a mixed bag. Sometimes cool, sometimes not.

I grew up in the 1970s and 80s. Yes, I did a lot of crazy things. Some of the things I remember:

- Playing with matches. Not to burn things or set things on fire, but just lighting the matches and breathing in the sulfurous gasses.

- Playing with lead sometimes in the form of sinkers and lead bars my Dad had that he used for casting sinkers for fishing.

- Smoking at a young age, starting at around 7 or 8 when I would walk or bike the country roads and pick up partially smoked cigarettes from the road shoulders.

- Making torches by stapling old rags to sticks, rolling the rags in gasoline and lighting them or rolling a tennis ball in gas, lighting it and playing "fireball" catch with my friend. We used our baseball mitts and gloved hands for protection.

- Walking around the property and in the woods with a .22 caliber rifle "plinking" at things. My Dad liked to eat wild rabbit. I would hunt them and bring them home to him where he would clean and eat them. I did not eat them.

- Spending most of the summer days outside, often far from home walking and biking without my parents having any idea of where I was and no way for them to contact me or me them.

Those are some of the things I remember.

Personally, our family did most of those things while I was growing up on the noughties, though I was probably in a lucky minority.

Both my parents smoked heavily, at home, and so did everybody else's.

I've never worn a helmet while bicycling and never will; if the nanny state ruins that one for us all by making it a legal requirement, as it no doubt will do eventually, I'll never cycle again.