The 1970's - particularly the early-mid 1970s - were probably the time that things were really still free-wheeling and unstructured before morphing into "Corporate World", the prevailing culture of today.
In those days, you didn't really have to be a robot - particularly if you were a kid. Especially a kid growing up in a New Jersey suburb.You could be mischievous, have fun, cause chaos, and it wasn't such a big deal. You could still roam the streets at night and get involved in all manner of harmless nonsense..In short, you could be a KID.You didn't have to be a social media creation.You could still ride your bikes to faraway (at least to us) towns, play baseball and football on the side streets - break into houses, make creative prank phone calls. It was much more innocent!
I mean, can you imagine being a kid today and trying to break into houses with all the high-tech security and devices that houses are equipped with now? Impossible! God, you would be immediately apprehended as a threat to national security and be thrown into one of those terrorist detainment camps for life! When we were kids, houses only had those chain link locks that even the Hamburgular from Mc Donald's could have broken into, they were so easy! Or those chintzy doorknob locks...in fact, many houses didn't lock their doors at all!
No - STAND BACK! VIPER! THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY VIPER! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! DANGER! DANGER! No wonder kids are all on Ritalin and anti-depressives/anxiety today! What happened to fun during summer vacation? As you can read about in my memoir - The Edge of Whiteness - we would break into this one family's house every Saturday for like - a year. We would the eat all the raisins out of their Raisin Bran, pour the bran back in the box, seal it up with glue, and put it right back in the same exact position on their shelves.I mean, this went on for nearly a year, and STILL they kept buying Raisin Bran from the A&P!
Eventually, we (me and my cousin Skinny) had no other choice but to spy on them as they were eating dinner in their dining room, while we stood on cinder blocks and listened for their every word on the baffling situation. Then (ironically) we would pick up the family's son, who also happened to be one of our best friends up for church the next morning.... we were puzzled why they couldn't figure it out, but it wa sall the more hilarious to us! Stay tuned for the next post, where I will explore our other adventures around the neighborhood!
Ah, the good ole days...
The Joy's of the 1970's
