Some of the best childhood memories aren’t bought in stores.
They are homemade—built from imagination, a little mischief, and the
freedom to explore. In our family, those memories often began with a bicycle
and something someone else had thrown away.
My love of bicycles began long before my boys discovered the
freedom of riding on two wheels. While we were living in England, my daddy
rescued an old bicycle from a junkyard and restored it for me. Daddy was a
fix-it man, always able to see possibilities in things other people had given
up on. What someone else had discarded became my very first bicycle and the
beginning of a lifelong love of riding.
Years later, when we lived in Hampton, Virginia, my bicycle carried
me on countless adventures. My parents and I spent many evenings pedaling
through the streets and neighborhoods together. We rode what seemed like a
million miles. I couldn’t tell you how far we actually went, but I remember the
pleasure of being together, the turning pedals, and the feeling that there was
always something else to discover around the next corner.
Eventually, those family rides led to adventures of my own.
I must have been about eleven when my parents began allowing
me to ride from our home to the nearby military base, a trip of approximately
two miles. There was swimming and bowling to look forward to, and I was
delighted to have the freedom to go without my parents accompanying me.
Well, almost on my own.
My little brother, who was only six, often came along in an
attached baby seat on the back of my bicycle. Imagine an eleven-year-old girl
pedaling through Hampton with her six-year-old brother perched behind her!
Our route took us down North King Street and across the King
Street Bridge, riding along the narrow sidewalk with cars zooming by just a few inches away. Looking back, I can hardly
believe my parents allowed us to make that journey. Getting myself across the
bridge was one thing. Doing it with my little brother riding on the back was
another.
At the time, I don’t remember thinking about what might go
wrong. I was thinking about swimming or bowling and the satisfaction of getting
there under my own power. My brother was along for the adventure, and we had a
whole day to enjoy.
I wonder now whether my parents worried as we pedaled away.
Did they watch us disappear down the street and hope we would return safely? I
never thought to ask them then. I was too busy enjoying the independence they
had given me.
There were smaller adventures, too. One of my favorite
destinations was a shopping center where I could buy éclairs from my favorite
donut shop. Those cream-filled pastries were worth every turn of the pedals.
There was something especially satisfying about making that
trip by myself. I could decide when to go, enjoy my treat, and pedal home
feeling as though I had accomplished something important. I didn’t recognize it
then, but those simple outings were helping me become more confident and
independent.
Years afterward, my boys, Dustin and Jarred, found that same
freedom.
They were always active and happiest outdoors. When Dustin
was nine and Jarred was seven, some of their favorite adventures began at their
grandparents’ home in Jourdanton, Texas. The house sat on Elm Street, plain and
unpretentious, but to two boys with dirt on their knees and daylight burning in
their pockets, it was a kingdom.
Between 1995 and 2001, my adoptive mother, Barbara Jeane
Crawford Meyer—Grandma to Dustin and Jarred—lovingly cared for them after school and
whenever my job required me to travel. My parents’ house became their home away
from home, a familiar place where breakfast waited in the kitchen and adventure
waited just beyond the screen door.
Grandma didn’t fill their days with expensive toys or
carefully planned entertainment. She gave them something better: room to roam, Grandpa’s collection
of junk to investigate, and enough freedom to turn an ordinary afternoon into
something worth remembering.
Mornings at Grandma’s had their own rhythm. The percolator
rattled on the stove, and cigarette smoke curled from a glass ashtray on the table, drifting past the window blinds. In her housecoat and slippers,
with her coffee close by, she made pigs in a blanket for breakfast.
She popped open a can of biscuits, flattened each one with
her palm, wrapped it around a little smoked sausage, and pinched the seam
before setting it on a cookie sheet. The oven door squeaked, and soon the
kitchen smelled of baking dough, salty sausage, coffee, and cigarettes. The
boys ate their pigs in a blanket hot, their fingers shiny with grease.
Then the screen door banged shut like a starter pistol, and they were off.
Having learned to ride a year or two earlier, Dustin and
Jarred had discovered that bicycles were much more than two wheels and a set of
handlebars. They were tickets to independence.
I can still see Dustin, older and certain, pumping the
pedals of a hand-me-down bicycle as though he were racing the Texas wind.
Jarred pedaled just as eagerly to keep up, his laughter trailing behind. Gravel
popped beneath their tires. Dust rose and clung to their socks. Heat shimmered
over the grass while cicadas carried on from the mesquite trees.
Their bicycles weren’t new, but that hardly mattered. They
were explorers crossing unknown land and traveling across a dry, red planet called Jourdanton.
What I didn’t know then—and learned only years later—was how far their exploring took them. Apparently, their idea of a little ride around the neighborhood was quite different from mine.
Dustin and Jarred have since told me about riding more than
a mile from their grandparents’ house, heading north of town along Brown
Avenue. Those journeys included crossing busy Highway 97. Even now, the thought
of my nine- and seven-year-old boys taking their bicycles across that highway
makes my heart skip a beat.
I can only imagine what I would have said had I known. To
them, it was simply part of the adventure. To their mother, hearing about it
years afterward, it was a reason to be grateful that the story could be told
with everyone safely grown.
