Here is one of my all time favorites.
FIRST BICYCLE
When I was 5 years old we lived off Telephone Rd in the Golfcrest edition. Good old McHenry St. My best friend, also 5 years old lived 4 houses down from me and that Christmas he got a shiny new red bicycle. I was still bangin' around on an old beater of a tricycle and felt like the worlds biggest dork riding it.
Well, I wasn't to heartbroken when, a week after Christmas, it got stolen. My parents didn't want to buy me another one because they knew I was getting to old for 3 wheels. The were right too. From the moment I saw Buddy's new bike I just couldn' force myself to ride the tricycle ever again.
As I said, Buddy was my best friend. But he had the devil in him sometimes. He would come down and ride donuts and figures eights in front of my house where I could see him and when I would run outside he'd ride off down to his end of the street. He would OCCASIONALLY let me ride it but not often enough to suit me. The last thing I thought of each night before falling asleep and the first thing to pop into my mind each morning was that shiny red bicycle. Streamers on the handlebars and bicycle brand playing cards in the spokes...to me it sounded like the raunchiest Harley Davidson in town.
I'd try to act cool around Buddy and his new bike. You know, like it didn't matter to me whether or not I ever rode it. But inside my heart was pounding and my blood was racing. To ride that bicycle and feel the wind in my face was all I was living for those days. He'd ask me if I wanted to ride it and I'd get all shaky and stutter around and say something really ignorant like I guess if ya want me to.
I'm not exaggerating even a little bit when I tell you that I wanted my own bike a hundred times more than Ralphie Parker ever wanted that Range Rider BB gun. I mean it. I moped around the rest of the year over it. When I didn't get it for my birthday that June I felt like my life was over and had to struggle to find a reason to go on living. Then when Christmas came and went and still no bicycle I was totally despondant. Borderline suicidal perhaps.
That winter we moved into a new house in Pasadena and what was left of my social life went completely away. Most of the houses in the neighborhood were still under construction and I was the only kid around. I missed my old school. I missed my friends. And I missed that shiny red bike!
The cold bitter lonely winter finally gave way to spring. I began to focus on my birthday coming up in June. I had already decided that if I didn't get a bike by then I was gonna run away from home. I used to fantasize about moving in with my friend Buddy and riding that red bike some more.
My dad was a shift-worker and he was on the day shift when my birthday finally rolled around. He was already gone to work by the time I got up and Mom told me not to wander off that he wanted me home when he got home from work. I didn't know whether to be afraid I'd done something bad or if it might be that I had to wait so they could both give me my bicycle together.
The hours dragged by like each minute had a brick tied to it but finally I heard his old work car pull up in front of the house and the breaks squealed as he came to a stop. I ran out in the front yard to meet him and he smiled and put an arm around me and asked me what I'd been up to.
Aw, nuthin I said. My stomach was full of butterflies and I was shaking like a leaf. He told me to go on inside for a minute and go to the back of the house so I couldn't see out the living room window. Just as I went inside I saw a blue pick up truck pull up behind Dad's work car. The back was open but it had a tarp thrown over something that was back there.
I went into my room and closed the door. I laid down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. COOOOOMMMMME OOOOONNNNNNNN PULLLLL_EEEEEEZE I prayed. the suspense was about to split me wide open. My mother knocked on my bedroom door and said that Dad wanted to see me out on the drive way.
Here we go!! I tried but I could not think of a single thing other than a bicycle that would account for this type of behavior from them. It was too big to bring home in the car. It took up most of the space in the back of a pick up truck...it just HAD to be a bike.
And it was.
I ran out the front door, nearly taking the screen door off it's hinges. I was hoping it was red but I really didn't care what color it was. At least I didn't THINK I cared. I stoped dead in my tracks. There before me, was my new bicycle. The bicycle that I would be riding until I learned how to drive a car. The bicycle that ALL my friends and neighbors would SEE me riding every day.
