paint it black

I will warn you now that this story doesn't really go anywhere, it's just something I remember from my childhood and a mystery that will forever linger in my mind:

I lived in something of a paradox when I was young boy. On one hand, I had a neurotic, over protective mother, on the other she worked 12 hour shifts and I was given a great deal of freedom during that time.
At the age of 6, I was a 'latch key kid.' I had a red cord around my neck that held both my house key and a key to the bike shed of our apartment building. My bike, quite possibly the best inanimate friend a kid could have, was a combination gift from an aunt and my grandfather. My aunt had found it, derelict along a stretch of train tracks. She brought it home and my grandfather fixed it up, painted it black and later presented it to me (to my knowledge he never worked on a bike before or after that). It wasn't my fist bike but it was definitely one of the most memorable.

We had some awesome adventures that bike and I. With the exception of winter, when I would be towing a toboggan, I was always on my bike when I was outside. I can remember outrunning guard dogs on a stretch of private property. Or at least feeling like I was outrunning them - there were two signs posted on a road that ended somewhere I was too afraid to travel to the end of, one said, "Private property, keep off" the other "beware of dogs." Whenever I rode my bike on the road I wasn't supposed to be on I could hear dogs barking and I peddled all the faster because of it. Eventually I would get to a path that took me away from the private property and when I could no longer hear the dogs I felt as though I had out-biked them. There seemed to be a greater logic to what I was doing back then but I can no longer remember, or even figure out, what it was.

My bike had something that resembled a banana seat but it was a little thicker and perfect for doubling real life friends who either didn't have a bike, or couldn't access the one they owned. It was also always up for exploring any forested area that I could peddle through, launching off jumps or the always popular and stylish 'pop-a-wheelie.'

We also faced our share of danger (more real than the dogs). There were some bullies who lived in an area that I inadvertently entered one fateful day. They took my bike and I went home in tears. The captain, with all the anger of a irate mother bear, found the boys who took my bike and made them bring her to it (they had said they couldn't get it). They had industriously placed it in a shallow hole and covered it with tree branches in the forest not far from where they lived.

We also came across a mystery that I am sure is much darker than I realized in my youthful innocence. One day, while biking to the pool, I took a short cut through the woods behind some businesses and came across a group of kids gathered around something. I asked what was going on and a boy I went to school with said they had found something. Curious, I got off my bike and went over to see . They found something alright and to this day I have no idea what they found. Semi-buried in the ground were about a dozen, maybe more, little baggies carefully tied off at the end and filled with a thick, fishbelly-white paste like substance. The bags had all been carefully placed in the ground and unfortunately I don't remember how they had been discovered. I also remember a really unpleasant smell that radiated around the baggies. Smells are supposed to be a memory trigger and I have never come across a similar scent. I also remember getting a feeling that something wasn't right about this - all of us did because we all seemed to have a collective urge to leave. I'd love to know what that was, maybe it wasn't anything but there are a lot of things I can't remember from 23 years ago and it must mean something that I can remember that.