When I was 6 or 7 years old, during the summers every morning my mom would give me $1.25, and I would get on my bike and ride to the public pool with my friends that was about 5 miles away in the center of our small town. We'd swim all day and go to the Burgerville for lunch where I could get a wonderfully tasty cheeseburger with fries and coke for my $1.25. Finally I had to be home by dinner.

If we didn't go swimming, there was a 40 acre woods/orchard behind our houses and we would search it for anything exciting, like bugs, squirrels or wild animals.

When I turned 8 we moved out into the country and I had to walk a few miles just to get to a friends house. We'd usually take our air rifles and go try to shoot things. By the time I was 10 most of us had our own motorcycles and parents who would let us borrow their shotguns for some real fun.

This was in the 1970s.