It is summer, and it is sweltering. While I try to maintain a moderate body temperature, sitting in front of our oscillating fan, my mind occasionally takes me back to the sultry summer days of my childhood.

I grew up in a time without cell phones, no seatbelts, no child car seats, no bike helmets, and almost no adult supervision. That sounds accusatory and judgemental, which it definitely is not. I was fortunate to have two of the loveliest, most patient, and generous parents ever. It was just different — way different. Our summer days were unstructured, open, free; they were not managed, curated, and (unreasonably) controlled by our parents and grown-ups.

Back in the day, after a bowl of cereal and some morning cartoons, my Mom (who did not have her own car for the first ten years of her marriage, the time it took for her and my dad to produce five children) said to us, “Out you go!” So we did. No hat, no sunglasses, no sunscreen. Some of us lazed in the backyard, but we were as likely to head out on foot or hop on our bikes and travel quite far afield. Or wander the neighborhood, often alone, to see who had a good swing set (or swing), who had a dog, who was home that day or who might be away or on vacation. There was a huge hilly cemetery nearby that was great for exploring. We lived not far from the commuter rail line, the train tracks for which were endlessly fascinating. We put coins on the rails, hunched just off the berm while the trains roared past, and undertook other dicey railroad adventures. It was exhilarating. We took money that we may have pilfered from our dad’s coin jar and bought things at the stores downtown that we didn’t have at home (candy, make-up, ice cream from Brigham’s). And, of course, we (unknowingly) made ourselves into lightning rods to slosh around in the street and gutters during furious thunderstorms. Magnifying glasses became fire starters, which we used to set paper, pine cones, pine needles, and anything at hand alight. Were we testing the boundaries and learning to understand risk? You bet. It is developmentally appropriate for children and youngsters to do that, to push the envelope. That reality is unchanged in the passage of decades. Kids still test and push and try the patience of adults, and sometimes those kids grow up to continue that childish behavior as mature and powerful persons (much to the world’s dismay).

We imagined things, built things, fixed things. We went into the woods and unknown territories to build forts or wickiups (which we did not know, at the time, were wickiups — we called them teepees). I remember lying on my back and looking at the clouds on and off for hours. If Mom allowed it, we set up Hot Wheels tracks that ran down the stairs, under tables, over jumps we engineered. Or we took out our Legos and TinkerToys and constructed castles, arenas, skyscrapers. In terms of games, I remember Boggle, Monopoly, The Game of Life. In our travels we had to learn to be problem-solvers: the bike blew a tire, or the chain fell off or I got fabulously lost. It was not an option; I had to, we had to, figure it out. I was a bookish child. Nancy Drew, The Boxcar Children, and other’s books took me to a different place or time or life. I rode my bike to the local library and camped myself in the children’s section for entire afternoons. Without instructions and without hovering adults, we had the freedom to design our days and activities as the spirit moved us.

Most remarkable to me is that we went places on our own. In elementary school, we walked home every day for lunch; I was in kindergarten and walked more than half a mile home four times a day. That was something my Mom fought for. In fifth grade, when the baby boomers over-crowded the primary grades, I had to pack a lunch because our grade was relocated to the lower level of Lynch Junior High (but we still walked to school). In that seminal fifth-grade year, I had Minna Horowitz as my teacher, and she took her entire class on an overnight trip to her farm in the country where we slept in the hay and fed her animals. In fifth grade! I don’t remember a single parent chaperone, but Miss Horowitz’s friends were all around. Our bikes, as I have indicated above, were our ticket to every kind of opportunity, positive or dangerous. By bike, we went to Wedge Pond or Horn Pond; sometimes we swam, sometimes we fished. There were the old-fashioned rudimentary playgrounds back then with swings that swung super high and which had all the most gnarly climbing equipment. Playgrounds all over hither and yon were a favorite destination. My parents allowed me to take the train to see Chicago in concert at (what was then) the Boston Garden. I think I was in tenth grade, and I remember it was a school night. It was a short train ride into Boston, and we often got a little bit of mad money from our folks and went into Boston for the day with a friend. Though it was close, the city was a whole different universe to our parents, and it allowed us to go there without them at pretty tender ages (13, 14 years old). It’s fairly incredible to me now, and I’m grateful in hindsight because I find new places fascinating rather than terrifying.

Even animals were unsupervised. Dogs wandered the neighborhood, often without collars or any identifying information. How is it that we somehow avoided a series of dog bites?

The point is that each summer day (and most on the weekend) was ours and we had to fill it — with something. If we were, or felt, bored, it was up to us to change that. Those open days asked many things of us: creativity, self-regulation, and self-management (we were on our own, but were expected home at various points for lunch or dinner). After dinner, we had to be home when the streetlights went on and before it got fully dark. In Rutland, Vermont, the fire station airhorn blows each night at 8:50 pm — a former curfew for children in the city to head home. It is a totem to a bygone era, no longer enforced as a curfew. But it’s a reminder of a past when children were most often outside all day and needed a horn to call them home at night.

When our children had their own children — with all the tools and gizmos and gadgets of today’s high-tech age — I had to wonder how I ever raised kids with just myself and a landline. But I did, and our boys survived their humble upbringing.

Again, one era of childhood and child-rearing is not especially better or more favorable. It is, it was, just different. But as I look back, I feel pretty sure that good, long stretches of time for us to fill with whatever we made possible was a good thing. Those experiences and inclinations are probably inside me — in personality, in preferences, in habits — even today.

What are you reading this summer? I’ll have brief book reports next time and, until then, let me know what’s on your bedside table.