When I was a boy, like many other Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, I had a subscription to “Boys’ Life” magazine.   It’s the official magazine of Scouting.   Lots of great adventure stories, history, educational articles about nature and wildlife, science, humor, and all sorts of things designed to show what the life of a young man of good character really looks like.  It also included reports of interesting things that Scouts around the country had done.   A fascinating and much anticipated monthly read.

Right.  I read it for the ads in back.

The last few pages were chock full of ads for anything that might grab the attention of a young Scout  and sucker him into parting with a few bucks.    Gilbert erector sets, chemistry sets, “Build your own Radio!” kits, etc.   Then there were also the ads for Bikes, pocketknives, orienteering supplies, camping equipment.  Lionel Electric Trains, money-making opportunities by learning to raise bees and sell honey, or to build a working Steam Engine.   And then there were plans.  Plans to build your own rowboat or tree-house or clubhouse in the woods … you name it. 

There were ads for all kinds of things.   If there was any off chance that some boy somewhere might salivate after it, there was an ad for it.

One of the ads that regularly caught MY eye was one where you could send in $1, along with a Self-Addressed-Stamped-Envelope, and get plans to “Build Your Own MOTORIZED Bike!”    The word “MOTORIZED” was in all caps so as to differentiate it from all OTHER bikes.   Not just a “bike”.   A MOTORIZED bike.

The ad showed an old Schwinn Cruiser, fitted with a small gas engine.  A boy with a slightly maniacal smile was astride it, looking like he owned the world.   There were “speed lines” added to the picture as well, indicating that any bike so equipped would veritably zip along at breakneck speed, providing not only rapid transportation, but a thrilling ride in the process.   In script below the “Build Your Own MOTORIZED Bike”, was the phrase, in a font designed to connote action:  “Ride Like the Wind!”

I had to have one.

I’m not kidding.   I HAD to have one.   I thought about that thing for weeks and weeks.

So, finally, unable to resist any longer, I took my $1, tucked it into an envelope along with a S.A.S.E., and waited for my plans.   Never mind that I did NOT have one of those Schwinns, or even anything remotely similar.  I had a typical “Sting Ray” bike, with raised handle bars, banana seat.  Like ALL the kids had in those days.   But that was a technicality.

It was weeks before I heard back.  Weeks.   Truthfully, life moved on and I pretty much had forgotten about it.

But on the day the envelope arrived, with MY OWN HANDWRITING on the outside, it thrilled me all over again to imagine that soon, very soon indeed, I would be smiling that maniacal smile, and would join the ranks of boys all over the world who could now, “Ride Like the Wind!“.

I eagerly tore open the envelope to find inside, one single solitary page.

It was a rough, primitive photocopy of a drawing with a bike with a steel plate welded just above the crankset, with a small gas engine mounted on the plate, with chain and sprockets to drive it.  I think there was an arrow pointing at the plate, with the words “weld plate here, and mount engine”.

There was not much that a typical 12 year-old Boy Scout could “build”, unless that 12-year old Boy Scout ALSO happened to own a machine shop and be an expert welder.  I didn’t know any Boy Scout welders.

But you COULD save up a what amounted to a small fortune for a 12-year old Boy Scout, and buy a gas engine from the supplier listed on the “plans”,  along with chain and sprockets, then take the picture to a machine shop and have THEM weld the plate on for you, etc.

My feeling of “being had” was palpable.   I looked and looked at those plans, and it just seemed unreachable. Needlessly complicated, and more than a little disappointing that I’d paid a whole DOLLAR for this sheet of paper.

But I never soured on the IDEA of a “Motorized Bike”.

Never.

So, no, I never actually got one.  But I always wished that I had.

Yesterday after work on my way to pick up Janet, I was running a bit early.   So I did something I do from time-to-time, and I stopped on the Vanderbilt University campus to walk the Labyrinth out beside the Scarritt-Bennett library.  It was just the thing I needed to center my mind and bring back a feeling of balance that I had allowed a hard-day to steal.

Heading back to my car, I heard the faint “putt-putt-putt” of a small engine, and wondered what it might be.

Imagine my delight when I looked up to see an older gentleman, with snowy white hair underneath his bicycle helmet, wire rim glasses, and a smile that said he owned the world … riding down 19th Avenue South on my “Motorized Bicycle”.

He had what appeared to be that EXACT Schwinn I had envisioned all those years ago, complete with leather panniers, whitewall fat tires, and yes … a puttering, sputtering gasoline engine.

There was only one phrase that could possibly have escaped my lips.

And it did.

“Ride like the wind!”

I smiled and waved. He smiled a giant, somewhat maniacal but knowing grin and waved back.    I laughed.  Honestly, I laughed out loud, and I even shed a couple of very, very happy tears.  He saw my laugh, threw his head back just a bit and laughed too.

I so, so , SO wish I could have had the opportunity to chat with him, to find out if he had been a Scout.   To see if he read Boys’ Life.  To see if rather than feeling like he had been duped, that when he saw those same rudimentary “plans” I had seen all those years ago, he had thought to himself:

“Hell.  I can build THAT!”

Beauty, they say, is “in the eye of the beholder”.  That is true, I guess.

But sometimes … sometimes … beauty is in the imagination of a boy.  A boy who then rises to the challenge of the chance to do something daring.  Something that nobody he knows has ever done before.

And brothers and sisters, I am here to attest, it is all the more beautiful when you can look at an old man having the time of his life, and see the wonder of the boy that still lives inside.

Love,

John.
“Ride Like the Wind!”