Essay: On the Simple Driveway
(2020) To be a lifelong resident affords recurring moments of rekindling when traveling down roads of the youth. Not far from here is a secondary road that gets busier each year. I used to look upon its countryside from the frosted window of an elementary school bus, turn off its roads for summer hockey, and lately to visit a new craft brewery. But there was always one feature that stood out in my memory.
A couple times in the past month I have taken Almshouse Road to pick up delicious pre-ordered craft beer from Warwick Farm Brewing. Their crowler cans are tasty concoctions full of goodness. Their IPAs are alluring. Whenever life returns to normal we have already plotted a route to the brewery so we can dangle our feet off the planned tasting room while looking over the neighboring golf course, cloudy IPA in hand. That is in the future but the drive takes us to the past.
Halfway down Almshouse Road is a clapboard farmhouse with a detached garage. It looks the same today as it did decades ago when I studied it from the window of my school bus to pick up kids who lived there. I still remember my classmate’s name: Toby. Toby was on my bus, in my grade, and even in my homeroom, so we spent a lot of time together. We spent enough time that I was invited to his birthday party.
The party was winding down; I was waiting to be picked up when a moment in my history presented itself. There in Toby’s driveway, laying on its side, was his bike. I had a bike, but it wasn’t capable of lying on its side. You see, it still had training wheels; Toby’s did not. His square driveway, flanked by the side door of the house and the L-shaped garage afforded just enough room to pedal around without gaining speed. It was perfectly flat. To this day, I don’t know why I did it, but I picked up his bike. Without thinking I stood over the bike, pushed off, and began pedaling around the paved driveway. It was my first time ever riding without training wheels.
On my last trip to Warwick Farms Brewing, past that old house where the birthday party took place, I wondered several things. I wondered quickly if Toby’s family still lived there. Shortly after that party I switched schools, switched buses and never really saw him again. But I wondered who else out there remembered the exact moment of riding without training wheels, let alone the circumstances surrounding it. This memory came flooding back as I passed the house that I had not seen in more than ten years. When my parents picked me up on that day, Toby’s mom relayed I had jumped on the bike and rode it without incident. When I got home, the training wheels came off.
Something makes me feel that I knew that that first ride without training wheels was eternal. I would like to think I took a moment to catalogue my feelings, to know these were the first few feet of freedom. Few things have stuck with me in life like the allure of riding a bike, and it all started on a square driveway waiting for my parents. I am hopeful that everyone has joyful memories of riding a bike, particularly that first successful ride when we took flight at mile one and never looked back. Independence only looks forward.
