Flash Back

Do you ever wish that he had a time machine? I know you can't go back and change things all that stuff about quantum physics and time travel. But would it not be great to be able to go back in your own history and just watch your history unfold? I would. The time I'd be most interested in would be the three years before my accident just as I was becoming an adolescent. The earlier years were okay and kind of fun.

I played a lot of Little League baseball growing up not necessarily because I wanted to but because my friends all played baseball. The team was made up of course all my friends from whatever grade I was in the summer. Myself and my best friend John lived in rural Boise. We lived quite a ways from the city, at least a couple of miles. The rest of the team members all lived in town and we practiced at the East junior high baseball diamond. Five days a week usually practiced which meant riding my bike all the way in to East been practicing. It was a long ride. In the early days I wrote a JC Higgins one speed and later inherited my older brothers Schwinn 10 speed. That's like my mit over the handlebars and pump into town. I put the past the old Holcomb school and on the Boise Avenue, past the twin Bridges then passed Greenwood Circle, past the Food Fair market(it used to be Dells market) then test Garfield school where we turn right on Broadway and pump past the Broadway bar (Danny Barlett's dad owned and ran the bar) past Fred's and Hawkins Take-home, as the Circle K Tavern across the Boise River Bridge, past Clover Club potato chip factory in coast into the baseball field. The ride in was actually quite a long pump. We practiced for about two hours sometimes three then reversed the trip.

There was a section between Greenland Circle the food fair market that was very rural nothing to pasture or hayfield on each side of the road. Midway between these two points on one side of the road was a huge stand of rosehips. On the other side of the road was a number of wild trash trees with wild shrubbery at their base. For one reason or another these rogue pieces of vegetation were targets for all kinds of litter. I don't know why but we found more than one pack of cigarettes on our home treks home. Other great finds included Playboy magazines and other treasures of soft porn. Other kids most of regular bikes back and forth by John and I did why they didn't find these treasures leaves me perplexed. These finds almost made the bike trips worthwhile.

That was 50 years ago or more. The only thing that remains is the curve in Boise Avenue. So much development has taken place over the decades none of the rich rural flavor remains. I spent a couple of hours with Google maps and the “satellite” feature which allows you to actually see the area given me a view of what the journey looks like now. I wish I could find a Google map that could take you back in time and see what the world looked like then. Every once in a while I do a search to see if somebody has put together images taken from another time been spliced together to render views of days gone by.