Growing up in the fifties

in the city I live in is the subject matter of a book the Senior Cat is currently reading. It consists of a series of personal stories by people who were children at a time when the world was a very different place. 

These are simple stories told by people who played in the street, walked to school, went to the Saturday afternoon matinee at the local picture theatre, and to Sunday School on Sundays. It is my generation and the generation of my siblings and many people I know. 

The world had changed even ten years later but not nearly as much as it has now. For the Senior Cat even the fifties was another world. While the writing is not fine prose he is finding the book fascinating. 

He was a new, very new, teacher in the early fifties of the last century. His first appointment was to a tiny settlement on the railway line that crosses the continent from south to north, north to south. As a "city boy" he was lost in the wild culture of such settlements. He, a teetotaler, had to live at "the pub" because there was nowhere else for the only teacher to live. From there he was sent to another small settlement which was almost as remote, then to the small country town where three of the four of us were born. At the end of nineteen fifty four he was posted back to the city so that he could continue working towards getting his degree. My siblings and I spent the next five years there.

At the Senior Cat's request I borrowed the book from the library and have now read part of it. Much of what is in there is familiar to me and, looking back, I think my brother and I were fortunate. We were not that old but we had a freedom that most children now would find completely bewildering. I doubt they would know how to use it. Even I was allowed to wander the streets around our home. We lived on a fairly busy road which included buses so we didn't play in the street at the front of the house. Instead we went around to the back lane. I would pedal on my tricycle, my brother would use his scooter. The boys played "cricket" and "football". The girls played "skippy" and "hopscotch". Everyone played "knuckle bones" - saved from the Sunday joint - and even the girls were sometimes allowed to join in a game of "marbles" . 

There was no adult to supervise us. If we disagreed we had to sort it out ourselves. There was the occasional physical confrontation but it was mostly words. Negotiation was an important part of setting up any game. 

In fine weather we stayed until our mothers, who were mostly "stay at home", called us in to meals by looking over the fences. Nobody had a watch. We rarely asked an adult for the time. If we needed to know we judged it by the shadows on the ground.  

I thought of all this again last night while watching two of the children in this street race up and down the footpath on their bikes. Their mother had come out to watch, to make sure they were safe. She had walked the short length of the street in both directions to make sure the neighbours were not likely to be leaving their driveways or would be watching for the children. She wanted them inside again after ten minutes but I was doing some essential watering in the front garden and told her I would watch them instead. That gave them another twenty or so minutes of glorious fun. They were even more startled when I became a "traffic policeman" and "directed the traffic" in and out of our little driveway. 

Their faces said it all. It was fun. It was much better than simply being allowed to ride up and down the footpath for ten minutes under the watchful eye of their mother. 

"I know they like it but I don't have time to watch and you can't let them do it on their own," their mother told me.

No, you can't do that any more. It means children now are missing out on so many learning opportunities, so much imaginative play - and so much fun.