Growing up in the 1960s
As a three or four year old…
My childhood is full of funny true tales, but in this age of judging and critiquing others, my stories might be taken too seriously. So please, remember life in America back around 1968 was very different. Kids played from morning until noon, coming home for a lunch they wolfed down just to get back outside with their group of neighborhood friends.
Divorce wasn’t a thing. Not often heard of at all. Moms stayed home and watched the kids, Dark Shadows and washed dishes by hand. They still used cloth diapers, and they fed kids formula thinking it was more nutritious than mother’s milk. Dad’s worked, and then took us to the Elks Club on Sunday to give mom an hour’s rest. We’d eat cheese puffs and drink orange soda.
I have a brother who is thirteen months younger than I. Jackson* had an uncanny ability to find places and use maps from age two. He drew a map of Syracuse in marker on the side of his wardrobe, but mom said she couldn’t punish him for it because of his accuracy. (Wish I had been accurate when I said I hadn’t found the chocolate candy on top of the fridge. I told her the dog did it. Why didn’t mom believe me?)
My kid brother was two when he started leaving home to go see dad at work. Except we lived off a very busy road. Very.
Our home was in the attic of a bungalow one house away from the I-81 freeway. We lived directly under the flightpath of planes landing at the Syracuse airport. We also had a cesspool in the backyard where the feces would flush to air out. All I know is it smelled. And the rats under the one car garage drove my German Shepherd dog crazy. I’ll never know why mom thought adding a puppy to a one year old and a newborn was a good idea, but that’s my mom!
Mom had to work upstairs in the tiny attic, and we would go in the yard to play. We had no access to the freeway, as a high fence stopped us from climbing up the steep hill to 81. I’d play in the yard and stay there. My brother played in the yard and took off to visit dad at work. Five miles away. I didn’t tell mom that Jackson had left, and truthfully, at three I don’t recall him being gone.
But the friendly police would find my two or three year old brother hoofing it on the main major road. All by himself. Hey, the kid knew where he was going! He truly did, but by the time the police found my brother a third time they told mom she had to do something to stop endangering his life. We’d all agree on this point. Jackson had to stop leaving, but how?
No amount of reason placated my brother, and we couldn’t spend a lovely summer day inside! Syracuse has long winters full of snow. Summers were made for outdoor living.
My mom bought a harness for Jackson, put him in it, and used a dog chain to chain him to the garage. I do have memories of seeing Cleo (the dog) and Jackson being together and tied up.
My brother couldn’t get out of the harness, though the dog did, and the neighbors called the police saying a kid was being mistreated on their street. The police knew all about the kid, and they told my mom it didn’t look good to have Jackson and the dog chained together. Could she perhaps chain him up in the backyard?
That’s all it took. Out of sight was out of mind, and we spent happy hours outdoors, with the dog running into the cesspool. My brother did have lots of times when he wasn’t chained to a fence, and he spent that time catching poisoned rats and wandering into the nasty pool of unearthly smells.
What makes me smile is how innocent we were back then. Now a kid on a harness, no matter how well-intentioned, would have neighbors calling into social services and the parents would have their kids taken away.
Times have changed, but I liked that time of sweet innocence.
My brother is a well-adjusted adult, and he has no memories of being chained up. I do, so I like to tease him about it every Christmas or so. We are alive, we are loved, and we survivied. I miss those days sometimes. Well, frequently.
Please don’t chain your child to the garage. Maybe the dog, but certainly not the child. It’s frowned upon now.
*Name changed for privacy
