When I was little, 6 or 7, we lived in Florida. There was a bay that had salt water canals dug off it it, like spokes on a bike tire. That picture is of my dad, standing in front of our section of the canal. There were a lot of them, and houses were built on either side of them. They were just another part of the neighborhood where we all played. I was the oldest in my family. I had two sisters, 3 and 2. Mom would just turn us lose in the neighborhood. All the neighborhood kids were just turned loose. I was responsible for the “little kids” (my sisters). I will NEVER forget the day my three year old sister fell off the seawall. It’s burned in my mind…the panic. Me running to the house screaming “Lexie fell off the sea wall!” Thank God the tide was out at the time because I probably would have jumped in after her and we both would have drowned. I still feel the horrible guilt of that day.
Another time a friend and I took a little row boat, paddled across the bay to an island that was out there. I think she was a year older than me, so 6 and 7. No life jackets. The island was probably teaming with crocs. But we went there with my folks’ permission and had a picnic. On the way back we got sooo tired. We started to panic a little, so we made it to the nearest canal, and pulled ourselves along the seawall, to the end, to the right, then back out, made it to the next canal, same story. We pulled ourselves through about 5 canals, so tired, so scared and so glad to be home.
As an adult, I look back and I would NEVER, not in a million years, live there if I had little kids!
Parents back then tried to kill their kids in other ways, not just by drowning. Remember the metal skates that you strapped to your shoes? The adjusted in size, but no matter how tightly you keyed them down they ALWAYS flew apart when you hit a bump in the side walk, just as you were hitting top speed (felt like 90 mph!) and throw you into a tree! I saw some at auction last week. Talk about a walk down memory lane. I picked them up. Those suckers were HEAVY, too.