Bikes

Lest this sounds too Father Knows Best, I got my first bike on Christmas Day.  It wasn’t the perfectly new, shiny bike with a ribbon.  It was the bike that was second-hand, balloon-tired and royal blue-recently painted by my father. An unknown relative had owed it before.

My sister and went up to our neighbors that morning, and when I returned, there was the bike.  It was pretty ugly—and that oxymoron fits the bike to a tee.   But it was a bike and it worked.

I knew there was no way in hell that I’d be able to get up Angus Street like the Clifton brothers that lived at the top of hill and had perfected a zigzag approach to the slope. No—this was a heavy thing that had to be walked up the hill.  It had foot brakes too.  But, I did get it up to speed going DOWN the hill—by peddling.

I can’t quite remember when or how or why—though there are some memories of saving up allowance—but I finally got my first brand new bike. I think I was in the sixth grade. It was a royal blue Raleigh with three speeds, hand brakes and a pump attached to the frame.  My dad and I bought it at Broadway Hollywood and were told that it would be delivered to the house.  When it actually arrived early, I was ecstatic.  I saved the British instruction papers for years.

My friend got a bike around the same time and we used them to explore all around Silver Lake.

In 1963, after President Kennedy was assassinated, we used the official day of mourning to bike down Griffith Park Blvd to the park.  We went to the pony rides, which had always been my favorite place in the world. The man told me I was too heavy to ride the ponies anymore. I wasn’t overweight; I was twelve.  Then it became a real day of mourning.

I rode that bike until 1972 when I gave it away to a family in Colorado with two boys who probably didn’t want an English girl’s bike with three speeds.  I still miss it.