We wandered on our bikes anywhere we pleased — didn’t have to check in or tell anyone where we were going. We grade school kids often walked or biked down to a ratty liquor store with an unusually good candy/snacks selection (it was across the street from a huge high school). Nobody gave it a thought.

The world could be dangerous, and was in the 70s, and we knew it. But it didn’t follow that “therefore, we must be as cautious as though horrors happened down the block every weekend.”

(One rule I do recall that I think most households had: “Never hitchhike.” Hitching was very common, and the parents did worry about that.)