Liz, you are so right. Being in your age group even if I was brought up in New Jersey, I relate to your summer experiences. It was fun to be free and safe in a small town. But my most independent experience was when I crossed the Ocean from the U.K. when I was nine years old travelling by myself on a Cunard liner called The California. Talk about independent I have felt independent since that week long trip so many years ago.

Happy Fourth of July 

My youthful freedom sounds just like yours. Out the door in the  summer mornings, home for lunch, out again––rules: when you hear the cow bell, which my mother would ring, you better come running; be home before dark. You bet it taught self reliance––it also spurned the imagination.

P.S. Please read the message I left for you on yesterday’s Kitty/Babe thread. 

I also had a childhood like that. We spent it roaming around wherever we darned well-pleased. We played hide and seek in cemeteries and rode our bicycles all over the place to visit our friends. We went down to the neighborhood park in the summer and played knok-hockey and ping-pong and tether-ball and if you had $1 at 7 am a car pool would take you up to Anthony Wayne State Park’s swimming pool an hour away  in upstate NY where you could jump off the high dive and wander the grounds without any supervision at all. You only had to be back by 5 to catch the ride home. We knew all the people in our neighborhood and just *who* would give you *what* kind of a snack and we went over to their houses at will and didn’t need to tell anyone where we were. We also were lucky in that our grandfather owned a lake house and as long as one knew how to "float" (his rule) you could go out the door in the morning in your bathing suit and not have to come back until nightfall just in time to eat something and catch some fireflies.

Happy 4th of July, Liz. We were very lucky, weren’t we?