Moving
On
I am honored to be speaking as a backup for Warren
Haskin. Warren has been a member of the club since
2003, has presented four fascinating papers, is a good friend, and is very ill.
Tonight’s topic made it difficult for me to decide what to
write. I thought of the Big Bang and the
speed at which we are all rocketing through the universe. Our member, Dr. Ivan Ciric, however, took
that subject away from me when he presented his excellent paper less than two
weeks ago at our regular club meeting. It was much better than I could ever
write.
Then I thought of the fact that on January 29th,
John Buchanan, pastor at Fourth Presbyterian Church gave his
last sermons, having determined it was his
time to retire,… moving on, so to speak.
John’s remarkable ministry there spanned nearly three decades, during
which time the Church’s membership effectively tripled and its social outreach
became, as we say, truly a Light for good works in this City. There is much
that could and has been written about his remarkable leadership, and I have
revered his ability to do regularly what we all would like to do tonight. He
has the greatest talent for presenting an argument in the form of a sermon 15
minutes or less that causes laughter and tears, and teaches a point in most
literary terms. I’ve always felt he gave a better
final argument each Sunday in less than 20 minutes than any lawyer I ever heard
close to a jury in much longer time.
Coincidentally,
my parents were married at Fourth Presbyterian in 1939, and they have both
rather recently moved on. Mother died
just nine days before John retired. He should know how mother enjoyed his
sermons. I guess I should tell him. He’d
appreciate that.
But, I decided I couldn’t write about all of
this lofty stuff and do any of it justice.
I then looked back at Warren’s contributions to
the club. I examined and reviewed the
four papers he has presented. The first
three were great, but of little help to me. His fourth gave me the excuse to write what I
always wanted to write about in the first place. His 2008 paper, “These Boys Lives” argued
persuasively that childhood memoirs could be works of valuable literature. And,
my professors always told me that if I didn’t know what to write about, to just
write about something I knew about. I
never argued with a professor..
In the Spring of 1961 my friend
Jim and I bought two of the first ten-speed bicycles made by Schwinn from a
bicycle store in Wilmette. We rode them from the store and back over to
my folks’ house on the far northwest side of Chicago.
Later that day Jim rode his bike to his folks’ home out in Long Grove
near where our President, Don Wroblewski lives.
Within a couple of weeks we decided that we wanted to
ride to California. We were impressed with the miles we could
cover on these bikes. We had no doubt that we could do it, if only we could
obtain our parents’ permission to try.
Jim had just turned 16 and I was not to get that old until August.
We
had maps and estimates of each day’s ride. Our parents listened to us at a dinner
at my folks’ home in May and after we presented our plans, we learned our
mothers had instructed our fathers to deny our request. However, our fathers had a couple of drinks
before dinner, and had a different idea. It is very interesting what benefits
teenagers can get from their parent’s use of alcohol. Two or tee martinis for
Jim’s dad, and he was putty in our hands. My dad believed that we couldn’t do
it and decided to teach us a lesson. He agreed with Jim’s dad to stay home from
work for a couple of days and receive our call that we had given up near the Mississippi river.
He planned on driving out to pick us up and return us home. Dad announced during dessert that they had
agreed to let us go. Our mothers
howled. Amazing, but both of our dads
and mothers remained married to each other for the rest of their lives.
On June 22nd, Jim and I rolled out of my
folks’ driveway at dawn and headed west. We pushed halfway to the Mississippi that day,
setup camp, ate and slept like babies.
Up at dawn, pack the bikes, twenty miles before breakfast; pushing hard
into the wind, hills so steep need first gear up; tearing down the other side. Crossed the Mississippi
at dusk and paid three dollars for a motel room in Bettendorf, Iowa.
Iowa very hilly,
windy in our face and hot. Small
town bike store owner sold us toe clips. These little devices changed our lives
forever. Now we could push down and pull
up on the
pedals at the same time! Eureka! We had visions of the tour de France.
About
halfway across Iowa
we realized that we had stopped at every Tasty Freeze and Dairy Queen we
encountered. At each stop, Jim would had a strawberry sundae and I had a black cow. I don’t know how he stood all those canned
strawberries. We determined to stop at every one we found all the way to San Francisco. And we
did. A couple of times we had to wait
for an hour or two when we came to a drive-in before it opened. Although this cost us valuable time, we
considered it worth the investment.
