Summer Freedom by Laurie Calkhoven

When I think of summer, I mostly remember the one between seventh and eighth grade. My friends and I tooled around town on our bicycles—mine was a Sting Ray with a banana seat—blowing Bazooka bubbles, stopping at the White Castle for cokes or the Dairy Freeze for ice cream, pooling our money and sharing if someone—usually me—didn’t have enough. Without a thought to having to lock up our bikes, we wandered through five and dime stores, or hung out at the bowling alley watching the teenagers and deciphering clues as to how we’d have to behave in a year or two.

There were five of us. We thought of ourselves as a “gang,” and gave ourselves all kinds of names. For a time we were the True Mints, because mints are cooler than cool. Then someone came up with the bright idea for us to wear those heavy chain dog collars as bracelets and call ourselves the Chain Gang. And for a few days—I don’t remember why—we were the Spoons.

It was just one summer. A summer of freedom and joy. We were old enough to get on our bikes and disappear for the afternoon (this was back in the 70’s before kids showed up on milk cartons), but not old enough for summer jobs. My bike was stolen toward the end of that summer, and by the next my family had moved to a new, less bike-friendly town. But it’s still the summer I remember the best.