Where the sidewalk ends....

The Mongoose, my late-life-crisis two wheeler, was left out of the shed last night which seemed like an omen: Ride! Ride like the wind!

Right. With Our Sun near her highest and the air temperature creeping past 90F, and when, exactly, did you say was the last time you were on a bicycle?

Not like we were thinkin' road trip. Not anytime soon...anyway. More like a simple shakedown pedal, just down to the construction on the River City Parks Loop and back, to check out the bike, a Wallyworld special Mongoose paver. Not exactly the 20" Western Flyer I started out on way back when, but a serviceable ride for a sexagenarian with enough sense to stay off the main drags. I just don't own the wardrobe to pull off riding that publicly!

Nearest access to the trail from The Cave is behind the flea market on Holliday Rd. Back when I first came to River City, the flea market site was Haven Amusement Park where I learned to cuss over miniature golf (18 holes for a quarter) and learned that cotton candy is an icky, sweet, cheap high! At the very back of the park, beyond the handful of carnie games, was this HUGE! public swimming pool that would not figure in this four-year-old's life for several more years.

I cannot tell you how drastically this neighborhood has changed in the five decades since I first knew it! Most obviously, an entirely different channel has been dug for the creek and freeways channel traffic flow overhead. On a skateboard I made myself with a 2X4 and one of my sister's sidewalk skates, I was one of the first to actually put wheels to pavement before those overhead lanes were opened to the public. Nearly all the old car lots of the fifties are long gone now from what remains of old Jacksboro Highway, back then the main highway in from Fort Worth and points south.

This section of the hike 'n' bike trail east from the flea market is one of the newer stretches. The trail gives out to construction right about where it ducks under Jacksboro Hwy. It picks up again beyond the heavy earth movers to skirt River City's Eastside and follow the river back to the west to Lucy Park. Once these final few hundred feet are finished later this summer the trail will link Lucy and Lake Wichita Parks.

But for today this is where the sidewalk ends. That old sun isn't getting any less intense, and my cell phone is spittin' out text message alerts as if the Mayan end of the world was ahead of schedule. We'll come back this way every now and again, just to make the workers wonder what the old geezer with the digital camera is up to. Right now there's a pitcher of tea on the top shelf of the fridge with my name on it.

Last one back is a rotten egg!

Roots revisited

Miller's Cave is an 8x12, two-bit shed deep in Brook Village, the very heart of River City's historic old country club.  Not The Country Club colony just up the road by the old Burns Mansion, mind you.  We're nearer Gene's on Holliday, around the corner from where Haven Park used to be and smack in the middle of where River City's Country Club began.  That's Ben Franklin Elementary a short hike west.  Started First Grade there, back in '55.  We lived on the other side of Mr. Kemp's & Mr. Kell's railroad tracks on Avenue Q long before someone turned it into a muppet musical.  Two blocks east is Carrigan where I unceremoniously ended my elementary school career, thrilled to be moving on to Barwise Junior High!

Brook Village field office, a.k.a. Miller's Man Cave

We could visit for years over how a 62-year-old son of a sea dog came to be retired in this neighborhood. I won't keep you engaged here quite that long. Not at one sitting at any rate.  This journal, you see, is a lot like a road trip but different.  Getting there doesn't mean a damn thing; it's the trip that counts.

Hear that?  The bells of First United Methodist Church (FUMC) chime out "Praise Him! Praise Him! Jesus our blessed redeemer."  Sitting out here of a Sunday morning, you can hear those bells if the neighbor birds aren't too chatty.

That was the first Methodist church in River City, I believe.  Goes back to 1881.  A mile northeast is the foundation print of our original home church, First Primitive Baptist Church, that stood on the corner of Seventeenth & Burnett Streets until TXDOT decided it needed that piece of real estate more than we did.  Ours was not the first Primitive Baptist church in River City.  At least one other predated it and was located over on Northside.

Ours was, however, the first progressive hardshell baptist church here; progressive in that it allowed piano accompaniment for song services and Sunday school, neither of which was allowed in "old line" churches.  Some of the brethren were shocked, or so I've heard, that W.P. & Cordie Saunders--my Mom's folks--would leave the old church and help charter a new one.  History records no other particular, peculiar people excel at feuding, breaking up, splitting off, making up and starting all over again like hardshell baptists.  And they've got the late, great Speaker of The House Mister Sam Rayburn to prove it.

The split between the two local churches came before my time, but I'd like to think that metamorphosis was to prepare the ground for my arrival.  Not too likely, I'll admit, but it could have had something to do with Granddad Saunders being a deacon and Mom learning to play piano.

DRAT! There's the phone!  Excuse me, I have to take this.....