OH NO!! It was hands down, the absolute UGLIEST bicycle I'd ever seen. Dad and another guy made it in the pipe shop out at the plant where he worked. It was made out of 1/2" tubular galvanize aluminum and painted silver. The handle bars were not the cool looking "ape-hangar" style like Buddy's red bike. They were just a half circle of 1/2" tubular aluminum. they had ugly brown handlebar grips on the end of each side...and no streamers. The wheels and tires were huge and I couldn't imagine what they had come off of. The seat was so big that my narrow little butt could have fit in it half a dozen times all at once.
And it was HUGE!
I tried my best to conceal my gut wrenching disappointment but I suppose it showed. Dad said. "Just give it a try before you turn your nose up at it. We worked very hard on it so you just give it a fair shake, okay?
Yes sir I swallowed.
He walked it down the diveway to the street and held it to the curb while I climbed aboard. He have me a shove and sent me on my maiden voyage on "Old Silver". I could reach the peddles but only just. I layed it down a couple of times that day in tight turns but by the end of the day I pretty well had it mastered. I just had to get on it at the curb and get off it in the grass where I just layed on the coaster breaks till it stopped and fell over. That night my mom doctored my scrapes and bruises and put bandaids on the ones that needed them.
By the next summer I had grown into that bike and had mastered it completely. The neighborhood had filled out nicely and there were now several kids my age for me to play with. One of the things we used to do was to ride our bikes toward each other at a high rate of speed and just before impact lock up the coaster breaks and slide the back end around so that they crashed into each other, the object being to knock out spokes on the other guys bike while protecting your own. I sent a many a boy home pushing his bike but Old Silver never lost a spoke...Not Once!
My dad put a stop to all that one day. Said he was tired of having to buy spokes for every bike in the neighborhood.
There was an area of Pasadena we called the Clay Pits. It is occupied by the Grand Park Village Apartments now but it used to be a woods. There were trails and hills and me and Old Silver passed a few wonder filled summers there. We'd cruise the trails and finally pull up and eat a sack lunch and explore the woods and all the mysteries that were contained there.
Nobody ever made fun of my bike that I can recall. Many of my friends were envious. Some of them tried to ride Old Silver but they couldn't make him get up and go like I could. It was years later but I finally did thank my dad for that bike. I told him that it was one of the very best things I ever had as a kid. He just smiled at me and said, "You're welcome."
FIRST BICYCLE
When I was 5 years old we lived off Telephone Rd in the Golfcrest edition. Good old McHenry St. My best friend, also 5 years old lived 4 houses down from me and that Christmas he got a shiny new red bicycle. I was still bangin' around on an old beater of a tricycle and felt like the worlds biggest dork riding it.
Well, I wasn't to heartbroken when, a week after Christmas, it got stolen. My parents didn't want to buy me another one because they knew I was getting to old for 3 wheels. The were right too. From the moment I saw Buddy's new bike I just couldn' force myself to ride the tricycle ever again.
As I said, Buddy was my best friend. But he had the devil in him sometimes. He would come down and ride donuts and figures eights in front of my house where I could see him and when I would run outside he'd ride off down to his end of the street. He would OCCASIONALLY let me ride it but not often enough to suit me. The last thing I thought of each night before falling asleep and the first thing to pop into my mind each morning was that shiny red bicycle. Streamers on the handlebars and bicycle brand playing cards in the spokes...to me it sounded like the raunchiest Harley Davidson in town.
I'd try to act cool around Buddy and his new bike. You know, like it didn't matter to me whether or not I ever rode it. But inside my heart was pounding and my blood was racing. To ride that bicycle and feel the wind in my face was all I was living for those days. He'd ask me if I wanted to ride it and I'd get all shaky and stutter around and say something really ignorant like I guess if ya want me to.
I'm not exaggerating even a little bit when I tell you that I wanted my own bike a hundred times more than Ralphie Parker ever wanted that Range Rider BB gun. I mean it. I moped around the rest of the year over it. When I didn't get it for my birthday that June I felt like my life was over and had to struggle to find a reason to go on living. Then when Christmas came and went and still no bicycle I was totally despondant. Borderline suicidal perhaps.
That winter we moved into a new house in Pasadena and what was left of my social life went completely away. Most of the houses in the neighborhood were still under construction and I was the only kid around. I missed my old school. I missed my friends. And I missed that shiny red bike!
