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That's how it was in suburbs of Rochester NY back in the 50s.  A usual command to one of the girls would be "go run over to Brian's and tell the rest of the boys to come home for supper."  Sending one of the boys already back home was a bad idea:  he'd get over to the neighbor's place and end up shooting hoops.  We walked to and from school, elementary was about a mile, middle and high about 2 miles.  With luck in bad weather we cadged a ride from our dad or the dad of the kids across the way.  But coming home was always the shoe leather express, even in snow when we had to walk in the roads if it had snowed during the day and people weren't home to shovel the walks.

We rode bikes to the city proper to watch AAA league baseball once we were over age 10. But that did require asking permission from parents.  I learned the hard way it wasn't ok just to say "Tell Mom I went with Leah to the ballgame."    Yeah, no.   I missed a bunch of ballgames after I tried that out once.

Earlier on,  over in a more agricultural area of the Hudson Valley,  the rules were even more lax for even younger ages. For me at age five it went like this:  chores first,  then no wandering off past the next farm over in any direction, keep outta creeks in springtime or after rainstorms, don't be trying to adopt any livestock from a neighbor's farm (that one was aimed at me, after a hijacked duckling incident), and no importing of amphibians or reptiles into the house or barns.  Harsh times!