Ep 28: Children of the 1960s

If you're a parent looking for sound, solid advice on how to raise your child in an ever-increasing dangerous world, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Richard Ramos.

Nine things working-class people who grew up in the 1960s did for fun that. Completely horrifying today's parents. Number 1, playing in construction sites after the workers left. Remember that? Every neighborhood that had at least one half-built house that became the unofficial after-school center. Kids would spend hours climbing scaffolding, jumping between floor joists, and playing hide-and-seek in foundation pits. The lumber piles were jungle gyms. The sawdust piles were landing pads. And nobody wore helmets because helmets were for astronauts. Parents knew where their kids were. They just didn't consider active construction sites particularly dangerous. After all, their 8-year-olds already knew how to use hammers and saws. The idea that someone could sue a construction company for kids getting hurt on their property was as foreign as seat belts. You got tendonitis? That's what the shots were for. Hello everybody, I'm Richard R Ramos and welcome to the Parent Whisperer Podcast. Today I want to share with you an article with you that speaks to how many of us on this podcast, or maybe most of us, the way we grew up in the '60s. That's the way I grew up. I grew up in the '60s as a kid. And usually on these podcasts, as you know, I try to address what are called the real-world issues that are usually of a more serious nature. But hey, you know, sometimes we've got to have a little fun, take a break. And I think that this article, it's fun, it's nostalgic and informative, but I think it also helps us realize that— well, we do realize, but it just kind of puts in context The world that our children are growing up in is so different. I mean, things have changed so much. There's just so many rules and regulations and things that were just kind of unheard of when we were kids, as this article kind of points out. So, but it gives us a different perspective and context to appreciate the past, our past, and the present that Our children are living in. As for the future, I'm a little skeptical about some of the things that are going on and coming up that our kids will deal with and probably be parents in. And that world is many— we may or may not be around, but I'll have more to say on that at another time. Let me go on to the second one with this article. It's called Hitchhiking to the Public Pool. I mean, just remember hitchhiking. I used to hitchhike all over the place with no shoes on. And you know, just when I think about it, kids hitchhiking today, it's like, no way. But we used to hitchhike all the time. It says here, working-class kids in the '60s treated hitchhiking like public transit. Needed to get to the pool 3 towns over? Stick out your thumb. The accepted practice was so normal that kids would hitchhike in groups and parents would give directions that included catch a ride to the The public pool was worth the risk. It was free entertainment if you could get there. Kids would hitchhike 5 miles each way for the chance to swim in chlorinated water so strong it bleached your suit. Parents' safety advice: don't get in vans. That was the entire stranger danger curriculum. I mean, imagine that. Remember that? What happened? My, my. Number 3: making go-karts from stolen shopping carts and scrap wood. Every working-class neighborhood had kids racing homemade death traps down the steepest hills they could find. The engineering was simple: steal a shopping cart, rip it apart, nail the wheels to planks, add a milk crate for a seat. Brakes were your shoes, steering was theoretical, and helmets were for rich kids with bikes. I mean, I lived— grew up in a park, a rural seco park. I think it's called Montecito Heights now, in northeast Los Angeles. And they had go-kart races on a hill. It was supervised. It was, you know, the go-karts were a little more modern, should I say, than what's described here. But certainly these were just dangerous things that we did as kids, and it was fine with everybody. And people did get hurt. Yeah, that did happen. But it's just fun to think about those times swimming in industrial rivers and quarries. Public pools Cost money and had rules. Abandoned quarries and industrial rivers were free and had nobody watching. Kids would bike miles to swim in water that was definitely not EPA approved. The EPA barely existed at that time. The quarries were freezing with underwater hazards. The rivers ran past factories that turned them different colors depending on the day. So yeah, these swimming holes— now where I grew up, they didn't have swimming holes, but when I moved to Santa Barbara, they have swimming holes there. You could drive there. Maybe not bike there, but you could drive up to the foothills there here in Santa Barbara, and in 20 minutes you, you got a swimming hole. And lots of people go there. But man, we used to swim in the LA River, which was really dangerous. I almost drowned one time and saved a kid from drowning one time, but that's a long story I won't get into. But when it would rain hard, the LA River, man, it would get full, and that thing was moving fast. We used to tie a chain around ourselves and then jump in the water, and your friend would run alongside you until you wanted to get pulled out. And that didn't always go so well, but it was fun nevertheless. Train hopping for transportation. Before suburban sprawl, working-class neighborhoods were veined with railroad tracks carrying freight trains that moved Slow enough to catch kids didn't hop trains to be rebellious. It was genuinely the fastest way to get across town. I mean, where I lived, where I grew up, there was a train track and a train would come by twice a day. Our house would shake. I mean, it was the second house. The train tracks were one house over, right in the middle of the street, and it would go right through our neighborhood and on and you know to who knows where. The Santa Fe train. Yeah, and we could jump on the train and jump off it. That's how slow it went. Can you imagine kids doing that today? Yeah, I don't know, maybe. But that's something that now it's all covered up. They took the train out of there a long time ago. But now this one's a little personal for me. BB gun wars in the woods. BB guns weren't toys. They were tools that working-class kids got around at age 8. By 10, groups of boys and some girls were having elaborate wars in whatever patches of woods existed between factories. The rules were simple: no aiming for faces, heavy clothes required, and if you got hit, you were out. These weren't supervised activities. Kids would disappear for entire Saturdays with their BB guns, coming home with welts they'd hide under their shirts. Parents' main concern wasn't the guns, it was making sure kids didn't shoot out windows or kill birds that weren't pests. Now, that's exactly what I ended up doing, I'm sorry to say. And I got busted for it. My friend had got a new BB gun for his birthday. And so we had the bright idea that down the street they were building some projects, some apartments, which