Back When Gravity Was Weak

By Tom Poland

 

My Buddy Was My Bike

Two coincidences occurred this week. Sister Deb sent me a photograph of me as a kid on my bicycle. As for the second, a former student, a teacher-turned-writer, asked me to review her feature, memories of her first bike. The two sent me pedaling down memory lane.

 

 

My red-and-white Western Flyer came from Western Auto and it became my buddy, my best friend. As soon as I was out the door, I was on that bike. Come nightfall, I reluctantly leaned it against a tree. I’m guessing the photograph was taken around 1959, and that’s telling. Western Flyer bicycles were no longer made after 1959. It was the end of the road for bikes like that. I loved that bicycle more than I did my first car. It was my first set of wheels, and I rode it everyday. I rode it through the woods, down on granddad’s farm, and down area roads. I slap wore out our driveway. The bike had neither gears nor handbrakes. To brake, you pushed back on the pedals. It had no water bottle. It did have whitewall tires and a rear seat, though I had no one to ride with me. Two words describe that bike: fun and freedom.

Seems I was riding as soon as I was born. I don’t recall training wheels. Today they are obligatory, as is dressing kids as if they’re about to play a game of tackle football. Note that I wore no helmet, no pads. Back in the 1950s, gravity was weaker. We didn’t fall as hard as today’s kids do. Besides, every square inch of land wasn’t paved back then. Grass and dirt made for softer landings.

Recently, my student, Mary Ann Hutcheson, witnessed a young boy leave his training wheels behind. She and her husband were walking in Saluda Shoals Park where its network of paved trails is a biker’s paradise.

Mary Ann: “Early into our walk, I noticed a mother teaching her young son to ride a bicycle. Mom was determined and patient. A little unsure of himself, her son followed her instructions and mounted his shiny new two-wheeler. Poised and ready, his helmet securely fastened, he planted his small feet on the pedals and began to push. Mom ran alongside and held fast to his saddle.

‘Pedal, pedal,’ she repeated. ‘Don’t stop!’

Like some ill-timed hex, her advice caused the little boy to do just the opposite. His feet stopped pedaling, and the bike spiraled off the path into the leaf-covered dirt. Each tumble might have discouraged a less-courageous and stubborn child, but not this one. He remounted, pedaled, swerved and tipped over again.

The unfolding scene evoked an unexpected, deep-rooted childhood memory. I was seated upon a brand new, light blue Schwinn ‘twenty-six-inch/two-wheeler,’ on Chestnut Street, in Woodbury, New Jersey, in the late 1950s. I was almost seven years old on that warm spring day and had come to an important decision. After weighing the importance of bicycle safety, aided by a pair of balanced training wheels, I decided it was time to ditch them.”

Adios training wheels. You’re one of the steps along the trail to adulthood now.

Do you remember your first bike? Looking at the photograph of my buddy, my bike, and me, memories come to mind. I’m in the front yard of my late parent’s home. From my shadow, it appears to be just after noon. The driveway is simple: two lanes of dirt with strips of grass in between. Asphalt covers all that today. Back when it was dirt, summer rains pooled into small mud holes that yellow and lavender butterflies flocked to. The driveway smelled fertile and earthy when raindrops first landed.

My ears look just as Dad jokingly described them: A Model T coming down the road with both doors wide open. Then, as now, I wore a watch. Not so sure about those socks though. They look like something Clarabelle the Clown would have worn. The background shows my neighbor’s old pickup and a stylish late-1950’s car. The photo is too blurry to make out the make and model. The big oak in the background? Looks the same today as it did back then.

I don’t know what became of my Western Flyer. Probably carted off to an old landfill many years ago. Too bad we didn’t keep it. Western Flyer bicycles are collectibles today, fetching prices that top $1,000 at auctions and antiques shows. Now you know you’re old when your childhood bike is considered an antique, but that’s okay because I’m an antique too, but I still ride bikes. The one I ride today is a Schwinn mountain bike with twenty-one gears, handbrakes, speedometer, and a water bottle. Even though gravity is much stronger today I still ride without a helmet and pads. So far so good. And as training wheels go? Well, maybe in a decade or two I might give them a try. Gravity may be even stronger by then.

 

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

 

Tom Poland is the author of twelve books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press released his book, Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It, in November 2015 and his and Robert Clark’s Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II in 2014. The History Press of Charleston published Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia in 2014. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture and speaks often to groups across South Carolina and Georgia, “Georgialina.”