I remember being able to walk from home, all the way downtown, watching a movie, and walking home, with no concerns. And, believe me, my Mom was a worrier, and if there was any inkling of a problem, she would not have let me go alone. I could ride my trike around the block, pedal my scooter around also. This was only a few blocks from Downtown Dayton, not out in the suburbs.
We used to sit on our front porch and watch the traffic go by, and there was a lot, Brown Street was a main street heading South. UD, the University of Dayton was just down the street not too far. We knew many of our neighbors, the Guilds, the Schmalls, the Burions, Bob and Dick Wolf, Warren Wogaman, the Eilermans, many who lived down our alley, which was a neighborhood all of its own. Our "alley" was "different" than the street side neighborhood, hard to explain. It was more relaxed, laid back, you could talk over the back fence, different conversations than on the front porch.
Oddly enough, you could wear your blue jeans in the backyard and by the back fence and in the alley, but you generally had to dress better to sit on the front porch. I could wear my "play clothes" in the alley. My Dad made me a "car" buckboard type thing, our of hickory, had wagon wheels, a Maytag Washing Machine motor that sat on a roller skate wheeled frame. I had a pedal, when pushed, the frame moved back and tightened the belt drive and I went forward. It scooted along pretty good. I did have a brake too. Made many trips down that alley on that.
My brother a motorcycle in the 40's, an Indian, had been a police bike, extended frame, with a sidecar. I vividly remember my first ride in that sidecar, down that same alley, at a pretty good speed, only inches away from all the garages and trash cans in the alley. Frightening.
Then came the war, in December of 1941. Farmers left the farm to work in the war plants, women left the home to work there also, boys and men left home to travel thousands of miles, some to be killed, some wounded, some lost. Most of my cousins in Indiana, never went back to the farm, the farms finally sold for housing projects. Many of the women kept working, they liked the independence and the money, many lost their husbands and became single parent families.
I think that is when we started our "decline" ... as a country. Our neighborhoods were broken up for freeways, the little corner stores closed up, we lost our "downtowns," years later, we took God and Prayer and "pledges" to our country out of our classrooms and lives, television took over, our lives were controlled by advertising and marketing ..... back then, we were sailing on the "ship of state" ... that was steering on a firm course, now we are on board a Titanic, sinking slowly, not knowing when it will go "under" ... but having that "sinking" feeling .... that it is ....
