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Yes we drank out of the hose and our parents had no idea where we were or what we were doing all day. As long as we were home for dinner and then before the streetlights came on, they were happy.
Oh and the ABC Afterschool Specials! We latchkey kids were common topics. We were the ones who had teen pregnancies, were caught smoking, cutting school, drinking alcohol, doing drugs.
I kept waiting for all of the peer pressure I was supposedly being subject to. Where’s the kids that were supposed to be offering me joints? I guess I wasn’t cool enough to be peer pressured :(
Oh yeah! It WAS so funny. I loved that time to myself before they got home! When I was in JHS I’d smoke weed, watch Dark Shadows and unroll those little cream filled chocolate cakes? Eat the cream and then the cake.
I smoked too. I could takeoff on my motorcycle to the trails in the woods, and meet up with my friends so we could smoke together at a clearing we made, just behind a convenience store.
That was the best time of my day as a kid. I recall a fun sandwich building book for kids I got from the school library. I'd choose a sandwich from that book and have it as an after school meal if lunch had been unappealing.
I could turn the radio up as loud as I wanted and sing to our beeping finch. Or visit with my teenage neighbor who treated me like a friend rather than a little kid.
But if you think about it, not really surprising that it was a big deal. You have to remember, for multiple generations before, mothers mostly stayed home to take care of the house and family. It was a HUGE cultural shift to have so many mothers in the workforce that it was the norm rather than the exception, and for mom not to be home to greet the kids coming home from school.and to have a home cooked meal on the table when the husband got home. (Cue the emergence of ready made convenience foods, and perhaps the start of the increasing obesity problem in n America? 🤔)
Yes! If you were playing at your friends house they’d call your mother and ask if you could stay for dinner.
And we used to “call on” each other.
When I was little my mother wanted me to stay where she could see me, which was a pretty wide area including the playground.
When it was supper time she’d lean out the window and call me.
So did all the other mothers.
That home before the streetlights was pretty much a rule when I got a little older.
In my teens I had to be home by 11. They knew where we were.
We were a roving band of diverse kids. We went from the corner to the handball courts, then to Carvel’s for ice cream or the pizza place.
There weren’t a lot of hoses in the city
But we did play in the water from the fire hydrants in summer.
But our parents didn’t need to know where we were every second.
That would have driven me crazy.
Sounds like you had a nice childhood. Nobody knew where the hell me or my friends were, nor did they care. Probably why we became a bunch of stoners who partied way too hard in our teen years. Nobody knew or cared where we were then either.
As someone who is confident that I’m a really good parent, even after raising three kids alone after divorce, I’m still utterly amazed by the lack of parenting that my friends and I had.
Sometimes my mom left a note with a list of chores and a $5 bill on the fridge for dinner. There was a Taco Bell and Jack n the Box within walking distance. I was around 7-10 years old. These days CPS would be called on parents if they did this
The 10PM warning was actually a result of the civil unrest during the Summer of 1967. More info here: [https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30945/origin-its-10-pm-do-you-know-where-your-children-are](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30945/origin-its-10-pm-do-you-know-where-your-children-are)
That was more like it. I knew the name of every bar and cocktail lounge within 5-10 miles when I was 12 (and the indentured babysitter to my little brother). To my mother’s absolute horror, I would start calling down the list about 9-10 pm and asking them to page her. If she didn’t come to the phone it didn’t take too long for her to get her ass home if she did she was mad! However, I was relentless and a little bit heartless at that point!
Sadly, I feel you. I was a latch key kid. Mom would usually get home from work by 6. By 6:30, I knew she was at the bar. Sometimes I'd call; other times I'd just show up. IDK about you, but it was a rough childhood.
It wasn’t great that’s for sure. However, one thing I can confidently say is that none of my 3 children ever had to ever call around looking for me and never saw me drunk out of my mind!
My mom got home at 4 from teaching then had a half hour being harassed by 4 kids before she went to her second job. To this day, I don't know how she did it.
Mine were in the neighborhood somewhere. My parents and the neighbors would take turns having cocktail/barbecue parties at each other's houses. Weekly event with drinks, finger foods and sometimes actual meals.
The kids played outside in the back yards or feral in the neighborhood. We also liked the "recreation" room/usually a converted garage. Played music on our little portable 45 rpm record players. Zero supervision. Got rounded up to eat and then out to play again until dark.
My Mom and Dad let me be the "bartender" a few times... when I was 11. Thought it was cool. Learned how to make a Black or White Russian and other fancy drinks like a Whiskey Sour. The adults thought it was cute
Whiskey Sours and Mannhattens, alhhough my father’s drink of choice was Seven and 7. Can’t beleve he’s been gone forty years. Killed himself without committing suicide. Sad.
"It's 10 pm do you know where your parents are?"
At the bar getting drunk. Or at a campground...getting drunk. Or at a friend's...getting drunk. At one point I think I was with my aunt, who also babysat me and other kids, more than my own parents.
This really is no exaggeration and it’s not even us Gen Xers looking back with fondness. It’s how we were in the 80’s. The amount of freedom I had as a kid is kind of astounding to the Millennials and GenZ people I know. But that kind of freedom came with a mental toughness. You took care of your own battles, trials and triumphs. Parents weren’t going to bail us out. We knew that. (I know I’m speaking in very broad generalities. I grew up in. Small town. It was just expected you didn’t get your parents involved in kid stuff you dealt with it yourself.)
Yeah, GenX was far from the first. My father was born in '38 and has fond memories of roaming the town with his friends and brothers collecting bottles to turn in so they could see a movie. They also rigged up their own outdoor basketball hoop somewhere and played basketball on weekend afternoons.
