Life on the Road
I remember Idaho Street and summers picking at tar strips in the concrete streets where I grew up. Bicycle riding and baseball games took place there along with hopscotch and squirt gun fights. Even before my second birthday I had found another world on the road.
Road Study
Nearly sixty years later I still appreciate the road and the world which unfolds upon it. Riding has brought me in close contact with the road — looking closely at its physical properties as they relate to riding, and considering the metaphysical properties of riding itself.
I still like touching the road.
Where it Ends Nobody Knows
Round and round we go. I love the road — on two wheels, in a car or on foot. The road is a mystery of which I continue to attempt to unravel. I took a road view as a kid and am still doing the same thing now.
For some ” unknown ” reason , I really related to this.
Thanx
Let us know if the unknown becomes known.
As a child I used to think how remarkable it was that I could touch a piece of road here, and it would connect to California like a telegraph wire.
Robert,
I’ve thought the exact same thing. I often think about it on I80 — like I sense the Pacific ocean.
Your essay of 2007 from (on the street where you lived) evokes memories for me as well.
My own memories. Yes, can still return to the very street of my dwelling location where i was from 1948 to 2010. The cul de sac was a tar and gravel surface, later replaced with a proper curbed and asphalt surface about ten years ago. And like you played on the street so many years ago without concern for the nanny aspect so prevalent today.
I miss the freedom of the period and the ability to enjoy life without physical hinderances or health issues. I too miss the house where I lived for 62 years. You become a part of the structure in that lengthy period of time; it was a refuge for me;
in frequent times of need and personal problems.
My younger brother now a pistol-toting Texan and American saw the situation otherwise and took steps to turf my widowed mother and me from the h ouse.
Mum went to a secure retirement home, me to a two bedroom flat. The house which my parents purchased for C$21,000 in the early autumn of 1947
(a considerable maount then) sold for C$900,000 and was subsequently demolished to be replaced by a 12,000 square foot structure.
So yes I can return to where my roots were, however only the street name is there; all those I was raised with, all those familiar names, school friends and similar are gone replaced by many unknown. Other houses on the street since, have sold for similar even larger amounts, been demolished and replaced by huge homes built on the large generous lots uncommon now but common, then.
So, the challenged one-a-day multiple postings are coming to an end, for you. However the postings have revealed a far more complex person inhabitated by one Steve Williams!
Married gentleman, father, grandfather, companion to Kim, lover of two wheeled transport named Vespa, four wheeled transport named Honda, two Belgian sheep
dogs named Junior and Lily, consumer of a myriad selection of photographic gear, friend of Paul Ruby and others as well as obviously a prolific journalist.
Tomorrow is February 29, a once-in-four-day, a day for those born on said day a chance to ponder about life’s oddities, and perhaps a termination on said day of these determined daily exposures of the journalist’s existence.
Do not say goodbye Steve, rather perhaps a short hiatus may well be in order, eh?