Bicycle Story by GJ

I was 12 or 13 (1939 or 1940) and was required to travel clear across town to a junior high school for a class in mechanical drawing.

My route took me two blocks down a VERY STEEP pair of hills to a dead end at the bottom: a guard rail that protected people from the electric rail that trains used in a commute to Chicago. We often referred to the train, the railroad, and the tracks as “the third rail.”

It was my habit to make a 90-degree right turn at the bottom, first to avoid crashing into that guard rail, and second, to make my turn north to the next street.

On the afternoon in question, I was running behind a bit and in a hurry and that turn was everything I could muster! Still in a hurry, I decided to ride around a small building on the corner of where I needed to turn left. (I had done this before, but never so hastily.)

Imagine my shock when I encountered a car heading straight for me, with only myself and my bike between that automobile and the side of the building. I instinctively withdrew my left hand from the handlebar, and my left foot from that pedal, and probably said something in the way of a prayer.

Two senses jolted me. One, the FEEL of bicycle as it was squeezed between two immovable monsters, and two, the SOUND of now-bare steel handlebar and pedal against the steel of automobile body. When I survived and recovered and made a miraculous turn left onto a sidewalk, I felt the now-cold handlebar and, an absence of pedal! Some part of the car had taken the grip from my handlebar and the pedal from my bike. I had taken a pretty deep layer of paint from an automobile.

And so, I right-pedaled as furiously, and as fearfully as I could to my goal, and I did, believe me, LOOK BACK!