Skip to main content

When I'm Sixty-Four

“When I get older

Losing my hair

Many years from now

Will you still be sending me a Valentine?

Birthday greetings bottle of wine?” . . . The Beatles.


Podcast - When I'm 64 . . . 


With this pandemic still raging losing my hair is not the issue. It's not being able to get out. This summer vacation (2020) has come to a screeching halt. We canceled our trip to France and were still navigating restrictions. Lately, I’ve been reflecting back on childhood memories. What prompted that you ask? Well, one month from today is When I’m 64 comes true for me. A rather fortuitous time to reflect it seems.

I slid down the chute on the 229th day of the year, August 16, 1956. It was a Thursday in Angouleme, France. My father was an MP in the U.S. Army, from rural Illinois. And within three years he moved our small family back to the midwestern town of Cuba.

One of my most vivid and fond early memories was the challenge and freedom of that first bicycle. Mine was a red, single speed 26 inch Sears bicycle. No training wheels, just hop on and away you go . . . well, it was not quite that easy.


You see, at five years old, and about three feet tall this behemoth looked to me like The General Sherman - it was huge! (It never came to me in those wards at the time).


But, that did not dampen my spirit to ride, I was determined!


By Dad lowering the seat, it was possible to reach the pedals, however not quite enough to complete a revolution of the crank to power the bicycle.


“He’ll grow into it.”


That was Dads theory . . . in the meantime, he bolted thick wooden blocks to the pedals so I could reach them and ride.


My next challenge . . . “How to mount this monster?” No problem - just kidding - it was a problem!


When Mom or Dad was there to hold the bike, I would climb aboard like scaling a ladder. By myself, hmmm, there must be a way.


Our house, on seven street, had a wooden back porch with two steps about three feet off the ground. My (brilliant) solution, stand the bike beside the porch, mount it, push off, whee - now what? Once in motion, floundering around the yard, the next dilemma was,


“How do I get off this thing?


Unlike today, kids were not cushioned with helmets, safety goggles, and knee pads. This was the baby boom era, I’m thinking there were so many of us we were considered dispensable. Or, maybe it was the lack of creative marketing by the toy manufacturers?


Anyway, after falling more times than I dare count, the answer came in a flash of clever insight. Simply ride into Mom’s lilac bush and climb off! It worked like a charm, however that didn't go over too well with Mom.


It was some time before I was allowed to go out onto the street. Eventually, it was around the block, uptown, to school, and a few years later I was riding to Canton and back, an 18-mile round trip.


Since that time, however, me and my many different makes and models of bicycles have pedaled to scores of locations, and ridden hundreds of miles, far beyond the quiet streets of that small town in Illinois.


Thankfully, that curiosity and sense of wonder never left me. At 64 my bicycle still symbolizes freedom, fun, and a dependable source of independent transportation.


“I could be handy

Mending a fuse

When your lights have gone

You can knit a sweater by the fireside

Sunday mornings go for a ride” . . . 


This is Patrick Ball, thanks for listening. See you in the next episode . . .

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Most Popular of All Time

A B+ Kind of Life

Welcome back to this week's On the Fly . Retirement has taught me something unexpected: life gets a lot more enjoyable when you stop chasing perfection. Lately, I've been having an absolute blast playing executive par-3 courses like Rancho Carlsbad . A short iron, a sunny morning, and nowhere to be except the next tee—that's my kind of day. This Thursday, though, I'm raising the stakes. I'm heading to The Links at Lakehouse in San Marcos, a full-size par-71 course with enough water hazards to keep the local fish well-stocked with my golf balls. After shooting a 64 on a par-3 course, I've set myself a new goal: shoot an 89 before my birthday next August. Why 89? Because on a par-71 course, that's bogey golf—one extra stroke per hole. For non-golfers, think of it this way: par is like earning 100% on a final exam. Bogey golf is a solid B+. You got the job done, learned something, and probably had a lot more fun getting there. The older I get, the more I appre...
Post a Comment
Read more

Resurrecting the '90s Graphite

Let’s face it, there’s a certain danger in reading John Gierach's Trout Bum . His wit, self-deprecation, and sharp, effortless satire are entirely infectious. If you aren't careful, his words will inspire you to drop everything, wade into a freezing river, and try to outsmart a creature with a brain the size of a lentil. In my case, re-reading Gierach recently didn't send me straight to the river. It sent me digging through the dusty, spider-guarded corners of my garage. In the early 1990s, seeking a natural escape from Manhattan's concrete canyons, I decided to learn to cast a fly rod. I bought an Orvis Rocky Mountain —eight-and-a-half feet, three ounces, built for a five-weight line—and had absolutely no idea how to use it. To avoid aimlessly whipping the water like scrambling eggs, I took fly-fishing lessons from Al Cucci, co-author of Hatches , on the Delaware River. With his guidance, I fished renowned waters: the AuSable in New York and Michigan, and New Jersey...
Post a Comment
Read more

Morning Coffee

In this episode, Morning Coffee . . . Now, I’m not saying everyone needs coffee. Some folks get by just fine on, I don’t know, sunlight and positive thinking. Me? I’m pretty sure I started drinking the stuff sometime around the Reagan administration. Reading John Gierach’s "Ode to Campfire Coffee" in Trout Bum (a book that should be required reading for anyone who sees sleeping on the ground as recreation) got me thinking about how we’ve managed to complicate something as fundamentally simple as boiling water and adding grounds. Taste, you say? Look, black coffee is an acquired taste, like tequila or cilantro. I just don’t get it. Gierach, bless his heart, mostly drinks his java streamside, probably while wearing wool socks and waders and contemplating the mysteries of the universe. As for me? My outdoor coffee experience is a bit different. Picture this: the High Sierra, where campfires are banned (to avoid agitating Smoky Bear), and I’m huddled over a Whisperlite , coax...
1 comment
Read more

A Tucson Typewriter Tale

One of the great joys of wandering without much of a plan is that the universe occasionally rewards your lack of organization. During my recent visit to Tucson, AZ, Robert and I were strolling through the Annex this afternoon, doing what tourists and newly minted retirees like me have elevated to an Olympic sport: meandering. The Annex is one of those places where every few steps there's another handmade candle, artisan coffee, or vintage object someone rescued from a garage sale and convinced the rest of us was always destined to become art. Then I saw something that genuinely stopped me. A young woman standing quietly behind a manual typewriter. Not a laptop designed to look like a typewriter. Not a quirky Bluetooth keyboard. An honest-to-goodness mechanical typewriter—the sort of machine that once announced every sentence to the entire office with a satisfying clack and enough force to wake nearby pigeons. With an iPhone 16 sitting in my pocket in an age when people write novels...
Post a Comment
Read more