I love to walk. I'm a Walking Man.
My 89-year-old Father walks several miles every morning, unless the Idaho winter or a gimpy leg keeps him indoors. He's a Walking Man.
My Grandfather was a long-time Walking Man at 93-years-old until an errant driver tagged him while crossing the street. He survived but knew being confined to a wheelchair wasn't for him, so he stopped eating and rolled into eternity. He was a Walking and Rolling Man.
My Great-Grandmother was (we're told) walking from Mexico City to the Texas border when my Grandfather was born. She was a Walking Mom.
My people... we walk.
Picture this: a typical school day morning in La Puente,
California in the late 1960’s.
Our house was located just outside the zone where the school buses transported kids. This meant I walked (or rode my
bike) to school almost every weekday until I got my license at 16. My schools were all about a mile from home, so walking was no big
deal, even as a third-grader.
I attended Willow Junior High School from September 1968 to June 1970. The daily morning walk was down Sunset Avenue, then onto Nelson Avenue for a mile to the
corner of Nelson and Willow Avenue, where the school was located. I don’t recall ever riding my
bike to Willow.
I wonder why?
I normally left the house around 7am. Walk the block, then right on the street with neighborhood border walls on my side and commercial buildings on the other. In fact, that side of Nelson was in the City of Industry, with the middle of Nelson serving as the borderline with La Puente. There were no sidewalks on that side of the street.
When I reached Tonopah Ave., I turned right and continued to Roger’s house, where I’d ring the doorbell and his mom would let me in. She was really nice. Their living room was open and bright, with jazz or classical music playing throughout the house. We’d leave and pick up Donnie next door, and sometimes Don would join us if he saw us rounding the cul-de-sac in front of his house. As we made our way back to Nelson, sometimes Rick would join us.
Kenny also lived on Tonopah, and occasionally we all loaded into his older sister’s Volkswagen Beetle for a ride to Willow before she went on to school. Her car had semaphore turn
signals built into the b-pillars, which always cracked me up when they popped
out.
Most mornings we walked together down Nelson, talking about cars and girls and telling jokes and just being Youngs. At Orange Avenue, across Nelson and just behind the liquor store, was a pickle factory with high fences that protected giant wooden vats of brining pickles. The aroma of vinegar and dill was VERY strong at that corner, all the time.
After another quarter-mile, we’d reach an open gate to the school at the corner of Nelson and Willow. During the daily 10am nutrition break, a catering truck would park on Nelson at the open gate and we could buy donuts, fruit, snacks, juice and candy. What the school didn’t know was the driver also sold small matchboxes filled with weed shake for a dollar. I knew a few guys that bought the weed-filled boxes, although I never did.
I wonder why?
I walked this walk almost every morning and afternoon. Occasionally I’d walk a girl home from school, which could take me in a completely different direction.
One afternoon, there was a big
ruckus in the liquor store parking lot at Nelson and Orange, with police cars
and fire engines in the street. When I reached the corner where a bunch of people were standing, I saw a burned-out Mercury Cougar sitting
in the middle of the lot, still smoking heavily and being doused by a fireman. The driver’s door was wide open, where a totally burned-up
body sat behind the wheel, looking like a giant pile of used charcoal. We learned later that the guy
had come out of a bar in the adjacent strip mall, got into his car and torched himself.
School buses... or rather, the seeming lack thereof... prompted this story.
I rarely see school buses anymore, with the notable
exception of the short buses that are mostly reserved for special-needs
students, just like they always were. Many parents now drive their kids to school, which results in long lines
of cars queuing up at schools in the mornings and afternoons.
A local Christian school near my home, situated deep in a
residential area, is causing real problems for the homeowners because of all
the cars clogging the streets to line up for the daily offspring transport.
This gridlock has led to blocked driveways, harsh words, flipped fingers and
the occasional bumper nudge to make a point. Cops have been
called on occasion, with brawls usually avoided. Usually.
I know it’s prolly different in other areas, but that’s not this.
Most newer residential neighborhoods have fewer local schools within walking distance. The e-bikes zipping around everywhere are a good way to get there, and it’s rare to see kids riding old-school pedal-power bikes anymore. I reckon the daily private limo ride to school is a natural solution for lots of them, with long lines of cars as a result.
What happened to daily school buses for kids who don’t live close enough to walk?
Most of the blame lies with the venerable Proposition 13, which has limited property tax increases in California since 1978. Even though the state's population has skyrocketed, funding for school transportation hasn't and schools are no longer mandated by law to provide buses except when equity access issues are involved.
Short buses.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, only about 2% of California students use a bus to get to school, while 68% ride in a private vehicle.
The costs associated with maintaining,
staffing, operating and insuring a fleet of buses is astronomical. Since we fund public schools via local tax dollars, there’s a huge
disparity of funding based on income, and schools struggle to make
ends meet. It stands to reason they'd leave the task of getting kids to
school up to the parents.
The only solution to this issue is money, which most parents aren’t willing or able to cough up. Legislative efforts to change the laws and increase school funding have failed repeatedly. For the time being, there’s no incentive for local, state or federal powers to help public schools beyond what is required by law.
I wonder why?
When I think about the kids in those long lines of cars, I feel bad for them. Buses would help bigly, but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon. Walking to school is one of the few ways left for kids to socialize in an uncontrolled environment without parental or authority figures around. Sadly, with small neighborhood schools a thing of the past, walking to school also seems to have fallen out of favor.
The memories of walks to and from Lassalette Elementary, Willow Junior High and La Puente High are bright 8mm films in my head, daily journeys that represented freedom… autonomy… self-reliance… self-confidence.
These days, my early-morning Old Man Walks resonate with those school days, and I relish a brisk walk in the breaking dawn. Most important now is to stay on my side of the walkway, lest I get clipped by one of those kids on an e-bike... zipping along at 15 mph, handlebar in one hand and mobile phone in the other, living their best life before they've even realized how crazy lucky they are.
If I was their age, for sure I'd be on one too... slicing through traffic, popping block-long wheelies, rolling in co-ed wolf packs... the stuff of modern youthful exuberance. When I wanna roll, I'll stick to my $10 yard sale pedal-power beach cruiser, with a bucket on my noggin and a big grin on my mug.
I'm just glad I still love to walk and have the desire and ability to do so. That's why I walk the way I walk... one foot after the other.
I'm a Walking Man.
