Memories of Growing Up in a Small Town

If you've grown up in a metropolitan area, you probably won't get this, but if you grew up in a small town or in a rural area of the the country, you just know.
I lived on the farm until I was five and then moved into a town of about 3,000. My grandparents still had the family farm and I was constantly there through my childhood. Growing up, my cousins and I rode our bikes everywhere. Our parents weren't about to drop everything just to cart us all over. We ran next door or down the street after school to play a game of freeze tag with neighbor kids. We would even stay outside playing way after dark under the street lights.  Our neighbors would sit on the front porch and actually engage in conversations.  We could run across town and not think twice amber alerts. You would search for empty pop bottles to take to the store to cash in for a few cents to spend on penny candy. As a youngster, you spent your summers at the swimming pool.  Getting into junior high, you'd starting looking for odd jobs around the neighborhood and set out searching for a few yards to mow to make some serious money, i.e., $3.00 or $4.00 a pop.  Gas only cost 30 cents a gallon.  High school would roll around and it was getting a part-time job after school and on the weekends at the local grocery store, or in the summer you'd buck bales of hay for three cents a bale. If you were lucky you'd make around $300 for the summer. (That's around 10,000 bales)

There's more stories to tell.  If you have one of your own, we'd love to hear it!