It's happened: Now I'm part of history

The story in Sunday's paper about organizing students in Springfield, Mo., to walk to school was amusing to me.

Can it really be true that a whole generation -- maybe a couple of generations -- have forgotten when walking was the rule, not the exception?

If you drive past any school today a few minutes before the first bell rings (do they still ring bells in schools?) or a few minutes after the last bell rings, you will see that we are no longer a nation of walkers.

We are riders.

Those long lines of cars are being driven by parents delivering children who would think you're crazy if you suggested walking. Some of those cars are being driven by high school students for whom bigger and bigger parking lots are a necessity.

If public schools wanted to end their perennial funding squeeze, they would demand tolls from parents who deliver their children to school by car or charge students who drive their own cars. This is a win-win concept. Schools would rake in hundreds of thousands of additional dollars. Or students would be healthier as a result of walking. Or more students would ride school buses.

At Weaver Elementary School in Springfield, students who use their own two legs to get to school don't just walk. Heavens no. Walking is so ... unusually ordinary.

At Weaver, students line up to become part of a Walking School Bus (I'm not making this up) with adult "drivers" -- keeping an eye out, no doubt, for spitballs.

I know a bunch of you have just put down your spoonful of Bran Buds and are smiling.

And if you're smiling, I can tell you approximately how old you are.

You are old enough to remember, as I can, when you walked two miles to and from school, and it was uphill both ways.

That's how far it was from our house on Killough Valley in the Ozarks over yonder to Shady Nook School on Greenwood Valley. Neighbors who lived a mile up the valley from us had that much farther to walk.

And, as I was explaining to a wide-eyed 24-year-old a couple of weeks ago when we were comparing the athletic shoes we were wearing, many of those Shady Nook students were barefoot when school started. Shoes weren't worn until cold weather arrived.

I also told my amazed listener that I was not among the barefoot students -- I had school shoes, chore shoes and church shoes.

Church shoes were my favorite, because they felt so good on my feet. Whenever I put on church shoes, I felt like I could run faster than anyone. But I didn't. You can't run in church. It's somewhere in the Bible. And if you did you were reprimanded by your parents or any nearby grown-up. So my running was limited to school shoes and chore shoes. If you walk two miles to and from school, you're not in the mood for running, because when you get home you have to put on your chore shoes and ... well, do chores.

I'm trying to imagine what those two-mile walks to Shady Nook would have been like if the Cole and Secord and Rich and Sullivan kids had lined up in a Walking School Bus every weekday morning.

On second thought, I prefer not to imagine that.

Yes, we are a nation of riders who expect shuttles to haul us if we have to park way out in the mall parking lot. What's next? Shuttles at fitness centers?

That's what riding to school has taught us: Walking is history.

At least I can say I was a part of history.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.