Yikes! Bikes and Trikes!

It’s always nice to receive messages from people who are reading these columns (hint, hint). For example, I recently received an email from someone who we’ll call Peter (because that’s his name).

Hailing from Switzerland, Peter commenced by saying, “Hi Max, I do love to read your Throwback Thursdays columns about growing up in England in the 1960s and 1970s. I'm 65 and I like to be reminded about those years.”

Peter went on to say, “You asked if we (your readers) had any requests for future columns. I have one suggestion — how about discussing what it felt like to own your first bike? I had a three-wheeler (age 4), a scooter (age 7), and a bike (age 11). I loved and pimped them all.”

As an aside, the word “pimp” first appeared in English around the 16th and 17th centuries. At that time, it had an unsavory connotation with which we need not concern ourselves here. Around the 1970s, the slang meaning of "pimp" — used to describe a stylish or swaggering attitude — began to gain traction. The slang use was further popularized in the early 2000s by media, such as the MTV show Pimp My Ride, where the verb "to pimp" came to mean to decorate or customize something in a stylish way, but we digress…

Peter’s message immediately made me think about the three little girls (ages 10, 8, and 5) who live next door (along with their parents, of course). They have an assortment of electric scooters and battery-powered ride-on toy cars. I couldn’t have dreamed of owning such a marvel when I was a kid and muscle power was the order of the day.

I can’t help myself… I’m starting to recall my own ride-on toys from the 1960s when I lived in Sheffield, England… cue “traveling back in time” audio and visual effects…

In the summer of 1962, shortly after my 5th birthday, I was playing in the driveway of our house on Springfield Road. Like almost everything else in Sheffield, Springfield Road is on a hill. We lived about a third of the way up the road. Below our house, the road had a relatively gentle slope down to the bottom of the hill where it met Abbeydale Road. Above our house, the road got steeper and steeper until it disappeared into the clouds. A little way down from us, Hastings Road branched off to the left.

Mum was in the kitchen. She had the back door open so she could keep a watchful eye (and ear) on me. Mum says she was surprised when she heard two little boys giggling because — as far as she knew — I was on my own. When she looked out of the door, she saw me and another boy sitting on the ground playing with my Matchbox cars (these were small toy cars sold in boxes that were about the same size as a box of matches).

“Who’s this?” she asked. “It’s Jeremy,” I replied (that’s what he’d told me, and I had no reason to doubt his word).

One of the reasons my mum was so surprised was that there was a wrought iron gate at the end of our drive. The bars were too closely spaced for a little boy to squeeze through (I knew because I’d tried). Also, there was a special latch on the gate. I assumed it was designed to prevent marauding lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) from getting in. Unfortunately, it also meant I couldn’t get out to go and see if anything interesting was happening. I bet Mum and Dad hadn’t even thought about that!

Just then, we heard a lady shouting in the distance. She was coming up Hastings Road calling, “Jeremy, Jeremy, where are you?” Well, that was a strange coincidence. Here was a lady who had carelessly lost someone called Jeremy. Meanwhile, we had one more Jeremy than we knew what to do with.

If it had been up to me, I would have hidden our Jeremy in the house and kept him. After all, we’d found him, and “finders keepers, losers weepers,” as they say. But Mum foolishly shouted, “He’s over here!”

Jeremy’s mum and my mum ended up having a cup of tea and a long chat while he and I carried on playing together. After that, Jeremy and I became best friends, and we played together all the time.

Jeremy and I both had fire-engine-red tricycles with three wheels — two at the back and one at the front. At first, our mums took us to each other’s houses to play. They chatted to each other while we rode our tricycles in the driveway.

As we grew older, since we both lived on the same side of the road, we were allowed to ride our tricycles to each other’s houses. We were also allowed to ride them up and down Springfield Road and Hastings Road on the pavement (sidewalk), just so long as we didn’t cross any roads.

We had a friend called Elizabeth. She lived next door to Jeremy, and she was one year older than us. When Jeremy and I were seven years old, we both got “big boy” bicycles with only two wheels. We taught ourselves how to ride these bicycles all by ourselves… then Elizabeth taught us how to ride them without falling off.

For our ninth birthdays, Jeremy and I both got four-wheeled go-karts. In addition to steering wheels, pedals, and brakes, they had very uncomfortable, unpadded seats.

By now, Jeremy and I were allowed to cross Springfield Road on our own (we had to be very careful and look both ways). This meant we could pull our go-karts up Springfield Road, which was steep, and then up Stowe Avenue, which was steeper, all the way to my Auntie Barbara’s house.

After we’d said hello to Auntie Barbara, who sometimes gave us a biscuit (cookie) or a sweet as a treat if we were lucky, we would race our go-karts back down the hill to my house. We would do this over and over and over again, and then we would do it some more.

We went very, very fast. Our go-karts rattled and clattered as we zoomed down the hill! They were bigger than us (“so we could grow into them”), which meant they were hard to control. Also, their brakes weren’t very good.

There were a few unfortunate incidents at first. Occasionally, little old ladies and gentlemen — who weren’t paying sufficient attention to what was going on around them — had to leap out of the way at the last moment. One elderly man ended up stuck in a bush, and we had to stop and help him get back out again (we were very obliging like that).

There’s a saying that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” This means that it’s difficult for older people who are set in their ways to change their behavior. I don’t think this is true. For example, the old people who lived in our area quickly learned to listen for the sound of us approaching and get safely out of the way before we came whizzing past.

I really enjoy hearing from readers, like Peter, who say these columns remind them of their youth. The funny thing is, writing them takes me back to those halcyon days when I was a young sprout. I’m also encouraged to receive messages from younger readers who tell me that my columns open a window onto a world they never knew.

As always, I welcome your captivating comments, querulous questions, and sagacious suggestions, all of which you can share on Hackster's Throwback Thursdays Discord channel. I look forward to seeing you there.

P.S. Don't forget that you are only a click away from perusing and pondering all of my Throwback Thursdays columns in one place.

P.P.S. Please feel free to email me at max@clivemaxfield.com if you have any questions about this column or if you have any requests or suggestions for future articles.