The Gravel Pit

continued

The next year we turned sixteen and could legally ride our bikes on the road to reach other dirt tracks. That spring, riding out Liberty to the trails behind the Huron Valley Swim Club, I noticed that someone had installed a cyclone fence around the perimeter of the Killins pit. "Bummer," I thought. "I guess it's closed to us for good."

It didn't bother me much then. Like everyone who has ever turned sixteen, I was loving the freedom of being able to go places without having my parents drive me.

Like the friends in Stand By Me, the four of us went our separate ways not long after that October forty years ago. But that day in Krull Construction's driveway, I remembered our youthful excitement and how much the place once meant to us.

As I turned my car around, Bob Seger's "Back in '72" came on the radio. That was kind of spooky.   

[Originally published in October, 2012.]