Thanks for sharing your wonderful memories!! I've always (to this day) wished I had grown up "rural" and used to tell my father on a fairly regular basis that he should sell the house and buy a farm. I had it all worked out in my head and could not for the life of me understand why he never agreed. Dad was a plumber, a good living, but it didn't offer the horses I always wanted!
I grew up in a well populated suburb of Chicago. Our school which had at least two classrooms for each grade 1-6 (there might have been 3 classrooms for each grade - 40+ year old memories are fuzzy), was 2 blocks from my house. My father attended the same school, which had me baffled when he told us the "when I was a kid I walked to school in bare feet in the snow up hill both ways" story, because there wasn't hill to be found on 34th street!!
We walked to and from school every day, never got a ride. We also went home for lunch ever day - again - walked. Ditto for any after school activities - walked. Kids could walk the streets without fear of pretty much anything in those days, even at night.
It's so sad those days are gone.