Date: Sun, 02 May 1999 08:38:42 +1200
From: David MacClement <d1v9d-AT-bigfoot.com>
To: Positive Futures 
Subject: Re: Reducing our need for cars

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> At 09:52 29/04/99 -0500, at:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/apr99/0227.html Diane asked:

>> ...
>>Sometimes I try to imagine what life was like before cars were an
>>assumed part of everyone's life.  This is where I would like the older
>>members of our group to enlighten me:
>>
>>If people walked to the grocery store, did they shop a lot more often
>>because it was more difficult to carry all the groceries home, maybe
>>pulled them in a wagon?   Did they leave the kids at home alone or under
>>the watchful eye of a neighbor, because no one worried about child
>>endangerment in those days?  Did you always go to the closest store and
>>not worry about getting the best deal?
>>
>>Did people allow a lot more time to get places -- say a half hour for
>>every mile or so walked or riding a bike?  Did it seem as if a great
>>deal of the day was eaten up walking or bicycling?  ...
>>
>>Did people not participate in many extracurricular activities -- such as
>>Little League, League of Women Voters, etc. -- because it would require
>>frequent travel at night?  Or were meetings not as frequent?
>>
>>If the weather was cold or rainy, did people just stay home?
>>
>>Were children allowed to walk places in the dark -- such as to school
>>before sun-up?
>> 

>Well, Diane, I'm not over 60, but I'm going to tell you how we did it in the 
>fifties and early to mid-sixties: most schools, we walked to. Any weather. 
>Elementary schools were not far. I even walked to private kindergarten, which 
>was probably almost a mile away. (of course, I always heard the stories about 
>how my parents walked 5 miles to school, uphill both ways, and it snowed 
>through July).  Junior high, I took the bus. Came to the corner. Didn't like 
>it much, but had no choice. School was probably 4 or 5 miles away. High 
>school was a little less than 2 miles away. Several of us in the neighborhood 
>would ride in with one girl's father. I'd usually walk home or take the pay 
>bus, until I had friends who drove and then I might get a ride home, but this 
>certainly did not always happen (I remembered few who had their own cars -- 
>we'd maybe talk a parent into letting us drive once a week or so). Come to 
>think of it, most of our fathers car-pooled to work (mothers were mostly at 
>home).
>
>I took piano lessons for several years. My teachers were in the neighborhood. 
>I did scouting. If the troop met in a home, we'd carpool after school. I 
>can't think of anyone who didn't carpool. For sports, they'd be held after 
>school at school. We had no soccer or anything, only school intramural or 
>team sports. We'd take the "late bus" home. Coaches understood to let us out 
>in time to get the late bus.
>
> ...
>For Ryan's late elementary years, we lived in Chicago in a university 
>community. Everyone walked everywhere. This being Chicago public school 
>system, there were rarely after school activities. Could never find a scout 
>troop in the neighborhood, but we had a "real" community with my seminary, so 
>Ryan did not miss those kinds of activities.  From 8th grade through 
>graduation, he attended public schools in the small city of Oak Ridge, TN.  
>The first year he walked, like he had done the previous 4 years. It took the 
>whole year before he realized that he was the only kid in Oak Ridge who 
>actually walked to school. 
> ...
>Thanks, Diane, for bringing this up. I did buy a very small car with 
>excellent gas mileage. It also has no air-conditioning, which I like on the 
>one hand, but hope for a cool summer on the other.  That will limit much of 
>my summer driving. I hate the road noise when the windows are open.
>
>Blessings, Priscilla
>

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>My father grew up in rural Pennsylvania on a farm, and he did, indeed, walk
>miles to school.  His mother used to give him a baked potato to put in his
>pocket so that his hands would stay warm on the way to school.  I think he
>ate them for lunch.  Of course that didn't help on the way back, but it was
>hopefully warmer at that time of day.  (He left the farm for good at the
>first opportunity.  Not because of the baked potatoes - he still liked them).
>
>        My childhood sounds like Priscilla's - also in the mid--50's to 60's
>- we walked everywhere, pretty much - to piano lessons, scout, church,
>friends' houses even across town.  We also rode bikes.  When we wanted to go
>to 69th Street, in another town (where you could shop), we would either
>walk, or take public transportation.  The walk would take an hour one way.  
>
>        We had the freedom to go anywhere - walking.
>        In the 7th grade, one of our greatest recreations was to "walk
>around"  at night, which was forbidden by my parents, but nonetheless....  
>The thrill was that we might run into other people (preferably boys) walking
>around too!  
>        Other recreation was bowling, overnights with potato chips, onion
>dip, and late nights, dances in the summer at the Presbyterian church, all
>of which we would walk to.
>        In the summer we rented a house near the ocean for 2 weeks, and my
>sister and I would spend most of our time walking, either on the boardwalk,
>or walking along the coast from town to town - spending all day exploring.
>Or lying in the sun, of course, reading books.
>
>My children are home a lot.  They each have bikes, but ride them only for
>leisure, not for transportation.  Their friends live too far away to walk
>to.  They are driven to book club, band practice, computer class, friends
>houses,  and we go to the movies when there is a good one at Budget Theatre
>- but that is 21 miles away.
>
>        I realize as I am writing this, that even though I am home most
>days, and walk all day every day, that I have become impatient with walking.
>It seems slow.  Maybe it just feels that way now because I am tuckered out
> ...

