Freedom Rider

When I was 11 years old, I had a Schwinn with riser handlebars. I was a free-wheeler and the summer was mine.

Wearing only swimming trunks and go-ahead sandals, my pals and I pedaled full-speed to the Alhambra city swimming pool every day, arriving early to wait for the pool to open. We had time to kill. Eons. After swimming and diving in cool chlorine water, we chirped dirt to Leo’s malt shop and chugged down peach shakes.

In the afternoon, with my Los Angeles Herald-Express newspaper bag strapped onto the handlebars, I delivered my route. The hard part was making it up Stockbridge hill with a full bag, but coming down I swerved into driveways, then back out to the street in practiced maneuvers, whipping neatly folded evening editions onto porches. Business was thriving and I was in the black.

My wheels took me to the double features at the El Rey theater and to Boy Scout camp-outs at the Emery Park Youth Center. I cruised to the library, where I spent leisurely days reading “The Martian Chronicles” and “From Here to Eternity.” I rode everywhere, even to Pasadena and Temple City, and I didn’t have to be home until 10 p.m.

One day, Louie Tavares and I lowered ourselves inside an open manhole and hiked for hours in a maze of storm drains, taking about what would happen if it started to rain. But we knew it never rained in the summer. We were invincible.

On the Fourth of July, I tied sparklers to the handlebars and rode all the way down Stockbridge at full speed, no hands, my bike emitting a fiery shower like a rocket ship.

I was a free-wheeler, zooming across sidewalks and hopping curbs--a racer, a diver, a spaceman, a soldier, an explorer, a paperboy who could deliver his entire route in an hours.

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Screenwriter Petievich’s last movie was “Boiling Point.” He’s working on a book about the Los Angeles Police Department.