A tribute to a boy's best friend

Let me take you on a trip down my Nostalgia Road.

Me and my buddies (bad grammar intended) are riding our bicycles across a dirt path, and then alongside the railroad tracks to a weed-infested baseball field. We throw our wood bats and Spalding baseball gloves to the ground. We carelessly drop our bikes. Somebody brings a ball. Two hours later, after arguing over the rules, searching for foul balls in the weeds, and beating our chests about who got the best hits, we jump back onto our bikes and ride to Boro Market for some Yoo-hoos and TastyKakes.

Life was good at 11 years old while we pedaled our two-wheelers across the neighborhood to new adventures.

The other day my wife had a garage sale special: two bikes that our kids have outgrown. One is a pink and white princess edition with white tires and white pedals, the other, a boy’s 18-inch metallic silver beauty. We asked eight bucks or best offer for each.

No takers. No offers.

I think that most kids do not ride bikes with their friends like I did. In this different world, parents lug their children everywhere, and if there is any bike riding, it’s usually a family excursion. We wouldn’t be caught dead pedaling behind Mom and Dad in my day.

When I was a paperboy, another lost piece of Americana, I delivered the Newark Star Ledger in New Jersey upon a big ol’ fat tire bike that was my version of a Ford Thunderbird tankmobile. I brushed red house paint over the rusted fenders and attached a huge basket to the handlebars to hold the 40 newspapers that I delivered seven mornings a week before school.

I gave up on the kickstand because the newspaper weight in the front would make the bike tip over. In fact, kickstands were not cool in my neck of the hood; kids would either drop their bikes to the ground or lean them up against a tree like they were cowboys tying up their horses.

My favorite kid bike was a black and white Royce Rocket, a junk bucket on wheels that I treated with no respect. The front fender scraped the tire because I bent the rim by riding on a flat going home from the fishing pond. To distract me from the scraping clatter, I clothespinned a Mickey Mantle baseball card onto the front spokes. Mantle fluttered along with me to our afternoon baseball games. The faster I pedaled the louder Mantle fluttered.

The chain would regularly come off the sprocket too, usually when I was at warp speed, sending me crashing into an immovable object. Bruises for me, dents and scratches for my bike. At 11, you just laughed it off.

On hot summer days, six of us would ride “no hands” to pop black bubbles on newly tarred streets, and then stand up on the pedals while we bounced over sticks and stones along our way to a secret fishing hole under the trestle.

Not too long ago, I shared an experience with my 8-year-old daughter that I consider a rite of fatherhood. As she pedaled her new bike, I ran alongside her with both of us holding on to to the handlebars. The exact moment that I let go, her fear changed to exhilaration, a moment in time I shall not forget.

Watching her ride freely away, I thought of two more special father-daughter moments yet to come. I will hand her the car keys for her first solo drive one day, and with God willing, I will stand at the altar and set her free again when I place her hand into the hand of the man she is to marry. On these two wonderful occasions, I will think back to when she rode her two-wheel bicycle without the training wheels for the first time.

In a scene from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” Nick Carraway tells Jay Gatsby that you can’t repeat the past. Gatsby remarks, “But of course you can.”

Whenever I get on my bike and ride now, I’m 11 years old again, and in my mind, I’m riding with my boys, and thinking Gatsby was right.

You can repeat the past.

Contact Rich Strack at katehep11@gmail.com.