Intro

It was pretty awesome growing up with free-range parents, especially during summer vacation, though I’m fairly certain they didn’t think of themselves as free-range anything. Shoving your kid out the door on a July morning and not expecting them until dark was just what parents did. So long as authorities didn’t come into the picture and wounds could be patched with band-aids and Bactine, few restrictions were imposed, fewer questions asked. Did they worry about us? Did they wonder what we were doing? I suspect both parties thought it best they didn’t know.

Lunch was scarfed at a friend’s house or skipped altogether. Everything else was the great wide open. Within the eight or so blocks of my nominal range, there were patches of forest and field that seemingly no one owned, a wooded park that followed a creek for miles in both directions, public tennis courts, ball fields, a community pool, and a convenience store with cheap candy and off-brand