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> ...
>I could go off on a tangent on whether children's activities are a
>necessity, but I want to stay focused on ways we can reduce car use.  It
>seems to me that children used to walk or ride their bikes to activities
>for the most part, but now parents drive them almost everywhere --
>because we live at greater distances and because we fear for our
>children's safety.
>
>In fact, I wonder how much of our car use is based on fear in general. 
>How many of us would walk to the store after dark?
>
>Diane
>

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** I went to school in Canada in the 40s and New Zealand in the late 40s and early 50s. And when we were raising our family in Ontario (London and Ottawa) in the 70s, we just used the car on weekends, to get to where we had moored our sailboat (on Lake Huron or the Ottawa River).

** During the War, there were very few cars and not a lot of people, so we walked to school: Mum would guess how early we'd have to leave, e.g. walking through the snow, we'd have to start before the sun was up. People were welcome: you were virtually never afraid of them. You might be told: "avoid her - she's crotchetty, and doesn't like kids", or such-like. But kids walking to (or from) school was plenty of reason to drive slowly; it was quiet enough to almost always hear any vehicle coming. Kids were seen as the future, that the war was fought for, so _everyone_ was at least tolerant - if you waved to them as they went past, they'd usually wave back.

[Priscilla:]
>             ... For sports, they'd be held after 
>school at school. We had no soccer or anything, only school intramural or 
>team sports. We'd take the "late bus" home. Coaches understood to let us out 
>in time to get the late bus.

** We had the odd scary times; the only one I remember (except for some bullying at school) was at Halloween, when I was told of some slightly older kids doing a particularly bad trick for the "trick-or-treat", and being whipped with a walking stick and sent home in tears with bruises. The kid was probably told: "serve you right!", and "now you know not to bother him again!". There wasn't any generalised fear of people, as a consequence, from my memory of it.

** Cars were strictly for the man to go to work with, for family use on the weekend, and to go (tent-)camping in the summer. Not a lot was bought - people didn't have a lot of money.

** Being the mother at home was a major job, recognised as such. As I've described before, clothes-washing took hours of heavy work before you could get it out on the clothes-line, with no washing machine. Baby-carriages and haversacks were used for shopping. Bread and milk were brought to the door (late 40s & early 50s). So Mum and we kids would walk to the grocery and green-grocery stores, taking maybe half an hour to get there. We were "price-takers", but I often remember being told: "no, we can't afford that"; I don't remember feeling resentful about this - lots of others also had little money.
We'd beg to be allowed to carry something home, and thus feel we were being useful, valuable, "growing-up". There is no memory of doing this in the rain, so I guess we'd make do with pancakes and stews if we had run out of fresher food but it was too wet to go shopping.
** I do remember chopping wood (and being proud to be able to do such a useful thing) when I was 9, in Collins Bay, Ontario. It was probably kindling, but I was good at it. This was for the cook-stove.

** When I first went to Intermediate and Secondary Schools, 7-10 miles away, (which, by the way, were in what had been a US Hospital during the War), we caught the school bus to and fro. But after a year or two, I had been given a bicycle (one of the best things that happened to me, during my teenage years - highly valued and well looked-after), and was allowed to cycle to school from then on. Quite a big hill to come back up, in the late afternoons. Again as Priscilla says, we ordinary kids just had sports during school time, so I don't know how the school-rep teams dealt with after-school practices. I'm guessing they just went home late, on those days, cycling if they were some distance away, or walking if 30 minutes or less, or they had no bike.

** As for cultural activities, I was part of the School Band (2nd Cornet!) and envied flute-players for having such a tiny instrument, so they would have less trouble dragging it around when travelling by bus. I was greatly in awe of cello players. I have some memory of school buses being organised on these 2-4 times a year when a large fraction of the school was on the school grounds outside of normal school hours. Sports Day, and the like.
_Very_ infrequent.

** My mother was a music teacher, and I don't remember anything to do with cars for her students - they must have walked to their piano and singing lessons with her. I had Maths tutoring for a few months, but I probably wouldn't have had it if Mr Dalgleish hadn't been within walking distance.

