If you grew up in the 1970s, you survived a decade that today's safety experts would call a slow-motion catastrophe. We rode bikes without helmets, drank from garden hoses on hot afternoons, and somehow lived to tell the story.

Some of what was perfectly normal back then would now get you a ticket, a CPS visit, or a stern lecture from a neighbor with a smartphone. Here are 23 things from the '70s that would land you in serious trouble today.

1. Riding in the bed of a pickup truck. Every Sunday drive, every trip to the lake -- kids piled into the open truck bed with the dog and a cooler. Today, most states ban it outright, and parents have been arrested for it.

2. No seatbelts. For anyone. Cars came with them, but nobody used them. Kids stood up in the back seat, climbed over the front, and sometimes rode in the rear window like a basket of laundry.

3. Babies on laps in the front seat. Mom drove home from the hospital with a newborn on her arm. Car seats existed but weren't required by federal law until well into the '80s.

4. Walking to school alone at age six. Five blocks, two stoplights, no adult in sight. Today that's a 911 call and a CPS investigation in some states.

5. Drinking from the garden hose. Hot day, thirsty kid, hose on the side of the house. Nobody worried about the lead, the bacteria, or the warm rubbery taste.

6. Smoking on airplanes. Entire sections of the plane were reserved for it. Pilots smoked in the cockpit. Stewardesses -- that's what they were called -- brought ashtrays with the coffee.

7. Smoking in hospitals. Doctors smoked in the hallways. New fathers lit up in the maternity waiting room. There were ashtrays bolted to the walls.

8. Lawn darts. Heavy steel-tipped projectiles you threw at a plastic ring on the lawn. They were finally banned in 1988 after a string of tragic injuries to children.

9. Trick-or-treating alone at age five. You went with your friends -- other kids, not parents -- knocked on every door in the neighborhood, and accepted homemade popcorn balls from strangers.

10. Paddling in public school. The principal had a wooden paddle with holes drilled in it for aerodynamics. Parents thanked him for using it.

11. Hitchhiking. College kids did it across the country. Teenagers did it to get to the mall. Mothers picked up hitchhikers and gave them rides home for dinner.

12. Letting kids stay home all day in summer. You left at breakfast, came home when the streetlights came on. Mom had no idea where you were, and that was the deal.

13. Mercury thermometers -- and what we did when they broke. You'd roll the silver beads around your palm. Schools kept bottles of mercury in chemistry class. Nobody called hazmat.

14. BB guns and slingshots, unsupervised. Every kid had one. You learned not to shoot at people's eyes by shooting at people's eyes and getting in trouble.

15. Sending kids to buy cigarettes for parents. "Run down to the corner store and get me a pack of Winstons." The clerk handed them to a nine-year-old without a second thought.

16. The "way-back" of the station wagon. Rear-facing bench seat with no belts, no headrests, and a panoramic view of the cars behind you. The cargo area doubled as a playpen.

17. Riding bikes without helmets -- anywhere. Down the steepest hill in town, into the creek, off plywood ramps. Helmets were for football, not bicycles.

18. A drinking age of 18 in many states. Eighteen-year-olds could legally buy beer in over half the country until the mid-1980s, when federal pressure standardized it at 21.

19. Open containers in cars. Dad had a can of beer in the cupholder on the way home from the lake. It wasn't a crime in most states until much later.

20. Lead paint, lead pipes, leaded gasoline. Kids chewed on windowsills, breathed exhaust on every street corner, and drank from pipes that had been quietly poisoning everyone for decades.

21. Free-range pets. Dogs roamed the neighborhood all day. Everyone knew them by name. Nobody picked up after them, and nobody seemed to mind.

22. Riding a bike to a job at age 12. Paper routes, lawn mowing, busing tables. Kids had real jobs and real money -- and rode their bikes there before dawn.

23. Letting the neighbors' kids run wild in your house. They came over, ate your snacks, used your bathroom, watched your TV. Their parents had no idea where they were, and that was just fine.

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Looking back, it's a wonder any of us made it to adulthood. But there's something in all this we don't talk about much: we were trusted. By our parents, by our neighbors, by the world. We were expected to handle ourselves, fall down, get back up, and figure it out.

The rules are stricter now, and a lot of them are good. Car seats save lives. Leaded gas was a disaster. Lawn darts had it coming. But somewhere between then and now, we also lost something harder to name. A kind of everyday freedom that kids today won't ever know.

We survived it all. And somewhere, in the back of a pickup truck on a summer evening, we were free.