Or the first time you were dressed as an adult and taken to an adult event and you saw the world or being an adult? Or your first airplane ride? The first time you drove? Or the first time a physician let you use his stethoscope to listen to your own heart?
What was it that changed your young life?
It was my first minibike that changed my life. I could twist the throttle, turn the handle bars, and it went where I wanted it to go. I rode it round and round the perimeter of my parents' suburban lot, driving the neighbors crazy, and wearing a path in the manicured lawn.
It wasn't much, a bent-tube frame, a 3 hp Briggs and Stratton motor taken from an old lawn mower, a seat held together with electric tape, a throttle, centrifugal clutch, and one brake. It was the fastest five-mile-per-hour thing I had ever been on.
I wanted to know why it ran, so I took it apart; an eight year old with his Dad's tools. I put it back together and it wouldn't run. So Dad and I took it apart and reassembled it again. He watched and instructed as I put the engine back together, teaching me how to use wrenches, how not to strip the heads off the bolts and the threads off of the screws. And after a weekend of learning/tinkering it ran!
I knew that I'd never be without something that had two wheels and a motor, and something I could tinker with. It turned out that way, mostly. Motor scooters, minibikes then increasing bigger motorcycles. And cars to tinker with. And I learned that if I could fix a carburetor, I could fix a balky toilet flush mechanism. If I could wire in a radio, I could fix wiring in the house.
And I learned that I could not fix everything, and equally important lesson.
Five decades later and I still have something that has two wheels and an engine. It's much bigger than a minibike. It's tethered to a battery tender now, waiting for Spring. I pat it on the seat every time I walk past. And I will continue to have something with two wheels and a motor until my body no longer allows it, even if I have to buzz around the neighborhood on a small Vespa, my cane velcro'd to the side.
A minibike changed my life.
28 comments:
For me it was my bicycle. It allowed me to ride as far as I cared to go. Over to the next town, up and down scary steep hills, as fast as I could.
If Forrest Gump was running, I was riding. I would still be riding were I physically able - I really miss being in the wind.
Those are good things Michael and Sixty. Good times, good times.
For me it was attempting the change out the engine of a Ford LTD, in the winter, and discovering there was a compatibility problem with the transmissions between 1973 and 74. Sometimes it is good to learn your limits. Mine was I was not really into pursuing a career (or even a hobby) in automobile repair. I am glad I can do the basics...but I really don't want to go beyond that.
Well, my Dad didn't teach me anything as manly as how to handle a wrench. He took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on those rare Sundays he was free. And kind of let me absorb the art by osmosis. That probably set the stage for my actually picking up a brush and trying to do like those art gods when my early teens arrived. And it's been heaven ever since.
I half-way expected someone to mention when they first saw Playboy by now.
Or Playgirl, depending.
I suppose it was my SkilCraft Chemistry Set which, opened up, looked like this. I augmented it with a real glass Erlenmeyer flask and a beaker which were available at a hobby shop in Madison. But I put chemistry aside for a time and didn't pick it up in earnest until college (I hated high school chemistry).
Years later, after my father passed away, my mother cleaned out her attic in preparation for selling her house. She found that chemistry set, along with all the ghoulish Aurora Monster models I built and painted. I didn't want them though as I'm not a pack rat and there's really no point in saving all the things one had growing up. I cherish the memories much more than the actual things.
@Haz: My older brother had a minibike just like the one you pictured. I suppose that's why he turned into a gear head and I didn't. Possession is 9/10 of what you become.
I half-way expected someone to mention when they first saw Playboy by now.
Great point. That was a game changer.
A minibike was my dream for most of my childhood, and I never got one. At 15, my dad bought me and my brother twin Honda 360s, with extended forks (beginner choppers). My brother's got totaled almost immediately (Sorry Frank), but I had mine for many years before moving up to a 750, and then a 1400. Motorcycles did change my life. They added freedom, independence, adventure, and it was pure bliss.
A new post on my blog shows my totally non- DOT approved riding outfit in 1980, and explains what a lucky fuck I am. Sorry, but I'm just modelling my narcissism after our great leader. It's the patriotic thing to do.
Lucky Bastard
I did save my first real 10-speed bicycle. I wrote about that here. These days I ride a Trek.
Michael Haz said...
I half-way expected someone to mention when they first saw Playboy by now.
That would have been the late 1960s at my cousins' house in Beloit. They had a neighbor whose garage walls were festooned with Playmate centerfolds torn out of the magazine. The cousins used to sneak in there and one day they showed us too.