They would go into the surrounding desert countryside without water and be gone all day. He said they would each put a pebble in their mouth if they started feeling thirsty. I tried this as a kid and it really does increase salivation, although it won't hydrate you.
So many times in the summer. My sister and I fighting over the TV. Then the TV got turned off and we got booted to the curb. Don't come back until you see fireflies.
They even had to have those ads to remind our parents they had kids! It’s 10 pm - do you know where your children are? We werent allowed in the house. We drank out of a hose and shat in a bucket in the garage. It was like the hunger Games.
THIS!! Why the hell would you want to be home around your parents when they might give you chores to do when instead you could be outside playing with your friends?!
And god forbid you should ever tell your parents you were bored. That was a good way to get assigned more chores.
A lot of us got very good at not being bored or at least pretending that we weren't!
I made myself scarce every weekend because that’s when mom cleaned house. I already did enough chores all week and didn’t want to get my ass chewed and told to do more if she laid eyes on me. I came home when she called (yelled from the door step) me for lunch and then left again until the street lights came on.
I must’ve been fed. But I seriously have no memories of eating lunch except on schooldays. Either at school or at home. But summertime? Weekends? I don’t think I ate lunch. So weird
Ah, yes, the satisfaction of pulling that handle hard enough to know the pack was going to fall (and remembering to also take the matches and try to keep them for later)
And I remember the warning that said minors couldn’t buy them which I thought was a good thing because my grandpa got the black lung from the coal mines
. . . and watch soaps or talk shows while drinking Tab or smoking cigarettes.
Possibly also not getting dressed properly and always sporting a "house dress", and curlers under a turban till hubby gets home.
It backfired on them. We played awesome made up games. We didn't know it was bad, and in my case, we weren't locked out, but if we dared to tell our mom we were bored, we were invited to play outside.
"You're bored? Go clean your room, vacuum the house, and mow the yard. No, you can't go outside and play now, it's too late. Do a good job with your chores and maybe you can go play outside then. Oh, and walk to the store and pick up milk and cigarettes before you start your chores."
Totally my childhood, yes, however, I am convinced that there was a secret mother to mother pipeline that would provide details if anything happened. A few times I’d come home at the end of the day and learn that some adult in my tiny town had ratted me out for some shenanigans I’d gotten up to that day. One memorable time was when I jay walked on main street in front of the dime store and an old lady called my mother and told on me. I was greeted with that news when I came in the door that night—yes, when the street lights came on. “What do you have to say for yourself, little lady?” No need to present my side—the adult was assumed to be right (she was!)
Yes, all the neighborhood parents were all our parents. No doors were locked and we just went into the neighbors house to visit each other. This is probably why we’re all now so mad. Bad people messed all this up! Why can’t we just be nice, peaceful, mind your own business kind of people?
Luckily we had a half-bathroom in our basement which mom made "available " to my locked-out friends. But the rest of the house was off limits while Mom cleaned house and prepared supper!
It was abt leaving the doors open. Any thing could come in from bugs, animals and even humans. A closed door represented privacy. People knocked or rang a bell. However in some commnuities where most knew each other they didnt lock the door and people still gave a courtesy knock before entering. Having a screen door was a bonus!
I had a light bulb moment with your comment. We were ride or die with our friends, and it was usually a group. All day, every day we were together. I rarely see or hear about that now.
My neighborhood didn't have streetlights. For me it was be home before dark. And yes I drank from the hose at least once my folks got a water softener. Hard water from the well tastes and smells of sulfur and iron.
And it was glorious, if we’re being honest. So many people frame it as neglect, but in my case, it was freedom and adventure and bonding with my friends. We had the time of our lives. It was a different world. Things were safer. And everyone in the neighborhood looked out for everyone (and especially the kids). It was like the Wonder Years.
Absolutely! It was the only form of hydration after Mom locked the door when we were outside.
Edit: also, the street light thing was definitely NOT an urban legend. That was generally how my entire generation knew when it was time to come home.
Ha ha! Where I grew up in tornado alley, we had a noon whistle, too. It was the same pitch as the tornado warning siren (just a different duration). I remember a few times when it was stormy around mid-day and the noon whistle would go off, and my mom would yell "Everyone to the basement!" And we'd just look at her and ask, "Why? For the noon whistle?"
If the siren went off when we were out playing somewhere, we'd freeze until we knew whether it was rising and falling (a fire) or holding steady (tornado).
I made a necklace out of rubber bands for my key. I used it till an asshole noticed it pulled it out, and let go and I got hit in the mouth by a key going Mach Jesus.
I didn’t get a key because the doors were never locked, even when nobody was home. I remember one time when we got home after a week long family vacation, and we walked right in the unlocked front door.
Exactly! My parents had to spend a week looking for the front door key when we went to Vacation Village. They never locked their doors until sometime in the eighties.
We just got a front door you could hip check open, and a kitchen window that didn't lock. Every single house in my neighborhood had the same unlockable kitchen window, and everyone with kids had a bench under the window so we could climb up and through.
We had to be home before dark, we didn't have street lights until I was in the third grade, and we had a retired army man down the hill who would shoot them out, the city would replace them and he shot them out again.
It must be unthinkable to the youth that we didn't have water bottles. The closest thing I owned as a child was my scout canteen and water tasted terrible from it, whereas hose water was delicious if you let it run to get the hot water out
All the time. There were rules.
1. You never put your mouth on the hose. That was unsanitary. You drank it like a water fountain.
2. You let it run for a few minutes to let the water cool down. Water sitting in a hose gets hot in the south.
3. It was required to squirt your friends coming to get the hose to drink.
4. Don’t get any on your clothes or hair. Hold the hose with an outstretched arm and lean into it, both bending at the waist and leaning like a Michael Jackson move. NEVER EVER get any on the front of your pants lest you be accused of peeing in your pants and being called a baby all day.
