Uncool? Yeah, But I'm Riding and You're Walking!

Uncool? Yeah, But I'm Riding and You're Walking!

Don't ask me why or how dad decided to buy me a two wheel motorized vehicle for commuting to school. Given his opposition years later to me buying a real motorcycle it still baffles me.

Perhaps he thought I couldn't possibly get killed on a motorized bicycle which could barely make 25mph. I guess he was right, because I didn't.

So there I was, all of 14, which was the minimum age to drive anything in Florida at the time, with something called a “Moped.” Although the term seems to have originated in Sweden, as best I recall mine was made in Yugoslavia and looked a bit like a heavy duty girl's bike, with the main frame tube enlarged and squared off to hold the gas tank. I believe it had two speeds...slow and slower...but must have had a centrifugal clutch as I think shifting was done by rotating one of the handgrips.

Yes, it's got pedals
What of it?

Yes, I did say pedals. While it was possible to pedal the thing if you ran out of gas it was quite a bit heavier than a normal bike, and would pretty much wear you out if you tried this for any real distance.

You got it running by pedaling like it really was a normal bike, until the engine kicked in. Then you sort of zoned out for 20 or 30 minutes until you reached your Junior High School. Best I recall this device did NOT make me the envy of my peers. It was so slow that I often tried pedaling to supplement the motor...to no real effect. I don't think it reduced my nerd factor at all. Still, it gave me one thing the rest of these cool guys did not have...independence. Turns out that, as slow as it was, I could still convince it to go other places beside school.

About a year later, again for reasons that were then and remain now unclear, the moped got replaced with a Cushman Eagle. It sort of amazes me that these have become somewhat collectible, as it was really just a bit less dismal than the moped. But it at least looked like a motorcycle...well, sort of. And the tank shifter seemed kind of cool. Still had the centrifugal clutch and two speeds, but these were now at least slow and...a bit less slow.

To me these devices were simply tools...a way to get places I otherwise could not...or at least not without someone else's parent. For dad I suppose it was a way to avoid being in any way, shape, or form, one of those parents.

I never thought I would ride any other vehicle with two wheels and could not wait to reach 16 so I could graduate to driving a car on my own. Meantime, since dad would not teach me, I managed to find someone with a friend who was over 18, a requirement for a novice driver to try four wheels. And best of all, the car was a stick shift (I think it was a Ford Falcon). So the first thing I learned to drive required using both hands and feet...something that for me would normally have seen as unlikely as walking naked on the moon. I wasn't exactly coordinated. But I not only managed but did so without destroying the guy's clutch.

Dad's only comment when I told him I was driving a car? “Good. That way I don't have to worry about you destroying one of ours.” And when I turned 16 he actually got me one...not the 57 Chevy at first, but a rather stodgy, despite the ram's head hood ornament and two-toned paint, Dodge.

It was a V8 that couldn't get out of its own way.

Mine was not a convertible
but had this kind of paint layout...dark and light blue
the only sexy thing about the car