I remember that we preferred walking in alleys on the way to school....it was cool, and off the beaten path, also out of site of the adults.
Indeed, we would share the territory with the neighborhood dogs, mostly friendly, in the backyards. I still remember Fritz, the little
terrier, and a drooling but lovable St. Bernard
named Brandy(nice tie-in with their live-saving abilities, and the current Top 40 song as well.)
It truly was a kids' world walking to school. I remember it as almost magical, and would even sing to myself sometimes if I was in a good mood.
How about the unsung crossing guards, the adult sentries in the magical world we would walk through on the way to school. Like Homer's Odyssey, they were their to guide us on our way
through the adult world of traffic and uncertainty. Mrs. Defillipo was there all 6 years, 1st-6th grade at our grammer school(just went up to 6th). I still remember her in her Lion's club jacket, or waiting in the car on cold mornings for a kid to materialize. I was always the last kid, which earned me a great epithet from Defillipo...The Last of the Mohicans...with no knowledge of James Fenimore Cooper, I still thought the title honorable and cool sounding, and it stuck. If I thought hard, I could remember thousands of things said, crazy things done, and laughs had on the way home from
school all those years. Throwing snowballs at the schoolbuses in the winter.....Kathy Richards crying because her mom made her wear a ridiculous
wig for class picture day....Mike Loavas punching me in the throat...a kid that was literally about 3 feet tall in 3rd grade, if that....Perry Jordan, who stood 5-8 in 6th grade....trying to whistle loud, like the cool kids....losing an oyster for show and tell and getting grounded for a week for that....singing
a song while ealking alone, and getting jumped
from behind from a kid who thought it was stupid, ruining the plant we were growing out of milk cartons cut in half.....Those memories were very vivid at one time, even in my early 20's, but at 45, they are getting a bit hazy....funny thing is they come back in dreams sometimes....
sometimes I dream of someone I haven't seen in 30+ years, and it sure is wonderful....my final statement is that our happiest times of life are
being a kid, and watching our kids be a kid, which brings us around full circle again to childhood. If we are lucky, we can experience it a third-fourth time as a grandparent. I truly think we are most fully alive as a kid. Just last week-end, I saw three girls about 8 to 10
years old run out of their SUV at the gas pump
to the store. They looked so stoked just to be
alive and have a chance to buy some candy and treats on their own. Kids have no baggage, and are experiencing everything in life for the first time as well. Everything is pure immediacy. No walls, preconceptions, illusions,
or undue expectations. And they bounce back from mistakes and hardships like a jack-in-the-box.
Compare a child dying of cancer with an adult.
Both are terminal, but the child seems to have the greater wisdom. He/she who never even had a chance to experience life retains a pure glow
of love of life, a visceral joy of just living in the moment. The adult, burdened with logic, expectations, and deferred dreams, is a mess.
Even Christ himself said much the same in the gospels about the wisdom of children.
How walking to school relates to this is its pure immediacy, like all kid things. Going to the movies was another. For those two hours,
nothing else mattered or existed but that theater and the kids in it. We just absorbed
experiences like a sponge, and were happier
than than we'd care to realize. If I, Ron,
and all the good folks who read these posts
could relive just one complete day in our childhood, maybe we'd realize not only how fully alive we were than, but how alive we can still be.....and, indeed, walking to school was a part
of that world......

I walked or rode my bike about 13 blocks each way home to school all thru K-6 (1958 - 1965) at Whittier Elementary in Winfield, KS. When I was in 2nd grade, our class was bussed across town to another school. I think it was because of construction at Whittier, and the number of 2nd graders was few enough to fit in one school bus. We met at Whittier in the morning, got on the bus to Lowell Elementary. At lunch time, back on the bus to Whittier & home for lunch. No one I knew ate lunch at school. Other than the high school, we didn't even have any eating facilities of any kind at any of the town schools. After lunch, back to Whittier & on the bus to Lowell for afternoon class, & back on the bus at the end of the day. We did that every day of that school year. We didn't consider ourselves Lowell kids. Our 2nd grade class picture was taken at Whittier & id's us as Whittier kids. Also our high school was 7 thru 12, and downtown instead of out on the edge of town, as were most high schools back then that I know of. We thought only the big cities (such as Wichita) had separate Jr - Sr high schools.

I walked to grade school in the sixties! We lived about a half a mile or so from school! Everyone walked to school! Back then, there wassn't to much worry about sleezeballs! I walked to school through grade school. But in Junior high, we got bused to other areas for desegregation. The prospect was good, but a nightmare for many who had to leave their areas to go to school far away! In grade school, they had safety patrols at each intersection! Remember the orange belts with a metal badge on them? We often gave the safety patrols a hard time. We walked to school in wind, rain and snow! Today in Virginia, you can't walk to school if your in elenmentary school! To many sleezeballs aout to nab you I guess? I don't know??? I still think walking to school is still possible!

Yea, I have a fond memory of taking off work like a bat out of hell to go pick up my son from school that was just in a hit and run walking to school. Him and his friend were in a crosswalk and that lady had no regards for then and struck them both! Thank God they were not hurt.