I was driving up a street near my house in Sharpsville the other night, and when I came to the stop sign, I noticed a freshly smashed pumpkin in the middle of the road and several kids fleeing the scene.

Naturally, I put down my window and yelled at them. Of course, they yelled back some obscenities while turning up a side street. I thought about following them, but realizing I would get myself in more trouble than it was worth, I drove away in disgust.

On my way to the grocery store Sunday morning, the streets were littered with smashed pumpkins, and as I drove into Hermitage, it was more of the same. What is wrong with some kids today? Do they get that big of a kick out of destroying other people’s property, and in this case, probably some small child’s jack-o-lantern?

When I was a kid, we were far from saints. We pulled pranks that most young kids do, and we had our share of ups and downs that are associated with growing up. But I don’t remember most kids having a penchant for destruction like some have today.

I’m fond of telling the story about sleeping out, because when I was a kid, it was one of the joys of summer. We spent half the night running around Farrell from one end of town to the other. We would stop occasionally at the myriad of fruit trees, gardens and grape arbors in the city, and grab a few snacks for the rest of the night. We had our favorite places to raid.

But that’s all we did, and some of the residents knew it. But most of them realized we weren’t taking much, and more importantly, they knew that we weren’t vandalizing their property. We didn’t rip out tomato and pepper plants, didn’t squeeze bunches of grapes by the handfuls and leave them on the ground to rot, or snap the limbs from the fruit trees. How much fun could that be?

I ran into my neighbors, Bob and Sue Curtis, at a surprise birthday party for friend Tom Faber several weeks ago, and we talked at length about this kind of violence as well as other things that have changed dramatically since we were kids.

One of the contributing factors high on my list is the disintegration of neighborhoods as we knew them in the 1950s and 1960s. Where I grew up on the 1000 block of Emerson, we had about 30 houses between Idaho and French streets. Everyone knew you, and you knew them.

In addition to your parents and grandparents, it was “the neighborhood” that kept you in line. Beyond the petty, you couldn’t get away with anything. We played sports well beyond curfew under the streetlights, but we couldn’t be loud, couldn’t cuss, or carry on and act like thugs. The minute things got out of hand, one of the neighbors who were on the porch watching came out on the street, said enough was enough, and the game was finished.

More than half of the neighbors on our block had gardens, and they were up in the morning long before we were, spading, weeding, watering, pruning and doing other chores to keep their plants and trees flourishing. It’s how we developed a respect for how much work it takes to raise vegetables and fruits, and probably the main reason why we didn’t have that penchant for destruction.

Not only have we lost most of the traditional neighborhoods through the years, but in the ones that are still around, things are different. People are too busy to be neighborly in the way it was on Emerson Avenue. Play in the street today can turn loud and violent. Neighbors no longer watch the games, but they call the cops instead. It seems to be one vicious circle.

I have said many times, in this column and in conversation, I’m not one to live in the past, but I sure appreciate it and have tried to learn from its lessons throughout the years. From a technological and material standpoint, kids today have it all over kids of my generation. But most of them don’t have the neighborhoods and other intangibles we had growing up, which had a lasting impression throughout our lives.

The editor's e-mail bag

Judging from the phone calls and e-mails, a lot of readers share my frustration about how badly some people drive in parking lots, especially at grocery stores, where it’s usually congested with traffic in every direction.

I got the following e-mail from Mary Jane Spadin in Sharpsville: