Dad was not a fan of The Three Stooges and their slapstick comedy. He once even banned me from watching the trio after I started emulating their antics. However, I do remember both of us sitting through one of their skits that involved the following exchange between Moe, Larry, and Curly and an actress playing a soothsayer.
Soothsayer: "I'm your new soothsayer, the Seeress of Roebuck."
Larry: "Your father must be Roebuck."
Soothsayer: "No, for I was raised by Montgomery."
Curly: "Oh, you're Montgomery's ward!"
Dad was howling. His sudden roaring laughter shocked the bejeezus out of me. In all my 5 years on this earth, I'd never heard him laugh that hard and that loud.
While Dad was a pretty good writer and could appreciate a good pun, it just happened that Montgomery Ward was Dad's all-time favorite department store. A lot of our home furnishings and major appliances came out of those doors. It was also his go-to place for supplies for any projects around the house. One of these projects was my first "real" bicycle.
After I ditched the training wheels and outgrew my starter bike, Dad salvaged a rusty frame from an old Schwinn and we got to work. After a thorough sanding, we shot it with a coat of primer and laid down multiple layers of a dark ocean blue. The rear rim and tire were recovered along with the frame, and the tire was 2" thick and solid rubber. Dad was particularly proud of that find. "You'll never get a flat with that!"
The rest of the bike was trimmed out in pure '70s awesomeness - looong banana seat, high rise handlebars, and, attached to the frame, a 6-foot long fiberglass rod with a neon orange pennant on the end. You'd be able to see me coming from over the horizon. On the last day of the build, Dad pulled something out of his toolbox that would be the crowning glory of this project. As I looked on, I saw his hand held an official Montgomery Ward embossed foil sticker. He approached the bike and carefully wrapped it around the frame. The bike was already just too cool, but that little bit of bling was like chroming out a hotrod. I was sure it would give me an extra 10 - 15 mile an hour boost cruising the neighborhood streets. "There you go, Wayne. No one else has a bike like this!"
The freedom and mobility a kid gets with his first bike are indescribable. My range of exploration and all the adventures that were opened up outshone anything available on the dozen or so channels we had on TV. On summer days and afternoons during the school year, I was gone. Some neighborhood quest or recent comic book acquisition by one of my buds always demanded a road trip.
This bike turned out to be the proving ground for my first attempts at finding my personal style with further customizations. I realize everyone did this, but taping a playing card to my rear frame to get that click-click sound off my rear tire spokes was the absolute shiznit. I also got into spoke reflectors and probably went a little overboard. My wheels looked like solid discs of amber and white. The coolest add-on was this little dinky headlight I bought after saving my allowance for a month. Attached to my handlebar, it ran off a 9-volt battery and likely couldn't cast a shadow in a pitch-black room. But I didn't care. I had a headlight! On my bike!
That bike and I traveled a lot of miles, crisscrossing streets and trails in my old neighborhood, and I hadn't thought about it in years. If I remember correctly, it was stolen one night after I failed to securely chain it to the tree near our front stoop. I was utterly crushed. As the months went on, Mom and Dad decided I was old enough to handle a bigger bike, and that Christmas, I found a 10-speed beside our tree. I was grateful to have it, and on its first road test, I was shocked at the speeds I could achieve with the multiple gears. It also helped that my rear tire wasn't a 15-pound hunk of solid rubber.
I've been through several road bikes since then, and each, in turn, has stories to tell about the time in my life that we rode together. But none of them have had the absolute chutzpah of personality as that salvaged old frame with the Montgomery Ward sticker.
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