10 Things Virginia Kids Did in the ’70s That Would Never Fly Today

Six cousins once piled into a wood-paneled Buick Estate Wagon, three of them behind the back seat, for the drive down I-81 to Grandma’s.

Nobody clicked a belt.

That was an ordinary Saturday for a Virginia kid in 1975.

Today, it would get a parent pulled over before the end of the block.

These are the things Virginia kids did in the ’70s that would never fly nowadays.

1. Lawn Darts in the Yard

Every hardware store in Virginia once sold a backyard game built around a foot-long metal spike you hurled into the sky.

Everyone called them Jarts.

The idea was to land the weighted dart inside a plastic ring across the lawn, and the reality was a heavy steel point coming down somewhere near a barefoot kid.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission finally banned them in December 1988, after lawn darts sent thousands of people to the emergency room and killed several children.

Not toys.

A Virginia cookout in 1977 had Jarts stuck in the grass right beside the horseshoe pit, and no grown-up saw a problem.

2. Loose in the Way Back

The station wagon was the family hauler of 1970s Virginia, and its best seat faced backward.

Kids sprawled across the cargo floor of a Country Squire or a Chevy Kingswood, waving at truckers on I-64 through the tailgate glass.

Seat belts back there were a punchline.

Virginia only added a child restraint rule in the early 1980s, and it didn’t require front-seat passengers to buckle up at all until a law took effect in 1988.

Now the state keeps a child in a booster seat for years.

A parent who let three second-graders roll around the trunk on the way to the beach would meet a trooper before the on-ramp.

3. Piled in the Truck Bed

Kids across Southside Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley rode to town in the open bed of a pickup, wind in their faces and the tailgate down.

It felt like flying.

A dozen cousins would pile into the back of a Ford F-100 for the ride to a tobacco field or a church picnic, perched on the wheel wells and a stack of feed sacks.

Virginia law now flatly bans anyone under 16 from riding in a truck bed on a public highway, with narrow exceptions for parades and farm work.

One hard brake on Route 58 was all it ever took.

4. Pumping Leaded Gas

Full service was the only service in 1970s Virginia, and a kid rode shotgun for the whole ritual.

An attendant in a Gulf or Esso uniform pumped the gas, checked the oil, and squeegeed the windshield while leaded fumes drifted in through the open window.

That smell.

Leaded gasoline coated every roadside in the Commonwealth with lead dust, and the country didn’t finish banning it for on-road cars until 1996.

Researchers now tie that era’s exhaust to lower IQs and lasting harm for the 170 million Americans who grew up breathing it.

Some kids leaned toward the vent on purpose because the fumes smelled sweet.

5. Buying Mom’s Cigarettes

Virginia grew the tobacco, rolled the cigarettes in Richmond, and sent kids to the counter to buy them.

No ID required.

A nine-year-old could bike to the corner store with a note and two dollars, then pedal home with a pack of Winstons and a grape Nehi for the trouble.

The clerk didn’t blink.

Virginia raised the legal age to buy any tobacco to 21 in 2019, matching a federal law that took effect the same year.

A kid running the same errand today would get the clerk fired and the store fined.

6. Merry-Go-Round Over Asphalt

The Virginia elementary school playground of 1974 was a field of hot steel bolted straight onto blacktop.

No cushioning anywhere.

A metal merry-go-round spun as fast as a pack of third-graders could push it, then flung the slowest kid off onto the pavement.

Slides rose ten feet and turned skin-searing by noon in a Tidewater June.

The federal government started pushing playground safety guidelines in 1981, and today's standards warn against ever setting equipment over asphalt or concrete, since falls to a hard surface caused most of the serious injuries.

A kid limped home to Norfolk or Roanoke with gravel in both knees after most any recess.

7. No Helmet Till the Streetlights

A bike was a Virginia kid's whole world in the '70s, and nobody owned a helmet.

Not one kid.

They rode banana-seat Schwinns in loose packs from breakfast until the streetlights buzzed on, popping curbs and bombing down hills with bare heads.

Virginia still has no statewide helmet law, but it lets towns and counties require them for riders 14 and younger, and dozens of localities now do.

From Fairfax County to Virginia Beach, the rule is on the books.

A helmet in 1978 would have gotten you laughed off your own street.

8. Drinking From the Garden Hose

When a Virginia kid got thirsty in July, the garden hose was the water fountain.

You drank straight from it.

Everybody waited out the hot, plastic-tasting first gush until the water ran cool, then gulped it between innings of driveway Wiffle ball.

Testing has since turned up lead, bisphenol A (BPA), and other chemicals in common garden hoses, which is why so many now carry a tag warning you not to drink from them.

Nobody built a hose for sipping.

Half the neighborhood shared that hose all summer, mouths right on the nozzle.

9. Restaurant Smoking Sections

Cigarette smoke hung over every Virginia diner, bowling alley, and Howard Johnson's in the 1970s.

The whole place reeked.

A hostess would seat your family three feet from a lit ashtray, call it the non-smoking area, and the haze drifted over the pancakes anyway.

Virginia didn't ban smoking in restaurants until a law took effect in 2009, one of the later states in the country to do it.

Kids breathed it in with their grilled cheese.

Light a cigarette next to a family's table now, and a manager would have you outside before the check came.

10. Baby Oil at the Oceanfront

A Virginia Beach summer in 1976 ran on baby oil, not sunscreen.

The goal was to fry.

Teenagers stretched out on the sand at the Oceanfront slicked in Johnson's baby oil, a few tucking foil reflectors under their chins to bake even faster.

Nobody fussed over sunscreen numbers because the modern sun protection factor label barely existed yet.