It Could Have Been Me

Kirkwood, Webster Groves residents walk the streets — every single one of them — in their towns:

Gabriella Ramirez, 16, and her mom, Deanna, set out to walk every single street in their town of Webster Groves. They completed their 160-mile journey in mid-June.

You know, when I lived in Old Trees, I had a baby who liked to ride in the stroller. So from the middle of 2006 to the middle of 2008, we roamed all over Old Trees for hours a day. The baby got up at 5am or so, and I’d feed him and take him for a two hour or so walk, and put him down for his morning nap. He’d wake up, have something to eat, and we’d go for our mid-day walk for a couple of hours, and then we would come home for his afternoon nap. He’d awaken somewhere in the mid-afternoon, and we would go out again for an hour or so. And maybe a little walk after dinner. We did this pretty much year-round, including 100 degree days in the summer and cold days in the winter where I’d put socks over his mittens. So we covered a lot of Old Trees, but not all of it.

We covered all of Tuxedo Park, Old Orchard, Webster Park, and Old Webster many times, but we were light on Sherwood, North Webster, and the other spots north of Lockwood (and the train tracks). Mostly because they were the most distant. A bit because some of the streets lacked sidewalks. Some, too, because North Webster is predominately black, and I have a policy of avoiding being the only one of anything anywhere (sure, some will call it RACISM, but I would feel the same about a predominately Serbian neighborhood like you find in south St. Louis).

In those days, before the iPhone and before smartphones took off, you didn’t have the ability to track the streets and your walks on an app; perhaps if I had gamified it, I would have made the effort toward completeness. And maybe got a book deal out of it. You know, the things I do, I don’t think about writing a book about. Maybe I should if I ever want to be a Real Writer.

Our walking days pretty much ended in the middle of 2008 when the youngest came along. He had an internal timer for 20 minutes, and if he was in a car seat or a stroller for longer, he would begin to wail inconsolably until he was out. This limited our walking excursions and car trips for the most part, but in Old Trees, you weren’t twenty minutes away from most things you’d need–church, shopping, and even my sainted mother’s house was just a touch over twenty minutes away. So we got by, and he got less ornery before we moved to the country.

As to walking all the local roads, well, I have not walked them as the block across the street is 4.1 miles around (4.2 on the bike), and the block we live in is 8.2 miles around by bike (or so I mapped; I haven’t done it because one side of the block is a two-lane farm road with no shoulder, no visibility, and lots of curves and hills that my beautiful wife doesn’t like to drive on, much less run or bike). So I have run on some of the major roads around, but not all of the cul-de-sacs and certainly not the private drives that abound in the neighborhood.

Still, good on these kids in Old Trees and More Old Trees on their adventures.

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