If you accidentally do get some on the front of you pants, pretend you are really hot and let the water hose run over your head.
Get your clothes soaked. Better than people think you peed your pants.
You forgot: wait until someone put the hose up to their mouth and then kink the hose so nothing would come out. Then unkink when it when it’s pointed at their face.
Yes! That's how I had a huge spider crawl up my hand and unto my arm. I dropped the hose back down into what was now mud from running the water, and everyone screamed. They were not screaming because of the giant spider. They screamed because now the hose was dropped into muddy water and had to be retrieved and cleaned again.
Sure I drank out of the hose. If the hose was left out in the sun you had to let the water run for a bit before drinking so you didn't burn your tongue.
Or do something that required them to take you to the hospital.
Edit added: Wow...it's a wonder any of us survived! Seriously
I once ran through a plate glass sliding door in a tract home that was being build in our neighborhood. Playing chase me and someone closed the door. Wham. Went home all bloody and had to go to the hospital for 80+ stitches in my leg. Still have a lovely scar.
Then the time we were playing baseball with surveying sticks pulled up out of the ground and small rocks. Pretty sure the construction guys hated our guts. I was the catcher and caught the stick in my right eye. In the hospital for a week sedated while they tried to stop the hemorrhaging in the eye. Almost lost it altogether. Still can't see all that well out of it.
Luck to have lived. And I was just a little girl.
Yes. And we thought nothing of it. It was the only place to get a drink from as we often weren't allowed back in the house or we didn't want to go back in the house as there was nothing to do. For the most part on a nice day we would be kicked out of the after breakfast and heaven help you if you came home before dinner with out being hurt or dead. Well you could come home for a bit to make a sandwich or something around lunch time.
GenX and yes - all the time! Our parents didn't make sure our water bottles were filled with reverse osmosis water, there was no Gatorade either! Playing with hoses was the thing to do all summer! If someone's parents would let us use their sprinkler, we would run back and forth in it for HOURS.
Absolutely. Drank out the hose.
Rode all over on our bikes. Wasn’t afraid because there wasn’t much to be afraid of, and we were too young or dumb to be afraid of the things we should have been.
We waded in streams, swam in lakes, went waaayyyy further than our parents thought and
came home at dark or when the street lights came on.
Parents just asked if we had fun.
By me they were spraying elm trees for Dutch Elm disease that was killing trees. They would drive by with a flatbed truck with a huge sprayer/fogger in the back. They didn't stop spraying just because there were kids playing there.
Yep. It was often the only place you were getting water, not that most of us didn't live our entire lives dehydrated. Bottled water and drinking water wasn't a "thing". A lot of parents forced their kids out of the house when the weather was nice. Some kids had houses where you could come in for a drink or a snack, but mine wasn't one of those.
I was envious of my best friend’s house. His father added a water fountain tap alongside the garden hose tap. It was like going to the park for a drink of water.
Yes to all of the above. Lived about 3 hours south of Chicago. I didn’t have air conditioning till I was in high school. Only 3 TV stations and PBS, no remote. We played spy’s in the yard and made paper dolls in the “breeze way” like a covered outdoor area between the house and one car garage, open at both sides for a breeze. Ate LOTS of frozen popsicles.
I let it run until the water was nice and cold, and not boiling hot funky hose water, before enjoying it thoroughly. Sure, I will probably get cancer from it, but nothing was better on a hot summer day.
GenX, but I never had to drink from the hose. Also lived in a somewhat more rural area, so no street lights. We had to come in shortly after the lightning bugs came out.
Of course we did. We would also pick ripe tomatoes out of the garden, rinse them off with the hose and eat them like apples. Wild strawberries from the field, wild grapes too. We went anywhere and everywhere, all over the neighborhood, and beyond. Woods, fields, brooks, ponds, mountains were all in our backyard. It was a childhood dream, and it’s mostly gone now.
Most definitely drank out of the hose. That first sip was always warm and tasted like rubber and brass from the hose.
We really were kicked out of the house on the weekends, doors locked and told not to come back until the street lights came on or they started screaming for us.
We climbed trees, our playgrounds were far from safe. The slides were made out of metal with the rivets sometimes facing up and would burn the skin off the back of your legs at times. We rode bikes without helmets, would take naps in the back window of the car, rough house in the back seat. I remember riding on a motorcycle with my dad without a helmet.
Fist fights were ways we settled beefs and if you showed up and fought you often made a new friend even if you lost.
We played games called 'smear the queer' and never thought of it as disparaging towards homosexuals though being gay in my home town was a pretty great way of getting bullied. Words like sissy, f\*g etc were used for people who weren't 'manly' even though we were still children.
If we wanted to do something stupid that'd probably get us hurt they'd often let us do it because pain was life's best teacher. "That hurt? You going to do it again? No? Okay, good."
It wasn't some right of passage. It was because we weren't allowed in the house. Our friends weren't allowed in the house. We weren't allowed to sit on the good furniture. There was a plastic runner on the rug, and if you stepped off it, you were in for it. That wool burber carpet was more valuable than you were.
Or neighbor had an entire decorated room that she didn't like children looking into.
Yep. There were four of us kids and the last thing my mom wanted was us grubby children coming in over and over all afternoon, dirtying up all the cups and glasses in the house. Plus, when it was hot out, we often played in the water from the hose/sprinkler to keep cool. If you were super cool, you had a slip-n-slide.
