Once upon a time, summer was just a blank canvas kids got to throw paint on–a real Jackson Pollock experience. We’d wake up everyday and throw on a pair of shorts and head out into the wild blue yonder of backyards and quiet streets to pop tar bubbles, play street games, and eat candy. No one over the age of twenty knew where we were unless they made Kool-Aid, which was a magic trick that made us reappear.

My summers as a child were not much different than my mother’s summers on Chestnut Street. Back then, generations experienced similar lives because swift change hadn’t yet come to define a year. Our mental and physical milestones were met in as natural a way as possible, without interference from technology or from the newfangled expectations of a culture that expects you to know who you are by the age of ten.

Hard lessons came from being late for dinner or forgetting chores. We lived within the boundaries of discipline and respect for our parents and elders, which was enough to keep us on the straight and narrow through childhood. Beyond that, the world was ours to explore and we ran through it and jumped around it, using its natural elements to create our own worlds–tree forts and stick swords and snow caves.

Summer vacations for generations of kids meant freedom and creativity. It meant camping on the weekends with your parents in an old tent, picnics at state parks, a few days at a state beach, maybe a boat ride if you were lucky, and the certainty of barbecues with relatives. My God, a single blue popsicle was a very big deal then. The wooden popsicle stick looms large in my memory and is high on my list of physical things that symbolize my childhood. Think about it: you know exactly what a popsicle stick feels and tastes like—even now, years after your last popsicle. Ice cream cones were also in the summer mix–though more rare than popsicles because ice cream has never been cheap.

Millions of kids went to summer camp in the 60’s and 70’s, and if we get the opportunity to build a better world one day, summer camp by a lake should be mandatory. No cell phones, no video games, just a kid with a bow and arrow or a sail in hand. My weeks at Camp Onyahsa remain some of the most treasured memories of my youth. And it suited my parents, who felt that for a week or two, there was some structure to the rambling days of my summer.

Family road trips, hot dogs, relish, station wagons, garden hoses, hula hoops, sandy sandwiches, motels. All nouns of summer.

Last day of school: a half day, with popsicles as a treat for our final send off. When the bell rings, we take one last look at our teacher, before moving like a giant wave into the hallway, holding our spent composition notebooks and stubby pencils. The doors of the school explode open and already we are summer kids, moving into the great unknown. This was our experience of freedom–we remember the feeling; we know freedom intimately, perhaps better than any generation because of that last day of school.

We had nearly three months off for the summer when I was in school. That first day after classes ended when you’d wake up whenever you wanted to was glorious. You’d hear the birds chirping or the sound of kids playing on a distant street and the warm air would waft through your open window and all the sounds and the feels were there–it’s summer.

We’d set off by foot or bikes to see who was around in the neighborhood and that’s how the day began. From there it was pure creation. We had to build our own day, mostly without money or parental intervention or any other venue beyond nature. It was 100 percent pure creation, straight from our imaginations.

Takeaway: If you know a kid, or have one, teach them how to build a fort this summer–in a tree, or behind the garage, or with two chairs and a blanket. I had so many forts as a kid I don’t remember them all. But one or two were in a little swath of bushes in our backyard. Another was made of chairs and blankets in the attic, which I slept in occasionally only to find the whole thing destroyed by morning.

Our children need outdoor play, sunshine, exercise, lessons learned from the good and hard knocks of neighborhood friends. Bring back the garden hose and the slip-n-slide.

Bring back innocence.