I was born in Leesburg, Florida, just nine months and four days after my parents were wed there at First Baptist Church. While clearly within the “zone of propriety” for properly chaste couples, premarital hanky panky being more seriously frowned upon back then, dad always liked to remark that me being born so soon after the wedding gave the old ladies at the grocery store something to gossip about. To me it just meant that their week of honeymooning in New Orleans probably didn’t involve as much sightseeing as it could have. Jazz and blues ain't the only things frequently conceived in the Big Easy!
Very soon after I was born, we were off for Fort Knox in northern Kentucky where dad was to serve his six months of ROTC active duty. He trained as a lieutenant in the tank division of the Army and served in the reserves thereafter. When he finished at Fort Knox we headed to Auburn, Alabama, where he was enrolled in the College of Veterinary Medicine. That’s really where I spent my first four years, in a trailer park outside of Auburn. It was a blue-collar type trailer park where most of the residents were retired or disabled and dad got a good deal on the rent by agreeing to perform some chores around the grounds occasionally.
Somewhere along about my third birthday Santa brought me a tricycle. Now, these were the days when things were built to last. That trike was solid steel, automobile grade. I’d say it likely had more high-quality carbon steel in it that you’d find in most compact cars today – no plastic whatsoever. Even the seat was crafted of smooth, hard steel. A grown man could put his entire weight on the step between the rear wheels. The front wheel was big with wire spokes and wide rubber pedals. It was covered by a full length, curved steel fender to catch any flying debris thrown up when a young daredevil rode hell bent for election through the mud and the gravel. The trike was, of course, red.
These were also the days before we felt it necessary to post warning signs telling folks not to drink battery acid – seemed to go without saying back then. At that stage in the nation’s development Californians had not yet determined that every known material or substance, natural or manmade, could cause cancer and had to be labeled as such. Certainly, my tricycle came with no warning labels or overt safety features. It was a tricycle for heaven’s sake! You could freely misuse it at your own peril and learn (or not) from your experiences.
Another thing true of that era was that kids played alone outside. We didn’t have a TV yet and there were certainly no “devices” for me to stick my face in and shut out the world. The only thing that kept my mother sane while she kept house (trailer actually) and tried to adjust to the roles of wife and mother, was the ability to send my over active, ever irritating little fanny outside to play. “Supervision” consisted of being within hearing distance of screams of pain or sounds (or lack of sounds) indicating inappropriate mischief. I was the only kid in our part of the trailer park since most other residents were older. Hence me and the trike spent a lot of time together.
Like every other boy child ever birthed, I liked to go as fast as possible on the tricycle. The road through the trailer park went up a hill past our trailer and when possible, I liked to ride down the hill to try to get up some speed. Sure, there were crashes, scrapes and bruises, but that was just part of being a kid. Peroxide, band aids and the occasional stain from a dabbing of Mercurochrome (yeouch!) healed all in short order.
The real thrill was when dad got home and I was able to beg him into pushing me on the trike. With one foot on the back step, his hands out on the ends of the handle bars, he could REALLY get that thing moving! I would work my legs as hard as I could trying to keep my feet on the pedals as we scooted up the hill. It was some serious fun!
Now, it wasn’t the trike’s fault, or even dad’s. It was just one of those things that happens. One evening, after supper, dad was pushing me up the hill. I was urging more speed and trying my best to keep up with the whirling pedals. But my foot slipped off the pedal, right into the spokes of that big front wheel. A sharp twist and just like that my left leg was broken just above the ankle. I don’t remember the pain of the break, but I do remember dad sitting me on the hood of the car and touching the skin that was peeled away on my ankle and shin by the wheel spokes. The next thing I remember is having a cast on my leg and laying on the couch in the trailer eating ice cream. Funny what your mind hangs on to.
As you might guess, that was the end of the wild, rear propulsion, chariot races on the tricycle. Dad felt horrible about the accident and exercised prudent care and restraint where the trike was concerned from that point forward. I was, of course, disappointed. I was pretty sure I could keep my feet on the pedals going forward and was more than willing to risk it. However, it was not to be.
That was not, however, the end of the travails of the big red tricycle. The unrestricted imagination of a four-year-old boy is a wonderous thing. It can devise uses for things like a tricycle that were never intended or envisioned by the manufacturer. Did you know you can churn imaginary ice cream with a trike? Well, you can!
Here’s what you do. You turn the trike bottom upwards so that it rests on the ground on its handlebars and seat. The front wheel now becomes a “churn” operated by cranking the pedal with your hand. That big front fender becomes the place where you put the ingredients for your imaginary ice cream – sand, sticks, rocks and such. Add ingredients and churn away, some items catching the wheel and spitting out into the air. Churn, churn, churn, fast as you can.
I never did figure out when the imaginary ice cream was “done.” But I’ll tell you what I did learn. You should not poke your fingers under the spinning wheel and try to remove or reposition ingredients. That front wheel was made of quality rubber with tread designed for traction. Quick as a blink that fast spinning wheel grabbed my little hand and swept it along the edge of that long, curved steel fender. The pinky finger of my left hand was nearly severed, cut all the way to the bone. It took eight stitches to repair. To this day, many decades later, I have a white scar across the bottom joint of the small finger of my left hand.
That red tricycle graced me with my first broken bone, my first cast, and my first stitches. Many others would follow, but that trike got in the first licks. What a wonderous machine! It returned to Florida with us when we left Auburn after dad graduated from veterinary school. It was soon relegated to an idle life of rust and ultimate demise out at the farm once I graduated to a bicycle with training wheels. My middle brother, Allen, born five years after me got his own new tricycle when the time came, even though mine was still solid, sturdy and ready for more action. I suspect that was largely because mom and dad figured that my old trike had already done enough damage and thought Allen should be spared its wrath. Seemed like a waste to me.