When I was twelve years old I rode my bike everywhere. Seriously, everywhere. Not across the globe, or across the state, but everywhere that two legs the size of pencils could pedal a 90 lb. kid.

For some reason fall, like it is now, reminds me of those days.

For all my kid-life, when I wasn’t riding it, my bike stayed on the porch outside the den in our house.

We had two porches on the back of the house. The one designated as the “back” porch was somewhat enclosed. A storm door. Plastic stapled over the screens. The chest freezer, an extra fridge, and the washer and dryer lived on that porch. The space was small and the only other utilitarian item on that porch was a stool where Dad sat down to take off his boots before going in the house. A single light bulb was mounted to the wall up high to the right of the back door.

The den, which is what we called it back then, and the porch that was just behind it was literally in the middle of the house. To the west was the kitchen, living room, two bedrooms and a bath. The back porch was off the kitchen. To the east was Mom and Dad’s room, her sewing room, and a second bath.

The porch outside the den door was under roof but was totally open to the elements as you faced the back yard. No wall. No screen. Nothing under the eave of the house to close it off.

The push mower was kept on that porch. Both my sister’s and my bicycles were propped up on that porch. I think there was a charcoal grill, a few folding lawn chairs, a table that collected all manner of junk, a basketball, and a 5 gallon bucket of important stuff.

That’s a lot of descriptive nonsense to get back to the bike riding.

The reason fall makes me think of my bike is that the den porch, when fall came, was always full of leaves. They just blew in from all over. Pecan, mulberry, fig, apple, and plum leaves dried by the sun, carried by the wind, wound up on the concrete floor of that porch. Whenever I went to get my bike the leaves would crunch beneath my feet.

I heard that same sound yesterday when I walked across my driveway on my way to the shop. I wasn’t thinking about bicycles. I wasn’t thinking about being a kid. There was nothing nostalgic going on in my head at all. I was just going up there to get some tools together for a project I’ve got coming up.

But…I heard that sound. The sound of leaves crunching beneath my feet on a hard surface.

Because I was walking on asphalt the sound hit me differently. It didn’t remind me of walking in the woods. It didn’t remind me of raking up leaves in the yard. It reminded me of that concrete floor on the den porch.

“Hey Mom! I’m gonna ride down to the lake.”

I remember the porch floor was painted red. Not fire engine red, but more subtle like an apple red.

I closed the door behind me. The leaves crunched. I grabbed the handlebars, lifted the kick-stand with my foot, turned the bike around, threw my leg over the seat, and pedaled off to wherever my mind would take me. The sound of dry leaves under the tires was even different than walking on them.

I don’t know that any of us will ever understand how one sound, or one smell, or one touch can transport our minds to another place and time so easily and completely.

I can’t prove it, but I think I was trail riding and mountain biking before either one became a thing. The dirt cow paths on the farm were my roads. The old cotton field terraces were my high jumps. The creeks were my water hazards. It would break me now, but back then exploring the woods and fields on my bike was the kind of day that I never got tired of.

Or I’d ride down to the Weems place. There was a little dirt road that cut in behind the old plantation house that I could follow down to the train trestle over the Towaliga Creek near Luella. And if I had a full day, not too far from there I could take the dirt road east, ride several miles to the Fambrough farm, turn right and loop back to the paved road and on home again.

A good bit of that road is under the Towaliga Reservoir today. A dirt road forgotten. One that resides only in the memory of the few left who saw it as it used to be. I’m sure Miss Helen Greer is one of them. She and Mr. Melton lived on that road not far from the Fambrough’s.

I reckon my favorite and most repeated bike ride was to North Avenue in Hampton. Just a smidge over three miles. Only two big hills to climb. I could do it on a lazy day in 30 minutes. When pressed for time, I could make it in twenty.

North Avenue was like a kid haven when it came to having something fun to do. You didn’t have to knock on a door to see if somebody could come out. When I showed up on my bike, I just looked for the yard with kids already in it. There’d always be a game of some kind already in full swing.

This is where I played Army on a neighborhood scale. We ran through every backyard without concern and without discrimination. We played baseball. We threw water balloons. We raced bikes. This is where I rode my first minibike and where I ate my first fried bologna sandwich. All of it made possible because I rode my bike into town.

You might expect me to get up on a soap box to talk about how kids these days are in danger of turning out to be useless human beings because they don’t ride bikes and play outside like we used to. Which is something people born in the 1950s like to point out without any justifiable research. Which is probably what my great-grandfather said about kids who didn’t ride horses.

It’s easy to think that our grandkids would be better off if they had a childhood like ours. They ride bikes, but mostly in circles out front of the house for a little while. They might pack up and drive somewhere with the family to go bike riding for an afternoon.

But they don’t live on their bikes like we used to. Neighborhoods are not teaming with kids on bikes going at it all day long, all summer long. And I’m okay with that. They have their own childhood to live.

When I got home, I’d ride around into the backyard and up onto the porch. Miles and miles behind me. I’d put the kickstand down and walk into the house.

Mama would look up. “Where’d you go today?”

I’d give her the typical kid answer.

“Nowhere much. Just around.”