The Bike

Summer was spent roaming the fields and woods. Watching crawdads in the creek, fishing for minnows and trout in the stream. Only later did Grandpa find out there were no trout. He spent his time catching frogs and snakes, looking for arrowheads and tomahawk heads, wishing for a BB-gun and messing with the litter of kittens that was found under the feedbox in a horse-stall. The regular cats were as wild as can be, but it didn’t take long to make nice pets of the kittens.

Summer was to soon gone and the spectacle of going to a new school was something not at all looked forward to. Grandpa’s dad managed to get a used medium sized 2-wheel bike for the smaller of his 2 sons. Due to the war there were no new bikes at any price. Finally, Great-Grandpa found a Schwinn in rather dilapidated shape. He sanded all the rust off and primed it, then painted it red with white trim. It was the model that had a tank between the 2 bars that went between your legs and it had a button on the right side. He also put a battery in the holder and we all were surprised when the horn worked. All in all the bike looked pretty nice and he was pretty proud of it. So finally the big day arrived.

It was 1 1/10th mile to the country schoolhouse and the 2 brothers made pretty good time. When Grandpa got there he found out that after looking at all the bikes there, his was about as nice as any of them. The country kids who stood in a circle around the bikes also observed this. Two of the bigger kids started taunting Grandpa about his bike and that him and his brother were “City Bugs”. This apparently made it OK for them to take rocks and start smashing the pretty red and white bike all to pieces. Soon the work of Grandpa’s dad and the boy’s pride lay there with all the spokes smashed out and the tank and horn button was a twisted mess of metal. The wheels were so bent they couldn’t be turned. Although the boy fought as hard as he could it was to no avail.

So sick at heart he went bawling home – walking. His parents were having coffee when he arrived. They finally got the story out of him of what had just happened. The upshot of all this is: 1. That if you don’t have a bike you walk to school, 2. He found out what a pacifist his dad was, and 3. He decided that given time he would kill or seriously wound all of those mean kids. Where the teacher was all this time he didn’t know. Mom got a call from school about the bad behavior of Grandpa in starting a fight. She let the teacher know that in no uncertain terms, that she knew what had happened and if they didn’t believe her to go out and look at what was left of the bike.

Grandpa went back to school (walking) and learned about “pecking orders”. He had to fight every boy there. Although none were killed, it sure felt good! It was 3 years before the oldest tormenter went crashing head over heals down 13 cement steps and yes, he remained alive!