As a young person growing up in the Calhoun woods, I quickly started wandering across the hills and valleys near the Village of Hur. I still do, what a blessing, it has been.

I recently re-watched "Stand By Me," a Hollywood classic made forty years ago, a saga about four boys leaving their home unannounced for two days, walking into the wilderness to find a dead body.

I started wood wandering before I was ten, to increase my aimless ventures during my teen years with neighborhood boys, sometimes girls.

It was a time that even good parents permitted the roaming gene, usually requesting to be home by dark.

I wandered out the Husk Ridge to Richardson, footed it to Pulcer's Knob and Rattlesnake Knob, two of the areas highest peaks, walked the Joker Ridge a hundred times, sauntered out the forested road leading to Mt. Zion, the first primitive road into this community, and dipped down "Darkey Fork" where dwelt one of two black communities.

Most of the time my parents, who both worked, never new of my whereabouts, and I often didn't tell.

Under the "My how times have changed" department, here at the close of the first 25 years of the new millennium, we have reached a point where parents try to know where their kids are ALL the time, mostly using electronic devices. Young kids are not allowed to walk to the bus stop without adults.

Up to fourteen kids got on the old clunky school bus at Hur, some walking by themselves up to three miles, deep snow and near zero weather.

Old people often claim things were better in the good ole days, which is questionable, but they were surely different.