A Spiderman motorcycle went by, followed closely by a Batmobile, which in turn was hotly pursued by a Chips Cycle, complete with windshield. They rounded a corner out of sight, but the sounds of their make-believe engines came back at me. When they were in full view again, the Batmobile had taken over the lead and the child on the Spiderman motorcycle pedaled frantically to retake the position he had previously held, his rainbow-colored streamers flapping in the wind.

As I watched these youngsters at play with their Super-Hero vehicles, my mind�s eye brought forth images of myself at their age, racing my scooter against my friends. We played in much the same manner as these children, except the vehicles we rode were homemade devices constructed of wood.

We would beg an unneeded wooden milk or soda box from the neighborhood grocer or candy store proprietor, nail it to a plan of wood, and fasten roller skate wheels on the bottom, our handle bars or steering mechanisms nothing more than bits of wood attached to the top of the box at odd angles. Instead of multicolored racing stripes or decals like those decorating these children�s vehicles, ours were mostly decorated with bottle caps and pieces of tin or copper. No two scooters were adorned alike, everyone�s imagination making his scooter unique unto himself. Because of this, whenever we happened upon a scooter leaning haphazardly against a pole or carelessly left lying on the ground, we would immediately know who it belonged to.

My scooter�s ornamentation was composed of various bottle caps hammered at random along the plank of wood and a flattened piece of tin with a number 7 scratched into it, attached to the front of the box. Another had a plastic Indian nailed to the top of the box and a feather protruding from the rear of the plank. Still another sported pieces of tin cut into different shapes. Whatever the design and however much the scooters lacked beauty and grace, we rode them with pride, because we constructed and decorated them ourselves.

We lined up side by side along the top of the same hill continuously, day after day, spring and summer. Racing to the bottom by pushing the scooters as fast as we could until reaching a designated area, whereupon we jumped onto the plank for the remainder of the hill�s downward slope. We made sounds of police sirens, fire engine bells and racing cars, always screeching to a halt at the foot of the hill before crossing into the main avenue and traffic.

Sometimes we stopped by turning the scooters over onto their sides, stepping quickly out of the way before falling over them. Other times, we spun them around to face the direction from which we had come, leaving scratch marks along the pavement behind us, or more simply and most often, we�d stop by banging the scooters broadside again the curb or each other.

Whenever the scooters were damaged and in need of repair, we helped each other carry them home, where we renailed or rescrewed them back into shape. If they were beyond mending, we�d start from scratch again with another box, another plank, more bottle caps and tin, and we�d build another so that we could race down that same hill another day.

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