I don't know if it is because you were in a different area than I, or if it was because you grew up 20 years after I did (based on your Civ 4 comment. I was playing a lot of Ultima 3 in my day.) But my growing up in a rural area, small town in central MA, I spend almost all of my time outside, often in the woods. Nobody was going to shoot me for trespassing, as all us kids knew all the local farmers and land owners. We went to church with them, and we all pitched in at harvest times to help on the farms and make a few bucks to spend at the local general store, which we got to by riding our bikes through trails we'd made in the woods. And traffic on the roads was always pretty light, so we never much worried about getting hit.