At the end of the fifth day we rode into the driveway of
a friend of my father’s in Omaha.
It was there that we first called
home. Dad had stayed home for three days
and then gone back to work. I don’t know
if he just had to go to work or if he had to get some space from mother’s worrying.
We stayed a day in Omaha
and saw the sights and went to a county fair.
The next morning we took off and were met by the president and a priest
at Father Flanigan’s Boys
Town. They heard we were
coming on the radio. They arranged a
tour and a big lunch for us with some of the other boys who lived there.. I remember being
in awe of the president of the school,who was a senior
in high school and captain of its football team. We left there late in the afternoon, and raced as fast as we could to a little town
named Brainard. As we were coming into
town, a yellow ‘51 Plymouth,
(yes, I remember the year) driven by a semi-toothless guy honked and pulled up
beside us. He told us that we were late and that we had to follow him. We knew we couldn’t out run even a 1951 Plymouth and we didn’t
fear the man for some reason so we followed him across some railroad tracks off
the main rode to his home in the shadows of the town grain elevators. His name was Charlie Pytlik and he was the boy scout leader in that little town. He had his troops in his backyard waiting us
to give us a picnic dinner. They had
waited all afternoon not knowing of our delay at Boys Town. So, we ate until we couldn’t eat anymore, pitched
our tent in his backyard and called it a day.
Nebraska
was flat for five-hundred miles. The average temperature ranged, we thought,
between 200 and 280 degrees. The wind
came from the west in constant hot gale force blasts. Hour after hour, day after day, we put our
heads into the wind and pushed and pulled as hard as we could along the right
edge of the road, two lane US
highway 30. We didn’t hit a divided or limited access
highway until California,
but that comes later.
We
learned some interesting things in Nebraska:
A greyhound bus with its engine in the rear approaches you
at 70 – 80 miles an hour in complete silence.
The second it passes you, the draft causes your bike to veer toward the
center of the road unless you instantly lean to the right. Greyhound buses traveling at 70 miles an hour
on a two lane US
highway are always closely followed by 18 wheel semis with their noisy engines
at the front. Scares the hell out of you
no matter how many times it happens.
And another thing; in July 1961 every farm along highway
30 had a dog sitting on the front porch a quarter of a mile from the road. Every dog was gray, and was the size of a
small horse. Not one of those dogs had ever
seen bicycle spokes sparkling in the sunshine. The sight of our bicycles enraged
every dog in Nebraska. We became very good at noticing the dogs get
off their porches. We sped up as fast as we could to pass the drive before the
dog could reach the road. We learned
that the hard way with our first encounter. We never got caught by a dog again.
One part of Nebraska
was beautiful. Every little farm town
with as few as 250 – 300 people had a municipal Olympic size swimming pool
surrounded by a park with picnic tables.
At the end of each day’s ride, we pulled into the local pool, paid the
dime to go swimming, were able to shower and swim, and then camped in the park
overnight.
There were no walkman or I-pods, and we didn’t bring a
radio, so for hours each day besides thinking and riding I would pass the time
by singing to myself. I sang theme songs from
TV programs about cowboys and other
heroes, and the first lines of the popular songs then. The songs of early 1961 included lyrics
about young love, teardrops, early Elvis Presley hits, and Everly Brother’s
tunes. I found myself humming the finale
of the New World Symphony, which I had been acquainted with performing in my high
school band. Go figure. You all might
remember Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife”,
Paul Anka’s “Lonely Boy”, Lloyd Price’s “Stagger Lee”, who shot Billy,
of course, and maybe a few of the lyrics.
That was the summer of 1961, but the songs became solid for years, so
you don’t have to admit to being that old to know the songs. One of our
particular favorites was Del Shannon’s “Runaway”, even though we didn’t run
away at all. It helped up keep movin’
into that damned wind.
On the road from Cheyenne
to Laramie, we
climbed for 50 miles and then came downhill for 8 miles at really high speed. That was the only time I fell. It was raining, the pavement was wet and the
road was slick with a film of oil I was
able to turn my bike on its side and slide down a truck cut-off lane. You
remember those, don’t you? If you do, you ARE admitting your age. I slid over a quarter of a mile, got up,
wasn’t hurt a bit, and coasted into Laramie.
