My childhood bicycles
When I was a child, an uncle brought a tired sixteen inch purplish black bicycle over to my house. He told me a man he worked with had bought it for his son, but his birthday was a few weeks away, and he wanted my uncle to keep it for him. My uncle said that because the bicycle was used, it would not hurt it any if I learned how to ride it. So he left that bicycle in my care with the understanding that it would be going to the little boy when his birthday arrived.
I was excited! I had a tricycle that barely worked. It squeaked loudly and was hard to ride. It was easier to push around than ride around. A loaner beat up old bicycle was something to behold. I remember the riding process vaguely. I would get started, fall, cry and push the bike back to my house. After I was done crying, I would push it out to the little slope in the driveway and repeat the process.
Soon I would ride about ten or twelve feet before I fell over. Then it was twenty feet, and one day I realized I could really ride a bike! Then my uncle showed up out of the blue. I knew why he was there even before he told me. He asked me if I could ride it yet, and I said yes. He asked me to show him how well I could ride the bicycle. I pushed it out to the little slope knowing it was going to be my last ride on a bicycle. I rode it down the slope and over to where he was.
My Uncle said the little boy’s birthday was in a few days and he would have to take the bicycle back. I do not remember exactly, but I am sure it was enough to make me cry. He said he would be back in a few days to take the bicycle to the man he was holding it for. A few days later it was the morning of my birthday and my uncle showed up. My excitement over my birthday party later that day was tempered by losing the bicycle to that little boy who was going to get it for his birthday.
It was to be done though. I knew in a few minutes the bicycle would be gone forever. I do not remember exactly how my Uncle told me the bicycle was mine and I could keep it, but I was the happiest boy alive that morning! It was still an old bicycle and probably ready for the junk man, but to me it was the best present I had ever received!
My Uncle managed to fool me again a few years later with an used blue twenty inch bicycle, as I had outgrown my rusty old sixteen inch bicycle. I put many, many miles on that old blue bicycle. A few years later my uncle tried a third time with an old iron framed twenty-six inch bruiser, but by that time I was grown up enough to catch on. I don’t remember a lot of birthday presents from my childhood although my memories of those old tired bicycles are as fresh as when they happened!
