Really enjoyed reading your story Eric! I'd forgotten how typical this 'one car family' scenario was when we were young. My family was the same and we walked or biked everywhere and were with each other nearly all the time as a consequence - for worse or better, lol! We lived in town so there were more people around and we also had 5 children, but still the family was the dominant social circle for us as well. This is in real contrast with my friends' children and my siblings' children as well who live very social lives and have from birth. And perhaps this is because we all live in cities, or maybe it's that most families have 2 cars now.
In any case, fun read and the upcoming trip to England with your brother sounds really great!
Hey @natureofbeing! Thank you. I've noticed that same change to social circles too. My five year old nephew is more social at that age than I am now. Lol.
It seems to me that back in the 1970's people were less comfortable borrowing money and credit cards were far less common. Raymi and I often talk about how the middle class in America would probably shrink very significantly overnight if credit was taken away.
I'm glad you enjoyed this one! I'm very excited for England. It'll be a nice reward for the hard work this year. Take care and have a good rest of the weekend!
you're so right about credit cards in the 1970s....this is a really big change! And a car was $2K then too and there was less reason to go into debt since the cost of living was more manageable. The credit situation these days is really heartbreaking - as Americans we are encouraged at every turn to go into debt and then are enslaved by this for years.
I think that my 7 and 2 year old niece and nephew are also more social than I am ;-)). But like you, I really appreciate the creativity that arose daily back in the days of unstructured, unsupervised time. Life really was quite different!