Walks Part One

I've gotten bored with the series on jobs I've held - I'll know doubt get back to them. (I only got up to 1979). I want to talk about walks. I've been taking walks for years now. The backpacking is just an extension of the habit. Coleridge used to go on long walks and compose his poetry in his head. I started because I was too young to drive. We lived 10 miles out of the city limits of Bloomington and in the summer I would walk into town to go see my friends or go to work at the A & W Drive-in on the south end of town. We lived 10 miles out from the north side of town. I could walk really fast. I used to work on Friday nights, so I would get out of school and start into town on 10th Street and then cut across Indiana University. I would wander through the Art School Building to look at the student exhibits, then stop in here (above) at the Lilly Library to see what they had on exhibit that week. Its a rare book and manuscript library. It turns out they have Gilder personal papers (see Retirement Project link). Then I'd wander through the Student Union, roll a couple games in their bowling alley and then go down by the law school and down Kirkwood to the Courthouse.

 

Then head south on Walnut to the city limits where the A & W Drive-In. There's a golden fish weather vane on the top of the courthouse here. There were a couple of bookstores worth looking at on Kirkwood. There was a bookseller that me let buy a 5 volume set of Freud's Papers, at a volume a paycheck because I couldn't afford it all at once. The migratory flocks of birds would circle the courthouse trees in the autumn evenings. I was 14-15 years old. I'd sometimes walk with other kids that worked there, but I liked to do the walk by myself mostly. I recall leaving one friend behind because he couldn't keep up. I walked it stoned once. I think it was about 10 miles.