nobody asked…

If Mama had known, my butt would have been grounded until I was 38. But like most 10-year olds, I figured that what Mama don’t know won’t hurt her. I also understood the corollary to that, what Mama did know could hurt the hell out of me.

The shiny new 26 inch Schwinn Hornet bicycle had been my reward for completing third grade with good marks, not getting dismissed for throwing spitballs or pulling that cute little red-headed girl’s pigtails, and avoiding bloody noses from fighting with other budding young Supermen like myself. What a beauty it was — burgundy-red and cream, whitewall tires, and a decorative tank between the horizontal ball-buster bars. The tank had the function of housing the non-functional, button operated, battery powered horn. I accessorized my bike by adding a squeeze-bulb horn clamped onto the handlebar, a basket mounted on the luggage carrier above the rear fender, and tassels streaming from the handlebar grips. And, of course, there was the requisite spring loaded wooden clothes pin for clipping a piece of cardboard in place to clack against the spokes when I was not in stealth mode.

Please understand, this was no flimsy, lightweight, wimp of a bike like the ones made today, but a heavy-duty model built to withstand both the stress of high-speed racing and the tortuous rigors of off-road adventures. There was never any hassle or hesitation for changing gears since this was prior to introduction of gear changers a few years later. And the rugged coaster brakes were far more durable than the delicate and temperamental hand-operated caliper brakes that more expensive models would soon have. This was every boy’s dream in the early 1950s. Unless, of course, your parents could afford the top of the line — the totally awesome Schwinn Black Phantom. It was roughly the same bicycle I had, but with a fancier paint job, chrome fenders, and a name that brought fear, awe, and envy to the neighborhood boys. My parents had to save and scrape to get the Hornet for me, so I was happy.

My parents were confident in my ability and trusted me enough that they allowed me to ride my new bike as far as school, which was a couple of miles away. I knew all the back roads and side streets and had enough sense to avoid the heavy traffic of the main avenues. In time, I reasoned that if going to school was OK then going to visit my friends who lived similar distances from my house would be OK. They lived in several different directions, but nothing was ever said about direction, only distance. So I routinely rode to see my friends Richard and Marcus who live across the street from each other, in the direction of downtown. One day we talked about going downtown, and decided that as long as we were careful, everything would be OK. Since there were no incidents and we were not found out, we decided that it would be OK to do it again. And again. And so we did.

Three 10-year old boys zooming up and down busy city streets, taking wrong-way shortcuts through one-way alleys, avoiding the buildings where two of our dads worked — we were hot snot on a stick. We had this thrilling adventure many times, and somehow our parents never discovered our transgression. It was during that period that I first learned to answer the questions, “Where have you been?” and “What have you been doing?”, with “nowhere” and “nothing”, respectively.

Fifty years later I told my Mom about it, and she scolded me almost as much as she would have if she had caught me in the act. Then she laughed — we laughed — and we agreed that it was a miracle that any of us lived to grow up and tell about it. Great bike, good times, good days, stupid tricks.

[A flip of my Superman cape to Bob Brady who inspired this piece with his recent post of Superheroes at his and Mick's Blog Brothers site.]