** I also (in my later teens) did lawn-mowing and baby-sitting, this last taking me out late at night. I remember many times arguing those parents out of driving me home; I wanted this wee bit of personal money to be "all my own effort", and enjoyed walking home in the (true) dark - very few streetlights and large amounts of "bush" (regenerating forest).

** I think the current excessive amount of money and "goods" is not good for the self-reliance and discovery that should be part of a child's growing-up.
I don't have an answer for the current suspicion of other people, though. I myself know about it - I'm one of the reasons parents around here drive their kids the 1 mile to our local primary school: long hair, long straggly grey beard, shirts out-at-the-elbows, "lawns" left un-cut for years. Their problem, not mine.

David.
(David MacClement) mailto:d1v9d-AT-bigfoot.com 
 http://www.oocities.org/davd.geo/index.html#top
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Date: May 6 1999, 17:12
From: Mike S., Eco Living Fellowship
Subject: Re: [pf] Reducing our need for cars
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/may99/0057.html :-

Before we moved to suburbia, almost 40 years ago, we lived in a row house. Our family had only one car and Mom didn't even have a license to drive until five years after the move to suburbia.

We lived in a town well outside the major city. Most of this information is taken from a child's perspective. We shopped at the butcher's meat market at one end of our block and at the green grocer/general foods store at the other end of the block. Canned foods were available in the store on the corner opposite the butcher. We would shop every day or every other day. We wanted things fresh. Refrigeration wasn't very good back then.

We would collect bottles from our friends and neighbors. Pull them in our little red wagon to the grocer or butcher and get two cents per bottle returned. We would give half the money to our neighbors who supplied the bottles and take half as our pay. We would buy our food and put it in our now empty wagon.

Our milk, eggs, butter and bread were delivered to our door (and placed in a thinly insulated metal box).

We walked everywhere within the neighborhood. We could easily walk to a retail business district. My childhood memory includes such establishments as a Woolworth five and ten cent store, jewelry store, tailor, local toy store, post office and bakery. One of my great pleasures as a first grader was being able to walk to school and buy fresh donut holes (donut center cut outs) for a penny each. On rare occassions I would buy a whole brown bag (lunch size) full of candies at the candy store on the way home for only three cents. We could walk to Church (two blocks away) in good weather.

The local trolley company built a playground on a triangle of land about four blocks away from home. I think it was to attract riders to the big city and give people a place to wait for Dads coming home from work. It had a slide shaped like an elephant, a bigger slide for the older children, a whirligig (small kid-powered spinning platform), swings and plenty of benches for Moms to watch kids and wait for the trolley to arrive. We took buses and trollies to nearby places like the hospital.

Travel didn't seem to take up as much time as it does today (in suburbia). My parents would visit often with friends that lived close by. The social schedule included picnics, barbecues, playing cards, dancing and Tupperware parties. Kids played in the street that went between two parallel rows of homes. Stick ball, marbles and kiddie pools were our back street fun. Men would work on wood shop type projects, house maintenance and auto repairs. Women would hang laundry on the line, watch the kids and tend a small kitchen and flower garden. A retired widower at the end of the block would teach the kids how to knit. We would make pot holders and scarfs with multi-colored yarn as beginner projects. This was a boon to the kids who had great gifts to give or sell. The old man had respect from the kids, peace and quiet, and some company to talk with. (I doubt it would even be allowed today, due to concern over children's safety.)

Child care was done mostly by stay-at-home Mom's. It was occasionally shared by neighbors and nearby relatives for errands and special events. Teen age babysitters would be used in the evenings when parents went out. Day care didn't even exist back then.

We seemed to go most places even in bad weather. I can remember walking to school as a first grader during a hurricane. In winter I would walk to school in the dark. The kids all went about the same time to the same schools so we were all on the street together.

The only adult was a police officer that directed traffic at a crossing of two major streets, only two block from the school. If you were a few minutes late to school or events due to bad weather, like ice covered walkways, people usually understood. The pressure to be precisely on time is much greater these days.

Diane, many of the strategies you are using and suggest are the very ones that we have used ourselves. We have lived in suburban spawlmania with one car and active kids for many years.

Your list of improvements is a good one. I would add:

1. Work at home.
2. Homeschool.
3. Telecommute, use computers, etc.

Yours behind the wheel of the van,
Mike S.

