I can remember a time when we didn't have to lock our doors

[CatWoman]

and we used to sleep on the front porch.

Yeah, try THAT these days.

That was in Portsmouth, Virginia -- ages and ages ago :D

Does anyone here remember times like these?

[ChoralScholar]

1. I didn't lock my doors until

a very suspicious family moved in two doors down.

This is the kind of family that stand outside in their underwear and cuss at each other at the top of their lungs. They have been here about 2 weeks and already have a car on blocks in the yard. I keep catching their boy messing with my dogs in the yard.

Basically, an episode of COPS moved in on my street. So NOOOW, I lock my doors.

[CatWoman]

8. LOL

That's funny

Basically, an episode of COPS moved in on my street.

[daveskilt]

10. thats my whole neighborhood - if you add wild chickens

Ive caught 8 this week, but the damn elusive rooster still is finding a way to hide. (not in rural area - just a really bloody poor one)

[Fenris]

2. No. And that makes me sad.

My parents have always been obsessive-compulsive when it comes to locking doors. We've never been robbed, but the fear alone makes them paranoid.

[Eureka]

3. I don't mean to rub it in but....

I'm still there. Rural Aus is maybe a little bit different to the US though. I guess people in Antarctica don't bother either :-)

[Superfly]

4. Try that in Portsmouth today...

I dare you.

I live in VA Beach, and the crime is getting bad in places even here (violent and property)

[CatWoman]

11. who are YOU telling!??!!!

I don't even go out alone at night when I visit Portsmouth.

Drugs and crime have really destroyed that town.

[Superfly]

12. There's only one place I visit in Portsmouth...

and that's the Biergarten. Their beer menu is a book.

[salinen]

5. If someone had said that

someday we will carry mace and have house and car alarms and gated communities, I would have thought they were nuts.

[Superfly]

9. If somebody told me that

I would carry a gun daily, I would have scoffed. Now, after being attacked twice, I carry a pistol.

[daveskilt]

6. I do - only 15 years ago in Utah

So Im in Utah for the first time. My friend there always left her car onlocked, keys in the ignition and the windows rolled down. I come from a town where nailed down isnt good enough, welded to the floor with armed guards is the only way to not have something stolen. So I ask her what she is thinking.

her reasoning - no one will steal it and if they do they must need it more than her. So one day someone steals it. The next day it is returned with a full tank of gas and a twenty dollar bill under the wiper (which sat there all day on the street not stolen) and a note apologizing and saying it was an emergency. Blew me away and I moved there a few years later.

[WarNoMore]

7. I remember.

I could wander all over the fields and woods with my dog, slept outside in the tent and be very carefree and independent.

[dae]

13. My Dad use to say "locks were made to keep honest people out",

the crook was gonna break in anyway.:) Up until 20 years ago we never even had a key to lock our house. Went on a trip for 10 days, no problem. But, I wouldn't do it now.

[CatWoman]

14. About 10 years or so ago

I had to provide survivor's assistance to this newly widowed wife of a servicemember.

She lived in French Lick, Indiana.

She told me that she and none of her neighbors ever lock their doors.

I wonder if that is the case now.

BTW: Larry Bird was her paper boy when he was growing up :D

[Tripper11]

15. My parents still live live in a town...

in Ontario that they can still go out for dinner, head downtown to do banking or whatever and leave the doors unlocked the whole time. They've never had a problem. When they come to visit here in Seattle I have to remind them to lock the door all the time, and the cars as well.
They never lock the doors of their vehicles ever either. You have to remind them, when they're in the city to lock them.

[Melsky]

16. I frequently don't lock mine

I just spent the weekend in LA and kept forgetting to lock my friend's car door.

I'm in a rural area in the desert now. If anyone tries to break in I'll throw a scorpion on them.

[mykpart]

17. Yeah, but I also remember

not being able to play with the neighbor kid because he might have polio. Huge trucks driving around the neighborhood spraying DDT to kill the mosquitoes in the summer. Smallpox vaccination that itched and ITCHED! Wondering why "colored" people were the only ones who got to sit in the back of the bus. The good old days weren't all good.

[CatWoman]

19. Jack the Giant Killer

The first time I saw that movie, my dad took us to the drive in.

On the way home, he took a sharp turn, the door opened and I fell out of the car (maybe that explains some things :D )

Years later we were talking about it, and my Dad said that the drive ins were segregated then.

