The Bike Path

I was close to my mid-teens when I started walking the 20 to 30 minutes to town from our house to meet up with friends. Sometimes, I would get a lift in from someone I knew passing by. When I finally made it into town, I would meet with a few good friends and we would stand outside the ESSO station and wait for the right person to ask to purchase some cigarettes and some beer. Once we had our illegal-to-underage items in hand, our next goal was to find some place secluded but not too far from the center of town. That was usually the bike path. The bike path was laid where an old set of train tracks used to run. It leads from the center of the town to just outside of the town. The St. Francis River runs nearby. With a line of woods between the bike path and the river, it made an ideal spot for teens to stay secluded enough from the people who did their daily walks along the path. I remember one day, while enjoying some cheap beer and the occasional puff off of a pipe, we were joined by another group who also enjoyed the seclusion of the area. They had the bright idea of lighting a small fire on the river bank. That was fine by us, it wasn’t harming anything. But, apparently it didn’t go unnoticed by the locals who lived nearby who had alerted the fire department, which was practically at the beginning of the path in town. We all scattered up to the bike path to be met by the local fire department, scolding us about the dangers of having a fire in a somewhat dry area of forest. Another time, I had woken up on a grassy area just off of the path , wearing a full suit, and dress shoes. I don’t remember getting there or what had happened while there… the empty bottles of booze suggest a good time was had….. but the day before had been a graduation….. I think? Anyway, the bike path was, and always will be one of the more memorable places of my teen life. These days, though, a rich fella bought up the land surrounding the bike path itself, so I doubt much goes on there in the recent years.