15 Streetlight Curfews People Still Remember From Childhood: a Porch Bell and a Curfew That Outlasted Graduation

I grew up in Western New York, not far from Niagara Falls. The rule in our house was to be home before the streetlights came on. Mom would call me for dinner by ringing the bell in our screened in porch that I swear I could hear from my best friend’s house 10 houses away.

Anyway, I moved to suburban Chicago in 1985 when I was 15 and lived out there for 25 years. I decided to move back to my hometown in NY, which I pined for ever since moving away.

Do you know what time the streetlights come on during a Western NY summer? 9PM! I was playing from like age 5 until 9PM at night. My own kids that I raised in Illinois never stayed out past 7 at the latest and usually were home long before then, well before dinner.

“Mid 80s Madison Wisconsin. My bike crew.”

Yes, but my parents worked it out that one parent worked the night shift so technically an adult was home, but you had to be very quiet when you got home so the night shift parent could sleep.

The expectation was that you got home, emptied the dishwasher (once we got one), set the table for dinner, folded any laundry in the basket, collected the mail and put it in its spot, any other basic tidying, and start homework. It wasn’t onerous by any means — perfectly manageable for a 9-year-old — but by heaven, it’d better be done when that door opened!

As I got older, once I was tall enough to do it safely, I would get dinner started and throw in the next load of laundry in addition to folding.

Mine was to be home and inside when the streetlights came on. I know, normal for most of us.

One day, after I graduated high school and I was working a full-time job, my buddy came to the door and I went out front and talked to him. The sun had barely gone down, streetlights had just turned on, and my dad told me I had to come inside.

Uh, what? I’m an adult now. I didn’t even go anywhere, I was on the porch. Anyways, fine, whatever. I got my own apartment the next day.

You just unlocked a memory for me there when you said that mom would holler your name if she wanted you home.

I also recall that sometimes a friend would tell you they heard your mom calling you, say if you were out of earshot, or even that neighbour kids could be recruited by a parent to go look for their kid to track down to come home early or something.

I grew up mostly in the 70’s and early 80’s (I was too young for the 60’s). But yes, we basically were unsupervised. We didn’t even have to tell our parents where we were going. We would hop on our bikes and head to the mall (a few miles away), or head to the ice rinks at the middle school to play some hockey in the winter.

And you have probably heard stories about Gen X drinking from the garden hose. Those stories are all true. And on weekends or summer nights, many times we didn’t go in when the streetlights came on. That’s when we would play “flashlight tag”.

We had no “play dates” back then either. Parents would tell you, “Go play with that new kid down the street”, and you would go over knocking on their door by yourself (or with other kids from the neighborhood).

“Bike Gang, 1970s”

When my kids were still in elementary school, I purposely picked our house to be kid friendly and we opened it up to all the kids in the neighborhood. It got pretty chaotic at times and on occasion we’d have 10 kids running in and out of our house playing tag or some other made up game. At one point I had to lecture a few neighbor kids on why it isn’t a good idea to slide down my laundry chute.

It was a short lived era, once everyone hit junior high kids started retreating to their own homes for a summer of playing video games. But I have fond memories of the 2-3 summers when I had a house full of chaos and energy.

I remember growing up my mom had to work two jobs to pay the bills so my grandma would babysit me and would let me hang out with all the kids who lived in the same apartment complex. It’d be like 9pm and she would let me go play soccer for a couple hours on summer nights.

She was an enigma. She wouldn’t let me eat breakfast until I did my morning chores but then go and let me hang out late at night with my friends. I was eleven years old, for context.

I grew up in the Houston, Texas suburbs. 1970s We ate about 5 and would go out after dinner — summer sun doesn’t set until almost 9!

We didn’t have streetlights so we were told to come in when we started seeing the bats flying. I was never afraid of bats bc we were told how many mosquitoes they eat per night!!

“The neighborhood kids, peak 90s fashion — 1993 or 94 based on the Pearl Jam Vs. album shirt I’m wearing”

Chicago suburbs...

My daughter will be 8 in 2 weeks and this was the summer we turned into our 80’s parents as well. She has a smartwatch that allows us to track her so she roams around the neighborhood on her bike or scooter (also with a helmet).

She has to check in every at a given time (like every 30 mins for example) with us. She sets her timer for whatever time we tell her and she then has to peddle back just so we can see the whites of her eyes before we let her go back out again.

We went for a walk once in hopes of grabbing and getting her to come and we saw her and 6 other girls ranging from ages 6-9 all on two wheels in the cul de sac down the street. They looked like a juvenile biker gang. It was funny.

Boy, the things we got up to... one thing I remember doing is trying to throw grapes into my sister’s mouth from our third floor window to her on the sidewalk. We had seen a [world records] show about the furthest grape thrown into someone’s mouth and wanted to try it.

My mother was furious to find grapes all over the sidewalk in front of the apartment building when she got home, she knew it was us.

“When I was 13, this dog would climb a [tilted] ladder into my treehouse to supervise my sketches over the Alabama River, Circa 1993”

There were two dogs named after the county. (Jackson County)

Jack and Son

“A Memory from Fifty Years Ago”

I’m 56, and it took place when I must’ve been around 7-9 years old. So 1977-1979.

I was at my cousin’s house in Levittown, about three miles from my house. He’s 3 years older than me but we were best friends.

I was sitting in a tree in his front yard at night, as we were about to go home. Suddenly I looked up at the night sky—the stars, the streetlights, the other trees, etc.

It felt so incredibly vibrant and just magical. Just overwhelmed with how vibrant everything was. But I also felt a sadness that this couldn’t last...that I’d grow up and never feel this way again. And I was only seven!

I never figured out why I felt that way that night, but I’ve never forgotten it in the almost fifty years since.