Preadolescence in the early 60’s, west of the Big Ditch
West Wichita, highlighted in the center of the photo by the Westport Drive-In, circa 1960s
Suburban Wichita, west-side style in the early 1960’s, offered childhood enrichments beyond what our parents likely appreciated when they made that down payment. The area west of the Big Ditch, north of Kellogg, and south of 21st Street housed a high percentage of two-parent families bent upon ensuring an easier life and “better education” for the children. Every parent’s dream. The landscape included several elementaries, though a junior high and high school would be quite a few years away. However, what our parents lacked in local political power was not a hindrance to the liberties and lessons they purchased for us and that would later be part of our empowering.
Though we had little money at our disposal, we did have incredible freedom to run the neighborhoods – and from dawn ‘til after dark during the best three months of the year. Many backyards were unfenced, so roaming from house to house, block to block was easily navigable and paths were deeply worn depending on closest friends (so many kids to choose from) and the more-understanding parents. Each street held possibilities for admiring the opposite sex or finding a better ballgame. Crude ball diamonds with minimal backstop and bumpy infields never dissuaded. Most summer mornings started there. Gathering enough for one of the three seasonal sports was rarely difficult. Tag, hide-and-seek, kick-the-can – even easier. The girls joined us for those and curfew was always too soon.
In my elementary school, each grade had two classrooms full of kids, only a handful of whom stayed at school during the lunch hour. The vast majority had 60 minutes to run home to a bologna sandwich and bowl of Campbell’s, watch an episode of “The Little Rascals” and get back to our desks. Our fathers worked. Many mothers were at home. Most children smoked second-hand as a prelude to their own deeper enjoyment. Dining at a restaurant was highly irregular, though McDonald’s on a Sunday after church frequently offered burgers at 10 for a dollar. New construction meant large piles of basement dirt that offered plentiful ammunition and made “king of the mountain” more perilous.
Though many were addicted to games of sport, the scientific inquirers had drainage ditches, the Cowskin Creek, and uncut fields to capture tadpoles and insects or observe cocoons and shed skins and animal tracks.
As for school, the “new math” proved a failed experiment, but they never adequately replaced SRA, the reading comprehension series that moved our ambition through color gradations – the thrill of competition applied to careful reading. Yes, in those days competition was hallowed and understood as the path to a better life.
The hot-house aspects of life west of the Big Ditch are certainly more than three-fold, but from my vantage point:
Children made so many decisions everyday – unsupervised. We were raised to be decisive: to follow the daredevils in the group or not; to weigh the risk of a swollen creek; to manage bullies without parental intervention; to decide what the group was going to do next. We had no phones, screens, or listening devices on our persons. During the summer, our independence was essentially whatever part of the day was not interrupted by the need to eat, quickly. So much of our time was with our peers. And no one seemed to be worried. (I don’t have a single story during my childhood of adult perversion regarding children.)
We were all lawyers in training. Everything was argued over: modifying the rules for tag; picking fair teams; out at first or a tie going to the runner?
Life was satisfying on quite modest budgets. Entry-level jobs (babysitting, mowing the lawns of the retired for a dollar bill, caddying at Rolling Hills for $5 if he had a good round) provided money for ball cards, a seat at the pharmacy fountain, or a sundae at Mr. Swiss. But, generally, our leisure was unfunded. We patched and taped the broken bat, the worn-through tennis shoes, the holes in our jeans.
The crowning achievement of my neighborhood at the beginning of our ascent into adolescence was a 60-hour baseball game, a world record that we held for most of two weeks before a men’s softball game in Paterson, New Jersey, added 12 hours to the endeavor. If kids were to try that today, how many parents and coaches would be overseeing and overruling – and preventing the children from planning, recruiting, arguing, and problem-solving? As for idyllic time and place to be a kid, my heart is tied to Wichita’s far-west side in the early 1960’s.
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