Well, like many dreams, when it was realized mine was a bit disappointing.
In the mid-'50s I was 12 or 13 and during summer vacation from school I was
sitting pins in a bowling alley at night and washing dishes in a restaurant
during the day. I made $12 a week washing dishes five days a week...and
glad to get the job...we were very poor. I had my eye on a French bike of
some forgotten make in a local store and it was $34. It had skinny tires, a
Sturmey -Archer 3 speed, chrome benders, and the first non-Ashtabula crank I
had ever seen.
I got my new bike home after a few weeks and promptly discovered that the
three speed was so much trouble that to this day I shake my head in
amazement that anyone would be interested in collecting the execrable
Sturmey-Archer stuff. The cotter pins on the crank were constantly loose
and the cranks wobbled much of the time. Of course, I didn't know how to
work on the bike and there was no one to teach me. I had bought it in a
hardware store and they didn't seem to know (or care) either. Eventually
something happened to the bike and it was gone...I can't really remember
just what it was and I probably didn't care much either by that point.
It wasn't until years later, maybe '71 that I got my first really good light
weight bike, the ever popular Peugeot PX-10, that I really had a light
weight to fall in love with. It seemed amazingly fast and agile and I was
smitten!
Tom Sanders
Lansing, Mi USA