FREEDOM

 
I return to a place fifty years later because I need to reclaim my identity.   So I leave sunny SoCal and return to New York
and the places I grew up in to find..something...

   So I'm walking through the woods of my youth and I come to the foot bridge that provides a path over Kissena Park pond.  I stop and close my eyes and place my hands on the railing and it's just as I remember it.  Steel. Hard. Sturdy.  The metallic smell mixes with the smell of pond water and green plants and tall oak trees.  Multisensory experience that brings me back to a place that was a refuge in my pre-teen years.  I tighten my hands on the railing and suddenly am on a wave that lifts me up like a bent escolater and my mind fills with clips of boyhood friends: Dennis  Collin's, Kevin Macquade, Robert Bauman, Phil Cop, Drew Gasser and Kevin Hopper.  The wave moves me up..up..then in a calm desent moves me down and brings me down..down...down to a patch of grass where we have our bicycles laying down.  Then come the voices..laughter..then
"That was so cool! We've GOT  to do that again.  We must-have been going at least 100 miles an hour down that hill" Dennis says.

Kevin M shakes his head and  said. "Not possible...the hill's wave height decreases too slowly to..build up..."

Kevin H cuts in  "Fifty miles then" and takes a swig from his Amazon Purified Water bottle.
Drew stretches his body and says.

 "I stopped peddling just before the top and then let go of the handle bars like I was flying...flying..,"

Bobby Bauman chimes in.
"That was like real..freaking FREEDOM, man." 
Phil begins to clap his hands in a 4/4 rythum.
Then starts the chant  ,,,"FREEDOM...,,FREEDOM..FREEDOM...
FREEDOM...

FREEDOM....FREEDOM..

FREEDOM...FREEDOM "

 As we continue to chant the word provides an energy and I again am lifted
up..and there is nothing to stop me.   Nothing to stop the wave of 12 year old boys who "Freaking flew down a hill at 100 or at least 50 miles per hour."

 

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