Twenty-five years ago, my husband and I moved with our two small sons (a two-year-old and a newborn) to a neighboring county in order to live in the school district where we were both teachers. I insisted that our new home be within walking distance of a grocery store. It seemed like a strange prerequisite since we were a two-car family; but the happiest years of my childhood, I’d lived within “walking distance.”

From the time I was two years old until I was 12, my parents, sister and I lived diagonally across the street from Mrs. Turner’s corner store. We also lived about two blocks from Tommy’s, a larger, more modern convenience store. Throughout the 1970s and early 80s, mom sent me on countless errands to pick up a loaf of bread from Tommy’s or a bar of chocolate from Mrs. Turner’s. We had charge accounts at both establishments.

I can remember walking alongside my neighbor and best friend, Mary Ann, as the two of us pushed our doll strollers over the rutted sidewalks from our houses to Tommy’s. Each of us had a shiny plastic purse slung over a shoulder with a few dollars in change rattling around inside. We couldn’t have been more than 8-years-old; but it was a different time and a safer place.

My mom laments the fact that she ever allowed me to take those walks.

“What was I thinking?” she asks; but her thoughts are stuck in the now. Back then, back there, there was nothing scary to think about. We knew everyone in every house from the corner of Pear and Spring all the way down School St. to North Main. Occasionally, one of our parents would call while we were shopping at Tommy’s. Tommy would answer the phone and then pass along the message for us to pick up a bag of sugar or remind us not to forget the can of tomato soup.

By the time my own young family relocated to Paris, Ky, in the early 2000s, I knew my boys would probably never enjoy the freedom of walking alone to the corner store; but that didn’t stop me from carting them to and from Ken’s Grocery. At first, I pushed them in a double stroller; later, I pulled them in a bright red Radio Flyer wagon. We’d head out for a walk, me with my purse over my shoulder. We’d buy popsicles or ice cream sandwiches at Ken’s. Sometimes we’d buy a loaf of bread or a chocolate bar. Then we’d walk home, the sun on our shoulders, the wind at our backs, happy to live within walking distance.