07/14/2026
One day in the 1980’s an elderly gentleman came in to buy parts to fix his grandson’s bike. At the time we had an antique bike from the early 1920’s hanging in the shop. Like most bikes from that period, it had wooden rims and tubeless cotton cord tires. He saw the bike and said, “I had a bike like that, let me tell you a story.”
“It was the middle of the depression, and we did not have much money, so I scrounged the dump for bikes and parts and finally got one rideable. It was old, the fenders were missing and the front tire had a slow leak, but I kept it working. To plug up the leak I had mixed some flour and water into a thin paste and put it in the tire, it plugged the slow leak pretty well. (more on this later!) One night I rode it over to my best girl’s house to take her to the movies. Her dad told me to have her back by a certain time and I said I would. We walked to the theater and left the bike outside. The movie was a double feature and we stayed for the second show. That meant we were going to be late, and her dad was going to be mad! I balanced her on the handlebars and raced for her house. Part-way there I hit a pothole and the front tire blew out. Because it did not have a front fender, the contents of the tire sprayed all over her skirt. Now that flour and water had been in the tire for a while and had fermented. Her dad was waiting on the porch when we arrived at her house late, and she smelled like a brewery.”
At this point he paused. I said, wow, that’s some story!
He pivoted in place, pointed to the street, and said “You don’t believe me? Ask her, she is in the car!”
They had been married for fifty plus years and now he was fixing a bike for his grandson.
There is never a dull at Bicycle Man LLC!