One of the best ways to discover America is on foot, one sidewalk at a time.

Think about it. You walk out the door, and there are you are, crossing paths with God knows who, from neighbors you've known for years to total strangers you never would have lain eyes on if you hadn't put shoes to pavement.

And you never know what conversations will erupt from running into a fellow human being. In the time it takes a dog to squat, you can chat about the price of gas and the cost of summer camp.

This week alone, people walking in neighborhoods across the country will find out the lady four houses down had a stroke, the couple across the street are expecting their third, and this year's block party is the first weekend in July.

Discoveries abound: The little girl around the corner has ditched her training wheels. A fresh sign promises a yard sale of unparalleled bounty and new neighbors. The guy you thought was so not like you supports your candidate for president.

No revving the engine, no gunning for a parking space or laying on the horn. Our legs may differ in muscle and length, but for the most part, we're on equal footing with no speed limit. Much easier on the nerves.

"When you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing democracy," Enrique Peñalosa recently told The New York Times. "A sidewalk is a symbol of equality."

Peñalosa is the former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, where he transformed entire sections of the city by building hundreds of miles of sidewalks, bicycle paths, pedestrian streets and parks.

"The 20th century was a horrible detour in the evolution of the human habitat," he told reporter Deborah Solomon. "We were building much more for cars' mobility than children's happiness."

I grew up on small-town sidewalks, where interested neighbors celebrated my every milestone and made sure I got away with exactly nothing.

If I left my flip-flops on the hill overlooking the Hutchinson house, my mother would be standing on the front porch by the time I got home, ordering me to go back and get them. Ditto in the winter, when I'd leave my little brother on that same hill buried up to his earlobes in a snowdrift and screaming as if he was on fire or something. (Such tattletales those Hutchinsons.)

Even little things, such as whether you wore your boots to school, became everybody else's business. I remember being in sixth grade and trying desperately not to look like it, when all my mother seemed to care about were my shoes.

Mom hated for any inch of us kids to get wet. Three drops of rain and she was ready to shrink-wrap us. She made us wear rubber boots so big and clunky we looked as if we hauled manure for a living.

"I don't care what the other kids have to wear," she'd yell whenever we protested. "We're not buying their shoes."

Well, I'd show her.

As soon as I got past the tiny brick apartment building full of old people, I pulled off those boots and stuffed them in the plastic bag I'd tucked under my coat. I reversed the process on my walk home, feeling pretty cocky until I saw my mother once again waiting for me on the front porch.

"Mr. Shepherd called," she said. "He saw what you did."

Good ol' Mr. Shepherd, the widower always waving from his second-floor balcony. Pretending he was all friendly.

Another life lesson learned on a sidewalk.

I don't know what to make of some neighborhoods these days, especially all those developments in the suburbs with no sidewalks and houses hermetically sealed. Children still try to play and ride their bikes, but I can't imagine it's nearly as much fun when your parents keep screaming for you to watch out for cars and stay out of the street.

And if their parents need anything — even an ice-cream cone or a gallon of milk — everyone piles into the car to go get it.

Who will be their Mr. Shepherd, their Mrs. Hutchinson?

Who, I wonder, will be their Vera?

Vera worked behind the counter at the dry cleaner on the corner. Often as not, I'd pop in on my way home from school to say hi and check on her tip jar with the little sign that read, "For Vera's Trip." She wanted to fly someday to meet Jack Lord of "Hawaii Five-O."

"A girl's gotta dream, Connie," she always said. "A girl's gotta dream."

The things you learn from walking.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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