MAPLE CREEK MEMORIES XVI

THE BIKE

I've got five dollars and it's...

We were poor. We walked everywhere we needed to go. Or bummed a ride with someone or rode the Logan bus into town. Most of our friends had bicycles. We didn't. We were poor.

And then we suddenly had some cash in our pockets from selling strawberries and decided we just had to get ourselves a bicycle. There were four of us, so if we pooled our money we thought we could probably get us one. But not a new one. Those things cost too much, twenty-five to forty dollars. While we had a little cash, we didn't want to spend it all.

And the the god of kids looked down and smiled. One of our friends had just gotten a new bike from his parents and was willing to let his old one go. So we negotiated. And the price was right, almost unthinkable. We had about thirty bucks between us, but he was willing to let his old bike go for only five bucks. Even back then, in 1954, that was a pretty good deal. And it still had both fenders, even if the tires were old. It needed brakes and could use new bearings in the wheels. Shucks, the tires would last a little while longer. We could rebuild the brakes, and putting new bearings in was cheap to do. And five bucks? Sure.

So the deal was made. No warranties, no help to fix it up. Just a flat five and walk away with it. And we did. Walk away with it, that is. The tires were flat so we pushed it the two miles to the house, stopping on the way to pump up the tires. Which were flat again before we got it home.

The two older boys weren't too much into riding the bike, but they still coughed up their $1.25 each and we alternated riding it for about a half mile, until the tires went flat on us, using our feet as drag brakes. We discovered that repairing the brake was was a job we really didn't want to do, and it only cost a few more dollars to get a new coaster brake and put it on. So the next time we went to school, we stopped at the five and dime and got a brake and bearings for the front wheel.

Ah. Rode like a new one then, and it would stop too. Next job was to paint it. So the next time we had cash, we stopped at the five and dime and got a half pint of paint and smeared it over the rusty metal. Made it look better. We had a lot of paint left over so we knew we could redo that paint job whenever we wanted to. But pushing it down to the store to pump up the tires really got to be a drag. We asked around and some other friends supplied some old worn out tubes. We patched them and put them in. It worked good for a while. But then we discovered that one tire had a small hole in it and pinched the tube which let the air out. So we got some old tires from those same friends and doubled them up on the wheels.


We now had four tires and two tubes on that bike. Not a good idea, I can tell you. Coming home from the store one evening with a full bag of groceries in one arm and holding the handlebar with the other, a tube blew out. The inner tire had shifted allowing the tube to be pinched between the two tires. Rats. Now I had to carry the grocery bag and push that #*(T%$ old bike too. All the way home, all the way uphill. Back on foot again, I found two fairly good tires at a friends house, paid him a buck for both and demounted the old and remounted the new. You know what was next--push it down to the store and pump them up. But it solved the tire problem for as long as we had the bike.

A few months later, the handlebars broke on one side. Just tore apart right at the barrel. We sawed it off to get rid of the snags, right against the barrel and rode it one armed from then on.

Now I was a pretty competitive little fellow when I was a kid, and my next older brother knew it too. He was always getting me to do stupid things because he said he could do it. And I was dumb enough to believe it most of the time.

One afternoon he came into the house and told me that he had ridden down the front path, into the road, pumped all the way down the hill and made a right turn across the bridge at the bottom that went up Finney Creek. Without braking. A ninety degree turn. I told him he couldn't possibly have done that. He insisted that he just had.

Sure. I tried it. Boy, you really go fast down that hill. And I just knew he couldn't have done it. But he said he had. So here I go. Here comes that turn. I made it about three quarters the way across that old wooden bridge before it laid down in a skid. I'm on the deck of the bridge on my right side sliding toward the edge. The bike has already gone across the bridge and is upsetting in the field. Wish I had. I hit the side board on the bridge, rolled over on my stomach, slid right on over and down into about eight to ten inches of water.

Wet, disgusted and just plain mad at myself for being such a fool and allowing myself to be taken in again, and at my brother for having done so, I still had to push that (*^$ bike back up the road to the path and then up it to the house. I looked all around for him. He was nowhere to be found. And by the time he was back I had cooled off enough not to start the fight I had contemplated walking back up that hill.

We have both laughed a lot about that little incident over the years, when one or the other brings it up. And I can't honestly remember how we got rid of the bike. I remember riding it when I was about seventeen, just before I got out of high school.

And I still have a scar to remind me that you don't have to be stupid, no matter how much someone goads you to be so.