Childhood Idealized

I want to thank the Born Again Redneck for a wonderful post regarding the relics and joys of his childhood. My girls have a PS2, a computer, satellite and other distractions unintentionally intended to keep them indoors. I guess we use them to give them something to do while they are indoors, but I'm afraid they work in reverse, more often than not.
I was fortunate as a boy to have begun life on a four-acre farm in a small valley community in northern Utah. I remember a few toys, like wooden blocks of various shapes and sizes, HotWheels, and Legos. Any combination of these provided hours of imaginational entertainment. But most favorite of my childhood memories came from the hours spent roaming the barn and shed, climbing the rafters, making mud pies on the sheep hay trough, and riding my bike up to the canal that ran through the town.

My dad then got a job in Tulsa, and we moved into a neighborhood that was under construction. Talk about a young boy's dream playground. There were always sand piles to dig through, jungle gym house frames to climb and explore. Best of all, there were streets to bike and roller skate on. It was not an uncommon day to have 10-12 neighbor kids riding their bikes around the streets, erecting scrap plywood ramps, and finding awesome trails with natural ramps. Falling off your bike at the end of a jump was a regular occurrence, that's why God invented the band-aid and arm sling. We were the bicycle repair facility of the neighborhood. My brothers and I could disassemble a bike, shift a few parts around, and wind up with a new bike in a matter of an hour. At one point, I was charged with the task of sorting the build-up of bike parts in the back yard. I had a pile for wheels, another for handle bars, another for sprockets, and so on. They were pretty sizeable piles at one point.

One day, while riding down the street, I found where a neighbor had thrown a frame in the trash. It looked cool, so I grabbed it and brought it home. After separating the rear bars, where it looked like it had been run over, I sanded it down and repainted it. It was my first experiment with two-tone paint, and for a 10 year old, it wasn't too bad. I threw some parts on it, and came out with a good solid bike.

Two weeks later, my brother had decided his bike needed an upgrade, and for some reason mine become a donor. It wasn't anything, though, for me to throw together another one, and I was back in the pack. We never really got into the newer alloy Mongoose bikes. We just couldn't afford those. Ours were always heavy, but not always as sturdy as those newer bikes.

School was in another neighborhood, about a mile or so away. There was a bus that stopped by my house, but it was nothing to ride to school. I got to where I could stand and pedal without holding the handlebars. That was freedom. Now and again, my brothers and I would gather a few friends for a bike rally, and head to the swimming pool, in yet another neighborhood. Sometimes, we looked like a motorcycle gang, hogging the street.

I don't know at what point riding bikes became a thing of the past.

A couple of years ago, at a garage sale, I came across an old mountain bike and offered $5 to take it off the guy's hands. It didn't fit in the car, so I rode it home. What an exhilarating thrill. The wind in my hair, the road beneath my feet. Zig-zagging across the road, dodging pot holes. Where had those days gone?

I have begun taking my older two on a bike around the neighborhood. They love it. And I love when they attempt to commit me to the next day after dinner. There is a comic book store about a mile away. I think I might take them down there today.