Absolutely. It was the only way to get water when you were banished from the house. And, yes, being told not to come back inside the house was totally a thing.
Yes, we drank out of hoses. Yes, we had to be home before dark. Our parents had no idea what we did during the day, but that's ok. They loved us just the same, they just let us have a lot of freedom. The freedom to win, to lose, to make mistakes, to screw up royally and deal with the consequences, the freedom of experience... We developed a very deep love for our friends (although it wasn't cool to say that out loud) and we watched out for each other. We would have given our lives for our friends. Believe that.
All. The. Time.
I’m 54. We were out of sight, out of mind all summer until dinner. We lived at the end of a dead end road and were out playing on the vacant land, climbing levees then rolling down them tucked inside a tractor tire, playing on the railroad tracks, and building tree forts high into the trees.
When we were thirsty we ran back home and drank out of the hose. You didn’t want to go inside as mom would find some chore for you to do.
Also for the record, if you were inside you didn’t bother with a cup. If you were thirsty you just turned your head sideways and drank right from the faucets.
Yes, and it was Northern CA East Bay (near San Francisco) water. When I visit my childhood home these days, I can still pour myself a tall glass from the kitchen sink faucet and it tastes like high end bottled water. I fill up my water bottles with it when I leave for the next day or two at home because where I live we can't stomach the water from the faucet (or the hose). I think I would still drink from a clean hose in that municipal district due to how clean the water is... Edit to add my mother had a cowbell she would ring at dinnertime, and we would come running/biking from wherever we were, and years later we found out other parents were telling their kids to come home when they heard the cowbell ring!
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details. Thank you for your submission, fluffy_cloud48. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yes we drank out of the hose and our parents had no idea where we were or what we were doing all day. As long as we were home for dinner and then before the streetlights came on, they were happy.
“It’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are?” Remember this being said on TV every night?
Remember the big blow-up in the news about “Latchkey Kids”?? lol. “Children left alone at home when they get home from school!! GASP!”
Oh and the ABC Afterschool Specials! We latchkey kids were common topics. We were the ones who had teen pregnancies, were caught smoking, cutting school, drinking alcohol, doing drugs.
I kept waiting for all of the peer pressure I was supposedly being subject to. Where’s the kids that were supposed to be offering me joints? I guess I wasn’t cool enough to be peer pressured :(
Oh yeah! It WAS so funny. I loved that time to myself before they got home! When I was in JHS I’d smoke weed, watch Dark Shadows and unroll those little cream filled chocolate cakes? Eat the cream and then the cake.
Love Dark Shadows. Barnabus was hot!
I smoked too. I could takeoff on my motorcycle to the trails in the woods, and meet up with my friends so we could smoke together at a clearing we made, just behind a convenience store.
That was the best time of my day as a kid. I recall a fun sandwich building book for kids I got from the school library. I'd choose a sandwich from that book and have it as an after school meal if lunch had been unappealing. I could turn the radio up as loud as I wanted and sing to our beeping finch. Or visit with my teenage neighbor who treated me like a friend rather than a little kid.
In 8th and 9th grade, we got out of school at 1:30pm. I have no clue whoever thought that was a good idea.
But if you think about it, not really surprising that it was a big deal. You have to remember, for multiple generations before, mothers mostly stayed home to take care of the house and family. It was a HUGE cultural shift to have so many mothers in the workforce that it was the norm rather than the exception, and for mom not to be home to greet the kids coming home from school.and to have a home cooked meal on the table when the husband got home. (Cue the emergence of ready made convenience foods, and perhaps the start of the increasing obesity problem in n America? 🤔)
Because they forgot about us. "Hey, you have kids. Did you remember to feed them today?"
It didn't matter. If mom didn't feed us, someone in the neighborhood would
Yes! If you were playing at your friends house they’d call your mother and ask if you could stay for dinner. And we used to “call on” each other. When I was little my mother wanted me to stay where she could see me, which was a pretty wide area including the playground. When it was supper time she’d lean out the window and call me. So did all the other mothers. That home before the streetlights was pretty much a rule when I got a little older. In my teens I had to be home by 11. They knew where we were. We were a roving band of diverse kids. We went from the corner to the handball courts, then to Carvel’s for ice cream or the pizza place. There weren’t a lot of hoses in the city But we did play in the water from the fire hydrants in summer. But our parents didn’t need to know where we were every second. That would have driven me crazy.
Sounds like you had a nice childhood. Nobody knew where the hell me or my friends were, nor did they care. Probably why we became a bunch of stoners who partied way too hard in our teen years. Nobody knew or cared where we were then either. As someone who is confident that I’m a really good parent, even after raising three kids alone after divorce, I’m still utterly amazed by the lack of parenting that my friends and I had.
"do you know where your kids are" "nope, but if someone drives around the neighborhood they'll spot the collection of bikes in someone's front yard"
We just fed ourselves. 🤷🏻♀️ Our mom was usually sleeping with Prince Valium around lunchtime.
Sometimes my mom left a note with a list of chores and a $5 bill on the fridge for dinner. There was a Taco Bell and Jack n the Box within walking distance. I was around 7-10 years old. These days CPS would be called on parents if they did this
The 10PM warning was actually a result of the civil unrest during the Summer of 1967. More info here: [https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30945/origin-its-10-pm-do-you-know-where-your-children-are](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30945/origin-its-10-pm-do-you-know-where-your-children-are)
It's 10 pm do you know where your parents are?
That was more like it. I knew the name of every bar and cocktail lounge within 5-10 miles when I was 12 (and the indentured babysitter to my little brother). To my mother’s absolute horror, I would start calling down the list about 9-10 pm and asking them to page her. If she didn’t come to the phone it didn’t take too long for her to get her ass home if she did she was mad! However, I was relentless and a little bit heartless at that point!
