Back then, when it got Summer, really Summer, when everything was green and hot and you were out of school until months away, like September, the middle of September even, and you were too young for a job, you did really cool stuff.

You had buddies, not hundreds like you get on Facebook now but never see, but maybe two or three and they were your best buddies, BFF hadn’t even been invented yet but what you had was even better, you knew these guys and you’d do every thing with them. You were in the same class with them at school, you rode the bus together and you lived within a mile of each one of them. You didn’t text them about getting together, you jumped on your fat tire, repainted with a brush because you didn’t have enough money to buy spray paint, Roadmaster single speed bike and you headed over to their house to get them. A lot of times you met them on the road as they were coming over to get you.

Your bikes were your transportation. They were the magic vehicles that gave you the freedom to do anything you wanted to. Like meet up with your buds and ride the five miles into town and go to scouts. Everybody that was cool would be a Boy Scout. Going down the big hill into town when you were going like 85 miles an hour your uniform neckerchief would be streaming straight out behind you and you were Parnelli Jones or Mario Andretti and nobody could catch you. If was cold out you would pull your neckerchief up over your nose like some body from  the Hole-in-the-wall gang. Coming home at night afterwards was always an adventure. It’d be dark and if you tipped your generator down so it rested on your front wheel you’d shoot a beam of light out 30′ or so. If you pedaled fast that is. We’d normally get home a lot faster than we had going down there.

Our bikes were not just any old bikes. They were an extension of yourself. You could read a guy and size him up just by checking out his bike. If he didn’t have streamers on his handle bars and the light and generator package and a very cool paint job. He was a dork and we’d pedal away from him so nobody thought we were dweebs too. Because we lived in the country we all had BB guns. The three of us even had scabbards set right behind the seat so we could carry our guns with us on expeditions. Mine was a Daisy Model 25 Shotgun Pump Lever model where you poured almost half a tube of bb’s into the tube under the barrel and then pumped it up until you couldn’t pull the lever back once more. At that point you could have dropped a Rhino at 20′ if you’d a found one. The other guys had Daisy Red Ryder lever-action model 1938 style BB guns. In fact I had one before my pump-action but I traded it to my buddy for a bull whip which I used to promptly break my glasses because I hadn’t learned to snap it right. We all had a much greater respect for Lash LaRue after that. My mom told me I coulda lost an eye until I was way into my 20’s after that one.

But the very best of times were when we would put together a pack and tie our big old Army surplus kapok sleeping bags on the back of our bikes and head off into the wilderness, or what passed for it in Northern Wisconsin at the time. We’d take off and find a creek somewhere, we had a good one where there was a little bend in it and it got deep enough you could actually paddle around for a few yards yet stand up quick if water got up your nose, set up camp in the trees where there hadn’t been too many cows and be Mountain Men until the food ran out, or somebody got hurt, or the farmer caught us and ran us out of there. But those were good times. The best actually.

We’d build a fire pit with rocks all around it and use dry twigs and limbs for the fire, we were scouts after all, we had this stuff down. Then we’d get in our sleeping bags and talk way into the night about all the stuff we were going to do when we got big. Tim was going to be a guy that traveled all over the world exploring and finding neat stuff, except that as it turned out he joined the Army, deserted, holed up with his girlfriend and had a shoot out with the Army cops and was sent to Leavenworth. That made the National news, Don’t know where he is now. Glen wanted to be a farmer like his dad, but wound up being a teacher in a grade school somewhere, as the milk prices tanked and they had to sell off the herd, and me, I went off to find my fortune out in the world. The jury ‘s still out on how that turned out.

But back then things were different. We read comics on Saturday afternoons. Going over to one another’s houses to see the new ones that each of us had gotten since the last time we were together. We had stacks of them, huge stacks, so many our mom’s would threaten to burn them if we left them out. We’d hang out after supper until it was so dark your mom would come out and yell into the neighborhood. “You better get home if you know what’s good for you.” That usually meant you had another half hour. If your dad came out and yelled. You went home right then. Running. We hadn’t had much to do with girls yet, but we talked about them non-stop. What we thought they did when they were home. Why they were so weird. Did you think you’d ever hang out with one and if so which one. Lots of fist fights almost happened over that one as you brought up a name of someone your buddy secretly liked..

But mostly we just hung out. You had your buddies. Somebody to laugh with, tell your strange thoughts to, walk down the over-heated blacktop roads to school with, the pavement so hot it stuck to your tennis shoes and you finally had to walk in the grass along side of the road so you didn’t burn your feet up. Going to the store and getting a twin pop that you’d break in half and give half to your bud. We’d flip for who was going to pay the nickel. Sharing that you couldn’t wait to get to high school so you could get girls but you were secretly pretty scared about that. After your buddy teased you for being a wimp until you almost punched him in his dumb face he would admit that it scared him too. But you each swore you’d never tell anybody else that.

It was different, back then.