The word riding means a lot to me. In the context of ridin' around, it means even more. There was a time, 37 years ago now, when my buddies and I spent a lot of time ridin' the streets of Paris. There have been Saturday nights, that I have burned a tank and a half of gas, and never went anywhere except from the Dairy Queen, to the high school, to Ogburn Park, and back to the Dairy Queen.
I guess every generation has the thought that there is nothing to do in this town. We made our own fun. We would cruise, drink cold beer, and generally have a good time doing it. Sometimes some of my friends would have dates, and couldn't ride around, but it usually wasn't hard to find some one that liked riding in a cool car and drinking ice cold beverages. Looking back, it was a simple time. Nice car, Ma's credit card, a little jingle in the pocket, good friends, I had it made and sure didn't appreciate it!
The kids of today probably would have no fun ridin' around like we used to do. Paris has grown, and has so many people,and so many vehicles, that a youngster couldn't pull some of the foolishness we used to pull. Gas was almost 10 times cheaper. Cold beer might have been a little easier to come by. The police looked the other way, when they could. Young people today get too serious, too quickly. As the world gets smaller, life gets faster. That is a natural progression that, I guess, we must accept.
I am very glad that I came of age in the late sixties and early seventies. I am glad I got to do a little ridin' on the streets of Paris, Tennessee. My buddies and I solved a whole lot of the world's problems on those Saturday nights, and had a lot of fun doin' it.
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from Susan Jones - When I think of "riding", I don't think of riding around in a car. For starters, we weren't allowed to ride around, we had to have a destination. And, as a youngster who had logged thousands of hours in a flower delivery van, riding around had little appeal. For me, riding around meant a different mode of transportation - my bike.
The year I learned to ride a bike with no training wheels, my whole world changed. No longer did I have to trudge to Joan Redmon's house (two full blocks away)... I could RIDE! No longer did I have to join in the carpool or walk to school, I could RIDE. I could even ride downtown and help my daddy at work, or visit with my friend, Crawdad Chambers. But the biggest advantage to a bike was that no longer could the big kids go off and leave me on their Sting Rays and Schwinns...I could RIDE.
One of our favorite destinations was Maplewood Cemetery off Dunlap Street. On the far south side of that lovely, quiet graveyard is a long, steep hill that seemed made for swooping quickly down and up on a bike. It's as if the city hired an engineer to design it. The tar and chip road resembled a marvelous ski jump, with a scary overlook at the top, straight down to a quick dip that brought the biker up on the other side. The ultimate goal was to get down that hill with no hands (I could do that) and no feet (I only did that once).
As a grownup I've visited some of my old play spots and was stunned to find how small and unimpressive they were. The big creek where we caught tadpoles and made pottery is tiny. The huge woods are only nine acres. But as an adult, when I rode to my favorite spot at Maplewood, I still had to take a hard gulp before summoning the nerve to push over the top and head down the hill.
Today when I ride around, it's mostly to get to work with a computer in the basket of my old Schwinn 5-speed, a Christmas gift in the early 70s. But no matter the destination, bike riding still beats a car or walking any day.
(If you like to ride, check out the Paris Peddlers rides in the calender on MyParisMagazine.com.)
Cruise and drink a cold beer nowadays and the sheriff will have a new sharecropper for his vegetable garden!
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