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

Boy on a Beam

In this special bonus episode, Boy on a Beam. In a world long ago, when the days moved quite slow, Before buzzes and beeps and the fast things we know, A boy sat quite still on a very fine day, Just staring at nothing . . . and thinking away. No tablets! No gadgets! No screens shining bright! No earbuds stuck in from morning till night. No lists, no charts, and no chores to be done. He just sat there thinking—that's quiet-time fun! His name was Young Albert. He sat in his chair, Thinking of things that weren’t really there. “Suppose,” said Young Albert, with eyes open wide, “I ran super fast with my arms by my side! Suppose I ran faster than anyone knew, And caught up to sunshine that zoomed past me—too! If I hopped on its back for a light-speedy ride, What secrets would I find tucked away deep inside?” “Would stars look like sprinkles, all shiny and small? Would UP feel like sideways? Would BIG feel like Tall?” He giggled and wondered and thought, and he dreamed, Till his head fel...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Fear Becomes the Default

In this special episode, When Fear Becomes the Default. Early Sunday morning, I was cycling past a small veterans’ pocket park in San Marcos. The air was still, the streets nearly empty. On one corner stood a young woman, alone, holding a hand-painted sign that read: “Be ANGRY. ICE agents are murdering people.” I pedaled past, but the words stayed with me. I knew the context—the footage and headlines from Minneapolis the day before, already ricocheting through the country and hardening opinions. Even in the quiet of the ride, the noise followed. Two miles later, I stopped at a red light. A black car with dark windows pulled up inches from my bike. My heart jumped. My first instinct wasn’t neighbor —it was threat . I found myself bracing, scanning, and wondering if the person inside was angry, armed, or looking for trouble. Then the door opened. A well-dressed young woman stepped out, walked to the trunk, and pulled out a sign that read “Open House.” She turned, smiled brightly, and sa...
2 comments
Read more

The Thought Experiment–Revisited

In this episode. The Thought Experiment–Revisited The Boy on a Light Beam In 1895, a sixteen-year-old boy did something we rarely allow ourselves to do anymore. He stared into space and let his mind wander. No phone. No notes. No “Optimization Hacks” for his morning routine. Just a question: What would happen if I chased a beam of light—and actually caught it? That boy was Albert Einstein . And that single act of curiosity—a Gedankenexperiment , a thought experiment—eventually cracked open Newton’s tidy universe and rearranged our understanding of time itself. Not bad for an afternoon of daydreaming. Imagine if Einstein had been “productive” instead. He would have logged the light-beam idea into a Notion database, tagged it #CareerGrowth, and then promptly ignored it to attend a forty-five-minute “Sync” about the color of the departmental logo. He’d have a high Efficiency Score—and we’d still be stuck in a Newtonian universe , wondering why the Wi-Fi is slow. In a post I wrote back in...
2 comments
Read more

Sweden Called . . . They Said No.

Have you ever wondered about  the Nobel Prize? Let's look at Where Genius Meets “Wait—Where’s My Medal?” Every October, the Nobel Prizes are announced, and humanity pauses to celebrate the "greatest benefit to mankind." And every year, like clockwork, a specific type of person appears online to complain—at length—that they were robbed. (Well, maybe this year more than most.) The Origin: A Legacy of Guilt The prize exists because Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor, had a crisis of conscience. Nobel held 355 patents, but he was most famous for inventing dynamite. When a French newspaper mistakenly published his obituary, calling him the " Merchant of Death, " he decided to buy a better legacy. In his 1895 will, he left the bulk of his massive fortune to establish five prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace). Because he was Swedish, he entrusted the selection to Swedish institutions, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The only outlier...
1 comment
Read more