Today, if you’re driving through a neighborhood and spot a child riding a bicycle (wearing a helmet and knee pads of course), the mom or dad who are always with the child has a conniption fit to get the biker out of the road and behind a hedgerow as quickly as possible. They are seemingly afraid that the approaching motorist will chase down the child and run him over.
It wasn’t always that way. Boomer kids owned the streets. That’s where we played. Reluctantly, we shared our concrete playground with a few automobiles, but the streets belonged to us.
In the winter, when it snowed, we chose the street with the longest, steepest hill and set up our sled runs. Cars waited for us to finish our slaloms before they rode by (with chains on their tires) and they didn’t object to our makeshift ramps in the middle of the street.
In the early spring, someone in the neighborhood always had a basketball goal set up at the curb and there we played hoops – in the middle of the street. H.O.R.S.E. was a preferred game, but we had plenty of two-on-twos and three-on-threes. The nice thing about playing b’ball in the streets was that you had a decent place to dribble, instead of a mud floor in somebody’s back yard.
Come summer, it was stickball for the guys and hopscotch tournaments for the girls. Occasionally, a few of the guys volunteered for hopscotch if we could press a girl or two into the outfield. In a tight game, we’d make the cars wait, if necessary in order to get the final out.
In the fall, the streets became our version of Cowboy Stadium. We drew chalk lines every 10 yards with each curb as out of bounds. After classes let out, any kid not enduring piano lessons showed up. We picked teams and played till dinnertime. In the streets.
And, of course, city streets were our paths to school to friends’ houses to the pool to the movies – wherever we wanted to go on a bike. No one ever pulled over if a car closed in. We just pedaled faster.
Never, throughout my youth, do I recall an automobile and a bicycle colliding. It didn’t happen. Probably because back then, car drivers weren’t texting or talking on cell phones. They knew kids were out on the streets and they paid attention.