How does one forget how it came to be that one of the prettiest girls he’s ever known ended up as his girlfriend? You’d think that something like that would be etched in his memory like a lighthouse telling him that in spite of himself he was on the right trail.
For the life of me I don’t remember how we met though living in such a small town the truth is we all had to bump into each other sooner or later. And for me it wasn’t a bump as much as a head first, full on crash, literally; finding myself holding hands with one of the most beautiful girls in all of the county and absolutely believing that she was all I ever wanted or needed in life.
Of course I was all of fourteen or so and how could I possibly know?
She was Beauty and I was Beast. That was how I saw it and so for me that was how it was. And because of that I had to try to prove to her, in my totally adolescent ways, that she hadn’t made a mistake when she let me hold her hand. I wanted her to know that she hadn’t made a mistake when she let me kiss her. But more than all of that I wanted, no needed, for her to know she hadn’t made a mistake when she’d kissed me back.
New Lisbon, for the most part, is a town built on level ground although there are one or two “hills” to be found. At the intersection of County Road A and Division Street if you’re headed north on Division you’re going to find a place to sled in the winter and in the summer to take your hands off the handlebars, raise your feet off the peddles and close your eyes. At best it’s a slope but when you’re looking for a helping hand from gravity you take what you can get.
The launch point was right there alongside the Methodist church and when you were sledding you’d pretty much run out of steam at the parsonage. To this day I’m not sure whether God is a Methodist or not but the one thing I can say is that no one ever got hurt when we were sledding down that slope. Well, not hurt in an ambulance calling, emergency room sort of way. There were the moments when if you didn’t get out of the way you were going to end up a sort of hood ornament on the next Flexible Flyer. But usually that was more of an intersection of time and lack of coordination and not much of anything else.
When the snow was gone the bikes came out.
I still remember that bike and all it meant to me. I don’t remember how many years it and I rode together but I do remember that Santa Clause brought it. It was red and white and gloriously beautiful with a frame large enough for a full grown man. The philosophy was that “he’ll grow into it” and it mattered little whether it was a pair of pants, a winter coat or a two wheeled red stead just waiting to carry you away to places you never before dared to venture to. In the end that would be true, he would grow into it, but for the moment the sheer size of his stead was something of a problem for that kid of eight or so.
My best friend taught me how to ride a bicycle by holding on to me from the landing of to his house as I tried to find some sort of center. He’d shove me and holler that I could do it and in the end he was right, I could do it.
In the years to come after Denny gave me a shove, yelled at me that I could do it and then picked me up when I’d fallen for the third time, that bike became my means of escaping almost everything but my imagination. It became Trigger or Champion or the best cow pony out of the remuda for doing the days’ work of rounding up cattle and running off the bad guys. As the years past it would become the machine that I hoped would carry me to another place and another time as I pumped harder and harder on those rubber peddles. If only I could go a little faster, if only I could turn down this road, if only…
In a little town you don’t always have to ride your bike here or there or somewhere else, you can walk and everything is fine, besides if you don’t use your bike you don’t have to try to figure out where to put it when you aren’t riding it. Of course that was all very true until you got to the age where you weren’t a kid anymore but you weren’t driving either. You found yourself in that twilight time where and when you knew the difference between being a kid and, well, thinking you weren’t a kid anymore. So, the only way around it was going to be that trusty old friend of yours with two wheels and a brand new set of high rise handlebars. It was a cool as you could get without a license and a car. And that was still a lifetime away.
She lived in the white two story house at the southeast corner of Main and Pearl. And though it wasn’t the most significant thing about that street there was just a slight slope to Pearl as it ran east toward the river. I valued any slant of the road simply because though I didn’t know anymore about gravity than anyone else I did know that it worked and it worked one hundred percent of the time which ultimately meant if you were headed down that slope you were going to pick up a bit of extra speed in the process. Of course as with most of my theories in life this one had at least one flaw. There was a stop sign at the end of the block which meant that about the time I’d built up a good bit of velocity it was also time to see whether or not the brakes still worked. Also there was the fact that if she was outside with me then what was the point in trying to ride as fast as I could away from her? The point was to keep her attention and validate her giving me her attention.
You’d think that young love would be simple, uncomplicated and something that moved along in starts and stops but without much in the way of conflict. How could I ever, even in those early days, keep something so easy and innocent?
And of course that was exactly why on this particular summer day I was doing my best to try and impress her and win her attention all over again for the umpteenth time. It was the dance we danced and for some time it would work well for us, that pushing away and then drawing back together that couples do when they haven’t learned how to simply let go and let their feelings for each other be what they are.
The object was to pull as hard as you could on the handlebars and at the same moment throw your weight back toward the rear wheel of the bike thereby performing the near death defying “wheelie” that all young guys knew full well could bring instant fame or at the very least something of a smile from the girl you were trying to impress. And no I wasn’t the world’s greatest at it. Ed Sullivan’s people weren’t going to be calling any time soon to have me perform on his show but there were moments when I could, well, sort of do it fairly well.
There are certain laws of nature that just can’t be gotten around no matter how hard you try. And when you start off not even thinking about what the eventual consequences could be there’s a good chance you’re headed toward a problem or two and from everything I’ve learned over the years since that day gravity is not to be toyed with and even more so not to be ignored.
She was standing there, gloriously, with golden hair brushing across her shoulders and a face to make the angels jealous and all the while watching me as I rode back and forth, here and there in front of her. Of course I should have gotten off that stupid bike, sat down in the grass beside her and just talked about whatever it was we talked about and pressed our shoulders against each other only because that was as much as we were going to be able to do sitting out there in front of God, all the town and most of all her mother. But no, that would be the sensible thing to do and certainly not the way I would do it. After all there were amends to be made to that beauty standing there and the only way I knew to do that was to try and impress her with manly death defying feats of strength and agility.
If your bike is on level ground a wheelie makes sense mostly because there aren’t many variables to have to deal with. A bit of an incline makes getting the front wheel off the ground a lot easier but there’s always a risk of too much incline and too much wheel off the ground which leads to you on the ground and the bike on top of you. Trying such a stunt on a decline is, well, just plain dumb.
Not only was I pointed downhill but the bike likely weighted close to a ton and a half, or so it felt when I went to pull the front wheel off the ground. Oh I got it up a ways just as I pushed down on the peddles and shot forward faster than I’d figured on. And about as quick as I pulled that front wheel up it was falling back down only to land on top of a broken tree branch. It’s amazing how laws of nature, when they meet head on right there on Pearl Street one sunny day in summer can cause such amazing results. In that moment gravity and friction met square on which meant that suddenly my bike wasn’t going anywhere and the problem for me was that I was - going somewhere that is. Over those handlebars and face first on to the asphalt and then into her mothers’ kitchen to sit at her table while blood did its’ best to get out of me and on to the floor.
Her mom patched me up as best she could but there was nothing that anyone could do for the two broken teeth I now had. I don’t remember much about all of that other medical emergency moment than that she seemed to be more concerned about me and how I was than anyone I’d ever known. When she was sure I was patched up about as good as could be she sent me on my way and I think that somehow she knew the sort of reception I’d get when I got home.
For years after that day whenever I laughed I would consciously put my hand over my mouth to hide those chipped teeth. It would be a decade and more before the results of that day would be dealt with. But in all the time to come I would forever remember a woman caring for me in a way I’d never before experienced and a beautiful girl who sat beside me not quite sure what to do but sitting beside me none the less.
In time she would find herself once more in that very same place - beside me and not knowing what to do.
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