Riding my bike to Grandma’s house

For ten years, from the age of 13 until I was 23, (1949 - 1959) I lived in Luton, an industrial town some 30 miles north of London.

This was where I started cycling, and throughout my teen years I rode my bike all over the South East corner of England, within a hundred mile radius of Luton.

My grandmother lived in a little seaside town called Hythe, in the county of Kent. It is on the South Coast of England, near Folkstone and Dover. On a clear day you can look out over the English Channel and see the coast of France.

On many occasions I rode my bike to visit my Grandma, who at that time still lived in the same house on High Street (Left.) where my mother was born.

The shortest route was 100 miles, and I would usually ride down on Saturday, stay overnight, and ride back on Sunday. 

The direct route took me right through the dead center of London, right down the Edgware Road to Hyde Park Corner.

If I could get an early start, usually around 5:00 am., I would be clear of London’s center before 8:00 am. when the traffic got heavier. This was a Saturday, and it was the 1950s when traffic was a lot lighter than today.

On the way back, I would take a detour north and east to Gravesend, where I would catch a ferry boat over the River Thames to Tilbury on the North Bank. This route was about 110 miles, taking me through Brentwood, Harlow, Hertford and Welwyn Garden City.

On one occasion, I rose early for my ride to Granma’s, I ate a large breakfast and immediacy threw up. Throughout my childhood and teen years I would periodically have these stomach upsets that my mother always called a “Bilious Attack.”

Looking back, I now suspect it was nothing more than food poisoning.

We never owned a refrigerator, and meat would be cooked, and then eaten over several days.

I really had no choice but to make the trip, neither my parents nor my grandma had a phone.

I had written a letter the week before saying I was coming, had I not arrived she would be terribly worried.

I rested a couple of hours, then ate something again and set out. By now it was too late to take the direct route through London. I would have to go the long way.

I hadn’t gone but a few miles when I brought up the food I had just eaten. I struggled on, and somewhere out between Harlow and Brentwood, weak from lack of food inside me, I collapsed in the long grass at the roadside.

I hadn’t laid there long when I felt something biting me and I discovered I was lying on a red ant’s nest. I was not having a good day.

However, it did get me up and back on the bike again. Soon after I was forced to eat again, and this time it stayed down. Once I was able to eat, my strength returned and I completed the ride.

If you ever have a chance to visit Hythe, be sure to check out St. Leonard’s Church. (Above, right.) Originally a Norman Church built in 1080, it was later enlarged in 1120.

An unusual feature is the Ossuary, or Crypt under the church, it houses a stack of human bones, and some 1,200 skulls. These are the remains of some 4,000 men, women and children, some who may have lived in the first millennium.

They are believed to have been placed there when the church was expanded, and later when the graveyard became full and bodies were removed to make room for more.

I went there as a child in the 1940s, and always wanted to return, but during the 1950s through the 1970s it was closed to the public. Now it is open again and there is a small fee to visit, which helps in the upkeep of the church.

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1976 Track Frame

When I was building frames in England back in the mid-1970s I recorded frame numbers in a little hardcover note book. I still have that book.

It contains little information, just a customer name and a number. It is a miracle the book has survived to this day. The only reason for keeping it in the first place was to keep track of how many frames I built, and to make sure the serial numbers stayed in sequence and I didn’t miss any.

At the time as I stamped a number on a newly built frame and wrote it down in my little book, probably the last thought in my mind was that I would be corresponding with people about these very same frames 43 years later. I don’t think anyone living at that time could have envisioned the Internet and email.

 

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from Rob Rix who lives in Lancashire, England. He wrote about a frame I built for him back in 1976. He gave me the frame number M6110, I opened up my numbers book and sure enough there is Rob’s last name, Rix.

In his email Rob wrote:

“Many years ago you built a frame for me and I still have it in my possession. The serial number is M6110. Back then we had to rely on letters and telephone calls to place the order. This bike has been all I ever wanted from a track iron - stiff and ultra-responsive.

The best place I had on it during my racing career was Nation Silver medal for the 1000m sprint. Well done Dave you did a great job for me and the proof is in the length of time I have had the bike, I really would not part with it.  

The front forks were bare tub clearance and originally undrilled however the fork crown was drilled some years later when I used the bike in Hill Climb events.

The only slight damage on the frame is from the inevitable track crash where the handlebars hit the top tube and put a fair dent in it. The frame was originally finished in bright yellow with red head and seat tube contrast panels.

After a couple of seasons racing I had it chromed for durability and it has remained chrome ever since. I have always been satisfied with the bike and you did a first class job for me.  Many thanks for such a good product.”

Rob Rix.

The frames I built in the UK were racing bikes that were used for racing. They did not have the finish and aesthetics of those I would later build in the USA. It is nice to hear a story of a frame that was used for the purpose it was built, and has served its owner well.

