Long Walks With Mom

Mom didn't drive in the 50s, so she and I walked. Together we strolled down Walnut Ave. past the Olsen's and the Olglesby's and the Fleisch's and down to Trackie's store. Around the lake we'd go and take a break at the swings.
After Carl was born, our walks expanded farther out into the town; up Lake Ave. and down Glassboro Road. We'd travel to the Pioneer Food Store, a small grocery where I could get penny candy. We'd cross Glassboro Road and walk up Elm to the small post office,where I would stare at the bronze and glass doors of the PO boxes. At the time I believed that when you put a letter in the mailbox, pneumatic tubes sucked your letter to the post office, where it would be directed to other towns via some vast network of those same devices. Too much Captain Video I guess.
Across Elm and down Academy Ave. to that place called school, a place Mom said I'd soon have to go to to learn things. Past the school and back to Lake Ave. and across Glassboro Road to Walnut and home. We would talk and watch the cars and stare at the sky.
Carl was in his coach, a gray-brown steel hulk with white rubber wheels and giant springs that bounced the whole thing whenever it hit a bump.
Sometimes Whee-Zee came along, scampering across the lawns,running ahead sniffing and searching,then running back to urge us on.
We'd walk to Woodbury, three miles away,down Egg Harbor Road, Mom and Carl and Me. Past Rizzuto's farm and Lake Tract fire house,finally reaching the sidewalk at the Woodbury cemetery.
Woodbury is a city, a large town really, but it's the county seat, so there was a Woolworth's and a Kresge's and a real Acme supermarket, and a movie theatre. To me, it was Oz.
The biggest treat for me was when Mom would take us to the Sun-Ray drugstore. Sun-Ray had a lunch counter and booths in the back. I could get a most amazing lunch of a hamburger and French fries and a Coca Cola. If I had been especially good, a new comic book or two.
We would walk to Union Ave. to Nanny's house to wait for Pop-Pop to come home from work so he could drive us home in his truck. I could ride in the back,surrounded by the wooden panels rising up from the sides. I was really an Indian potentate riding his elephant; but only I knew that.
Soon I would travel those sidewalks alone,heading for school and visiting new found friends,trying not to step on the cracks so I wouldn't break my mother's back.
I would be older and on my own, but I'd never forget those long walks with mom.