The time I got run over — and kept walking

One of the great blessings of my life is that I never had to ride a bus to school.

On my first day in first grade in the Year of our Lord 1961, my mother walked me up Apartment Street and down Park Avenue to the campus of what was then Drexel Primary School.

After that, at the ripe old age of 6, I was on my own.

Drexel Primary was roughly eight-tenths of a mile from our house. A perfectly acceptable distance for a first grader to walk on his own.

Of my four grandchildren, the oldest is in the fourth grade while the next in line is in the third.

Their parents would no more let them walk to school than they would let them play with scorpions.

Apartment Street had no sidewalk and still doesn’t. But in 1961, there were only three houses on the entire street.

Park Avenue had sidewalk most of the way.

And the only street crossing was where Park Avenue and Mountain View Street intersected, and back in those days, that intersection was blessed with a stoplight.

It was at that intersection that I was knocked down by a big ol’ Lincoln in the early autumn of 1962.

I was 7 by then and knew how to tie my own shoes. But somehow, I had gotten it into my head that so far as stoplights were concerned, green meant stop and red meant go.

Normally, there wasn’t enough traffic on Mountain View to make any difference, but on this day I stepped squarely in front of the aforementioned Lincoln.

Luckily, the gas-guzzling behemoth struck me only a glancing blow and I and my book satchel were sent sprawling in the grass of a Mountain View residence.

I guess a kid who thinks red means go and green means stop wouldn’t be considered the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but to make my intellectual standing absolutely clear, I stood up, shook myself off, and took off in a sprint.

Certain that if I were caught, I would be hurled into the hoosgow, I got off the streets and made my home through corn fields and woods.

The weather was warm, the front door was open, and my mother was working in the kitchen. I slipped through the screen door, entered my parents’ bedroom, and immediately scooted under their bed, figuring I could lay low for a week or two.

No more than a few minutes passed before a loud knock came on the front door, said knocking administered by an officer of the Drexel Police Department.

The officer informed my mother that her youngest son Billy had been struck by a car a short while ago but had run off before anyone could check to see if he was hurt.

What ensued was a lot of yelling and screaming and crying and I thought the cuffs and a long period of imprisonment were sure to follow.

My mother was too relieved when I crawled out from under the bed, with nary a scratch on me, to administer the beating I no doubt deserved, and the police must have had other desperados to deal with on that September afternoon.

The officer did not leave our home, however, until he was certain that young Billy now understood that red meant “STOP!” and green meant “GO!”

That lesson came more than six decades ago and yet I have never once forgotten it.

Now if any parents of school-age children are reading this remembrance, you’re likely thinking that surely my parents came to their senses, realized that a 7-year-old had no business walking to school, and that I was ferried there the following morning by my mother in the family Chevy.

Nope.

Didn’t happen.

Young Billy marched out the front door the next morning and walked to school as per usual and as per normal.

I walked to and from Drexel Primary each school day for three years.

From 1964 to 1969, I walked to the now long-demolished Drexel Elementary School on Main Street.

And, from the autumn of 1969 to the spring of 1973, I walked to and from Drexel High School each day.

By doing so, I escaped the mayhem, violence, and disorder which my bus-riding friends endured each morning and each afternoon.

More importantly, I began each day outside, getting a fine dose of daily exercise before I even realized what exercise was.

I could linger after school as long as I wanted, either for club activities or just hanging out with my buds, with no worry about missing a bus or about having to phone a parent to come get me.

Maybe the world really was different back then — fewer cars, fewer worries, and perhaps a little more faith in a child’s ability to find his own way.

Or maybe it was just that my parents understood something we’ve slowly talked ourselves out of over the last several decades: that independence, like anything else, has to start somewhere.

I wasn’t the brightest 7-year-old to ever misread a stoplight, but I learned, and I kept on walking.

And in those miles between home and school, I picked up more than an education — I gained a sense of freedom and confidence that no bus ride could ever deliver.