This was my back yard when I was a little kid living in Florida. It’s a salt water canal that came off of Tampa bay. It rose and fell with the tide. No fences, tons of kids.
I was 5 and my little sisters were 2 and 1. Mom would just turn my 2 year old sister and I loose, with instructions for me to take care of her. My sister fell off the sea wall once. Fortunately the tide was out. If it hadn’t been I probably would have gone in after her, even though I couldn’t swim. It’s a guilt I feel at the pit of my stomach to this day.

I pulled her out of a neighbor’s indoor pool once, too. Nobody was keeping an eye on us.

There was an island in the middle of the bay. My girlfriend and I wanted to row over to the island in a row boat. So Mom packed us a picnic and we were on our way. No life jackets. No telling WHAT was on that island…alligators, snakes, spiders.

I was 6, my friend was 7.

On the way back we got scared. We may have been fighting the tide or something. There were several canals, like spokes on a bike. We made it to the nearest one and proceeded to stand up in the boat and pull ourselves along the sea wall, to the end then pulled ourselves across the other side. We traversed 4 canals that way until we made it home.

That’s just the way it was for EVERYBODY in those days. Was that OK?

Topics: children, parenting, Florida, islands, supervision, canals, rowboats