Blog

 Now I’m by myself when I go bike riding because my sister just had a knee operation. She claims after successful knee surgery she’ll be able to double her bike speed! If I can’t keep up I’ll really be a sissy boy. During my misspent youth when I was 14 years old, I had a paper route. I’d get candy bars, tickets to the theater and get “gifts” when I signed up new newspaper subscribers. One of those “gifts,” was a “Genuine Police Siren.” I’d pull a chain and it would rub against my front tire spinning a armature which would produce a siren sound (no batteries), unfortunately slowing down my bike. It was illegal in Illinois so I really wanted one. It turned out to be somewhat lame, not loud enough, good sound however. At any rate I got two buddies these sirens Terry & Bill (Bill was a wise guy, remember “Leave It To Beaver?” The wise guy Eddy Haskell, well Bill looked like and even talked like Eddy). Picture the scene; all three of us pumping our bikes and pulling our siren chains all at the same time, that’s when something totally amazing occurred, They “resonated,” becoming exponentially louder! It was so loud I could actually feel the sound, it was amazing, I never in my life experienced this phenomenon again! The most memorable event was when we stopped all the traffic on Harlem Ave & Ogden!

At any rate a Berwyn Cop Car witnessed our shenanigans did a U turn turn on Ogden Avenue and turned on his lights (electric gum ball machines located on their roof), so we took off into Riverside. A cop car could never catch a 14 year old kid on a bike, we knew every short cut in the neighborhood and could easily hit 20 MPH. We were like trying to catch a fart in a windstorm, rather elusive. We weren’t even close to getting caught, a fun biking day! We were really proud of ourselves giving the cop the slip. We had to lie low, we were on the lamb, hiding behind bushes, while the Keystone Cops were looking for us, we stayed on the lam for about 7 minutes.