Whee! Wheels!                                                                                                                 October 10, 2020 

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“Bob! Come see what I got for you!” Pop called out standing next to my window beside the driveway.

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I rushed out the back door with high expectations with Jerry right behind me. Pop was always bringing interesting stuff home. Jerry and I could never anticipate what it might be. He was good about visiting the church members as well as potential members and often they gave him  some castaway object.

 

We rounded the corner as fast as we could and there stood Pop beside a bicycle! “It's for you!” he stated as I slowed my approach, looking at the object I was about to receive.

 

Now, I had not asked for a bike. I did not know how to ride a bike. This was a rusty bike. And it was a GIRLS bike!

 

“I’ll help you learn to ride.” he bragged. “You’ll have fun on it.”

 

“Can I learn too?” Jerry asked.

 

“It’s a little too big for you right now. Maybe later.” Pop promised.

 

I touched it with mixed emotions. I was glad to get a bike. My friends had bikes. I knew I could learn to ride. But it was in serious need of some paint and oil. The fenders were bent and rubbed the tires. It made a funny noise when I pushed it. And it was a GIRLS. 

 

The positive was that it would be mine. 

 

“It is a good learner’s bike.” Pop encouraged, noticing my hesitation. “We can start this afternoon. Let me take care of some things in the office and I’ll help you learn then. Okay?”

 

“Sure. Okay.” I replied with anticipation. 

 

“You may want to get the oil can and squirt some 3 in 1 Oil onto every moving part. There’s a lot of rust there.” He instructed as he turned to walk over to the office the other side of the driveway.

 

Jerry rushed to get the oil can as I pushed the bike toward the garage, listening to the squeaks and clanks it made along the  way. I began to apply machine oil on everything that moved or should move. Soon It sounded much better as I turned the pedals. 

 

As I wiped off dust and dirt from it a baby blue color began to emerge. The red rust served to accent the soft color. I got a rag from the hall closet so I could wash it properly. Soon it looked pretty good and the smell of the oil seemed to add to the niceness.

 

I was pushing it around to work in the lubrication when Mom called us to lunch. I washed my hands with a quick splash from the kitchen faucet leaving most of the dirt and oil on them..

 

 “What’s that smell?” Mom asked.

 

“Oil.” I replied.

 

“What have you been oiling?”

 

“My new bike.” I responded proudly.

 

“Let’s go look while we wait for Dad.” she advised.

 

I led her out the back door where I had parked my new gift. She was very quiet as she examined the treasure.

 

Pop came up while I was explaining all that I had done to it. Mom gave him a strange look then asked, “Where did you get this, huh, thing?”

 

Pop responded in a voice so soft I could not hear it. I took another swipe with the rag and headed to the lunch table.

 

As we ate, I explained to Pop where I had applied oil and how I had moved the fender from rubbing the wheel.   He smiled and asked a couple of questions. Mom just looked at him without a smile on her face. Her eyes must have been communicating something but Pop hardly looked at her

 

Jerry and I rushed through the toasted bologna sandwiches and the sweet tea and told Pop, “I’ll meet you in the driveway.” 

 

When he finally arrived, I was ready for my great adventure of learning to ride a bike. Never mind that the sun was warm and there were puffy clouds. And I didn’t notice the greenness of the trees out by the drainage ditch. The only thing I was thinking about was learning to ride. 

 

“You’re taller than the previous rider. We’ll adjust the seat and handlebars for your height.” he noted. 

 

We got the crescent wrench and made the adjustments.

 

“First, you need to know how to stop the bike. When you pedal this direction, you go forward. When you stop pedaling, you can coast. To stop, you reverse the direction of pedaling. I’ll hold the bike up and you get on the seat and now, pedal like you are going forward. Now stop.” He instructed. 

 

We repeated that process for a few minutes until I knew to stop I had to reverse the way I  pedaled.

 

“Now, to get on the bike, you need to get it moving. Move the pedal to almost the top position and put your left foot on it.

Do a little shove with your right foot and stand up on your left. You’ll be moving and can swing your right foot across and have both feet ready to go.”

 

It took a couple of tries to get the pedal where it needed to be and my foot on it. Pop held it up and didn’t let it move as I stood on my left foot and swung my other foot over. 

 

“How let’s actually do some riding,” he encouraged.

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For this I got on the seat with both feet in their place ready to go.

 

“I’ll be right behind you so you won’t fall. Are you ready?”

