My First Bike

I got my first bicycle when I was in second grade. I remember my father running behind me trying to help me learn how to ride it and get the hang of balancing. I did not have training wheels and it was difficult at first. I think he helped me with it twice. After that, I got determined to ride it myself and did so without any additional help.

It was a second hand bike with 16 or 20 inch wheels. I am pretty sure it had only the one speed or gear.

I rode that bike all over and even had a few adventures with it. One day, I decided to find out where the end of our street was. I already had been as far as I could go to the north so I rode south. Stewart Avenue in Lombard, Illinois goes quite a ways south from the 300 block but it doesn't go directly through. I discovered that there is one spot where you have to go around the block to continue down the street. Eventually, it dumped out on Roosevelt Road which was a very busy 4 lane road and I rode on the shoulder for a ways and found a different way back home. No place for a second grader!

On another occasion, I rode the same bike on the sidewalk down Main Street in Lombard. I came to a place between Maple Street and Parkside Avenue where an alley dumped out onto Main. As I rode by, a car popped out and hit me. I was knocked to the ground. The man who was driving the car jumped out to see if I was hurt and I remember telling him that my little finger hurt but that was it. He told me that I should call him later if I discovered that I wasn't okay after all. I said okay, got on my bike and rode home. I thought later that it would have been difficult for me to call him since I did not know his name nor did he give me his phone number! I wonder if he ever thinks about when he hid the little kid with his car.

These two events happened when I was in second grade when I was 7 years old. I finally told my mother about them 40 years later.