It was an August morning in 1962, and the three of us, my brother Steve, Walter Huber, and myself, decided that we wanted to ride our bikes to Stone Mountain. Never mind that it was over 25 miles one way in Atlanta traffic or that we had one speed, balloon tire, Sears Roebuck bicycles. Back then, kids made their own adventure, because there wasn't game boys or iPods, much less computers. We had to think for ourselves and make up our own fun. Plus, the parents really got irritated if you just hung around the house.
Our Sears bicycles, painted red and white with chrome fenders, were the standard for kids during the 1960s. I don't think they came in any other color. There were what were called "English bicycles" with a three-speed gear set up, but we all thought gears for bicycles were for sissies. Good husky American kids rode one speed bicycles. They built up those leg muscles for football! And of course, no self-respecting kid wore a helmet. I don't even think they made helmets back then for bicycles.
That morning after breakfast we mentioned that we were riding our bikes to Stone Mountain. My father just grunted. My mother didn't say anything, either because she didn't hear us, or maybe because since she didn't drive, she had no idea just how far Stone Mountain was. Either way, we looked upon it as permission to go.
So off we went, in shorts, T-shirts and tennis shoes that hot summer morning. We dodged traffic as we rode our bikes down Lindbergh Avenue, underneath the Southern Railway trestle, past the Piedmont Drive-In Theatre and the Junior Varsity hotdog stand and out onto Highway 78 towards Stone Mountain.
Back in those days, Stone Mountain was still privately owned. It was primarily used by the Ku Klux Klan for rallies. The kind where they all dressed up in sheets and burned a cross. There was no tourist train running around the mountain, no Stone Mountain Village to capture souvenir dollars, not even the carving of the Confederate war heroes that all exist today. None of that was there in 1962. The State of Georgia was talking about buying the mountain, but the owner and the state couldn't come to terms yet on the price. So when we kids rode our bikes up to the base of Stone Mountain, after stopping off in the little town of Stone Mountain to walk through the Confederate Cemetery, there was nothing to prevent us from hiking up to the top of the mountain.
We left our bikes at the point where we started climbing up the mountain, not bothering to lock the bikes because no one felt the need to lock a bike up to keep it from being stolen. If it happened back then, and I'm sure it did somewhere, maybe up north in New York City or someplace like that, we didn't worry about it.
We scampered up to the top of the mountain, and came to a clearing surrounded by stubby pine trees. There, in the middle of the clearing, was the remnants of a burned cross. It had rained the night before and apparently it had been difficult to get the cross to burn completely. Scattered in the clearing were also pamphlets describing the mission of the Ku Klux Klan. Back in those days, it seemed like most everybody got along, although we were puzzled at the painted words at the front of each Atlanta Transit System bus that simply said, "All Colored to the Rear". We couldn't quite figure out why people couldn't sit anywhere they wanted on the bus.
After trekking back down the mountain, talking excitedly about our discovery of the burned cross and the evidence of the mysterious Ku Klux Klan, we mounted our bicycles for the long trip back home. We stopped at a gas station to put air in our tires, and being thirsty, we drank from the water hose. We hadn't thought to bring any money, because somehow in our 12-year-old minds, we thought we'd be back around lunchtime. But here it was, almost 2:30 in the afternoon, and we were a good three hours from home. It looked like we'd be barely home in time for supper. We decided to skedaddle.
As we passed through the outskirts of the town of Tucker, though, we rode alongside a peach orchard, and the trees were sagging with luscious looking red and yellow peaches. We found a spot to crawl underneath the barbed wire fence, and quickly grabbed as many ripe peaches as we could carry. We hustled back under the fence, gobbling down the fleshy peaches as fast as we could. The three of us ate everything but the seeds. They didn't call those peaches "delicious" for nothing. Our stomachs full, we got back out onto the highway and headed again for home.
We had gotten no further than a half mile down the road though, when a beat up old pickup truck pulled in front of us and stopped. A rough looking heavyset man wearing a straw hat got out of the truck and confronted us. "Did you kids just get into my peach orchard?” he demanded.
"No sir", we all lied. "We haven't been anywhere near a peach orchard!" If we had bothered to look, we would have seen the peach juice stains on the front of our T-shirts. But we weren't about to admit our peach theft! We continued to protest our innocence.
Then the man started smiling. That's when we really got scared. "Well boys, the main reason I stopped was to warn you."
"Warn us about what?" I asked. Walter and Steve got closer to me as we waited to hear what the stranger was going to warn us about.
He continued. "I just sprayed my peaches for bugs. There's poison all over those peaches you just ate. If I was you boys, I'd get myselves over to a hospital right quick. There's no telling what that poison will do to you!"
Terrified, we took off on our bicycles. After we had gotten away from the stranger, we stopped to parley. The last thing we wanted to do was go to a hospital. We'd have to explain why we thought we were poisoned and the next thing we knew my dad would be at the hospital whipping me and Steve for stealing peaches.
We decided to take our chances and headed for home.
Maybe it was the hot afternoon, and the combination of juicy peaches on an empty stomach, or maybe it truly was a pesticide, but 30 minutes into our continued ride, I was on the side of the road, vomiting every last bit of those peaches. It didn't take long for Steve and Walter to follow suit. Miraculously, we all felt better after we threw up, and we made it home for supper with 10 minutes to spare.
Steve and I were even able to eat two hamburgers each for supper. We were hungry from our ride and had suffered no ill effects from the peaches. The resiliency of youth!
But we never ate peaches from a tree again! Nor did we ride our bikes back to Stone Mountain.