 

I was too excited to answer and just nodded my head.

 

“Pedal!” he commanded as we began to move with Jerry running along side.

 

I felt like I was falling over but Pop had one hand on the back of the seat and the other on the handle bars. He moved them just a little and I stopped feeling like I was falling. Then I thought I was falling the other way and he made an adjustment. We continued the process as we moved almost all the way across the church driveway. By then, I began to feel what he was doing and started making adjustments myself. 

 

“You’re doing good,” he praised. “Keep going.”

 

I did until we reached the entrance to the highway. I stopped and he held the bike up while we turned around to do it again. 

 

About halfway across the church property, I felt confident and was going a little faster. Pop was jogging along behind me, giving just a touch if I was reacting too slow. 

 

“Great! You’ve got it,” he encouraged. But his voice didn’t sound as close as it had been.

 

I wanted to look back to make sure he was there to catch me but I was afraid it would make me fall. I just kept going and Jerry kept running.. 

 

“Stop!” he called out. 

 

I had been looking down and was about to run into the church steps. I reversed the direction of my feet and the bike stopped. I slid off the seat and tumbled onto the ground together with a little bit of tangle between legs and spokes with Jerry dodging the wreck.

 

I jumped to my feet. “I did it! I did it! Didn’t I?”

 

“You sure did!” he said as he hugged me and helped me get the bike up.

 

I felt great. The fear and the caution were gone. I was riding. The time I spent on my little scooter was transferring to a quick learn on balancing a larger object.  And it didn’t matter that it was a girls bike!

 

I rode every time I had a free moment. Down the church driveway, across the parking, around the building. I was riding everywhere and enjoying every minute of it. I even taught Jerry how to ride on it. I guess it really didn’t matter that it was the wrong gender.

 

Sunday came and I wanted to show my new bike to my friend Gary. I was cautious. I knew what he would say. Sure enough, he took one look at it and asked, “Why did you get a girls bike?”

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What could I say? I just transferred the blame. “It’s what my dad found. He got it for nothing.”

 

I couldn’t be proud of the bike but I could still ride it every opportunity. 

 

“Pop,” I asked him one day, “Why won’t my bike stand up?”

 

“Maybe the kick stand is broken.” he offered.

 

“No, it’s good.”

 

“I don’t know.” he surrendered.

 

“It’s too tired.” I laughed.

 

Now I had a new goal. I wanted to buy a new BOYS bike. My allowance would take until I was in college to grow enough to buy a bike. So I began to look for other ways.

 

The easiest seemed to be picking cotton. I could pick cotton on Saturday but that was not going to get me a bike very quickly. Pop worked out a deal with the farmer next to the church so that I could pick during the week and get it weighed and paid for on Saturdays. That helped some but not enough.

 

Then I discovered Grit Magazine, America’s Greatest Family Newspaper. I probably answered an ad from a comic book to get started. Boys selling them were to be twelve years old but I was a little shy of that but Pop came through for me and I started developing my route. 

 

Grit had a larger circulation than any newspaper in the early ‘50s and it was very popular in rural areas. I had to determine how many I could sell and order that amount because I had to pay for them whether I sold them or not. So, once I ordered them, I had a high motivation to sell them. 

 

Each Saturday, I would fill the front basket with the latest edition and start around the block. The farm block was one mile between farm roads. So the block would be four miles. At first I started down the highway where there were the most houses. I covered both sides of the road. Then down the first farm road until I ran out of papers. Soon I knew which houses would not buy so I could skip them. So my route grew and I went further around the block. 

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At ten cents a paper, a cotton sack filled with white bolls, and my weekly allowance, my savings began to add up.

 

One Saturday morning, after my paper route, I dumped all my money onto the top of the bedspread Mom had made and counted it carefully. Yes. I had enough to buy my BOYS bike. 

 

I rushed over to the office where Pop was bent over the desk with his leather Bible open studying his sermon for the next day.

 

“Pop! Guess what!” I exclaimed.

 

“It’s too tired.” He quipped. 

 

“No,” I giggled. “I think I have enough money to buy my bike.”

 

“Okay. We’ll go to Deacon Jones’ Firestone store this afternoon. Let me finish my sermon first.”  

 

I counted it all again and put it into my money bag, pulled the string tight and tied a knot so nothing would fall out.

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Finally the sermon was prepared, lunch was eaten, and we loaded into the black Chevy to drive the five miles into Blytheville.

