# Nobody drove their kid to school.



## fuzzybuddy (May 10, 2019)

I grew up in the 1950s. When I was six, I walked a mile to school. You wonder why I'm sure it was a mile. I lived at 244 Pleasant Street. If I lived at 246 Pleasant, that was over 1 mile from the school, and I could ride the bus. It did irk me that all the kids, who could ride the bus, stood if front of my house to catch the bus. But that was a different era. Parents weren't concerned about a six year old walking to school, because those ugly things hadn't happened. They had walked the same streets to school. There was one kid, Jeffery, who was driven to school by his mom. We teased him about that. Today, letting a six year old walk a mile to school is unimaginable.


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## Babs (May 10, 2019)

I also walked to school, but not a mile. I lived in the country and like you said all the kids walked to school unless they lived really far from the school. When I was in Elementary school it was in the 40's and then later in the 50's, but there wasn't any worries like today.


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## Capt Lightning (May 10, 2019)

I always walked to school, or later, cycled.   Since I now live in a rural village and the school closed years ago, most children catch the school bus every day.  However, I was pleased to see that in bigger towns, children still walking to school.


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## Sassycakes (May 10, 2019)

Growing up in the City my school was only 3 blocks away so I walked to school everyday.


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## JustBonee (May 10, 2019)

Different era ... not safe to walk to school today, especially alone,  even  a short distance.  Taking buses have their dangers as more people on the road ignore stopped buses, etc.  
So parents drive their kids  to school these days,  to only worry about the potential dangers  facing them there.


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## Ruth n Jersey (May 10, 2019)

I walked to school also as a child. A little less than a mile. We did it 4 times a day because everyone went home for lunch. My mom would have my lunch ready and in about 20 minutes I was back on the road. In high school we walked about a half a mile to the bus stop. We took public transportation for which the school issued bus tickets once a month. After we got off the bus we walked almost a mile to the high school. My mom couldn't have driven me if she wanted to, we only had one car.


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## AZ Jim (May 10, 2019)

I walked to school and it was a long walk.  Down hill to school and (pant) uphill to home...


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## tortiecat (May 10, 2019)

I walked to school, but then I lived in the country.
I had to go to large city for high school and then
we took the bus.
My children also walked to school in the 60s' and 70s', sad how times have changed.


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## C'est Moi (May 10, 2019)

I rode my bicycle to elementary school; it was about a mile each way.   I remember riding every day, rain, cold or shine.   My mother didn't drive and my dad was usually driving our only car to work anyway.   

There certainly weren't as many overweight kids back in the day, either.


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## jujube (May 10, 2019)

I walked to school over a mile, crossing a busy highway, from age 5 to 7, then the school district provided bus service. One year of riding the bus and then we moved closer to the school and it was back to walking.


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## Aunt Bea (May 10, 2019)

Grades 1-4 I lived in the country and took a bus to and from school.

Grades 5-12 I lived in a small village and walked to school.  

I preferred walking to school and being independent.

In the city where I live today the limit for K-12 to walk to school was recently reduced from 2 miles to 1.5 miles each way.


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## Trade (May 10, 2019)

"Well, nobody ever drove me to school when it was ninety degrees below
We had to walk buck naked through forty miles of snow"

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## Camper6 (May 10, 2019)

My son likes to bug me when I tell him about things like walking to school in the good old days.

He says, "O.K. Dad tell us again how you used to have to walk to school in the winter and had to climb those icy hills with barbed wire wrapped around your shoe"


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## hollydolly (May 10, 2019)

I lived in the suburbs of the city, and walked 25 minutes to and from school, in all weathers 4 times a day... on the odd term, my mother might be able to afford for me to stay for school lunches but mainly I'd have to go home for lunch, all that walking for a bowl of chicken noodle soup, or a banana sandwich...!!

There was no school buses like they have in the USA..you either walked or you paid on a public bus.. we never had money for the bus, but sometimes we'd get on if it was snowing or raining heavily , and as soon as the conductor came for the fare we'd get off at the next stop so we didn't pay, and we'd have at least got half our journey over.

My father would never have been able to take us to school by car because he was always at work.. but even if he'd had a day off and we'd  suggested it, it would have been met with incredulity, that we'd even have had the temerity to ask...


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## Pink Biz (May 10, 2019)

*I lived in a large city and walked to elementary school and home for lunch, about 5 blocks one way. My mother didn't drive, so getting a ride wasn't even an option. Did the same in high school-minus the home for lunch part-about 8 blocks one way.*


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## Gary O' (May 10, 2019)

We had to walk



But,



there wasn’t much traffic


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## RadishRose (May 10, 2019)

Ruth n Jersey said:


> I walked to school also as a child. A little less than a mile. We did it 4 times a day because everyone went home for lunch. My mom would have my lunch ready and in about 20 minutes I was back on the road. In high school we walked about a half a mile to the bus stop. We took public transportation for which the school issued bus tickets once a month. After we got off the bus we walked almost a mile to the high school. My mom couldn't have driven me if she wanted to, we only had one car.



Same here, Ruth. In elementary school anyway. In the winter we often bought hot lunch or brought lunch to school. I can almost smell that baloney sandwich with French's yellow mustard and the banana!

