Maybe I was ten, as I remember, old enough at least so my feet went all the way down to the pedals. It's hard to believe, but I don't think I even tried to ride the thing that Christmas Eve. It was a cold Wisconsin winter--aren't they all?--and riding it out of the living room on Christmas Eve would have been impossible--well, improbable anyway. Even though the bike never made it out of the living room that memorable night, in every other way that gift, that year became a highlight of my life. It was totally unexpected. My parents must have done a ton of thinking to figure out how to keep that bike out of my way in the house, to keep the present hidden.
It was Christmas, which is to say, dead of winter outside, so getting the new bike into the house and hidden away in the living room before the after-church opening-presents ritual took some doing. How do you hide a 26-inch J. C. Higgins in the living room? Stealthily, I'm sure.
Somehow they got me out of the house when they brought that beauty in. I don't know whose idea it was, but that Christmas Eve jumped forever to the very top of my never-to-be-forgotten holiday seasons: the Christmas I got my first real bike.
Went something like this. It was Christmas Eve, after the Sunday School program at church. We lived a block north, so I expect that I raced home, hoping my parents would do likewise. In all likelihood, they did. I don't know that they could start the drama fast enough.
Opening presents is an engagement that requires ritual. What you don't want is bedlam--the once-a-year joy is too good to race through. It calls for deliberation. When my sisters and I got a little older, I'm sure we were handed the mantle to distribute the goods. Back then, I think Dad took care of it. Slowly.
What I hadn't noticed was that the entire vestibule had been emptied, all those coats and jackets spread evenly over the back of the couch. Honestly, I never noticed. What I do remember is a sense of being cheated, a sense I would never have admitted back then, but something as palpable as the carols Mom had playing on her Magnavox stereo to set mood. I wasn't getting my share.
I'm sure I didn't hear a thing. It was Christmas Eve, for pete's sake, the biggie. I'm sure we worked at it--one present at a time: first Judy, then Gail, then me catching the spotlight to see what emerged when the wrapping paper came off. And I've never forgotten the palpable sense that I was getting rooked somehow, that my bounty was solely in arears, that I wasn't getting my share until finally Dad told me to take those jackets and coats off the back of the living room couch.
That's when I knew I'd smacked the jackpot. Just like that, a shiny handlebar found its way through deliberate lie of the pile of coats. There was something beneath all those things--good night! it was a bike, a full size, 26-inch beauty, shiny-new, the most memorable Christmas present I'd ever received--and I had absolutely no idea it was coming.
That Christmas remains as one of the, if not the most memorable Christmases of my life.
All of that rides back from my memory from the late 1950s, when my parents must have determined that it was time their son had a good bike, his own bike, and went out like drunken spendthrifts and bought a brand new 26-inch J. C. Higgins for their son. It was a pure surprise, a shock so full of joy I can feel it yet. Whatever pictures I had are likely gone with the flood, but I know very well what the bike looked like when I pulled it from behind the living room couch, where it had been so stealthily hidden.
All of that comes back to me now because if the dealer has it right, I'll be getting a huge box full of another bike, this one actually a trike. It's coming today, seventy years or so later--not a J. C. Higgins, but a specialty brand made just for seniors like me who've lost some balance. One can't relive one's history, and I won't try; but pardon me if I don't, just now, feel a bit of the kid in me.
Today, I'm getting a new bike. . .well, trike, and I'm thrilled.
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The tank was red, like the one up top, but so was the rest of the bike. I haven't a clue what happened to it, but I'll never forget the Christmas it was right there in the living room with us.
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