ST. LOUIS SUNDAY

As all of you know, I have a very vivid and strange imagination. I actually believe that if I ask you to watch the E.T. clip below, you will actually do it.

Even though you've seen this a million toms on T.V. or at the movies!

However, if you don't watch the clip, you will not really be able to get into the mood and flavor of my blog post today.

I've got faith in you dear bloggetts!

Click it on...NOW!!

Would you believe me if I told you that we did the same exact kind of bike riding in my old neighborhood that you saw in the clip?!

We could go through town faster than a car because we knew all of the shortcuts through vacant lots, ball fields, parking lots, constuction sites, and all places a car couldn't go.

The only differences were that the police weren't usually chasing us, and we didn't always have an extraterrestrial in a milk crate on our handlebars. 

I had a Western Flyer bike from Western Auto that was NOT a skinny little racer with the hand brakes!

My bike was sturdy, with bigger tires and a foot brake that didn't whimp out on hard stops like some of the hand brakes would, where pieces of the rubber that squeezed the tire would break off and fall helplessly to the ground.

I always had some kind of lawn mowing job or something to make spending money, so I bought tons of accessories for my beloved bike!

Beautiful hand grips with streamers, colorful reflectors, a head light that actually worked by a little generator powered by the front tire; I would also create an occasional motor cycle sound produced by clothes pinning a baseball card to part of the frame where the spokes of the tire hit it to make the noise.

My best friend Doobie and me actually rode our bikes all the way from St. Ann to Forest Park one day, but we didn't know the shortcuts and had to ride down the sidewalks of St. Louis!

Why didn't we ride in the traffic?

You've never been to St. Louis, have you?

Anyway, they did not have the little ramp areas at the end of the blocks to smoothy cross the streets like they do today.

No, no! At the end of the blocks we had to just drop off the edge of the high curb and land (thud!!) on the street and then lift the front end of our bikes up to get up over the next curb.

We didn't notice until we got to Forest Park that the tail end of our back bumpers were bent up in the shape of a V from hitting the curbs!

We "hid" our bikes in some bushes at the park, where they could be easily seen by someone who  was really interested in stealing our bikes, and we went to the zoo, the Jewel Box, the planetarium, the art museum, Jefferson Memorial; and when we returned...our bikes were still there!! 

Times have changed since then.

THE END