The cold bitter lonely winter finally gave way to spring. I began to focus on my birthday coming up in June. I had already decided that if I didn't get a bike by then I was gonna run away from home. I used to fantasize about moving in with my friend Buddy and riding that red bike some more.
My dad was a shift-worker and he was on the day shift when my birthday finally rolled around. He was already gone to work by the time I got up and Mom told me not to wander off that he wanted me home when he got home from work. I didn't know whether to be afraid I'd done something bad or if it might be that I had to wait so they could both give me my bicycle together.
The hours dragged by like each minute had a brick tied to it but finally I heard his old work car pull up in front of the house and the breaks squealed as he came to a stop. I ran out in the front yard to meet him and he smiled and put an arm around me and asked me what I'd been up to.
Aw, nuthin I said. My stomach was full of butterflies and I was shaking like a leaf. He told me to go on inside for a minute and go to the back of the house so I couldn't see out the living room window. Just as I went inside I saw a blue pick up truck pull up behind Dad's work car. The back was open but it had a tarp thrown over something that was back there.
I went into my room and closed the door. I laid down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. COOOOOMMMMME OOOOONNNNNNNN PULLLLL_EEEEEEZE I prayed. the suspense was about to split me wide open. My mother knocked on my bedroom door and said that Dad wanted to see me out on the drive way.
Here we go!! I tried but I could not think of a single thing other than a bicycle that would account for this type of behavior from them. It was too big to bring home in the car. It took up most of the space in the back of a pick up truck...it just HAD to be a bike.
And it was.
I ran out the front door, nearly taking the screen door off it's hinges. I was hoping it was red but I really didn't care what color it was. At least I didn't THINK I cared. I stoped dead in my tracks. There before me, was my new bicycle. The bicycle that I would be riding until I learned how to drive a car. The bicycle that ALL my friends and neighbors would SEE me riding every day.
OH NO!! It was hands down, the absolute UGLIEST bicycle I'd ever seen. Dad and another guy made it in the pipe shop out at the plant where he worked. It was made out of 1/2" tubular galvanize aluminum and painted silver. The handle bars were not the cool looking "ape-hangar" style like Buddy's red bike. They were just a half circle of 1/2" tubular aluminum. they had ugly brown handlebar grips on the end of each side...and no streamers. The wheels and tires were huge and I couldn't imagine what they had come off of. The seat was so big that my narrow little butt could have fit in it half a dozen times all at once.
And it was HUGE!
I tried my best to conceal my gut wrenching disappointment but I suppose it showed. Dad said. "Just give it a try before you turn your nose up at it. We worked very hard on it so you just give it a fair shake, okay?
Yes sir I swallowed.
He walked it down the diveway to the street and held it to the curb while I climbed aboard. He have me a shove and sent me on my maiden voyage on "Old Silver". I could reach the peddles but only just. I layed it down a couple of times that day in tight turns but by the end of the day I pretty well had it mastered. I just had to get on it at the curb and get off it in the grass where I just layed on the coaster breaks till it stopped and fell over. That night my mom doctored my scrapes and bruises and put bandaids on the ones that needed them.
By the next summer I had grown into that bike and had mastered it completely. The neighborhood had filled out nicely and there were now several kids my age for me to play with. One of the things we used to do was to ride our bikes toward each other at a high rate of speed and just before impact lock up the coaster breaks and slide the back end around so that they crashed into each other, the object being to knock out spokes on the other guys bike while protecting your own. I sent a many a boy home pushing his bike but Old Silver never lost a spoke...Not Once!
My dad put a stop to all that one day. Said he was tired of having to buy spokes for every bike in the neighborhood.
There was an area of Pasadena we called the Clay Pits. It is occupied by the Grand Park Village Apartments now but it used to be a woods. There were trails and hills and me and Old Silver passed a few wonder filled summers there. We'd cruise the trails and finally pull up and eat a sack lunch and explore the woods and all the mysteries that were contained there.
Nobody ever made fun of my bike that I can recall. Many of my friends were envious. Some of them tried to ride Old Silver but they couldn't make him get up and go like I could. It was years later but I finally did thank my dad for that bike. I told him that it was one of the very best things I ever had as a kid. He just smiled at me and said, "You're welcome."
