FIRST BIKE LESSON

  The west part of Jackson has changed in the seventy years I’ve been gone.  I have trouble finding Minerva Street.  It runs north and south off Capitol Street. I look for that hulky building that once housed the Coca-Cola plant in the mid 1940s. The building is there, on the corner, the adjoining railroad tracks making a slight protrusion here and there. I  turn left off Capitol Street and maneuver the torn street once full of stand-alone homes and small apartment homes. 

I recall the quiet evenings. This was an ideal street for us to live on. Sidewalks on both sides of the street allowing evening strolls after a hard day’s work.  With a short walk Daddy could be at work at the Postal Telegraph office on the other side of the viaduct separating North Jackson from West Jackson.

 I drive down  the street once, turn the car around and retrace the route. I stop at the spot where I lived for three happy years. There’s no house.  Only a parking lot full of vivid memories. Gone is the low wall that ran alongside between our house and the Sanantones.  I had looked for that wall to determine the location of my house. Most of the lots on the west side had been obliterated for additional parking.

My gaze falls across the street. I remember that house was different and didn’t belong on the street. Once I was invited inside to meet the elderly couple and their son. I can’t recall the reason I was there. They were sitting in the” parlor”, a space heater  inside a fireplace keeping them warm.  I gazed around to see the walls of a soft brown wood.  The house was a palace more than a home. With my “now” eyesight this same house sits with its roof caved inward from neglect. I cross the street and I see the brick sidewalk , still there, twenty giant steps long. The most elevated spot on the street.

 The beginning point of my bike lessons. The new shiny red bike was my August birthday gift.

Dad and I started at the bottom of the hill at the south end of the street . The push up the hill north to the house with its wide front porch and that brickwork on the sidewalk was difficult for skinny me, even with Daddy’s help. At the bricks I followed Daddy’s instruction. I scrambled onto the sea with Daddy holding onto the bike.  He pushed. Away I flew to the bottom of the incline, peddling fast and screaming with innocent joy. The bike remained upright with Daddy’s steady hand.  At the bottom of the hill I jumped off, turned the bike around and we repeated the push up the hill. 

 Despite the neighborhood disintegrating, the memory of bike lessons endures.  Those were special afternoons with my daddy.