Guest: Memories of my free-range childhood

It was the first time in my childhood I had an excuse for coming home late for dinner, but nobody — not even the cops — would listen.

In the summer of 1972, when I was 10, Tommy Gillen and I built a dam in the creek on the other side of the Horning Road railroad tunnel.

We’d been building up the dam for days to create our own three-foot pool in which we chased after crayfish and minnows — our own...