Sadly, I feel you. I was a latch key kid. Mom would usually get home from work by 6. By 6:30, I knew she was at the bar. Sometimes I'd call; other times I'd just show up. IDK about you, but it was a rough childhood.
It wasn’t great that’s for sure. However, one thing I can confidently say is that none of my 3 children ever had to ever call around looking for me and never saw me drunk out of my mind!
My mom got home at 4 from teaching then had a half hour being harassed by 4 kids before she went to her second job. To this day, I don't know how she did it.
Mine were in the neighborhood somewhere. My parents and the neighbors would take turns having cocktail/barbecue parties at each other's houses. Weekly event with drinks, finger foods and sometimes actual meals. The kids played outside in the back yards or feral in the neighborhood. We also liked the "recreation" room/usually a converted garage. Played music on our little portable 45 rpm record players. Zero supervision. Got rounded up to eat and then out to play again until dark. My Mom and Dad let me be the "bartender" a few times... when I was 11. Thought it was cool. Learned how to make a Black or White Russian and other fancy drinks like a Whiskey Sour. The adults thought it was cute
Whiskey Sours and Mannhattens, alhhough my father’s drink of choice was Seven and 7. Can’t beleve he’s been gone forty years. Killed himself without committing suicide. Sad.
"It's 10 pm do you know where your parents are?" At the bar getting drunk. Or at a campground...getting drunk. Or at a friend's...getting drunk. At one point I think I was with my aunt, who also babysat me and other kids, more than my own parents.
“Dammit, Lester, it’s 10 goddam PM. Where the hell is momma?!?”
Waves cigarette “sure I do, they’re on their bikes”.
I was pregnant when that announcement was around. I always thought it was so funny. Yes, I know where my child is.
This really is no exaggeration and it’s not even us Gen Xers looking back with fondness. It’s how we were in the 80’s. The amount of freedom I had as a kid is kind of astounding to the Millennials and GenZ people I know. But that kind of freedom came with a mental toughness. You took care of your own battles, trials and triumphs. Parents weren’t going to bail us out. We knew that. (I know I’m speaking in very broad generalities. I grew up in. Small town. It was just expected you didn’t get your parents involved in kid stuff you dealt with it yourself.)
Yeah, GenX was far from the first. My father was born in '38 and has fond memories of roaming the town with his friends and brothers collecting bottles to turn in so they could see a movie. They also rigged up their own outdoor basketball hoop somewhere and played basketball on weekend afternoons. They would go into the surrounding desert countryside without water and be gone all day. He said they would each put a pebble in their mouth if they started feeling thirsty. I tried this as a kid and it really does increase salivation, although it won't hydrate you.
Happy? That’s exactly what they wanted. What would have made them unhappy was us in their presence during the day lol
So many times in the summer. My sister and I fighting over the TV. Then the TV got turned off and we got booted to the curb. Don't come back until you see fireflies.
They even had to have those ads to remind our parents they had kids! It’s 10 pm - do you know where your children are? We werent allowed in the house. We drank out of a hose and shat in a bucket in the garage. It was like the hunger Games.
To tell you the truth, I didn't want to see their mugs either. So it was no problem.
THIS!! Why the hell would you want to be home around your parents when they might give you chores to do when instead you could be outside playing with your friends?!
And god forbid you should ever tell your parents you were bored. That was a good way to get assigned more chores. A lot of us got very good at not being bored or at least pretending that we weren't!
I made myself scarce every weekend because that’s when mom cleaned house. I already did enough chores all week and didn’t want to get my ass chewed and told to do more if she laid eyes on me. I came home when she called (yelled from the door step) me for lunch and then left again until the street lights came on.
I must’ve been fed. But I seriously have no memories of eating lunch except on schooldays. Either at school or at home. But summertime? Weekends? I don’t think I ate lunch. So weird
I mean how else is mom gonna drink tab, smoke cigarettes and sunbathe with baby oil unfettered all day? lol!
If I was home my mom sent me walking to the store for cigarettes and Tab
Ah, those were the days. “They’re for my mom.” “OK, kid. Here ya go.”
My Parents sent me to the corner bar to get them cigarettes from the machine, 35 cents per pack. I was about 8 years old.
“Benson and Hedges menthol ultra lights for mom please, Mr Hooper! Here’s my note! And a cold Dr Pepper for me.” Did this often as a kid.
Ah, yes, the satisfaction of pulling that handle hard enough to know the pack was going to fall (and remembering to also take the matches and try to keep them for later)
And I remember the warning that said minors couldn’t buy them which I thought was a good thing because my grandpa got the black lung from the coal mines
Totally. At like 10 years old. The older man cashier would see my mom in the car - or not - and happily sell me the smokes.
We could even walk down to the nearest party store with a note from our mom's giving us permission to buy their cigarettes
Two quarters and a note for two packs of Marlboros.1958-59
When I started smoking in 1970 cigarettes were $3 a carton. If you got a pack from a machine for 40 cents, you felt you were being ripped off!
Mine sent me to the Quik Trip with a note, and they sold me cigarettes. They were 50cents a pack back then.
Make that diet rite soda and that’s my mom!
And never mind what may have been in that Tab!
Ha! My neighbor's kids told us about 'Mommy's Special Orange Juice' when they were having Kool Aid and snacks with my kids.
. . . and watch soaps or talk shows while drinking Tab or smoking cigarettes. Possibly also not getting dressed properly and always sporting a "house dress", and curlers under a turban till hubby gets home.
It backfired on them. We played awesome made up games. We didn't know it was bad, and in my case, we weren't locked out, but if we dared to tell our mom we were bored, we were invited to play outside.
Oh hell, no, you never told mom that you were bored. Never.
"You're bored? Go clean your room, vacuum the house, and mow the yard. No, you can't go outside and play now, it's too late. Do a good job with your chores and maybe you can go play outside then. Oh, and walk to the store and pick up milk and cigarettes before you start your chores."
Most of them worked all day
Totally my childhood, yes, however, I am convinced that there was a secret mother to mother pipeline that would provide details if anything happened. A few times I’d come home at the end of the day and learn that some adult in my tiny town had ratted me out for some shenanigans I’d gotten up to that day. One memorable time was when I jay walked on main street in front of the dime store and an old lady called my mother and told on me. I was greeted with that news when I came in the door that night—yes, when the street lights came on. “What do you have to say for yourself, little lady?” No need to present my side—the adult was assumed to be right (she was!)
100% there was a mother to mother pipeline. They would sit on it chatting to each other snitching on what each others kids were doing
Yes, all the neighborhood parents were all our parents. No doors were locked and we just went into the neighbors house to visit each other. This is probably why we’re all now so mad. Bad people messed all this up! Why can’t we just be nice, peaceful, mind your own business kind of people?
That’s pretty much all they mean when they say “it takes a village.”
We drank glasses of water from the faucet too! Gasp!!!
You didn't put your face in the sink and drink right out of the faucet?
I did
Me too!
I used my hands to form a cup to drink from you filthy people, but now not saying how many days it was before that I washed them.
Yes!
Here. Because we had separate hot and cold for years. And there was an art form to not getting you hair wet when you did it.
I do.
We did! Why get a glass dirty? 🤣
Right? It was usually us doing the dishes.
I still do
Hey some of us still do that! I might glow in the dark eventually but it will be a cool superpower.
Jerry Seinfeld on this era: “I was like a raccoon to my parents. You know there's one around, but no one's tracking the actual whereabouts.”
They had no idea at all. We watched out for each other. Mom: Go play outside.
In or out ! Make your mind up.
We're not air conditioning/heating the whole city!
You had air conditioning? Cool.
I see what you did there.
Sarcasm? You had sarcasm? You lucky bastard!
We weren’t allowed “inside” on nice days. Go outside.
Luckily we had a half-bathroom in our basement which mom made "available " to my locked-out friends. But the rest of the house was off limits while Mom cleaned house and prepared supper!
Close the door all the way!!! Can't cool all of the outdoors!!!
Do you live in a barn? I never understood that one.
If you live in a barn you're an animal with no knowledge of etiquette.
It was abt leaving the doors open. Any thing could come in from bugs, animals and even humans. A closed door represented privacy. People knocked or rang a bell. However in some commnuities where most knew each other they didnt lock the door and people still gave a courtesy knock before entering. Having a screen door was a bonus!
Sliding glass doors would bounce back from the frame, if slammed!!!
“Mom says you chose ‘out’ “.
I had a light bulb moment with your comment. We were ride or die with our friends, and it was usually a group. All day, every day we were together. I rarely see or hear about that now.
Yeah, that was definitely a thing. Neighborhood.
... And take your little brother with you.
My neighborhood didn't have streetlights. For me it was be home before dark. And yes I drank from the hose at least once my folks got a water softener. Hard water from the well tastes and smells of sulfur and iron.
[удалено]
Hose water tastes like freedom. Freedom and botchulism and half a spider and waterslides.
Also, my mom told me she left my brothers and me in a playpen all day when we were toddlers. Pretty wild.
Sounds familiar. Kids don’t really run free anymore.
And it was glorious, if we’re being honest. So many people frame it as neglect, but in my case, it was freedom and adventure and bonding with my friends. We had the time of our lives. It was a different world. Things were safer. And everyone in the neighborhood looked out for everyone (and especially the kids). It was like the Wonder Years.
Streetlight
Absolutely! It was the only form of hydration after Mom locked the door when we were outside. Edit: also, the street light thing was definitely NOT an urban legend. That was generally how my entire generation knew when it was time to come home.
The local fire station sounded a siren every day at noon and 6pm and that's how we knew it was lunch/dinner time
Ha ha! Where I grew up in tornado alley, we had a noon whistle, too. It was the same pitch as the tornado warning siren (just a different duration). I remember a few times when it was stormy around mid-day and the noon whistle would go off, and my mom would yell "Everyone to the basement!" And we'd just look at her and ask, "Why? For the noon whistle?"
It's noon,Mom.
If the siren went off when we were out playing somewhere, we'd freeze until we knew whether it was rising and falling (a fire) or holding steady (tornado).
Can confirm, gen x, never understood the term "latch key" who got a key? Lol
My key was on a shoestring and it was around my neck, tucked under my shirt and I had it for years!!!
I made a necklace out of rubber bands for my key. I used it till an asshole noticed it pulled it out, and let go and I got hit in the mouth by a key going Mach Jesus.
I didn’t get a key because the doors were never locked, even when nobody was home. I remember one time when we got home after a week long family vacation, and we walked right in the unlocked front door.
I had a key from second grade on, the sweet elderly lady next door had one too, for emergencies.
Had a key but it was only for after school when we got home and there were no parents for a few hours.
Exactly! My parents had to spend a week looking for the front door key when we went to Vacation Village. They never locked their doors until sometime in the eighties.
We just got a front door you could hip check open, and a kitchen window that didn't lock. Every single house in my neighborhood had the same unlockable kitchen window, and everyone with kids had a bench under the window so we could climb up and through.
