Walking to school, all business, walking home, not so much

I guess I was a pretty lucky kid. I lived within walking distance of my elementary school, junior high and high school. Although by the time I was of driving age, walking to school was so uncool although my mom did let me take the car to school once, the last day of my senior year.

The elementary school I went to was about 5 blocks north of our house. The walking to school part was all business, the walking home was another story altogether. I would often walk part of the way home with my friend Judy or my friend Annette. They would peel off way before I did though and I'd often take my time. There was this one house a few blocks from the school that had the most enchanted yard! They even had a tortoise in there that I remember visiting with the Brownie Troop I was in. They had all sorts of fruit trees too, loquats and pomegranates. They hung over the sidewalk as as my earlier blog posts have mentioned, I wasn't shy about 'picking flowers' so why would I be shy about picking fruit? The hard part was explaining the mess on my clothing, hands and face as pomegranates aren't easy to break into.

Many years after this, when I was in college, someone purchased that property from the wonderful lady who had the tortoise and the awesome garden. It was built into a modern home, that while walking through it (did I mention that I also wasn't shy about walking into half-finished building projects?) that I thoroughly approved of. What I didn't approve of was that the trees, and I also imagine the tortoise, were long gone.

When I was in the 5th grade they decided to tear down the elementary school and build a new one but that took time. At that point, we walked to that location to take a bus to another school that was probably a mile or two away. That time waiting for the bus was put to good use. We'd have our lunch money with us and we'd use a portion of that to go to Nick's Shoe Shine in town and check out his candy supply. Bringing home a pack of Ugly Cards or crumpled up candy wrappers did not make my mother happy one bit but I think what she disliked the most was when a bunch of us decided to not bother with the bus and we walked form LBE to Miano Elementary  instead. Boy, did I hear all about that when I got home that day.

Now what I need to do is get my butt in gear and locate those old pics from the day.