Exploring my new world

Growing up in the seventies and eighties meant freedom.  Parents didn’t hover over their children as much as they do now.  We roamed our neighborhoods, met interesting people and did interesting things.  It was how we learned about life and the world.

As soon as we were settled in, I began to explore our street.  My parents allowed me to travel up and down our block, sometimes on foot and sometimes on my bike.

Bikes were a huge deal when I was growing up.  My very first bike was a sky blue two wheeler with hard, twelve inch tires, a white seat and an orange alligator decal on the chain guard.  Another bike I had was a three wheeled chopper.  The huge orange seat was molded around the two oversized rear plastic wheels and the extended chrome front end was a thing of beauty.

My first twenty inch bike was bought for my birthday.  It was a standard Huffy with a banana seat and upright chrome handlebars.  It had a brown paint job that faded into the joints.  I didn’t have this bike long.  I had ridden it to Ideal Pharmacy and went in to buy a can of 7up.  When I came out, it was gone.  I searched all the way around the store and couldn’t find it.  Later in the day, my dad drove me around the whole neighborhood and we couldn’t find it.  She was gone forever.

Knowing I couldn’t live without a bike, I begged my dad to get me another one.  We got into the car and found a guy selling used bikes on the side of the road.  He picked out a girl’s bike with a green boat flake metallic paint job.  When I began to protest, he asked me if I wanted a bike or not.  Once we got it home, he helped me tear it down, sand it and paint it.  He even pinstriped it for me.  He took the bar bar off my alligator bike and fit it onto this one so that it was a boys bike.  Truthfully, this was a better bike than the standard Huffy.  I spent time customizing this bike with a MX seat and knobby tires.  We would go to the parking lot of the AC plant behind our neighborhood and steal chrome valve caps off of the nicer cars and put them on our bikes.  I should mention that I am no longer a thief just for the record.  While everyone was riding around the same dirt bike style two wheeler with the “54” oval on the handlebar, I was customizing my own ride.

Eventually, I graduated to a ten speed one Christmas.  It was black with white cabling.  That Christmas morning, before my parents were up, I was riding it up and down the length of our house.  The clicking of the wheel awoke my dad and he made me take it outside.  Ten speeds and wintry Michigan roads don’t mix too well, especially on thin ten speed tires.

I never had the pleasure of owning a big wheel or a green machine.  Maybe the Lord has them waiting for me in Heaven.

Our street was a pretty great street with pretty great people.  To our left was a sweet elderly woman whose son Bob took care of her.  Across the street on the corner was an older couple that had two cherry trees with limbs stretching out over the sidewalk.  They would yell at us if we tried to pick them.  Next to them was the neighborhood barber.  He owned a shop next to Dairy Queen on the next block.  He sold to a young family that would buy fireworks from out of state and put on a great show for the fourth of July.  The next house had an older teenager who could ride a wheelie on his ten speed without hands.  We all thought he was the baddest ever (bad meant good of course).  Next to him was a family with a couple little girls.  The mom was known for screaming out the names of the girls as well as their dog when she wanted them home.  Their neighbors were some of my closest friends growing up.  The parents were Christian people with four boys.  The youngest two boys and I hung out quite a bit playing sports in the street or our yard.  Their neighbor was a lady that didn’t like us much because our basketball would always go into her yard and we would jump the fence to retrieve it.  Her neighbor was a funny kid with the last name “boner”.  You just can’t forget a fact like that.  A little further down the street were the Clarks.  I met Mark one day while he was doing some work in his backyard.  I asked if I could help and he for some reason allowed it.  Free labor from a six year old isn’t much of a bargain.  Mark used to cut his lawn with an old fashioned reel mower.  I asked him once why he didn’t use a gasoline mower like everyone else in the world.  I don’t recall his answer, but looking back now, it’s because Mark isn’t like everyone else in the world.  He was also probably too cheap to buy gas.  Mark’s son Eric would become best friends with my brother and we are all still close today even though the miles have separated us.

At first I was only allowed to ride my bike on the sidewalk on our side of the street.  Then I could cross the street and before long I was riding in the street.  I swear, all we did was ride bikes.  Mark would take Eric, my brother and I to For Mar nature preserve to ride.  We knew how to tear them down, lube the bearings and fix our own flats.  Once in a while, we wouldn’t tighten our handlebars properly and we’d pull a wheelie only to have our handlebars come off in our hands.  I can still hear my dad yelling at us for leaving skidmarks on our sidewalk.  There were two reasons for this.  One, he didn’t want any skidmarks on his sidewalk and two, he “wasn’t going to be buying another *#!@ tire after we skidded all the tread off of it.”  We would do our paper routes while riding our bikes.  We would make ramps out a two by six and a cinder block.  My brother and Eric were a part of the Mongoose rage that came about.  I can remember them trading stuff for mag wheels and used bikes.  I bought a girls bike from a family down the street for $25, brought it home, washed it and sold it for $40 from my front yard.

It was true that once the streetlights came on, we were to be home.  Long days of running, playing, sports, bike riding and mischief were my life.  Parents oversaw us but didn’t hover.  We all seemed to make it out alive.