And then I remember an eleven-year-old girl crossing the
King Street Bridge with her little brother on the back of her bicycle. Perhaps
my boys came by their adventurous ideas more honestly than I care to admit.
Daddy’s talent for fixing things came with a backyard full
of junk he might need someday: scrap lumber, old parts, and an assortment of
objects whose usefulness wasn’t always obvious to anyone but him. Dustin and
Jarred saw that collection differently. To them, Grandpa’s backyard held
everything they needed to create their own adventures.
They gathered pieces of scrap wood and hauled them to the
post office parking lot, where they and their friends built ramps for their
bicycles. There were no store-bought kits, no instructions, and certainly no
professional supervision—just leftover lumber and a group of boys determined to
see how high they could jump.
I never saw those ramps, so I can only imagine their construction. I suspect my opinion of their sturdiness would have differed considerably from theirs. But to Dustin, Jarred, and their friends, they were probably masterpieces. They had sorted through Grandpa’s junk, worked out a design, and built something they could use.
Looking back, I see the connection to that old bicycle Daddy
brought home from the junkyard in England. He had turned something discarded
into a gift for me. Years later, his grandsons were finding their own
possibilities in the scraps he kept. Across three generations, we were
discovering how much enjoyment could begin with something old and a willingness
to make it useful again.
When the boys weren’t riding, there was still plenty to do.
Scrap lumber became ramps, and cinder blocks and plywood became jumps.
Cardboard boxes became castles. Sheets dragged from the house and draped over
the clothesline became tents and forts, held in place with rocks, rope, and
stubborn determination.
They dug holes to see what was underneath and caught
grasshoppers to use for bait. Even the sprinkler became part of a game, with
the boys darting through the spray, trying to dodge the water, and laughing
when they got soaked anyway. Their entertainment came from their hands, their
imaginations, and whatever they could find in the yard.
Sometimes Grandma watched from the porch, a glass of sun tea
sweating beside her. When she called them in for lunch, they arrived loud, rowdy and very little inclination to stay indoors. They ate, then
disappeared again with another bang of the screen door.
They tracked in mud and grass and occasionally tried to
bring their outdoor discoveries into the house. Grandma had a clear opinion
about where those things belonged.
“Get that shit outside before I spank your ass!”
There was no mistaking what she meant. Back outside they
went, taking their treasures and their commotion with them.
That, too, was part of being at Grandma’s. She loved those
boys, but loving them didn’t mean letting everything they found in the yard
come through her kitchen.
By evening, the sun had dropped low, but the Texas heat
still hung in the yard. The air smelled of dry grass and damp earth where the
sprinkler had been running. Grandma would stand at the door and call their
names. Dustin and Jarred came running, their hair damp with sweat, their shirts
clinging to their backs, and both of them smelling like wet dog. They talked
over each other, each determined to tell her about the day’s adventures first.
A few years later, we moved to an apartment complex in
Pleasanton, Texas. A different address did nothing to diminish their
resourcefulness. Once again, they found scraps of wood and other discarded junk
and built a bicycle ramp. The apartment parking lot became the place to ride,
practice jumps, and spend hours entertaining themselves.
I still smile at the nicknames they gave themselves. Dustin
was “Man Bug,” and Jarred was “Pocket Change.” Those names fit the playful boys
I remember, always ready to invent a game or find another use for something
lying nearby.
From Grandpa’s backyard in Jourdanton to the apartment
parking lot in Pleasanton, the setting changed, but the essential ingredients
stayed the same: two bicycles, a few scraps of wood, an open space, and an
afternoon ahead of them.
Those years between 1995 and 2001 are gone now. The bicycles
rusted, the forts collapsed, the screen door was replaced, and the ashtray was
put away. Dustin and Jarred grew into men with jobs, bills, and hard days of
their own.
But when I listen to their stories, I hear the boys again. I
hear their excitement over a ramp they built themselves, their laughter at
something I was never supposed to know, and the easy certainty that Grandpa’s
backyard held everything they needed.
I hope they can still hear the gravel beneath their tires
and remember the Texas sun on their shoulders. I hope the smell of coffee or
biscuits baking brings back Grandma’s kitchen. And I hope that somewhere
beneath the noise of their grown-up lives, they can still hear her calling them
home.
My daddy couldn’t have known, when he rescued that bicycle
in England, that years later his grandsons would be digging through his
backyard junk to build bicycle ramps. But when Dustin and Jarred tell those
stories, I recognize something familiar: the satisfaction of making something
yourself and the freedom to see where it might take you.
An old bicycle. A handful of lumber. Two boys who could make
an afternoon’s entertainment out of almost anything.
The ramps are long gone, but the stories remain—homemade, just like the adventures themselves, stitched together from imagination, mischief, freedom, and a family’s love.
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All primary source information referenced was obtained from a variety of published and archival materials, including books, historic newspapers, U.S. census records, vital records, probate files, and land documents. These sources were accessed through leading genealogical platforms such as Newspapers.com, Ancestry, FamilySearch, Find a Grave, as well as through local, state & federal archival repositories, libraries and private collections. Interpretive narrative may also include Carol Anna Meyer Brooks' personal experiences or family stories shared with her throughout her lifetime.
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