In Rocks Springs
Wyoming some younger boys met us
at the town pool. One of them was the
son of the local school superintendent.
He asked his mother if he could bring us home a camp in their backyard
with us. Sounded like a good deal to us
because Mrs. Lundberg, we were sure, was a great cook and would have enough
food to restore our strength. We loved to eat. She fed us well and lots. She
let us camp in her backyard. She fed us a big breakfast, AND she fired off the nicest
note to my mother, which I still have in a scrapbook we made of the trip.
Here are a just a few other things Jim and I learned:
•
At the Wyoming Utah
border there was a restaurant which looked west from the summit down into the
valley with Salt Lake City
spread out below. The road was four lane, but not divided, and the way going down was so steep
that I passed a truck whose driver yelled down that he was doing 60 miles and
hour. Pretty much fun, but pretty
dangerous too;
•
It was 96.3 miles across the Great Salt Lake
desert from the eastern most gas station to the western most gas station on
either side of the south end of the great Salt
Lake. That 96
miles was covered in 5 ½ morning hours and was one of the easiest rides of the
trip;
•
Swimming in the great Salt Lake is funny because the
salt keeps about half of your body out of the water; when you cry from
laughing, you get salt in your eyes, and it burns a lot;
•
The roads across Nevada had exactly the same
number of dead rabbits per mile as those in Wyoming;
•
The climb up Donner Summit west of Reno seemed like 100 miles straight up and
took half a day standing on the pedals at all times;
•
Lake Tahoe is one of the most beautiful places on Earth; Squaw
Peak overlooking the Olympic village
in Squaw Valley may be scaled in 2 and a ½ hours wearing tennis shoes;
•
Truckee California outside of Squaw
Valley into Sacramento is about a 100 mile ride which did not require pedaling
since it was all downhill (that was really a cool day!);
•
Route 40 became a limited access highway west of Sacramento
all the way into San Francisco. Bicycles were not allowed on limited access
highways in California
at the time. As far as I know they never were, and are not today. We learned this from a motorcycle trooper that
looked like Erik Estrada. He pulled us over on the shoulder near
Marin, slowly got off his two wheel motorcycle (such were also restricted from
these roads by the signs, but we didn’t tell him that. He threatened to give us
a ticket for violating the signs. My
friend Jim, who had a driver’s license avoided the
ticket by proving to the officer that we couldn’t have seen the signs because
we got on the road in Chicago
as opposed to any one of the frequent entrance ramps where the signs were
posted.
That
officer did us a great favor. He told us
to get off that road and how to find our way through Sausalito
overlooking San Francisco Bay and where we could wind our way through the
neighborhoods to the base of the Golden
Gate Bridge.
Jim’s
parents and younger brother and my mother went to San Francisco to meet us when we got there. My
dad stayed home and worked. Maybe mom
didn’t want him to come, I don’t know. They were waiting for us at a hotel in
town.
There
is a sidewalk on the Golden Gate
Bridge on the east side
of the bridge overlooking the bay and the city beyond. We crossed halfway, stopped, sat down on walk
and lit some cherry bombs we had carried from Wyoming and tossed them off the bridge to
announce our arrival. Sitting there, Jim
asked me a troubling question. How fast do you think we could get back home on
our bikes if we had the wind at our back? I shrugged because we both knew we could
probably make it in half the time. “What
do you think,” he said, “should we do it?”
We were silent for a long time.
Both he and I knew we were lucky to be allowed our little adventure. Silently, we got up, got on our bikes, and
rode into town where we met our folks.
It was time to move on with the business of family and school. We had
covered 2500 miles in 24 days and we rode into town feeling like humble victors
of some inner contest. We both recognized that our
relationships with our folks and friends and even ourselves would never be the
same, had grown and matured in that one month.
So,
we had learned a lot, especially that its always time
to say thanks to your folks, your teachers and friends for allowing you the
freedoms and lessons to grow.
My
thanks and prayers to Warren Haskin and his family, John Buchanan and his, mom
and dad, and, of course, my friend Jim, without any of whom this presentation never would have
happened. Thank you, all.
Stephen
J. Schlegel
Presented
March 2, 2012
Chicago
Literary Club/ Fortnightly Club Joint Meeting