I couldn’t resist turning into the old subdivision. My Yamaha Tracer 9 GT made easy work of the large hill that once took me a lot of exertion on my black-and-yellow Huffy BMX. I still remembered each home and each childhood friend (and enemy) who lived there more than 45 years ago.
Maybe it’s just the wistful nostalgia of a man who recognizes there are more miles behind him than lay ahead that makes me long for those summers as a latchkey kid. My single mother would wake me early, convinced I had to be awake in case the house burned down, and then she’d cart my little brother to day camp and herself to work. I was left alone. Glorious, unsupervised, anything-could-happen, late-1970s/early ’80s freedom.
I’d sneak rides on my neighbor’s minibike, roam the nearby forested mountaintop where no one could find me, or scour the busy roadside ditch for glass bottles I could return for deposit and spend on candy and quarter-a-play video games at the convenience store.
By the afternoon, groups of us suburban BMX types would slap a board on some bricks (surreptitiously acquired from a nearby construction site) and make a ramp in the middle of the street. No one ever stopped us or worried much when we scrapped most of the skin off our legs with the semi-regular crashes. No one got road rage when we stopped what little traffic ventured past, except in winter when we pelted cars with snowballs.
Those same streets are empty on this sunny summer afternoon. I haven’t seen anyone not eligible for AARP as I pass the manicured lawns. The old neighborhood looks gentrified. The modest homes now feature added garages and additions. There’s not a kid on a bicycle in sight. There’s not a collection of haphazardly ditched bikes in front of the only house on the block with an Atari game console.
The only latchkey kid in sight is me, a balding, divorced man in his late-50s standing in the road by his childhood home soaking in a flood of memories. I had my first kiss in that driveway playing spin-the-bottle. I broke my arm across the street playing football. I got grounded for repeatedly jumping my bike off a small hill and riding across the lawn of the corner house, occupied by the Hall sisters, a pair of old maids prone to yelling at trespassing BMXers.
I fire up the Yamaha and slow cruise along the side streets. For mischievous old-times’ sake, I cut the corner and ride my sport-touring bike through the grass of the Hall sisters’ former home.
No one comes out to yell at me.
A half century later, I have the luxury of lots of summer days off work. With no wife or children to anchor me to adulthood, the latchkey kid is again free to roam. I often venture out on my motorcycle to the places I explored in my youth. They still can fill an aimless summer afternoon with fun and adventure. Some have gone and some remain, to borrow a line from The Beatles, but the memories of lazy days spent on two wheels never change.
I ride past where a dirt road once led to a secret swimming hole. It’s now a gated golf community with no access for a daydreaming motorcyclist. I ride past my middle school, long since demolished for a more modern facility. Gone is the Depression-era, two-story building where I used to gaze out the tall windows hoping to spot a chopper or cool muscle car amid passing traffic.
Despite this being a very different world from my 1970s childhood, time hasn’t erased the joy and freedom I feel while aimlessly riding my motorcycle, awaiting what new adventure or mischief a long summer day might provide.
Don’t worry, I’ll be home before the street lights come on.
— Michael E. Gouge
Editor-in-Chief
