A Long-time Affair
A Long-time Affair
It's often said that Americans are in love with the automobile. In this regard, I
am, evidently, not very patriotic. My affair has been with the bicycle.
If you asked me to list all the cars that I've driven over the years, I'd have to
give it quite a bit of thought. As far as bikes go, there have been only three, all
red, all perfect.
My first bike was a twenty-inch Huffy Convertible. I learned to ride a two-wheeler
on the Huffy. The training wheels were pretty useless. Not only did they set the
bike at an odd angle, they reduced the cornering ability to that of a double-brick
semi.
The Huffy was the bike that my father ran behind while I kept trying to look back
and say, "don't let go!"
Of course, he did. (You never really ride until the grown-up running along side
lets go.) Actually, you've never really ridden until you are wheeling downhill,
pedaling full speed on a twenty-inch red and black Huffy. I think it was no
accident that the Wright Brothers were bicycle builders. In later years, when I
lived in Dayton, Ohio, I learned more about the famous brothers and about the
Huffmans whose Davis Sewing Machine Company became Huffy. The Huffmans
also owned a field out east of Dayton, and it was on Huffman Prairie that the
brothers actually perfected their Flyer. The entire history of flight was reenacted
as I rode down Cain Street in Youngstown, Ohio, waving to my earthbound
younger brother. With hands free and arms extended, I was inventing flight.
My brother's revenge would come when I was eight years old and he abandoned
his three-wheeler. The prospects were not good. My older sister had received a
second hand-me-down bike from a cousin. She couldn't ride two, and my brother
was a six year old novice. The math was simple. I was to inherit a blue twenty-six
inch girl's bike. I was told that I had "outgrown" the beautiful, sporty, red and
black, speedy, classic-lined Huffy Convertible.
"You're getting too big for this little bike" is a lie most boys would want to hear,
but I didn't believe a word of it! I knew what "too big" looked like on a twenty inch
bike. It was a gangly teenager whose knees threaten to rearrange a jawbone with
each half cycle of the sprocket wheel. That was not me. As an adult, I am a
towering five foot seven; as a child, however, I was on the short side. My sister
and I would walk down Indianola to catch the Market Street bus downtown on
Saturday mornings. I was eight, she was twelve, and the bus driver thought I
was under six and wouldn't accept my nickel fare. I even stood tall and said that I
was eight, but he didn't flinch. Wounded pride is worth more than five cents.
Even worse about being short in elementary school was the narrow field of girls
about the same size, but that's another story.
I knew my only cycling option was to swallow the last of my pride and ride the
bar-less blue bike with the wire basket in front of the handlebars. My father said
he'd remove the basket and bolt a bar across the chasm between the yoke and
the seat. The bike would still be blue, like me, and my imagination did not do me
any favors in that regard. I could hear the jeers about riding my sister's bike. I
couldn't even threaten them with a big brother who would beat them up. My
sister probably could, but that would have defeated the purpose.
As providence had it, the family received free passes to Myers Lake Amusement
Park. It was the day the park was opened to telephone employees. With
admission came raffle tickets and intermittent sequences of numbers read over
the loudspeakers. That was the day my number was up! The prize was a new,
red, shiny, twenty-six inch Murray boy's bike. My sister said that I really didn't
win the bike, but my father did and gave it to me because I needed one. I,
however, knew the truth. God wanted me to have that bike.
Don't get me wrong, I loved my twenty-inch Huffy Convertible. It was small,
compact, and quick. The Murray had balloon tires and weighed as much as I did.
It was the Humvee of bikes in the 1950s. It was awesome. My problem was
logistics. Even with the seat at the lowest position, I could not remain seated and
keep my feet on the pedals at the lowest point of rotation. The solution was
simple; I rode standing up. Later in life I fathered two children, so the strategy
had no lasting affect.
The other two problems called for more innovation. Being too short to pedal the
bike meant that I was too short to throw my leg over the bar and ride off. To get
on the Murray, I had to begin at the front step or curb or any place that I could
take a step up. Sometimes I had to walk the Behemoth quite a distance before
starting, and then I had to work hard to catch up to the others who could take
off on the spot. My final strategy was derived from TV westerns. Like Hopalong
Cassidy, I learned to place my left foot in the stirrup and swing into the saddle. In
this case, it meant rotating the sprocket until I could place my left foot on the
pedal. With two pushes from the right leg, I usually had enough forward
momentum to mount the beast, usually. When I fell, it was only practice for the
second major problem, the dismount.
