Bob Batz

Times change.

So do bicycles.

I recently bought bicycles for my two grandchildren so they would have something to ride when they were at our house. Nick is nine. Morgan is five.

Not as fancy as this.

Nick’s bike is black and silver with a fancy seat and hand brakes. The bike is called a “Black Shadow,” or something really dramatic like that.

Watching as they rode their new wheels for the first time, I suddenly remembered all of the hand-me-down bicycles I had when I was a kid and growing up on the mean streets of Flint, Michigan.

My first bike was a well-traveled two-wheeler that was “ridden hard and put away wet” as they used to say.

It was peeling paint and held together with masking tape and gosh knows what else and it was given to me by a neighborhood kid named Butchie, who, as I understand it, later did 15 to 20 years for swindling an old lady out of all her money.

Even though that first bike wasn’t anything to look at – or ride – I dearly loved it and I rode it for something like five years.

But all the time I was riding that bike I was dreaming of a new one.

Back then, if I remember correctly, the best two-wheelers on the market were Columbias and Schwinns.

A kid riding a Columbia or a Schwinn was considered to be one lucky kid and every Christmas when I made out my wish-list I asked for a Columbia or Schwinn, but alas, I always found packages containing socks and pajamas under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning.

Then, on my 12^th Christmas, my dream came true.

When I emerged from my bedroom on Christmas morning expecting socks and pajamas, I found the big blue Columbia bicycle standing beside the tree.

Santiago, the hero of Ernest Hemingway’s classis novel The Old Man and the Sea was right when he said “We are born lucky. Yes, we are born lucky.”

Contact Bob at bbatz@woh.rr.com

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