My first real date in high school had been with a boy in the class ahead of ours. Oldest son of a doctor, he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and enrolled in what was then known as Iowa State College in Ames. I had not the slightest knowledge of where Ames was located, never having had a reason to study the Iowa road map. (You’d have thought that, sometime during our junior high school study of Iowa history, we would have been exposed to that basic information.) Mother had taught me to drive her car, but I had no license, not even a learner’s permit since I’d learned my driving skills off-road in our cow pasture and had no necessity to consult a road map.

Even after I’d been accepted as a student at the University in Iowa City, I was uncertain about whether that might be the same school that my friend attended. Even worse, I had little sense of just where Iowa City was but trusted that my dad would get me there when the time came for my debut into higher education. Looking back, I find my naivete at the time embarrassing, but such innocence was not unusual for my generation. Today, I find that it is simpler for me to navigate with the aid of landmarks rather than highway numbers and the compass, and that is quite possibly the reason I have a poor sense of direction and have been known to get lost in parking lots.

I never had a car at my disposal until after I was married, so there was no need for a driving license. In college, undergraduates were discouraged from having cars on campus and nearly everyone walked everywhere. At home, I had always had a bicycle, as did all my sisters. My parents considered bicycles to be sufficient transportation for us in our relatively small town, as well as being inexpensive and good exercise. I often went on leisurely after-supper rides by myself, with no particular destination, enjoying the freedom and solitude as well as the opportunity to discover new sights and resurrect pleasant memories. It wasn’t surprising, then, that I should find myself on my bike, making a nostalgic tour of my old neighborhoods and other locations a few days before I left for my new life in Iowa City.

I rode past the house on Main Street where I was born, across the street from my junior high school (originally the town’s first high school building.) Less than two when we moved to First Street, I remember nothing about my first home, but have pictures showing one of Mother’s many flower gardens with a goldfish pool and weeping willow tree. Summers on First street featured the screened-in front porch where we slept behind canvas awnings, played cards and read comic books on rainy days and where I spent a couple humid July weeks suffering with mumps.

Across the street lived Johnny Fee, a teenager who gave me rides in the handlebars if his bicycle. His best friend worked at the Jack Spratt Store and was killed when a shelf full of canned goods fell on him. Mother took us to the funeral home to see him before the funeral, the first time I realized that you didn’t have to be old to die.

A few blocks south, our street turned into a country road where we often rode our bikes to wade in Competine Creek and eat our picnic lunch of peanut-butter sandwiches, oranges, oatmeal cookies and Kool-Aid® that Mother had packed in Karo syrup pails. Once, I had a flat tire on my bike and a farmer in a pickup stopped, loaded our bikes into the back and drove us home where we later got a stern lecture about the dangers of accepting rides from strangers (although our parents knew the farmer, we girls hadn’t.) I rode past the vacant lot where my big sister had convinced me it would be fun to roll down the hill in a rusted barrel and where a cantankerous billy goat had lived – the goat that had proven to be the cause of a severe allergy that put me in the hospital for several days one summer. Last, I rode past the East Ward Elementary School filled with memories. A couple of my favorite teachers there had made me dream of becoming a teacher too. One thing I hadn’t expected was that this would be, not only my last bike ride before I left for college, but my last bike ride ever.