Day Four-Oh-Eight - Kids and Bikes

Things changed.  I'm not sure when it happened or whether or not it is a good change.  But change most definitely occurred.  Let me explain.  When I was a kid, the most expensive possession I had was a blue Huffy bicycle with a banana seat and a basket on the front much like the one pictured below.  This isn't the exact bike I owned, it's one I found on the internet.  But this looks just like my Huffy that I got for my 5th birthday back in 1968.

I'm sorry about the picture quality, but this is undoubtedly a photo from someones EBay account in an attempt to clean a garage that was caught in a 70's time warp.  Back to what I was talking about.  When I was a kid, not only was this my most expensive possession it was also my most prized possession.  Few things gave a kid as much freedom as their very own bike.  Last week I talked about how all the kids in our neighborhood met down near our house after school everyday.  We all played outside until around dinner time.  When our Dad's came home from work, we each made our way inside for dinner.  As we went in for dinner, bicycles were left in our wake in whatever position they ended up when we ejected from the banana seats.  Some were lying on their side with the wheels still spinning, others were leaning against a tree in a front yard and a few were propped on their kickstand neatly on a driveway or sidewalk.

But for that couple of hours in the afternoon between the time we finished our after school snacks and the time our Dad's came home from work, we were road warriors.  The bike was not just a trusted friend, it was our mode of transportation no matter where we were going.  Some kids did tricks on their bikes.  I didn't.  I was as accident prone then as I am now and I didn't like pain anymore then than I do today.  So, my bike was strictly for riding and transporting dolls and things in the basket.  I knew kids who could stand on their seat for a second.... just before the crash.  I also new a lot of boys who could do wheelies on theirs.  My brother, Robbie was pretty good at riding with no hands.

Once Ronnie went down "Deadman's Hill" which was a big mound of dirt that construction guys had piled up at the end of Nottingham Dr.  Kids spent so much time riding bike's up and over it that trails had formed in the weeds that were growing in the big pile of dirt.  As Ronnie came down the front side, something went horribly wrong and he wound up with a concussion.  Just another Meyers weekly trip to the emergency room.  It think it was the only Meyers trip to the emergency room that was a result of a bike accident though which is a little remarkable considering how much time we spent on our bikes.

Our friends, the Bailey's apparently had a thing for going over the handle bars of their bikes and knocking out their front teeth.  I think on the second or third occasion that this happened to one of them, their Dad, Don outlawed bikes at their house.  I know it happened to Donnie once or twice and I think it happened to Deanna once too.  I'm not sure about Davie, bikes might have already gotten outlawed before he ever had the chance to fly over his handlebars.  I remember going to their house and never being able to ride bikes because they just didn't have any.  Apparently, the feeling was that motorcycles were slightly safer.  So when we went there we rode dirt bikes around.  They started out with Honda 50's but graduated to bigger and faster bikes, but not much faster.  I remember the summer we got our first used Honda 70.  It was total greatness but I was a teenager by then and we all had to share it.  So even then I still rode my dependable blue Huffy when necessary which was most of the time with two brothers.

Sometimes, when I was on my bike, it was my trusty steed and I was a cowgirl in the old west.  Other times, the bike became a fancy sports car and I would speed along the highway in my mind.  At other times, it was a station wagon full of kids and I was the mom telling them to sit down in the back and stop hitting each other.  This was obviously back before kids sat in carseats or before we even new what carseats were.  If you are a kid today and you are wondering what a station wagon is, it was a funny looking SUV.  Please refer to The Brady Bunch or National Lampoon's Vacation.

When I was on my bike, I could pretty much outrun anything else on two wheels....  I thought.  We used to ride our bikes to Community Grocery during the summertime to get candy and a Coke.  Mr. Huckabee probably hated to see us coming.  We would all go in and swarm his store for a half hour and walk back out with a bag of Sprees and one Coke to share.  A total of 75 cents was spent between 6 kids and we had wasted a 1/2 hour of Mr. Huckabee's life.  If Mr. Martindale was working we would go back and watch him cut meat.  Because you know, what kid doesn't like to watch a real butcher with missing fingers and everything at work???!??!?  Right?  You never knew when he might cut another one off and you wanted to be there to see it when it happened.

On the way back from Community Grocery you could take a detour on the road where Mr. Shoemaker's shop was.  It was a dirt road right across from Community Grocery that turned and sort of ran along side Highway 21.  If you went up that road, it took a long time and was a good bike ride but there were mean dogs that chased your bike.  They hated kids on bikes and apparently blue Huffy's were the worst in their minds.  I'm not sure what it is about being chased by a dog that makes a kid think that abandoning the bike and sort of shoving it at the dog and running for your life might be a better choice.  But I do remember that happening once.  The problem is that you then have to wait for the vicious dogs to lose interest in your bike so that you can sneak back and get it because coming home without your bike wasn't an option.  I mean seriously, my parents probably spent at least $50 on that bike.  It was going to have to last me at least 10 years!

Yep, things changed.  I don't think any kids go out and ride bikes for hours anymore checking in at home at lunchtime and again in the afternoon for a snack.  Now, in the summertime, kids go to camp and are part of whatever kind of team or class their parents can find to put them in so that they never spend a single minute without adult supervision.  When we were kids the rules were pretty simple, play outside, never take a ride from anyone, if you don't know somebody - don't talk to them, and no fighting.  Your bike was your independence and you loved it like a member of your family.  A flat tire could sideline you until Saturday when your Dad had time to help you fix it.  The worst thing that could happen was to lay your bike on it's side behind a car and allow it to get run over.  Then you were out of the game until your next birthday or Christmas because everybody knew that bikes were too expensive to get a new one in the middle of the year for no reason.  So you took care of that bike like it was the most important thing in the world.

Maybe that's the reason that I loved my little black Honda CR-V so much.  It's the only car I ever had that lasted almost as long as my Huffy.  Of course, it was only a Honda so it could never be quite as dependable as a Huffy.  I wish Huffy made cars!