In high school, we used the city buses, not school buses. My bus stopped across the street from my house, and all the high schools then were downtown. Mine was just a block or so from where he bus let us off. No going home for lunch tho' unless you had a car, but few did.


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## cdestroyer (May 12, 2019)

kiddie garten teacher made me mad cause she let a girl pass out the scissors when it was my turn. she said I didn't like it I could
go home. so I walked 2 miles, push the button on the pole, cross the main street. got home and mom said the teacher had called to tell her what happened. mom said not to worry you couldn't lose me. I was 5 in 1952


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## JustBonee (May 12, 2019)

I lived in the country when I started school, so for 6 years I remember riding the school bus everyday.  It was  rowdy even back then.  
By Junior High we moved to town so I got to walk about 3/4 mile each way everyday.   Had a few girlfriends that lived along the way, so met up with them daily.  
In the winter, when it was snowing, I remember walking home in shorts and a heavy school jacket.  We thought we were cool.


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## fuzzybuddy (May 12, 2019)

I had forgotten. Lunch!!!!! I had to walk back home and then come right back. So for me, that was 4 miles a day . Now, that I look back, my parents weren't that shook up their kid was doing all that walking. It was almost expected.


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## Rosemarie (May 12, 2019)

When I was young, very few people had a car, so being driven to school wasn't an option. It was walk or take the bus.


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## Aunt Bea (May 12, 2019)

fuzzybuddy said:


> I had forgotten. Lunch!!!!!



My mother always scraped up enough money for my sister and me to buy the hot lunch at school.

In elementary school, the lunch ladies were still cooking from scratch peeling potatoes, apples, etc...  

The head lunch lady used to visit each table and tower over us giving lectures about how nutritious the food was, cleaning our plates, how much it cost our parents, etc...

When I got to middle school I usually skipped lunch and saved my money for more important things like cigarettes. layful:nthego:


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## moviequeen1 (May 13, 2019)

I walked to our elementary school which was 2 blocks away from our house
My siblings and I would come home for lunch.I couldn't understand why we had to go back afterwards,I thought the school day was over LOL!


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## Nihil (May 13, 2019)

I either walked or rode a bicycle. 2 of the institutions were about a mile away. I have pleasant memories of my routes. I have a scar on my philtrum from getting squirrelly on a bike while riding to elementary school. I had the same dumb accident at the 3rd college I attended. I had more speed going and knocked my sense and vision out of whack for a few hours. My forehead didn't scar.


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## Butterfly (May 19, 2019)

We always walked to school.  Elementary school wasn't very far, but the junior high and high school were.  There weren't any school buses in town then, so everybody walked.  We had only one car and my dad had to be at work very early and of course he took the car to work.  I don't remember ever being taken to school in the car.  We were just expected to walk, like everybody else did.  Girls were not allowed to wear pants to school, so on bad days we'd wear them to walk and then go change into our skirts and shove the pants into our lockers.  Pain in the patoot, but you didn't want your legs to freeze on the walk.  We brought our lunch to school -- there was only 30 minutes, so there wasn't time to go home and back.


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## Keesha (May 19, 2019)

We walked a mile to school, a mile back for lunch, a mile back to school and a mile back again. We had a full hour for lunch.
Most kids walked to school. Our neighbours across the street got a ride to school and back everyday but they were the exception


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## Manatee (May 30, 2019)

I never ever rode a school bus.
When I was 11, I walked home for lunch and got sick.  Instead of going back to school, I went to the hospital and had my appendix out.  That was when I learned that bad things don't _always _happen to other people.


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## johndoe (May 30, 2019)

My elementary school was just two blocks away. High School was about a mile up a hill, back down for lunch then back up. In the '50s, guys had their Elvis style haircuts and we never wore hats. I remember a buddy who would wet his hair profusely to get it right, and in the winter the water droplets became ice droplets. When we got to school his hair was frozen.


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## StarSong (May 30, 2019)

When driving our grandson to school last week (his morning sitter was unable to be there that day), both my husband and I were telling him that we were never driven to school by our parents.  My husband grew up in the Los Angeles suburbs and always lived within a mile of his school so he was a walker.  I was raised in the NE US and walked to my first school, then caught school buses from 3rd grade until I started driving as a senior in HS.  The bus stop was about 1/2 mile from our house.  Everybody walked to the bus stops, regardless of the weather.  Unaccompanied.  God help any kid past kindergarten whose mother would have walked him to school or the bus stop.    

Our grandson's eyes were as big as saucers.  He couldn't imagine being that independent.  Kids are always within arm's reach of an adult these days.  Big Brother will be a seamless transition from Big Parents.  

It was a different era.  I drove my kids to school, but we lived 7-8 miles from their (private) schools, so walking wasn't an option.


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## DaveA (May 31, 2019)

Never walked to elementary school, jr. high or the high school.  No heroic stories from here and I would guess that I started school at an earlier year than some of you.

  We lived 4.5 miles from the elementary school, 5 from the Jr. High and 11 from the high school. I started school in 1939 and there were no school buses as we know them today. A smaller city bus picked us up and delivered us home at the end of school. It was used exclusively for the elementary school kids. For Jr. High on through high school we used regular city buses with the tickets supplied by the school system. As with many of you, kids less than a mile from the schools had to walk.


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