Recalling a ride on the 'freedom' train of youth

One of the topics that came up more than once at the all-school reunion I attended in Minnesota last summer was how fortunate we were to have grown up in an era when kids, for the most part, were left to their own devices and imaginations to entertain themselves.

We marveled at what our parents had let us do unsupervised in the early 1960s and it seemed so far removed from the well-orchestrated, over-scheduled lives of today’s children.

One classmate remembered those lazy summer days when she and her three younger brothers would ride their bikes across the busy four-lane highway to Silver Lake, about four miles away, where they’d spend the entire day swimming with no lifeguards and no rules.

Of course we all acknowledged it’s a much different world now, and perhaps there are more dangers lurking out there. But I don’t believe we’re doing our children and grandchildren any favors by hovering over them every minute of the day.

It was quite liberating to have time to ourselves when I was growing up. As long as my brothers and I did our “chores” we were free to wander in the woods and do pretty much what we pleased. I remember spending most of one summer in a huge tree with a broad, low-hanging limb that was a perfect natural treehouse where my middle brother and I played “house” for hours on end.

Through the years I’ve looked at that tree, still standing on the south edge of the grove around the house, and wondered how it could have captivated us for such long periods of time. I guess it was our imaginations hard at work.

When I was 14 my friend Karen decided we should take a train trip to Fargo, N.D., about 25 miles from home, and spend the day shopping. Karen was a “town kid” and had worldly knowledge about such things as trains and schedules and how to get from Point A to Point B. It sounded like a wild adventure; I was in.

It was my first-ever train ride. Not long after that the passenger service between towns was discontinued, and it would be years before I would take another train trip. Chugging along those 40 minutes or so gave us such a feeling of independence, two young girls riding the rails, going to the big city. This was liberation.

The train depot in Fargo is right downtown, and back then, so were all the major department stores, plus a fairly new shop for teens called Vanity. We were in our glory. Karen had a lot more cash than I did. It was a well-known fact that town kids had parents who were “rich,” and farm kids had parents who were not poor, but frugal to a fault. It didn’t matter, though. I chose my purchases carefully, and instead of buying a higher-priced dress off the rack I bought a couple of yards of the most beautiful shade of lavender polyester double-knit fabric I’d ever seen and sewed my own dress.

Karen and I caught the last train home and I still remember the gentle rocking of the train car as we came around the last bend, our packages all around us. It had been a glorious day and we’d navigated the trip all by ourselves.

As an aside, those of you who grew up in ’60s and ’70s may well remember that indestructible polyester double-knit fabric. When my daughters were still toddlers my mother made a quilt for each of them using squares of double-knit from my old school clothes. And there among the pretty pastels in those quilts that never will wear out, is that lavender double-knit fabric I so proudly purchased that day of independence in Fargo, an undying thread to my first real taste of freedom.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.