I remember falling out of the car, but I don't remember that the drivein was segregated.

Funny how you don't notice some things as a child...........

[madrchsod]

18. i still don`t lock my door

actually i never have all my life lived in a home where we locked our doors...

[kodi]

20. doors? doors? we could only dream of having doors. we lived in a cave

it wasn't much, but we was happy, except when the bears woke up in the spring.

and you just try telling that the young people today, and they won't believe you.


http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/four_yorkshiremen.htm

[daveskilt]

21. cave you say...that would have been a palace to us.

lovely my brother and I often go on like that for hours (mainly to make fun of my dad you actualy is a yorkshireman of the ilk portrayed.)

[kodi]

26. when i say a cave, it was but a hole, a dank, dark, wet hole in a wall

but we was happy, when the bats was sleeping.

[Sotarr2004]

37. A wet hole in the wall ? Luxury !!

. . .there were 27 of us living in a crack in the pavement. . .

[kodi]

39. a pavement? lucky bloke. our wet hole was lined with stinking bat guano

there we were, 49 of us kids (catholic, dont you know?) hanging upside down by our toes all day long, waiting for nightfall so we could scrape up the rancid guano with our bare little fingers and sell it to the likes of those rich pavement dwellers, all so we could buy us a little morsel of baked red clay for our supper.

times were hard, but we survived.

bah, these kids today, they have it easy.

[Mick Knox]

22. I still dont always lock my doors...

And leave my keys in the car... (except my new car that likes to lock itself)

The advantages of living in deep dark forest.... Gimme me mountains or gimme death!

[carpetbagger]

23. I didn't lock my doors when I lived in WV until 2000.

Of course, whenever I mentioned the low crime rate, the response would always be something like "nothin' to steel".

[Zomby Woof]

24. but then matcom moved next door!

And you had to lock the door to protect your innocence! :evilgrin:

[CatWoman]

27. nah

just the liquor cabinet :D

[Kickin_Donkey]

25. I don't lock my doors ...

But maybe this is cheating, because my house is located among agricultural fields a couple hundred yards off the highway, several miles out of my rural town. I'm in the Central Valley of California. I always leave my keys in the car in front of the house. However, if I'm going away overnight or longer, I would lock it.

[THUNDER HANDS]

28. when I was a kid we didn't even have doors

We slept under a tree and if we were lucky the tree had leaves...

:)

[NicoleM]

29. I lock mine but

I'm sure most people around here don't. I figure if I lock mine, then anybody who wants to steal anything will try the door, find it locked, and move on to a house they don't have to work to get into. :)

[Loonman]

30. My ditzy roommate still thinks it is

When she's not leaving her window open, all day while she's at work and nobody is in the house, she's locking doors no one has the key for, and leaving key doors unlocked.

[supernova]

31. I remember leaving the windows open at night to sleep

Or going out into the woods to sleep, just a few steps away.

We left the door unlocked to go to the garden, 1/2 mile away.

It was nice. I never worried about sleeping outdoors if I was so inclined.

[CatWoman]

32. I remember the open windows, too SN

In the summer, we'd open all the windows in the house and get a cross breeze.

[arwalden]

35. Our Windows Have Security "Pop-Up" Latches That Allow The Window..

to open about 3" but NO FURTHER. It's just enough to allow a breeze to come through on mild nights.

-- Allen

[kskiska]

33. I used to ride my bike to school in the 50s

and would leave it outside on a pipe rack with the others – none of them locked. On the other hand, in the 70s, my daughter roller skated to a neighborhood grocery, and left her skates outside the door for a couple minutes. They were gone when she came out.

My mother told me of how she and her girlfriend would walk their babies (me and another kid) in carriages and leave us outside while they went in and shopped.

[RebelOne]

36. Same here. And that was in Miami, too.

Which today is a hotbed of crime.

[arwalden]

34. You Really ARE Old Aren't You?? LOL -- Porchmouth??

I used to work at Tower Mall in Porchmouth.

-- Allen

[CatWoman]

40. OMG!!!

You worked at Tower Mall?????

And yes, I am old :pout:

:hi:

[PVnRT]

38. Thanks, Reagan

for getting unemployment and crime nice and high. Oh, and for getting the CIA to sell crack in the U.S. That helped too.