When I was a kid in the 1960s, we played in the street. We didn’t have much choice.
I grew up in a barely middle-class neighborhood in Columbia, Tennessee, less than a mile from the Maury County Courthouse. The pre-World War II frame houses were small, and the lots were tight. There were no sidewalks, just postage-stamp lawns that melted into an eight-square-block grid of pavement laid out beside the mighty Duck River. If we were going to play outside — which was a given in the 1960s — it was going to be in the streets.
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Sure, there were public parks and tennis courts within walking distance, but most of us stayed within a block or two of our parents’ houses, which meant repurposing the streets as our playgrounds. We were Second Avenue kids, and we didn’t play much with Third Avenue kids. (Meanwhile, Sixth Avenue kids — if they existed — might as well have been in Kentucky.)
We played kickball in the street, flew kites in the street, smacked Wiffle balls in the street, played freeze-tag in the street, staged bike races in the street. As we grew older, we sat under streetlights at dusk and talked, usually while sitting astride bikes with banana seats and sissy bars decorated with STP oil-additive stickers.