You got it right, they spelled bicycle wrong in the olden days, so I am correcting the spelling in the title of this outstanding and may I say well written article.
Gabi has a bike here at the Homestead and she was riding it the other day which cause me to think about the olden days when I rode a bike. As kids we went everywhere on bikes. Walking was too slow and if you were going any distance you wanted a bike.
Anyway, I remembered an old bike I had when I was a children, and its’ name was Elvis. Allow me to deviate a little from the story, as another childhood thought just entered, or maybe it exited, my brain. If you think of something that was stored in your memory, did that thought just enter or leave your brain? Neither, you just accessed that memory, why do I have to tell you everything?
When I was 7 years old, I received a bike for my birthday, my mother told me that my older brother Jack, got a tricycle for his 7th birthday. I must have been advanced even in the olden days! My brother receives these posting so I am not writing behind his back.
I just had another thought, the address of where we lived when I turned 7 was, “714 College Street”. Why is that important, allow me to explain? We lived at 714 College Street, I was 7 years old and my brother was 14 years old (he is 7 years older than me). Seems odd to me!
Back to my original thought, Elvis. Now I received Elvis when I was 7 and I still had Elvis when I was 10. Elvis had served me well and I had put close to 100,000 miles on the bike. (I said close to, I did not say exactly!) Anyway, Elvis had served me well over the years and was, shall we say, as loose as a goose.
There was a hill about one block from May Green School, that we kids called Hilldermen’s Hill. I may not have spelled Hilldermen correctly. Hilldermen’s Store was at the bottom of the hill, thus Hilldermen’s Hill. The store was owned by my uncle Vernon Hilldermen.
The hill was about one block long, and the big deal for us kids was to ride down the hill with no hands on the handlebars. I was good at doing this, but Elvis was so loose that he would shake, rattle, and roll, all the way down the hill. Now you know why the bike was named Elvis!
Before you say thank you, let me say, you are welcome, I know these tells are always enlightening and interesting to those of you who were rich, and did not have the exciting childhood of a poor family.
May all your shaking be from an old bike!
Don Ford
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