Author: Edward Guenther
Uploaded: November 11th, 2011
Eddy needed money. The boys had worked for a number of days at the golf course, hunting balls and selling them to the golfers. The golfers could get a good buy from them; yet if the golfers were having a bad day they could get angry with the boys. Eddy remembered seeing one golfer get so mad that he threw a club and it stuck up in a tree. Eddy tried to figure how that could happen.
Anyway, Eddy finally saved $10, which was enough to start shopping for a good used bike. Mama showed him the classified section in the local newspaper and he started down the column. He didn’t get far when he came to a bike for sale for $7.50. Bingo! Eddy felt like a man of the world, able to run an item like this down so quickly. Mama took him to town, and he knew that the blue bike for $7.50 was
the one for him. He couldn’t believe his good fortune: He figured it was a rugged looking man’s bike. And the lady said it was a good bike too. At home he rolled it out for show.
With one accord Eddy’s brothers laughed and laughed. “What’s wrong?” the surprised Eddy asked. “That’s a girl’s bike!” they roared. Eddy’s heart sank and he felt two inches tall. But his pride took over and he proclaimed, “So what! I know that! I don’t care!”
“Yes, you do,” Davy said as he walked away. He knew… and Eddy knew… Eddy did care… a lot.
Now, this being Eddy’s first bike, he didn’t know how to ride one. But so what, he had lost interest in bikes anyway… at least in this bike. Seven dollars and fifty cents down the tubes! He pushed his blue clunker over to the number nine green, situated at the highest point of Pa’s pitch-an-putt golf course. From the top of this hill, the green valley beckoned for Eddy to push off and soar like a bird. It was an imposing hill for a first time biker, and Eddy perched there on that blue bike. He waited under the Main plum tree and pondered the sight before him. Delaying the inevitable, he pondered why this was called the Main plum tree. The other one, located on the other side of the green, was an elephant plum and its plums weren’t much good. But this Main tree would break its branches from the weight of its fruit. He smiled as he remembered Johnny, Donny, Davy and himself sitting up there and eating plum after purple plum. Then suddenly Davy would shinny down as if there was grease on the tree and light a shuck for the house. The others wouldn’t be far behind. Then, at home, they faced the problem of only one bathroom!
Eddy scuffed the ground with his toe. The ground was hard dirt now. At the end of the plum season the extras would fall to the ground. This would make it slick for them to run and slide on. It would be a “slip and slide” right through yellow jackets. But there weren’t any yellow jackets eating plums now.
Eddy looked down that hill from his blue bomb, took a deep breath, and then pushed off. In a fright he became aware of two things: First, he didn’t know how to stop a bike, and second, this roller coaster ride ended in a shear drop off.
Past the number 2 and 3 greens he soared, then the hill flattened out before sloping down again toward the bay, the drop off …and death. The flat stretch was actually fun, but all Eddy could see was the row of holly bushes stretching across the path that ended near the southwest corner of the swimming pool.
With longing Eddy remembered the summers he and his brothers and his sisters Annie, Anjo, Mary, and Margy,
would catch thrushes in those holly bushes and teach them to fly. They would hold the little birds on their fingers and wave them up and down until away they flew. It was an important job… how could they ever fly without their help? Davy’s usually flew first.
Recklessly, Eddy flew down the hill, with Davy watching breathlessly near the holly trees. His front wheel shimmied and shook as he tried to keep the machine upright. He was hopelessly out of control and all he could think about was that cliff and how would he ever stop. Now Davy would have liked this adventure…He was wild…but not Eddy.
Bouncing over the molehills, eyes bulging, lips flapping, hair flying behind him, Eddy saw a gap between the holly trees… if he could only aim for it. The gap was abut 25 feet wide, but to Eddy it was the eye of a needle! It was the left bush that was bothering him. Its stickers glared their challenge in the bright sunshine. Before he knew what was happening, with his hands glued to the handlebars, he smacked that little tree dead center! (Now this part might be a little hard to swallow, but it’s true.) Eddy flipped headfirst over that tree and lit on his feet on the other side. “Say”, he thought, “that was all right!”
Davy ran up and looked at Eddy’s blue bike. “The forks are bent. This bike is ruined!” he said. “So what,” Eddy responded gleefully, “I hated that bike anyway. It was a girl’s bike!” Davy nodded sagely. They both knew.