Your Parents and Grandparents
 

In this forum I thought it might be of interest to share memories of our parents and grandparents or even great grandparents as they relate to bicycling.

I sure wish I had made inquires when I had the chance, but I just didn't have any sense of historical heritage a few yrs ago.

Let me start:

My mother and grandmothers: I have no knowledge of their ever riding bikes

My Grandfather: faithfully commuted on his bicycle to the hospital where he worked as a Janitor.

My Dad: now in his mid 70's loves bikes and still rides. During WWII he road his bicycle and delivered, sadly enough, death telegrams for Western Union.

Sadly, if my G'xxxxx's & parents ever thought I'd be riding a bike for exercise, they would have been very dissappointed in me. If one was not working (and they all worked HARD), one was lazy.

Sadly once they retired, death soon followed.

I can remember only one anecdote regarding my father and his bicycle. When my father was a kid, he and his buddies would go to the local Sears Roebuck store when someone had accumulated enough money to buy a new bike. This was in the east Bronx, New York in the 1920s. The gang would ride their bikes over to Sears, get the new bike, and assemble it on the sidewalk outside of the Sears store. This was so that they could all ride home together.

My father bought me my first bike at another Sears store in the west Bronx in 1946 (yeah, I am *that* old). At the time, Sears bikes were made by Columbia. We didn't assemble it in the street though, we loaded it into the rumble seat of my father's model A Ford. He would not buy me the bike until I had learned to ride one, but we didn't have a bike for me to learn on. So I taught myself to ride by renting a bike (big business in New York in the 1940s). I can remember my first ride on that new bike like it was yesterday.

I guess things are done a bit differently today, huh?

Igor
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