were called projects back then. Today they're called affordable housing. And we were hiding behind a wall and some of the apartments that were— people were living in some of them and we'd shoot out— we were shooting out the windows. I don't know what we were thinking. We weren't thinking, and we— next thing we know, a cop jumped over the wall. And luckily for me, again, this is another long story that I tell in my books about how I was saved from being run over by a train when I was 2 years old. And that same cop that saved my life— a pretty dramatic story that I'm just mentioning here— at 2 years old, he saved my life. Now I'm 12 years old, shooting out windows of apartments with a BB gun on my friend— with my friend. And the cop jumps over the wall, and guess who it is? The same cop. Luckily, he knew me. He couldn't believe it was me. Took me to my mom's house, you know, scolded us, took us to juvenile hall, scared the hell out of us. And of course, we didn't have to go in because he knew us. But imagine today, a young Chicano being busted by a cop. Shooting at windows with a BB gun. Imagine what would happen today, but that was back then. And so I was guilty of that, sorry to say, and glad to say nobody ever got hurt. But still, it was, you know, terrible for us to be doing that. Exploring abandoned buildings. Yep, every industrial town had them— abandoned factories, closed schools, empty warehouses. These became elaborate playgrounds where kids played Everything from hide-and-seek— remember hide-and-seek? Does anybody even play hide-and-seek anymore?— to a full contact war. The buildings were definitely structured unsound, definitely full of asbestos, and definitely— oh, tetanus factory. Yeah, we could get tetanus. But they were also the most interesting places available. Kids knew which buildings had weak floors, which had cool machinery left behind, which had resident homeless people who were either friendly or to be avoided. They'd spent entire summers mapping these places, creating elaborate games and spaces that would now be surrounded by federal safety tape. That's correct. Today, exactly. But parents knew their kids played there. And the rule, what was the rule? Don't go alone. And then it talks about junkyard scavenging as treasure hunting. The local junkyard wasn't off limits. It was a resource center. Kids would spend hours hunting for bike parts, cool pieces of metal, Or anything that would be repurposed into toys. The owner usually knew all the kids by name and had an informal system. Stay away from the crushing area, don't mess with cars being stripped, and you could take small stuff. I mean, imagine that today. Maybe there's some places like that today, I don't know. But the point here and what I'm saying, this was all normal stuff. It was such an easier world to live in. There wasn't so many rules. And I'm not saying we don't need rules and some of the safety rules we have now. Yeah, we probably, you know, were risking a lot more back then. True. But, you know, my cousins and I, he lived near a hill. We used to climb up to the top of the hill and with cardboard and slide all the way down. And we'd get in a barrel and roll all the way down. I mean, and sometimes we got hurt, no doubt. I know a nail stuck all the way in my back of my arm, a rusted nail, and things like that would happen. But man, we had fun. And you know, that's what we want for our kids, for them to go out and have fun, but to be safe. And of course, we made up all these things because we made the best with what was available to us at that time. So this last one though, now this one I never experienced, but maybe some of you out there have. Chemistry sets that could actually blow things up. Working-class kids whose parents scraped together money for a chemistry set got the real deal. Sets with actual chemicals that could create actual explosions. The instructions included how to make gunpowder. The warnings were suggestions. Small kids figured out how to concentrate the good stuff. These weren't supervised activities. Kids mixed chemicals in basements and backyards, following and not following instructions with equal enthusiasm. Small explosions were expected. Singed eyebrows were learning experiences. Parents' attitude was that kids interested in science should be encouraged, and burns would teach better safety lessons than any lecture could. Here's the author's final thoughts. And by the way, I should give you the name of the author of this article. Adam Kelton in Veg Out is the online vegoutmag.com. Yeah, by Adam Kelton. Anyway, at the end, he— I think he gives a pretty good conclusion here. Where are we? He says, here's what's hard to convey about working-class childhood in the 1960s. It wasn't that parents didn't care if kids got hurt. They just had different calculations about acceptable Risk. When you're working 2 jobs to keep food on the table, you can't helicopter parent. When everyone's kids are running wild, yours can too. When you survive the same childhood, it seems normal. These kids weren't tougher, they just lived in a world where danger was background noise rather than something to be eliminated. They got hurt more often. Some died, unfortunately, from preventable accidents. And yes, I did have some friends that did die. And plenty have scars with good stories. I have those too. Modern parents aren't overprotective for being horrified by these activities. They just have information options and lawsuits that didn't exist then. The truth is both eras got something right. The '60s kids learned resilience, problem-solving, and independence through benign neglect. Today's parents are statistically safer and will probably keep all their fingers. But somewhere between jumping off trains and being driven to supervised playdates, there's probably a sweet spot. And I agree with that. And I just thought again, it's just a fun article. It's informative. And yeah, it gives a good perspective. You know, things were different way back then and nothing wrong with all the preventative things today. But I just hope mom and dad listen. I just wanted to give you something to bring back some fun memories and hopefully I put a smile. On your face. And I just wanted to give you a little break from the serious stuff. We have enough problems and serious things to be concerned about. And I just, you know, for me, you all deserve to be recognized. You all deserve to be honored. As far as I'm concerned, parents that are on a mission, as I call you, you are really the unrecognized community heroes. For raising children that are happy, healthy, respectful, and that are a blessing and not a burden to our communities and to society. You've been listening to the Parent Whisperer podcast. I'm Richard Ramos. I sure appreciate your time. Please subscribe, leave me a review. For more resources, you can visit my website, richardrramos.com. Don't forget my middle initial, richardrramos.com. You can find my books there. You can find other resources there. And remember, Mom and Dad, Parents on a Mission is not for bad parents. It's for good parents who want to get better. See you next time.

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