SWMBO and I were talking the other night and I asked her what she wanted for her birthday. Without hesitating, she said that she wanted a bicycle with coaster brakes! That took me back to 1959 when I got my first bike on Christmas morning. The most awesome looking red Schwinn 24" bike with coaster brakes, whitewall tires, a tank in the middle tubes with a push button horn. Did I mention full chrome fenders in front and back? What a ride! In '67, dad and I hot rodded it. Stripped the tank off, took it down to the bare frame, painted it "Harvest Gold" (the color of the family sedan which was a '63 Chevy Biscayne), put high rise handlebars, a banana seat, bobbed the fenders, and off I went for the second 100K miles. Sarah will get her bike next week. I may get one too, if they still make banana seats!
Ken, I almost hate to reply to this because it sounds like Monty Python's "We we poorer than you" routine. We were a family of eight living in farm country where the remnants of the depression hung on till WWII. Everyone else was just like us so we didn't know we were poor. My dad got a job with the county driving a maintainer that paid $18 a month (hey, he HAD a job) so he could finally float me a 25 cent loan to buy a bike from the neighbor. I paid it back by gathering milkweed down that the navy bought for life preservers. It didn't have a chain and the tubes were rotted so I packed the tires full of oats and used the old black friction tape to hold them to the rims. Not good for level ground or uphill but a real thrill zooming down several long hills to the swimming hole. To this day I think that bike peaked my interest in mechanics and definitely honed my driving skills; with no brakes you learn to think waaaaay ahead and also to select the best place to crash.
Yep ; It was 1961 and we lived way out in rural Massachusetts , I somehow gut my hands on an ancient old rusty red bike with Coaster brakes and 29" tires that needed tubes , the tubes were hard to find . Of course every kids 1st. bike was the very best one in spite of crappy coaster brakes and wobbly neck bearings etc.
IIRC, coaster brakes are the kind that you just turn the pedal backwards to engage the brake. Bike will coast if not pedalling, but will brake if pedalled backwards. I don't remember the name brand of my first bike. It may have been a Royce Union. I seem to remember calling it a Rolls Royce. It was huge and very uncool looking monster of a bike with fenders, etc. Used to take it up to the school yard and run it down this huge hill with a jump at the bottom. Really, the hill was huge and the jump was a flight of stairs high where you took off from it. Lots of crashes and serious road rash from that as the landing spot was full of sand over concrete. Visions of Evel Kneivel in our heads. As we got older, we would take our mini-bikes to the same hill and go UP the jump. It would give us even bigger air (REALLY big air). I distinctly remember winding up my mini-bike and taking a good long head start at the jump and actually looking down on the roof of the school after hitting the top of the jump. My God, the crazy stuff we did as kids. Nowadays, I wouldn't even think about letting my kids out to ride their bikes all over town unsupervised. I used to leave my house on my bike at 10 years old in the morning and not come back until dinner time. No cell phones then, so mom hadn't the slightetest idea where we were, etc. Built a friction bike at 14 out of a stingray bicycle and a lawn mower engine with a piece of baseball bat on the crankshaft and a couple of concrete nails in the keyway. Mounted the engine so the chunk of bat pressed against the rear tire of the bike and literally rode it all over town with the Police after me every chance they could get any where near me. would ride it for HOURS all over the towns back roads trying not to be seen by the cops. Coming down a great fine hill one day when the rear axle let go. Rear tire flew off as the frame of the bike hit the ground. I got both feet sliding on the pavement as the rear tire flies past me down the hill. Wrecked the frame of the bike, but we built it to wreck it anyway. Oops, I see that I digress. Too bad you can't let your kids ride around like we used to when we were young. Too many dangerous things and people in the world today. I long for a place and time when I could just let them ride without having to worry about it. This weekend I'm taking the kids out to farm country way out east on the north fork (unpretentious fork) of Long Island and I'm going to cut them loose and let them ride to their hearts desire. Nothing to worry about out there. I ride with them enough to let the boys have at it and get a taste of what life was like when we were younger. Gonna give them some cash and send them into town to get ice cream for themselves on their bikes. What a treat that will be for them to learn some of the independance we had as youngsters and so took for granted. These days, the kids are way too sheltered and brought up in too much of a box to allow that to happen. Unfortunate. Andy
You're right Andy ; I too headed off as a child , God alone protected me as I met some really strange and deadly characters . When my boy was 8 or so I boted him out of our little house in the Ghetto with instructions to be gone untill sunset , I caught him once or twice in the 'hood then he adjusted and took off , learned to hike the local mountains etc. he's very independant now and I don't have to worry . These days even " good " neighborhoods have meth labs etc. so don't letting your kiddies go too far unattended. Interestingly , the black kids 'round my 'hood have made up Motorized bicycles with old lawnmower engines , they go over 30 MPH and blast through stop signs etc. with no brakes
Hand built all my bikes from scrap ones, mish mash of parts to make something you could ride, we were hard up when i was a kid so i had to learn to build bikes from big bro, first time i ever popped a wheelie on a bike the front wheel just fell off because the spindle had come loose! it hurt real bad coming back down but i learned to double check all was tight! had many a scrape on bikes including sliding under the trailer of a 30ton semi at a roundabout, only i came out the other side, my prized racing bike went under the wheels, left a lot of skin on the tarmac but i was lucky that was all i left, didnt stop shaking for an hour, can still see the underside of that trailer now as i went under it, how i ever got this old i will never know
My first bike was a second hand blue schwinn with a white banana seat and a nice big sissy bar. I remember The first time I was riding it without the training wheels. I was soooo excited that I was riding it all on my own that I forgot to brake, and ran myself right into the side of the shed and got a concussion.... fast forward about 20 years... I am riding motorcycles now, and wrecked my buddy's sport bike (I ride a cruiser) because I braked to hard coming up on a patch of gravel on a curve. I went flying (unfortunately the only time I wasn't wearing my leathers) and slid about 15 feet on the pavement. Lots of road rash, and friends asking me if I was ready to give up riding. When people would ask me that, I would always reply that my first spill on a bicycle didn't stop me from riding one ever again, so why would my first spill on a motorcycle. I'm just thankful that my guardian angels are willing to work as much over time as they do.
That reminds me~ My first bike was about 100 pounds of metal painted _red_. I think it was Sears or Wards metal. Everyone who was cool had one of those new fangled "Schwinn" bikes with the chopper handle bars and banana seats. Mine had a seat like you probably would have found on a tractor. NO speeds. I think it was as long as my dad's 1960 wagon. My fondest memory was when I was toolin' around on it during the summer. I had left my house, deep in thought- The street went slowly uphill, the way I was going. As I was looking straight down, avoiding eye contact with the hill ahead of me, my eyes caught sight of a shiny bumper. About that time I realized I was running into a parked car at about 5 miles per hour. It was good enough to stop my rig dead in it's tracks and send me over the bars onto the trunk of that car. If I was driving one of those fancy smancy Schwinns, I'd have been stuck between the uprights. Thank God that didn't happen.
Who remembers this?? Baseball cards attached to the spokes? There is no telling how many multi-million dollar cards we ruined in order to make our bikes sound like a motorcycle in the early '60's Good times, my friends, good times You know who you are!!