Eye-opening
My first viewing of Playgirl was actually pretty memorable, beside knocking down my confidence substantially. I remember a layout of a dude - I can't even remember what he looked like - but I remember his story. Supposedly he lived alone (and mostly naked) on a big vineyard he owned where he raised grapes and produced wine in the sunny picturesque landscape with a big windowy house in between sessions of lying around sunning himself with a chubby.
I always thought of that as an ideal lifestyle after reading it and it has stuck with me for years. Never got the vineyard, but I did have a chubby once.
The set of Collier's Encyclopedia my parents bought early on was a big influence too. I looked through those like kids do Wikipedia these days.
I was in my early 20s when I bought my first tractor. A 1946 John Deere Model H.
Once RoundUp Ready corn became available, I never used the cultivator again. I'm now up to 4 tractors. A man can't have too many tractors.
Same here with the encyclopedia. I read every one cover to cover as a new volume came each month. I learned about the world in alphabetical order.
The encyclopedia salesman came to the house and convinced my mom that this was the ticket to her kid's success. They gave us a little coin bank that you put a quarter in each day, and that would be the monthly payment.
Learning to play instruments changed my life and defined who I was for a while. First a clarinet and then at the age of 10 guitar lessons. The lessons from some very accomplished and actually somewhat famous teachers led me to a modest career in music and performing...for a while. We (the duo that I sang and performed in) did USO shows and almost went overseas in a tour (we were too young so we couldn't go...thank GOD), managed and staged several variety type shows in college, performed as a pre pre pre opening act for the Doors (that was awesome, we actually caught a glimpse of their backsides as they arrived LOL), performed in Las Vegas small clubs for a bit, San Francisco in several night club venues. And more.
If I hadn't learned, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to do all those wonderful exciting things and wouldn't have had the opportunity to realize that the professional performing lifestyle was really really not for me and gave it all up while I was still young and sane. Music is still a part of my life and I play, not as often as I would like, and still perform for charity functions.
When my mom bought me my first Nancy Drew book. Instant bookworm.
My game changer was when my Dad took me to the library and I got my own library card. He knew the people who worked there and I got a deal where I could go into the "adult" section and take out books.
Now by "adult" I don't mean porn. It was just that the library was split between the children and the adult section.
I was able to take out books by Mark Twain and Bret Harte and Edgar Allen Poe and Kenneth Roberts and Zane Grey and Edgar Rice Burroughs and John Norman and Robert E. Howard and John R. Tunis and so many books that I still reread today.
Game changer.
I was eight years old.
I always like the sound of those old John Deere's, AllenS. For a kid driving a tractor is like being given a gift of power. It was a trust that farm dads didn't bestow lightly on us boys and, in the fifties, very rarely gave to daughters.
To start mine, Dad, you spun the flywheel. Magneto. Full choke, with the linkage to the carb, directly over the wire from the magneto to the distributor, turn the flywheel until you came up to compression, then, with a light turn... pop! You have to immediately, remove the full choke, and if it doesn't start you do the same thing again, but this time with half choke. Starts every time.
My family uprooted and moved to CO when I was very young. I thank them everyday.
I bought a bike with my caddy money. It got stolen. That convinced me that it was going to be long haul, and I was going to have to walk most of the way.
Star Trek. I wanted to grow up and be the Scotty of the first Luna Colony. So much for that.
Or maybe it was having to help can green beans. I hated canning green beans and became driven to have a career that meant I'd never have to can another green bean for the rest of my life.
Or maybe learning to sew at an early age. Construction taught me to use systems and gave me the joy of completing a project. Visualizing flat patterns in 3D gave me a leg up on math concepts that people tell me are not natural to the female brain. Getting to use Granny's old treadle sewing machine was my first lesson in mechanics, and Mom never knew that I would take her new Singer apart and put it back together. (That machine was still working 30 years later.)
Sewing is a fine platform for Engineering.
My parents bought the Encyclopedia Americana which included an entire set of The Book of Knowledge, the kid version of the Encyclopedia. Loved those.
In second grade I started writing a book, a kid's idea of a book. I worked on it for a long, long time. It is sixty pages or so and is terrible, but it was the beginning of writing all the time.
Oh, that's not a thing, I guess. Maybe the fresh spiral notebook was the thing.
Mine was seeing Edward Scissorhands for the first time. Finally, I had found someone who had as weird ideas for storytelling in movies as I did.
Of course, I had watched and loved movies prior to that, but I never truly imagined turning my strange ideas into real cinema before.
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