Birthday bike
December 23, 2015 § 14 Comments
Do you remember your first birthday bike? I got mine when I was five. I got my second one (purple with a banana seat, OF COURSE) when I was eight. I got my third one when I was twelve. It was a man’s bike, which is to say it was a ten-speed.
Guys had ten-speeds. The only legit guys who had BMX’s raced them, and they only raced on Redlines.
My ten-speed was a gray Murray. It was called a ten-speed because it had ten gears. Total. Every other bike I’d ever owned had one. I still remember hopping on it, wobbling down the driveway, and almost running into the giant oak tree because I tried to stop by backpedaling.
Ten-speeds didn’t backpedal brake.
My Murray had lazy brakes. Do you remember those? Levers that ran parallel and underneath the tops of the handlebars so that you could brake without putting your hands up on the hoods? They were super squishy, just like the handlebar brakes, and didn’t stop nearly as good as, say, an oak tree.
My brother’s birthday was on December 27, two days after mine, so we both got twin Murrays as Christmas-birthday combos. We were a Christmas shopping bargain for our parents, but bargains only in that respect.
Ian’s was the same color but bigger than mine, of course. By a couple of inches. “Your bike looks like a baby’s bike,” he said. “If I had to ride that baby bike I’d walk.”
There was nothing more contemptible than a 12-year-old walking because it meant your bike had been stolen and you were too poor to buy another one. It never meant that you couldn’t ride a bike. How come? Because there was no such thing as a boy in Texas who couldn’t ride a bike. It’s like saying you didn’t know how to spit or cuss.
When I was thirteen I started Seventh Grade at Jane Long Junior High. She was the Mother of Texas, a historical figure who had wrestled some coyotes and given birth “to the first white child” in Texas, as we were taught in our integrated classes. They cleaned it up long after I (barely) graduated by saying she gave birth to the first “English-speaking child” in Texas.
The principal of Jane Long, Mr. Thompson, was a real sonofabitch. He had been famous for beating the children with a big board. Rumor was that he had his spanking privileges revoked when he broke the spine of one of the kids from the Burnet-Bayland Orphanage across the way. Now all the spanking was done by Mr. Harsch. That was really his name.
The first day of school I rode my bike, and it was hot, August-in-Houston hot. There was a big cage made of 12-foot fence. You wheeled your bike in and you locked it with a big chain if you had any sense. I locked my Murray good.
After school I went out to the cage to get my bike. A big guy with thick fuzz on his upper lip was standing at the gate.
“You got your money?” he asked.
“What money?” I asked.
“Don’t nobody get their bike ‘less they pay rent.”
“How much is rent?”
“Fifty cents.”
“I never heard nothin’ about no bike rent.”
“You’re hearin’ it now.”
“What happens if I don’t pay?”
“You like your teeth?”
We stood there for a minute. I was scared and he was big but I didn’t have fifty cents and I lived five miles away and there was no way I could pay fifty cents a day anyway. My allowance was only seventy-five cents.
“You don’t want to hit me,” I said.
“Maybe I do,” he said.
“Nah, you really don’t.”
“What’s a skinny little Seventh Grader runt gonna do about it?”
“I ain’t gonna do nothin’ about it now,” I said.
“What are you gonna do later?”
My bluff being called, I got ready to fold and say goodbye to my bike when I suddenly remembered a story my Grandpa Jim had told me about how he had put an end to getting bullied at the Virginia Military Academy.
“I’m gonna go home and get my daddy’s pistol and come back and blow your goddamn brains out, that’s what.”
I had stuck my lower jaw out and I was trembling. I knew I looked crazy or terrified and hoped it was the former.
“I ain’t scared of your damn pistol,” he said. “My daddy’s got a bigger one anyhow. And I bet I’m a better shot.” But he stepped aside.
I unlocked my bike and rode it home. He never bothered me again.
END
————————
For $2.99 per month you can subscribe to this blog, but if you don’t, nobody’s going to blow your goddamn brains out. Click here and select the “subscribe” link in the upper right-hand corner. Thank you!
Cycling in the South Bay 
in today’s PC world, you’d be suspended or some other BS for threatening your classmate saying you have a gun..then again, some kids actually have done it….amirite?
In today’s world, kids would actually go home, get the gun, and use it. Which brings up my grandfather’s story, which is probably worth posting.
Don’t stand between a boy and his bike.
Or his father’s pistol.
In today’s world (PC not withstanding) you’d be arrested for threatening your classmate, and your extortion-minded classmate would be treated as a victim. Never mind that his pattern of miscreant behavior is well documented.
The school administration, having been rendered powerless to do anything by parents who threaten to sue over the slightest attempt at discipline to their children (whom they believe can do no wrong), simply wring their hands and implore the true victim (you) to “walk away” when faced with the threat of violence, or other playground misdeeds.
So, when the inept administration’s inaction finally forces you to take care of yourself, the only option you have is overwhelming force (threatened, or more if threats aren’t effective). So, you’re the victim again, only this time of the system that can’t effectively provide discipline to prevent the problem from escalating. And again, when you’re punished for using the only tool available to you.
Or perhaps you’re not the type to resort to force, so you turn further inward and practice the avoidance techniques you’ve learned to try and stay unnoticed, and therefore unmolested. But when that fails (and it always does) you know the administration won’t help you, so then what? You’re well on your way to being a perpetual victim and mad as hell, but feeling there’s nothing you can do about it, with all the psychological baggage that entails. With luck you’ll survive (literally) to escape the institution and maybe the system entirely.
That pretty much sums it up. I really am going to post my Granddad Jim’s story. It’s a doozy. Just need a bicycle lead-in …
Where was your big brothere when you needed him. Only one thing that’ll beat a bully….a bigger bully.
I thought about this for a while, so basically you stood up to bullies with regards to bicycles at a young age. Funny how the die gets cast early.
Have a happy holiday.
Haha!!
In todays world, his parents would be arrested for allowing him to ride his bike to school by himself like some kind of free range kid, a threat to Mom and Apple Pie, for sure.
With all of these comments, one might believe the world is not a better place than it was a few decades ago. But, what about all of the Full Carbon 100% Carbon Reenforced Carbon Fiber Carbon that is available now. Surely this is a sign the world is a much better place today than it was then!
It is an expressly unique time that the generation born and raised in the 60’s and 70’s is the very first generation to complain about how the world is turning to shit and that things were so much better 30+ years ago.
30+ years ago was OF COURSE better because we were so much farther from death.
As Dr. Panglosswould say, we live in the best of all possible worlds at all possible times.