BIKER CHICK

Back in the summer of 1956, I was 7 years old and ready to take over a "new" hand-me-down, Big Sis's blue bicycle. Good lord, it's as big as I was and about ready to swallow me up and spit me out on the street. When it came to wheels, though, I was always game--even in spiffy, white party shoes.

I visited with Mama Bore over the weekend, and she recalled when I learned how to ride my first two-wheeler bike--a loaner, of course, boy's bike, in our backyard. "You must have fallen off a hundred times," she laughed. At least. I quite clearly remember tumble after slam after head-on crash into trees. But, by god, I was going to learn how to ride that little red bike. And I did. Two years later, I graduated on to the gargantuan one above. Did I really pedal it up and down the street faster than lightning, like it seemed at the time? Hmmmm. Probably.