GREENGO

Small towns were relatively safe in the 1950s and 1960s. I rode my bike to school, put down the kickstand, parked it alongside the others, and hoped they wouldn't all fall into a pile. After school I biked to my parent's newspaper office and went in, leaning the bike against the window outside. It stayed there waiting for me.
The streets "rolled up" after five o'clock except on Thursday nights when the newspaper went to press. Then the only light in town, other than a couple of streetlights, was the light coming from the open door at the back of the print shop. I'd ride figure eights on the one-block main street, waiting for the papers to get printed.

I loved that bike! I had ridden my tricycle to the little one-room library and around the crooked sidewalk in front of the courthouse long enough. Finally! One Christmas, there it was! I named it "Greengo" because it was green and it would GO!

The hardest task Greengo ever had was riding down a dirt road beside my friend Phyllis and her horse. It wasn't really dirt. It was fine, powdered sand. I pushed more than I rode!

I owned Greengo from age seven to sixteen. Painted her once with this gosh-awful flat color of green that had looked pretty good on the glossy swatch in the paint section of the Shell gas station/hardware store. I don't remember what ever happened to the old gal. I got my driver's license, and that was that. Funny how old friends get left in the dust!