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In the best shape of my life

Some say that the time for reminiscing about when we were in the best physical shape of our lives, is for when we are done riding. When that time comes for me, I already know when that was, 1970 and 1971. It started literarily by accident. 

I was living in England, it was early in the 1970 season. I was out training alone after dark and was rounding a bend on a relatively quiet country road when a motorcycle traveling in the opposite direction, took the same bend on the wrong side of the road, and met me head on.

The motor cycle, ridden by a sixteen year old with no driver’s license or insurance, with a youth of similar age riding on the back. These kids were on a big ol’ British Norton Dominator and were racing some others who were following also on motorcycles. Because they did not see a light from an approaching car assumed it was safe to take this particular corner on the inside. 

All I remember of the impact was a huge headlight coming straight for me, the next moment I was lying on my back in the road. What actually happened was that the motorcycle passed slightly to my right, the handlebars of the motorcycle passed over my bike but hit my right forearm. Remember this was England so I was riding on the left side of the road.

The impact threw me up in the air, doing a complete summersault, and I landed on my back in the road. Rather like a wrestler, doing a move called “The Irish Whip.” It happed so fast I do not remember that part, but know that is what happened because the back of my head was slightly grazed, (We didn’t wear helmets back then.) and the back was ripped out of my sweatshirt.

The motorcycle also went down and the two youths picked up some road rash as they slid across the road and ended up against a wooden barn on the opposite side. Apart from this they were uninjured. I was not so lucky. My right forearm was shattered, broken in three places. My bike on the other hand was completely untouched, not even a scratch in the paint.

I experienced the worst pain in my life that night lying in a hospital with my arm a temporary sling hung by my bed. The next morning they operated, and had to put a stainless steel plate in my arm to hold it all together. The plate is still there today, and I wouldn’t know it except for a six inch operation scar to remind me. 

They put my arm in a cast from my hand to my armpit, with my elbow held at 90 degrees. This cast was on for five months. I could drive a car and do a few other things but couldn’t work. I decided to keep riding my bike and rigged it up with a single fixed gear and a brake lever in the center of the handlebars so I could ride with one hand.

I rode every day as much as 60 to 80 miles. Weekends I would ride with the other guys in my cycling club. They cut me no slack and would drop me on the first hill we came to. I was riding with my left hand only so had to sit down on the hills, and could not get out of the saddle to climb. I would chase the group for miles, sometimes catching up, other times I never saw them again.

Weekdays I would sometimes ride with an older retired guy. He was probably in his late sixties, where as I was 34 at the time. He kicked my butt, and told me months later that I had the same effect on him. He kept telling himself that he couldn’t let a cripple with one arm beat him, while I was thinking ‘I can’t let this old man beat me.’

When the cast came off after five months, the doctors were amazed, my right arm had muscle in it. My left arm got a hell of a work out and I have heard that if you work one arm or leg it will affect the other. So riding my bike was probably the best thing I could have done for my recovery.

The end of that year and the one that followed was my best season ever. The five months that my arm was in a cast I had been doing over 400 miles a week, and doing it all on a single 69 inch fixed gear. (46 x 18.) I could spin and was as strong as a horse on the hills. There is no doubt in my mind when I was in the best shape of my life.

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They called me Don Dave

When I left my bicycle business in 1993 I went to work for a company that manufactured bowling equipment. The company was located in the City of Orange just south of Los Angeles in Southern California. The workforce of about 100 was almost entirely Mexican.

The following year the owner of the company decided to move the business to Springfield, Oregon. The State of Oregon, along with the City of Springfield gave him large tax breaks, low rent, and other incentives to move there because of Oregon’s high unemployment rate.

All employees were given the opportunity to move with the company but only about 15 of the original workforce including myself decided to move. When we arrived in Oregon we immediately started hiring. My position with the company was Welding Production Manager so I did some of the hiring. 

We were not necessarily looking for skilled workers, we were prepared to train people. We didn’t drug test anyone which may have been a big mistake, most of the people we hired it seemed had been unemployed for so long, they had lost any desire to work. One man I remember started work at 8:00 a.m. I showed him how to do a simple assembly job with a wrench. He worked until 10:00 a.m. when we took a break, he left and we never saw him again.

Another man I hired lived near me and I gave him a ride to work each day because he had no car. He quit after two weeks and stole a box of bronze bushes from the company worth several hundred dollars and sold it for ten dollars to a local scrap metal dealer. How do I know this? I found the bill of sale from the scrap dealer in my car some days later. As fast as we could hire these local workers, they quit. We didn’t fire them, they quit. We may be found two or three workers we could hang on to.

In desperation the owner contacted some of his original Mexican workers from Southern California and offered them a job. A few of them came and soon the word spread and others followed and by the end of that first year in Oregon our entire workforce was once again almost all Mexican. The company had really tried to give locals the jobs but had failed through no fault of our own.