--- At 09:52 29/04/99 -0500, Diane Fitzzssiimmons  wrote:
> Now that I've vented my spleen about the UCS Report, I would 
>like to turn my attention to reducing our need for cars.
> 
> This is where I would like to hear from any members
> of the group 60 or older to share some wisdom.
> 
> We are a one-car family. We live less than two miles
> from anyplace important visited on a regular basis.
>   My husband and I work opposing schedules so that 
> someone is always at home to provide transportation
> for any family member who needs it.  We also live on
> the bus line, used mainly to get me to work
> (our community has a very limited bus service).
> 
> Sometimes I try to imagine what life was like before
> cars were an assumed part of everyone's life.  This is 
> where I would like the older members of our group to 
> enlighten me ...

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Re: [pf] RE: Reducing our need for cars
Mon, 03 May 1999 10:37:24 -0500
From: Betsy Barnum;

http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/may99/0014.html is:

Diane Fitzsimmons wrote:
> Yet, when I talk to other parents who say they are stressed out by the
> frantic pace of today's lifestyle, one of the things they cite is the
> hectic schedule they must follow in order to transport kids to all their
> activities -- dinners eaten on the run, or in shifts, housework
> neglected or put off until late at night, more dependence on convenience
> items such as professionaly laundering.
>
> Perhaps I'm straying too far from reducing car use, but I do see these
> as inter-related.

And, of course, carting children around to their activities may well be seen as justification for a larger--and safer--car. I used this as an excuse to buy a Ford Explorer in 1994, when my son decided to play the string bass. And there was all the soccer gear, especially when both boys had games or practices. I drove it for two years, and couldn't tolerate the cognitive dissonance anymore, the gas guzzling, polluting, way-too-big vehicle. And, by the way, my son's orchestra teacher said she had a friend who played the string bass professionally, who transported it to and from concerts in her Volkswagen bug. So, huge vehicles are really not even necessary for that. But it is a perception, and there is also the safety issue.

Getting back to kids' increasing activities, I recall some outcry about this during the 80s, books like The Hurried Child, articles in parenting mags about this phenomenon of rushing kids around from school to activity to class to whatever, so that they never had a minute to themselves to just be kids. But it seems to have become more the norm, now.

It's difficult to be a parent, confronted with this situation. All the opportunities are so good, so valuable--sports, art lessons, tae kwon do, music lessons, groups at the science museum, the natural history museum, the art museum, swimming lessons, gymnastics, ballet, and on and on and on--a kind of panic sometimes kicks in. "What if my kids don't get the opportunities other kids are getting? What if they miss the one thing they most needed, because I said no more? What if I don't *make* them take music lessons, and later they wish they had learned to play an instrument?" And on and on and on.

It's partly our competitive society, it's partly a sincere desire to give kids lots of exposure to different things they might become passionate about. It's also the notion that we (and our kids) can have--and be--everything, if we just try hard enough. Kids sports organizations, I have found, teach 10-year-olds soccer or basketball as if everyone of them were going to become professionals, rather than simply be active and have fun. My 15-year-old son has given up on soccer, after playing it since second grade, because he doesn't want to make it his whole life--go to practices every day, spend hours on "skill-building," play with high intensity. He just wants to play. But there is no place for that. Youth sports are highly competitive and demanding, even to the point that more teenagers and even younger kids are developing chronic injuries. This is true for community youth athletic groups and on the high school level also, at least it is so here where I live.)

I think another big factor in all this activity for kids is the assumption, now a basic tenet of American culture, that *all* time must be productive, and so both adults and children must always fill their waking minutes with *doing something.* It's not okay to do *nothing.* Of course, doing nothing in particular is what childhood consisted of, for many of us who are over 35 or so--at least, in between school and chores. I took piano lessons and ballet and was in Girl Scouts during my childhood in the 50s and 60s, but I had plenty of time to build forts in the woods, walk along the railroad tracks, ride my bike, play kick the can and other group games in the neighborhood, ice skate and sled on neighborhood hills, climb a huge cottonwood tree that grew in between my neighbors' houses. I also did all my family's ironing, plenty of house-cleaning, and lots of babysitting, in my early teens, when my youngest brother was born.

I think the pressure to be "productive" and "efficient" is one of the most damaging aspects of modern culture. It's part and parcel of consumption, a mentality of consuming everything, even time (even our very selves). It's a capitalist mentality, that maximizing productivity is one of the highest values, almost a sacred obligation--one of the things we are supposed to be bringing to the altar of industrial growth society, where economists and efficiency experts are the high priests and "more" is the chant that rises to heaven. Bringing our children and their productivity is highly encouraged, especially if it leads to more spending on equipment, supplies, gas for transporting and the ever-essential larger vehicle.

Betsy

--
Betsy Barnum
http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/1624

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And perception, what does it take? It takes for us to tell ourselves the
truth. It takes for us to tell ourselves the truth. That's what it takes.
Not to lie to ourselves.

--John Trudell, Stickman, 1994

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