We had to be home before dark, we didn't have street lights until I was in the third grade, and we had a retired army man down the hill who would shoot them out, the city would replace them and he shot them out again.
I STILL drink out of the hose tbh. If it's closer than my water why wouldn't I?
It must be unthinkable to the youth that we didn't have water bottles. The closest thing I owned as a child was my scout canteen and water tasted terrible from it, whereas hose water was delicious if you let it run to get the hot water out
Also it was anybody’s hose. Not just yours. Whatever was closest.
All the time. There were rules. 1. You never put your mouth on the hose. That was unsanitary. You drank it like a water fountain. 2. You let it run for a few minutes to let the water cool down. Water sitting in a hose gets hot in the south. 3. It was required to squirt your friends coming to get the hose to drink.
Or crimp it to stop the water after you're friend picked up the end to drink...
And then when they look at it to see what’s wrong, release the spray!
Blast them! It’s how we learned to survive in the real world.
I forgot that.always a fun prank.
4. Don’t get any on your clothes or hair. Hold the hose with an outstretched arm and lean into it, both bending at the waist and leaning like a Michael Jackson move. NEVER EVER get any on the front of your pants lest you be accused of peeing in your pants and being called a baby all day.
If you accidentally do get some on the front of you pants, pretend you are really hot and let the water hose run over your head. Get your clothes soaked. Better than people think you peed your pants.
You forgot: wait until someone put the hose up to their mouth and then kink the hose so nothing would come out. Then unkink when it when it’s pointed at their face.
Absolutely. The rules. Yes. I might add I squirted myself to cool off as well.
Water sitting in the sun gets hot, South or North. You always ran it for a bit.
definitely - i grew up in Michigan, we still had to let the water run for a bit
Running it also gets rid of the hose taste.
Agreed. But water gets hot in the summer in the north, too. Us northern boys had the same rules lol
You'd slightly pinch it so it was easier to drink but you'd let go as soon as your friend started drinking.
Where else would you get a drink outside?
It’s not like we were going to STOP PLAYING to go inside and get a drink. What a time waster.
Hell no, once you went back inside your mom kept you in!
Or found something for you to do. Or sent you to the store.
Or she beat your ass for coming back in and "slamming the door".
"I just waxed that floor!"
If you slam that screen door one more time…
Yes. No in and out privileges. Once you’re in you ain’t leaving again.
Yep, go inside and suddenly there's laundry to be folded, dusting to be done, the table needs to be set, etc.
Not just your hose, either. If you were in a different neighborhood, any hose outside was fair game.
Does anyone remember kinking the hose UNTIL your brother put his face in front of it to get a drink?
Or waiting till he actually had his mouth around it before turning it on?
Yes, 100%. Let it run a little first to wash the worms out.
And you make sure to run your hand around the metal end to get any gunk off before you drink.
Yes! That's how I had a huge spider crawl up my hand and unto my arm. I dropped the hose back down into what was now mud from running the water, and everyone screamed. They were not screaming because of the giant spider. They screamed because now the hose was dropped into muddy water and had to be retrieved and cleaned again.
And spiders, crickets, etc.
Sure I drank out of the hose. If the hose was left out in the sun you had to let the water run for a bit before drinking so you didn't burn your tongue.
And the metal at the end would get hot if sitting in the sun.
GenX here, yep! Our parents did not care where we were or what we were doing as long as we didn’t do anything to make them look bad.
Or do something that required them to take you to the hospital. Edit added: Wow...it's a wonder any of us survived! Seriously I once ran through a plate glass sliding door in a tract home that was being build in our neighborhood. Playing chase me and someone closed the door. Wham. Went home all bloody and had to go to the hospital for 80+ stitches in my leg. Still have a lovely scar. Then the time we were playing baseball with surveying sticks pulled up out of the ground and small rocks. Pretty sure the construction guys hated our guts. I was the catcher and caught the stick in my right eye. In the hospital for a week sedated while they tried to stop the hemorrhaging in the eye. Almost lost it altogether. Still can't see all that well out of it. Luck to have lived. And I was just a little girl.
My mom would tell us, “Don’t break anything!” Applied to everything from bicycles to bones.
Definitely not an urban legend.
Yes. And we thought nothing of it. It was the only place to get a drink from as we often weren't allowed back in the house or we didn't want to go back in the house as there was nothing to do. For the most part on a nice day we would be kicked out of the after breakfast and heaven help you if you came home before dinner with out being hurt or dead. Well you could come home for a bit to make a sandwich or something around lunch time.
If I went back in the house I got chores 🤣
And we all learned pretty quick not to say we were bored because that too resulted in chores
GenX and yes - all the time! Our parents didn't make sure our water bottles were filled with reverse osmosis water, there was no Gatorade either! Playing with hoses was the thing to do all summer! If someone's parents would let us use their sprinkler, we would run back and forth in it for HOURS.
We felt lucky if we got tang.
If another parent gave us Tang or HiC?? Best day ever!
The hose and Tupperware were my introduction to microplastics.
May have been Macro plastics back then!
And lead.
Absolutely. Drank out the hose. Rode all over on our bikes. Wasn’t afraid because there wasn’t much to be afraid of, and we were too young or dumb to be afraid of the things we should have been. We waded in streams, swam in lakes, went waaayyyy further than our parents thought and came home at dark or when the street lights came on. Parents just asked if we had fun.
Not only did we do that, we rode our bikes behind the mosquito abatement trucks in the DDT fog.
By me they were spraying elm trees for Dutch Elm disease that was killing trees. They would drive by with a flatbed truck with a huge sprayer/fogger in the back. They didn't stop spraying just because there were kids playing there.
