“Haven’t seen you running much lately,” the neighbor from down the street commented, little knowing he’d hit a nerve, perhaps my last one of the day.

It was a simple remark, made, I’m sure, with the kindest intentions, but in my mind I played it all out. He’d seen me biking and didn’t consider that form of exercise to be on par with running. Not nearly.  Maybe he was in a physical fitness vacuum and hadn’t heard that biking works all the muscle groups and conditions the core. Who knows? He may even think bike riding is just for fun.

Fun? Well, I’d have to clue him in. Why, I haven’t biked for the pure fun of it in decades. No sir, now it’s all about miles marked and calories burned. But there was a time when biking was something different. Back when summers were different, too.

When I was a kid, summer was a sensory smorgasbord. It was humming window units and the smell of wet pavement. It was Dixie cups filled with tropical punch Kool-Aid. It was barefoot. And it lasted longer than summers do now.  Much longer.

I can remember summers when the white space of entire calendar months was left blank, save for five days of Bible School and a week-long vacation to a motel somewhere within the travelable triangle of Gatlinburg, Pensacola and the Ozarks. It was a magical left-alone time, and joined by friends in my rural subdivision, we made the most of it – on our bikes.

Those years were an iconic era for bicycles. Banana seats and high-rise handlebars ruled, and a two-wheel sensation called the Schwinn Sting-Ray caused many a 9-year-old to break the 10th commandment. Dubbed as “the bike with the sports car look”, its ads encouraged young riders to accept no substitutes. I’m afraid in my case, we did. My family was more the Western Auto set.

No matter. We were all riding what would one day be retro, and by the looks of today’s eBay, worth a lot of money. Unfortunately for me and my friends, we put decals in places that forever ruined their resale value. Besides that, we wore our Western Flyers and Raleigh Choppers slap out, from their gravel-pelted chain guards to their missing handle grips. That’s because we rode them like Harleys, with an attitude to match, chasing after heat-made mirages and memorizing the loose rock in every curve.  We flew past entire soybean cycles and witnessed the construction of more than one ranch-style home. All the while, we stayed true to our main task – keeping vigilant watch for the South Central Bell employee destined to bring an end to our four-way party line.

During those summers, my friends and I would pedal whole days away, stopping only for pimento and cheese sandwiches and an occasional episode of Match Game. Never once did we get called lazy (unless there were peas to shell). And all this happened, of course, before moms knew the importance of helmets. Ponytails flapped free in the breeze. “Look, no hands,” was a rite of passage.

Even so, we rough riders knew first-hand (and knee and elbow) that our greatest threat was actually a double one – road rash resulting from a nasty cocktail of tar and pea gravel, and the dabbing of Merthiolate that was sure to follow. Which was more painful would be hard to say.

But even at that age, biking wasn’t just physical. At some point in one of those summers a defensive back from the Philadelphia Eagles desegregated our neighborhood, and our bunch wasted no time in cruising up his driveway to meet the man everyone was talking about. I dare say he did more toward race relations in our rural route world than anything a social studies teacher ever could.

Good as they were, those summers always came to an end, usually on a Saturday involving back-to-school shopping. Other things eventually ended, too. About the time I turned 12 I got a 10-speed for Christmas, a slick Sears model made for petites (which is nice for too short to reach normal pedals). It was then that gears started complicating biking and life started complicating the summer calendar. I suspect my fondness for two-wheeling met its real demise about the time I was issued a driver’s license.

Several years later I married a man who had a Schwinn Sting-Ray in his past and two Peugeot racing bikes in his dorm room. Needless to say, my Sears 10-speed was left behind at the wedding altar, doomed to become word 22 of 25 in a garage sale ad in the Tate County Democrat. What became of my beloved banana seat bike is anybody’s guess.

And what has become of summer, well, that’s a topic for another column.

 

Wesson resident Kim Henderson is a freelance writer who writes for The Daily Leader. Contact her at kimhenderson319@gmail.com.