Growing up in the city come in when the street lights come on. Now when the shed lights come on its time to get ready for dinner
You made me remember a time when I wondered a little too far from home as a kid. My Dad hollered for supper for quite awhile and I didn't hear him so he came looking with belt in hand. The last Thanksgiving I still had my Dad I was telling that story and he didn't remember. I said I sure did, he chased me home, I'd take about 3 steps and crack, 3 more and crack, etc. We had a good laugh at the dinner table.
I grew up in the burbs of Cincinnati, SW Ohio corner. We had a street light at the intersection just adjacent to my house. We played a lot of wiffle ball football, kick the can, hide and seek... Family 2 houses down had 13 kids. I used to love listening to them call the kids for dinner and then watching them all come running down the street.
No street light here. I grew up on a dairy farm, so for many months every year it was dark when it was time for milking the cows. Summer or winter, a lot of the time my parents didn't know nor care where I was. If supper had been served without me, I then had to do without supper. I don't do the milking today but also don't worry about street lights or dinner.
A loud whistle was used to summon myself from where ever in the neighborhood I might be. Only my parents did it and the neighborhood knew what hearing it meant. One of the neighbors had a big bell they would use for their boys.
In Maryland, we lived at the base of a small peninsula protruding into a backwater of the St. Mary's river. This was tucked behind St. George Island. We rode our bicycles far and wide on paved and dirt back roads and trails in the woods. There was a single street light at an intersection where the school bus stopped in our isolated community. My Mom could whistle a piercing, two tone blast audible for a long ways. By day, during the summer, we might be six miles from home chasing pollywogs in the creek, swinging from the huge grapevines in the trees behind the lake or having rotten pear fights under the huge pear tree at the end of an abandoned orchard. By dusk we were expected to be within whistling distance and come right home when she called. It was a wonderful privileged to be a free range kid!
I took a large metal light fixture from inside the barn from my Colorado proginator when the last 40 acres were sold. Electricity was not added for several decades after it was built, but seems they had that light mounted at some point. Dad was the milker too. Chores before school no matter the temperature though it seems he had light. The milking place blew my mind, put food in a trough where a 2 x 4 'ish board swung down over the feeding cows neck and other clever things.
