EASY RIDER

Come ride with me on another great adventure, over hill, over dale, as I hit the pavement trail. 02/07/2016

 EASY RIDER

On my dresser bureau are two small framed sepia pictures of me as a four year old, seated on my tricycle, on the campus of Stevens Institute of Technology. In one, the New York skyline serves as a backdrop, while in the other Castle Stevens, the abandoned home of the school’s founding family, serves this purpose. My attire is 1931 vogue: Scottish tam and knee-high plaid stockings.

My parents bought me a two-wheel red bicycle for Christmas a few years later. It featured white wall tires but lacked training wheels. Since snow had fallen, my initial rides were limited to the confines of a narrow passageway connecting two bedrooms in our railroad-style apartment. The learning process necessitated my lurching from side to side, banging the bike against walls and bedsteads. My mother tolerated this process without comment.

Once I had learned my balance, my brother oversaw my street riding ventures, carrying the bike up and down the stairs leading from the sidewalk to the basement. Not many months afterwards, I finished riding and parked the bike inside the gate near the basement steps. I went upstairs to tell my brother I had finished for the day. Before he could go down the four flights from our apartment, a miscreant stole my bike. I witnessed the theft from my parlor window. My shouting and yelling at the little hoodlum did not deter him. My parents could not afford to replace it. I did not acquire another bicycle until my sixteenth birthday.

In 1943, my brother (then in the army) gave me $25 to buy a bike from a neighbor about to be drafted. What a bike! A Schwinn, it had everything on it one could desire: Chrome plated handlebars; white wall balloon tires; a front fender lamp; a bell; a horn; a speedometer; and rabbit tails attached to the handlebars and the rear fender. Heavier than a tank, it took all my strength to carry it up the flight of stairs from its basement storage to street level. Returning it there can only be classified as an adventure. Unable to lift and carry it down on my shoulder, I gave it free rein, hanging on for dear life as it careened down the steps.

The terrain of Hoboken, known as the Mile Square City because that is its approximate dimension, slopes downward from the Hudson River to is western border where its boundary ends at the face of a one-hundred foot high hill. Atop this mountain lie parts of Jersey City and Union City. A “T” shaped elevated roadway called the Viaduct connects the three communities. Too steep for me to ride my bike up, I found out one summer day in 1943 how easily I could ride it down.

On that momentous occasion, my pal Dick Maylander asked my buddy Eddie Anderson and me to accompany him to Staten Island to visit his aunt. We began our early morning journey by riding our bikes to the foot of Hoboken, the site of the Erie-Lackawanna ferry terminal where we boarded one that disembarked us in lower Manhattan. Once ashore, we cycled to Battery Park and took the ferry to Staten Island - a half-hour ride that cost just a nickel. Dick’s aunt made us a picnic lunch, which we ate while sitting on an oil-fouled ocean beach, watching the sea gulls. The oil came from tankers sunk by German U-boats after leaving the nearby Bayonne refineries, we believed. Yes, the war had left its mark upon the New York harbor and the Jersey Shore. We wondered if German submarines might still be on patrol in the nearby waves.

In mid afternoon we returned home by way of an alternative route. After sailing back to Manhattan, we rode up Broadway to 42nd Street, sometimes hitching a ride at the rear of a bus. From there, our travels took us cross-town to the Hudson River, where we took the Weehawken ferry that landed us in that city near the Lincoln Tunnel entrance. To assuage our thirst, we raced off to an ice cream parlor in Union City to gulp down their famous double-thick milk shakes. Belching with delight, we steered toward the Viaduct, the last leg of our jaunt.

With an air of nonchalance based on ignorance, I sped down the initial leg of this roadway as fast as possible, zoomed around the turn, now on the half-mile long section leading to town. The ride exhilarated me at first, but then panic set in. My feet came off the pedals and I could not get them back on them to brake. My speedometer registered 100 mph. Okay, so maybe it was only 50. Whatever it read, it exceeded the limit. Luckily, the light turned green at the bottom of the hill, allowing me to roar through the intersection and three more without encountering traffic before I managed to stop. My companions, who rode more sensibly, laughed at my adventure.

We should have ridden straight home, but we did not. Instead, we went to a pizza parlor. Afterwards, as night replaced dusk, we finally headed for the barn. As we rode, I stood up on my pedals and being pumping to go as fast as possible, sprinting to get ahead of my two companions. At the intersection of Fifth Street and Willow Avenue, a car's headlights loomed to my right. I jammed on my brakes, skidded sideways, crashed against the car’s front left fender, fell sideways and landed on my back, the bike spinning around on its left pedal. The automobile continued down the street a short distance as I lay sprawled on the pavement, fully conscious.

I sat up, taking inventory, moving my limbs to verify they were still attached. The noise of the accident drew a crowd of people running toward me. An elderly Italian man reached me first, asking repeatedly, “Geesachrist, kid, are you all right?”  My two friends looked down at me, visibly shaken.

“I’m fine,” and stood up to prove it. At that precise moment, the motorist backed up over my bike, breaking its frame in two.

I exploded in rage at the driver. “You stupid so-and-so, you just ruined my bike.”  My invective continued.

Then the motorist exploded. He picked me up like you would a small dog, threw me in his car, and drove me to the emergency ward of St. Mary’s Hospital, just a block away where a thorough examination determined the collision had caused me no physical harm.

Dick rode me home on his handlebars. I held one half of my broken bike. Eddie trailed behind, holding the other half. I gave my family a gloomy account of the incident. They were surprised that I never learned the motorist’s name nor had I thanked him for taking me to the emergency room. It’s hard to love your enemy. It would have been better if a U-boat had surfaced and shot it to pieces earlier that day.

Oh, the ER doctor had given me a clean bill of health, but he failed to discover my broken heart. My dream machine had turned into scrap. The good life I had led until now had soured. Would the sun ever shine again? It did, but not for a good long time.

That bike turned out to be the last one I ever owned. No other could replace this love of my early teen life.

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