 

At the Firestone store where I looked over the limited choices of  Schwinn bikes, I took my time. This was the most important decision of my life. I touched each bike. I examined each detail. I probably kicked each tire. Pop and Mr. Jones patiently talked church and waited for me to come to a decision.  Finally I chose a full size green bike with some fancy trim. 

 

Of course I had to try it out before I bought it. So Mr. Jones let me take it out to the work area where they changed the tires. 

 

Did I mention I had learned to ride on a girl’s bike? So, standing with my left foot on the pedal, I pushed the bike off. I started to take my right leg across to the other pedal. I quickly discovered that men’s bikes have a bar across there and my leg was not going to go through it. I had already shifted my weight and was trying hard not to fall over. I was coasting across the shop trying to figure out what to do. I was running out of speed and space and decided the best I could do was to jump off and try to hold the bike up. I was lucky enough not to fall or drop the bike. I quickly looked around to see if any of the workers had seen clumsy me appearing as if I had never ridden a bike before. Fortunately, every worker was busy with his job and had not observed my humiliation. I quickly glanced back at Dad and the owner relieved that they were deeply involved in solving some world problem and were ignoring me completely. Knowing now what I needed to do, I pushed off again, swung my leg over the back of the bike and peddled up to Dad and the owner. “I’ll take it!” I said having just proven that this was the bike for me.

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When we arrived home, Mom and Jerry came out to see the new purchase. I showed them its special features, which were not many, then climbed on for a demonstration ride.

 

I stopped in front of Jerry and said, “You can have my old bike. It’s yours now.” 

 

On the flat church property, I had a lot of room to ride so I did. I rode just for the fun of riding. Most of the time it was on the gravel parking lot but sometimes it would be all the way around the church building through the grass.

 

Our bikes were made for riding, not for tricks. So I just rode, at least for a little time. I learned to turn loose of the handlebars. I learned to sit on the handlebars facing back and ride it  backwards looking over my shoulder to see where I was headed. I learned to throw my legs out wide, release the handles and balance only on the seat. That wasn’t easy on a gravel parking lot. My big challenge was to stand on the seat, leaning over the handlebars to steer. 

 

One day, I thought it was time for me to stand up straight on the seat without holding onto the handles. I almost got all the way up before the bike needed some corrections to balance and I was not able to do it. I closed my eyes as I went forward over the front wheel. I’m not sure if I thought that not seeing what was happening would prevent it from happening or if I just didn’t want to see how badly I was going to be hurt. When I opened my eyes, I was laying on the ground, my head on the front wheel and the bike behind me. I must have done a complete flip in the air but nothing was hurt. It was a trick I never perfected!

 

I usually analyzed things pretty well, but there were times when I failed to think things through. We had gone to a rodeo and seen cowboys do their fancy roping. Gene Autry and Roy Rogers added to my desire to become skilled with a rope. I found some rope, made a loop and began to rope anything that I could. Posts, small trees, chicken and even Jerry soon fell victim to my practice loops. I was getting pretty good and usually could capture my target much to the dismay of Jerry and Pop (somehow Mom escaped becoming a victim of my lasso). 

 

Those cowboys were so good, they could be on a moving horse and capture a moving steer, or a moving bad guy. I saw white hatted Roy Rogers rope a shady black hatted villain and pull him off his horse. So the logical thing for me was to practice calf roping from something moving. 

 

I didn’t have a trained horse to help me with the roping so the next best thing was my bike. There was no saddle horn like the cowboys had so I tied the rope around the yoke of my bike. I was ready to rope on the move.

 

One of the posts out front of the house became my goal. I rode toward it and turned to the left. At the right time, I swung the rope once over my head and threw it toward the post. It was a perfect lasso! Before I could congratulate myself on a job well done, it dawned on me that the post was not going to go with me. As a matter of fact, it was going to stop me as quick as the slack in the rope ran out. I hit my brakes hard. I was almost stopped when the rope tightened, yanking the untrained bike to the right. My momentum carried me to the left and onto the gravel. The only serious injury was to my palms and holes in the knees of my jeans. I decided that calf roping is best left to trained horses and I would wait until I had one before I did more practice. 

 

My faithful bike and I survived all the way through high school with even greater adventures when we moved from the country to Paragould, a small town. Oil, spokes, tires, and patches kept it going and gave me the freedom of the whole town.

 

Cotton picking, allowance and Grit Magazine paid good dividends for the next seven years.

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Psalm 91:11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.