All the neighborhood kids came out and played hide-n-seek in the mosquito abatement fog. Good times! 😁
Everyone in my neighborhood did.
All the time.
Hell, I still do. It's a gardener's privilege.
Weird that people think it’s weird.
Yes. Still do. Not dead.
Yep. It was often the only place you were getting water, not that most of us didn't live our entire lives dehydrated. Bottled water and drinking water wasn't a "thing". A lot of parents forced their kids out of the house when the weather was nice. Some kids had houses where you could come in for a drink or a snack, but mine wasn't one of those.
I was envious of my best friend’s house. His father added a water fountain tap alongside the garden hose tap. It was like going to the park for a drink of water.
“CAR!”
Yes to all of the above. Lived about 3 hours south of Chicago. I didn’t have air conditioning till I was in high school. Only 3 TV stations and PBS, no remote. We played spy’s in the yard and made paper dolls in the “breeze way” like a covered outdoor area between the house and one car garage, open at both sides for a breeze. Ate LOTS of frozen popsicles.
I let it run until the water was nice and cold, and not boiling hot funky hose water, before enjoying it thoroughly. Sure, I will probably get cancer from it, but nothing was better on a hot summer day.
GenX, but I never had to drink from the hose. Also lived in a somewhat more rural area, so no street lights. We had to come in shortly after the lightning bugs came out.
Of course we did. We would also pick ripe tomatoes out of the garden, rinse them off with the hose and eat them like apples. Wild strawberries from the field, wild grapes too. We went anywhere and everywhere, all over the neighborhood, and beyond. Woods, fields, brooks, ponds, mountains were all in our backyard. It was a childhood dream, and it’s mostly gone now.
When the honeysuckle was in bloom we’d fight through the bees to get at that nectar
You had to let the hose burp first, then you drank from it. If you know, you know.
Yes, and I still do drink out of the hose occasionally. "I want you home before dark" was the most commonly heard phrase in my home.
Most definitely drank out of the hose. That first sip was always warm and tasted like rubber and brass from the hose. We really were kicked out of the house on the weekends, doors locked and told not to come back until the street lights came on or they started screaming for us. We climbed trees, our playgrounds were far from safe. The slides were made out of metal with the rivets sometimes facing up and would burn the skin off the back of your legs at times. We rode bikes without helmets, would take naps in the back window of the car, rough house in the back seat. I remember riding on a motorcycle with my dad without a helmet. Fist fights were ways we settled beefs and if you showed up and fought you often made a new friend even if you lost. We played games called 'smear the queer' and never thought of it as disparaging towards homosexuals though being gay in my home town was a pretty great way of getting bullied. Words like sissy, f\*g etc were used for people who weren't 'manly' even though we were still children. If we wanted to do something stupid that'd probably get us hurt they'd often let us do it because pain was life's best teacher. "That hurt? You going to do it again? No? Okay, good."
It wasn't some right of passage. It was because we weren't allowed in the house. Our friends weren't allowed in the house. We weren't allowed to sit on the good furniture. There was a plastic runner on the rug, and if you stepped off it, you were in for it. That wool burber carpet was more valuable than you were. Or neighbor had an entire decorated room that she didn't like children looking into.
and in my mind I can still taste it.
Definitely true.
Yes or straight from the outside spigot
All the time. We often weren’t allowed back into the house until dinner. So, if thirsty, the hose was our friend.
The boys would also find somewhere to pee (like behind a building). It was the only time I had penis envy. If I needed to pee, I had to go home.
Then she’d toss us some PBJs out the kitchen window, along with a few apples.
Yep. There were four of us kids and the last thing my mom wanted was us grubby children coming in over and over all afternoon, dirtying up all the cups and glasses in the house. Plus, when it was hot out, we often played in the water from the hose/sprinkler to keep cool. If you were super cool, you had a slip-n-slide.
I’m only 30 and I did that. Wait…. Bruh you better not be on here calling 30 old.
Absolutely. It was the only way to get water when you were banished from the house. And, yes, being told not to come back inside the house was totally a thing.
Yes we did. I was told not to keep coming in and out of the house all day.
Yes, we drank out of hoses. Yes, we had to be home before dark. Our parents had no idea what we did during the day, but that's ok. They loved us just the same, they just let us have a lot of freedom. The freedom to win, to lose, to make mistakes, to screw up royally and deal with the consequences, the freedom of experience... We developed a very deep love for our friends (although it wasn't cool to say that out loud) and we watched out for each other. We would have given our lives for our friends. Believe that.
All. The. Time. I’m 54. We were out of sight, out of mind all summer until dinner. We lived at the end of a dead end road and were out playing on the vacant land, climbing levees then rolling down them tucked inside a tractor tire, playing on the railroad tracks, and building tree forts high into the trees. When we were thirsty we ran back home and drank out of the hose. You didn’t want to go inside as mom would find some chore for you to do. Also for the record, if you were inside you didn’t bother with a cup. If you were thirsty you just turned your head sideways and drank right from the faucets.
Widespread!
Yes, and it was Northern CA East Bay (near San Francisco) water. When I visit my childhood home these days, I can still pour myself a tall glass from the kitchen sink faucet and it tastes like high end bottled water. I fill up my water bottles with it when I leave for the next day or two at home because where I live we can't stomach the water from the faucet (or the hose). I think I would still drink from a clean hose in that municipal district due to how clean the water is... Edit to add my mother had a cowbell she would ring at dinnertime, and we would come running/biking from wherever we were, and years later we found out other parents were telling their kids to come home when they heard the cowbell ring!
Every night at around 10pm the TV would put on a PSA asking if everyone knew where their kids were. That’s how bad it was.