Nobody "sicked their dog on you". They simply owned dogs. The dogs would come after people coming up in your yard.
Going into a "close friend's" house is a WHOLE lot different than just walking into a person who is not a "close friend's" house.
And nobody "whipped out guns".
Everybody owned them and kept them close at hand. And to my knowledge...nobody ever got shot by a friend or family member in my little towns when I grew up. Everyone knew how to handle guns and respected them because we grew up that way.
And I still will tell you...I don't care how small the town is, if you are not close buddies with somebody, you just know them and they know who you are because the town is small....and you go walking into their home unannounced: That is VERY uncool and wouldn't be appreciated by anybody.
And if you did it and their dogs were running loose (like everyone's dogs did in small towns in the 60's and 70's) you probably would have gotten bit. And if you walked into my house like that and we weren't friends but just knew each other casually from living in the same town....well, you better start talking fast or I will jump on your ass.
I'm still in disbelief that you think it's cool to walk into people's homes like that. Not family, not close friends (though I would personally never be so discourteous to even my friends and family), but just walking into anybody's home because everyone is so "neighborly" they don't mind.
Fuck...I think Andy Griffith would have shot you in Mayberry, RFD if you had walked into Aunt Bee's house and scared the shit out of her.
I'm thinking that I misunderstood what you were saying. If you are talking about your best friends in high school, then yeah...I could see you walking into their houses like that.
Just not any old house in your small hometown that is not owned by a buddy's family.