Pick apples from branches that overhang the walk.
Stop and talk with neighbors I meet along the way.
These I suppose I’d miss, were I a boy today
Walking home.
From school, down alleys and streets, or
Through yards and yards without fences.
My choices taught what independence is.
But today’s child has fewer choices.
There’s danger in strangers and many more fences.
Mom to drop off now –
mom to pick up,
Because lurkers are lurking and mom won’t be shirking
Her duty to protect us from us.
Where is that boy, picking apples down streets,
Down alleys, through yards, with an independent mind,
Who comes through the door today after
Walking home?
Notes:
I used to walk to the High School on Saturday mornings in
September and October for the after-Friday-night-football game practice.
On one of the streets, Glendale, there was a yard with a green apple tree in it. Many branches, loaded down with apples, would hang over the chain-link fence. I could reach up while walking along and grab 2 or 3 apples to eat on the way, or put in my gym bag for later. Those were delicious green apples, becoming yellow apples as they ripened further (and out of reach) later in the season.
I drove by that yard with my son in June 2006 and showed him where the apple tree used to be. There was another tree there. but not an apple tree.
We used to walk everywhere in Grandview. I walked to and from kindergarten, grade school, Jr. High, and High School. I walked to my baseball games, Dairy Queen, and Grandma's house.
There were no fences in the backyards on Mulford Road when I was young, so we played football from yard to yard. Now there are fences in most backyards. The alleys between each street were our thoroughfares on our Stingrays.
When I visit Grandview, German Village, and Columbus from California, I like to walk the streets like I used to. I tell friends here in California that I'm visiting the land of laundry chutes and basements.
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