I found these Mexican workers a joy to work with. You could take someone who had never welded in his life before, spend about half an hour showing him how, and by the end of the day he was welding with the speed and quality of someone who had been doing it for years. The Mexican has a work ethic like you wouldn’t believe having been taught to work hard from a very early age. In their own country they don’t work just to get by, they have to work hard in order to survive.

If one of their group was not pulling his weight for example the others would say to me, “Juan is lazy.” Not behind his back but to his face. Juan would become embarrassed and we would all have a laugh. He had been shamed into working harder by his fellow countrymen.

They called me “Don Dave,” in a somewhat lighthearted manner, but never-the-less a mark of respect they didn’t even extend to the owner of the company. Being an immigrant myself helped, but I believe I got that respect because I treated them with respect. I treated them as I treat everyone, as an equal, neither above me nor beneath me. I learned a few words in Spanish, enough to instruct them on their daily task. They made me look good with the company, because of the quality and quantity of work they produced.

Mexicans would not cross the border each day in their thousands if there were no jobs. People hire them not because the Mexican National is cheap labor, but because they work hard, do a good job and often an employer can’t find others to do the work they do.

This article was first posted in 2016. Immigration is a topic that is now even more current, not only in America, but in the UK too. It is one of the reasons for the mess known as Brexit. Often a thinly veiled form of racism. When the company was raided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. (INS.) in 1997, only those of Hispanic appearance were  questioned and deported. I was not asked to show my Green Card. (Even though I have one.) Several white Mexicans of European appearance, and one black Mexican (Of African heritage.) were also not questioned, or deported.

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The significance of a decade ending in nine

I came to the United States in January 1979, exactly forty years ago. For me it was a life changing move, an act of truly starting over. It was sometime in the years that followed I realized there had been a significant, often life changing event that had occured in my life, every decade on the year ending in nine.

This could be traced back all the way to September 1939 when I was just three and a half years old. It was the month WWII started and my father left to go to war. I have absolutely no memory of this, but just two weeks later my mother gave birth to my sister, and my elder brother and I went to stay with my aunt and uncle for a couple of weeks.

I have a vivid memory of this visit, in spite of my age.  My uncle was a chauffeur for Lord Farringdon. He lived on the estate of Buscot Park, in Oxfordshire. He and my aunt lived in a flat (Apartment.) above the garages were the Rolls Royce’s were kept. The estate is now open to the public and the Garages are now the ticket office where visitors start their tour.

I never went inside Buscot House (Below.) but walked by the front steps and explored the whole park with my brother and cousin. We went fishing in the lake there, and I remember catching a small fish. I remember a rose garden that sloped down to the lake, with a sundial in the center.

When WWII ended in 1945 and my father returned, he had a hard time keeping a steady job, and we moved every year. This played havoc with my schooling. In 1946, 1947, and 1948 we lived in different places often hundreds of miles apart.

Dave 1949By 1949 I was 13 years old and we moved to Luton, an industrial town just 30 miles north of London. My mother finally said she was through moving and we settled there. I caught up with my education, got a scholarship to an Engineering Technical School, which lead to an engineering apprenticeship.

Luton was also where I started cycling. Joined a club and started racing at 16 years old. It was where I met Pop Hodge and started dabbling in framebuilding, and look where that lead. Luton was definitely a life changing move.

In 1959, now 23 years old, an adult and able to make my own choices. On a quite sudden whim while in between jobs, I decided to move north the Nottingham. It was there I later married in 1964, and we had two daughters. 

In 1969, still unaware of this ten year itch thing I had going, we upped and moved to Worcester. My original intentions were to find a simpler lifestyle in rural Worcestershire. A better environment to raise two small daughters.

As it happened Worcester was in the West Midlands, just south of Birmingham, and a hot bed of British cycle racing. This got me heavily involved in cycling and framebuilding again. Once again a life changing move.

Dave 1979In 1979 aged 43 I moved to America. My marriage had ended and it was a good time to make a complete break.

I later remarried.  Nothing happened in 1989, except my second wife left, so I guess that is significant, but not altogether life changing. Anyway I was aware if this ten year cycle thing by now.

I left the bike biz in 1993, moved to Eugene, Oregon in 1994. Met my wife Kathy there and married in October, 1998. Now I could have waited a few months and married in 1999, but you can’t manipulate fate, and for what other reason would I do that?

We moved to Charleston, South Carolina in 2001. We are still here and nothing significant happened in 2009. However, here we are on the dawn of 2019 and we are considering moving inland. Charleston is a beautiful area and we love it here, but the secret is out and there are getting to be too many people. Traffic is horrendous, and it will only get worse.

We are looking at rural areas near Greenville, South Carolina. Listed as a bicycle friendly city by the League of American Wheelmen. It could happen this year, but not be to fulfil some prophecy, but because the time is right. It will just be a coincidence that it happened on a year ending in nine, which is how I feel it has always been. An interesting coincidence.

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