Back When You Just Went Outside
Memories from a late-70s summer childhood, when your bike was your passport, dirt was your cologne, and the ice cream truck was your GPS.
Hi, I’m no-one.
I’ve been thinking about the kind of childhood you can’t buy, download, or charge. A kind you lived in the dirt, under the sun, on a bike that made motorcycle noises thanks to a single playing card and a wooden clothespin. I’m talking about summers as a kid in the late 1970s—the last era where boredom was a launchpad, not a crisis. And I can’t help but wonder: what happened?
You Just Went Outside
Back then, you didn’t ask your parents what the plan was. You were the plan. You slammed the screen door (loudly), hopped on your bike, and roamed the neighborhood until you found a partner in crime or a small crew. That was your social network—live, analog, and slightly unsupervised.
Too few kids for baseball? Stickball. Tag got too violent? Wrestling match. The rules were made up and enforced by whoever could yell the loudest or had an older brother with bruising rights. And once the sun started to drop, you knew the drill: get home or face The Look.
I hung out mostly with boys—loud, muddy, and perpetually daring each other to jump from something taller. And always there was that one girl. The one who just showed up. Didn’t demand attention. She just quietly took over the curb, joined the game like she’d invented it, then vanished like a legend.
Notes from the Ghosts of Childhood Past
- Vacations were rare. Maybe the pool. Maybe a park. Mostly, you stayed home. Your bike was your ticket. Your block was your world. You didn’t need destinations—just daylight and a friend with a wiffle ball.
- Playing cards clothes pinned to your bicycle spokes made you feel like a Hell’s Angel. A very tiny, polite Hell’s Angel.
- Helmets were optional. Elbow scrapes were inevitable.
- The ice cream truck wasn’t scheduled. It was a rumor. A warped jingle that made everyone drop what they were doing and run. Kids swarmed from all directions, fighting for a spot in line. If you had change, you were lucky. If not, you sprinted home, hoping to beat the truck’s disappearing tail lights.
- There was always one kid with a pocketknife. We all pretended not to be impressed.
- If someone’s mom had Kool-Aid, she was basically royalty.
- Getting the "good" spot on the stickball team was a diplomatic act.
- Unguarded construction sites were our playgrounds. We came home covered in dirt, missing a shoe, or dragging something we weren’t supposed to have.
What It Meant to Be a Kid Back Then
This isn’t just nostalgia, it’s a quiet tribute. A reminder there was a time when risk and freedom were part of the childhood contract. We got bored, and that boredom birthed forts, wars, alliances, and sometimes stitches. Today’s kids have smartwatches, group chats, GPS fences. They’re not worse. But they’ll never know what it’s like to be sticky, sunburned, and 90 minutes late because the game needed a tie-breaker.
This is for remembering. For laughing. And for maybe, just maybe, passing down a small ritual—something like the snap of a clothespin and the hum of a playing card on a spinning wheel.
Before the Streetlights Came On
If you were there—back when summers stretched long and unsupervised—then somewhere deep in your bones, there’s still a dirt-streaked version of you. You were pedaling hard toward an ice cream truck that may or may not exist, cards rattling in your spokes, yelling “WAIT UP!” into the summer air—not sure who you were chasing, but knowing it mattered.
And in that moment, you were the fastest, freest, most alive kid on Earth.