“The thing that stands out the most to me is the amount of freedom that we had as kids. There were no fences and no fears. When I was a young girl in the 50’s there were about 20 kids were in my neighbourhood in Inglewood. The boys and girls would play all day every day and as long as we went home for lunch and dinner, our parents were happy for us to play outside. We might fall and break a bone – and that was the only time we’d get in trouble!
We’d ride our bikes, take our dogs down to the river, paddle the canoe along the river and climb trees. I was the best tree climber and could climb higher than anyone else. We also made up our own games. One was a jumping game that was similar to ‘hopscotch’…we called it ‘hoppy’. We used to play marbles a lot. My brother bought a property in his 20’s right near our childhood home. When he first moved in, he redid the garden and found hundreds of marbles in the soil and sand. Probably from the kids playing!
I know it’s an overused saying, but things were much simpler back then. We were free to play outside, and I don’t think that kids these days have as much freedom as we did.”