For the quick dismount, gravity is a friend. For the painless dismount, gravity is
the enemy. When the bike is shiny and new, the added difficulty is to find the
correct balance between a controlled crash and minimum property damage. A
perfect landing was to maneuver back to the front step and brake fast enough to
catch the step under the left foot. Failing that, the landscaping was my bike's
friend. I would aim my bike toward a bush or hedge and bail out at the last
minute. In this way, the Murray rarely hit the ground. My sister and her friends
were a bit of an annoyance. As I approached, they would stop whatever they
were doing to catch the next act. To this day, she reminds me of my application
of small boys with big bikes.
After the fourth grade, our family moved to North Olmsted on the west side of
Cleveland. The streets were flatter than in Youngstown and my legs had grown
considerably longer. As a result, the plantings around the new house thrived.
The guys in the new neighborhood had lighter bikes. The red Murray with its
balloon tires still outweighed the medium-weight Schwinns that Rich and Ronnie
used. Still, I could run over any curb with no ill effects (though with my history of
riding, recklessness was not a consideration). Greg had the fastest bike, an
English Racer. With three gears and skinny tires its middle name was speed. With
hand brakes instead of coaster brakes, it could be pedaled backwards with no
effect except a clicking ratchet sound that told all the panting racers that the
finish line had already been crossed.
Still, the red Murray was a reliable trip maker. Since my father will probably not
be reading this account, I will confess to at least one trek across Westlake and
Bay Village to the shores of Lake Erie. As I approached sixteen, my appreciation
of my bike wavered for a brief time.
For a year or so, my brother and I got up at 5:30 a.m. to deliver the morning
paper, the Plain Dealer. Except for snow days, our bikes carried us. There were
two inescapable truths to consider, however. First, there was not much profit in
the newspaper business (at least not in our end of the trade) and second, an
eight-year-old balloon-tire bike was not a chick magnet. Cars were, and I found a
1952 Ford Coupe for sale at the gas station for fifty dollars. I had that much
money, along with all the amassed logic of a sixteen year old brain. I explained to
my father how it would all work for the benefit of humanity and probably bring an
end to the Cold War. He calmly explained gasoline, insurance, and how a car will
"nickel and dime you." No chick magnet for me. When I started dating, it would
have to be with a brown Buick station wagon set to midnight curfew time.
By now I had a real job as an orderly in the research lab at Fairview General
Hospital. It was a great gig for a high school kid, and I probably put in as many
hours volunteering as I did on payroll. Still, work was five miles from home and
my father drove the wagon to work. On school days, I could take the city bus and
be picked up by my Dad on the way home at night. Weekends and vacations
meant that I would need my own set of wheels, two of them.
My next love appeared to me in a vision. Actually, it was a picture in a Western
Auto Catalogue. The Sherwood Flyer was not a deluxe bike. It did not have white
walls, but it had all the essentials. It was everything my sturdy Murray was not. It
had skinny tires, hand brakes, and three gears that changed with a twist of the
right-hand grip. It was even imported from England by Western Flyer, so it was
an English Racer. It cost me thirty-nine ninety-five plus tax in 1964. As an
accessory, I bought a generator light. With a click of a latch, the rear tire would
turn a small generator which produced enough current to light a headlamp and a
taillight. That's what I used to travel Lorain Road through city traffic after dark.
The old Murray was given a good home. A surgical technician at the hospital
rebuilt it and took to riding during lunch breaks.
The red Sherwood Flyer has been with me ever since. It has survived child
carriers bolted to its frame and a daughter who used to ride it to gymnastics at
the YMCA. By then, it was twenty-eight years old, and from what my daughter
tells me, the boys at the "Y" had never seen anything quite like it. From her
perspective, the thing worked quite well as a guy magnet. Go figure!
In 2007, my Sherwood is approaching forty-three years old. It looks pretty much
the same having avoided the short-legged fate of my Murray. The red finish has
faded some from sunlight. In places, the patina has turned "desert bronze" (the
color of our '63 Buick wagon). I only live four blocks from Lake Erie and the ride
there will not get me into any trouble. On the other hand, when the road is flat
and empty ahead of me, I can still let go of the handle grips and coast on that
red bike as if reinventing flight.
© Rob Smith 2007 all rights reserved. Do not repost or copy without permission from the author.
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Creative non-fiction by Rob Smith