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Portrait by C. Dey Prescott
D. R. Prescott has written a novel, short stories, a nonfiction book, a collection of essays, a full-length-three-act play, planetarium show/display scripts, two family histories, technical articles and business plans as well as written for and edited several newsletters.
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Recent awards and published work include Writers' Journal, Long Story Short, Taj Mahal Review literary journal, The Orange County Register, Writer's Digest and Writing.com among others.
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Prescott currently writes and explores life in Orange, California.
"Sentience can be annoying."
-DRP Abt. 1990
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My fifth contribution (BENGAY AND PROMISES) to The Taj Mahal Review
Literary Journal December 2010 is available: http://ning.it/ggarW6 ________________________
Don Prescott appears on Episode 7:Colonizing the Cosmos and 8:The God Question of D. Wayne Dworsky's Alpha Centauri & Beyond Blog Talk Radio.
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O R D E R T O D A Y !
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The Old Hawthorne Deluxe
by D. R. Prescott
In the summer of 1957 between my seventh and eighth grade years, Fred, my best friend, and I took a two-day bicycle trip from East Liverpool, Ohio, to near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fred had a relative near Pittsburgh and we planned to go to their place, stay the night and return the next day. I am not sure how we managed the parental consent thing. I suspect exaggerations were involved coupled with imaginative minimization of the risks. Why we did it is still a mystery other than we wanted to say we did it.
I had just bought a “new-to-me” bike. It was an over-used, rusty old Hawthorne Deluxe painted in the original maroon and gray. I don’t remember what I paid for it but it couldn’t have been much since that bike was a sight that would make anyone eyes sore but mine; even in its battered condition, it looked great to me.
Fred convinced me that we could make it serviceable again. It was only March and our planned expedition to Pittsburgh was several months off toward the end of June. That time of year would give us about fourteen to fifteen hours of daylight to make the trek one way. We figured we could do it in nine or ten hours. After all, that is averaging about 4 miles per hour… just about a good walking speed and we had wheels. How wrong we were.
When not going to school, doing homework, cutting grass, sleeping or helping my grandparents (since my grandmother had become virtually bed-ridden by that time and I lived there most of the time), my attention was divided between a number of things: (1) the bicycle was in pieces in my Sophia Street basement, (2) diversions that Fred and I frequently conjured up, (3) playing chess with an old neighbor (fortyish!) who had taught me to play the game, and of course, (4) there were always the impromptu pickup ball games. I usually played short stop. I liked the action at that position. There was nothing like snagging a line drive or stopping a hard hit grounder in my well-used Rawlings glove.
That spring, I rounded up as many grass cutting jobs as I could find to finance fixing up my old, beleaguered Hawthorne. I cleaned and cleaned but could not remove all the rust from the frame. Painting was absolutely necessary. Getting the fenders re-chromed or completely replacing them was far beyond my budget so I resorted to elbow grease. Whoever had the bike before me took lousy care of it. Obviously, it had been left in the weather for an extended period judging by the amount of rust and had its share of running into things measured by the number of dents in the fenders. Of course, in the Midwest, things rust fairly quickly if left in the weather, including automobiles.
Eventually, the bicycle refurbishment operation was transferred to Fred’s house for two reasons. His dad had a very well-equipped machine shop over his garage with just about any metal or woodworking equipment you could want. A second and most pressing reason was my dad’s constant threats alternating between kicking my butt out of the basement to throwing the “junk” out.
Simultaneously, Fred and I had gotten interested in building and flying control-line airplanes and astronomy which eventually led to rocketry, learning to use a slide rule and a rocket club we formed which is a topic for another piece about a big explosion (nobody hurt!) It seemed that our budding interests and Fred’s accessibility to his dad’s workshop provided a base for bigger things to come. But, in spite of our meandering diversions, the work on my Hawthorne progressed steadily.
By May, we rolled out my “new” 1947 Hawthorne Deluxe sporting a new paint job, tires, inner tubes, chain and working front light. The battery-operated turn signals on the rear rack even worked! We actually did a pretty darn good renovation job, although the paint did not exactly match the original and the chrome fenders were as clean as possible but still stained with the big dents having been pounded out as satisfactorily as possible considering limited funds. Fred was mechanically-inclined and had learned to use most of the power tools including the metal lathe in the workshop which helped in making some replacement parts for the rear rack assembly. I learned a lot from him and valued those hours we worked together that were just the start of many sessions for us in that machine shop.
We spent a lot of time talking as we worked. Of course, sometimes we got into the usual youthful, testosterone-driven subjects like sports, cars and sex, especially about how the girl who lived across the street had filled out quite nicely in the last year. More often, we discussed things that most guys never broached, partly because it wasn’t as cool as sports, cars or sex in the macho-teenage society of the fifties. We would get into discussions about heavy things like religion, science and the nature of things. I guess you might say that we were a cross between macho-wannabes and nerds. We were always trading creative barbs and jousting with good-natured repartee.
Many of our discussions were prompted by exchanges I had with my fortyish chess partner who loved philosophy, science and stimulating conversation, especially over a chess board which after he taught me to play became a place for some great discussions that I remember to this day. From the fifth grade to the eighth grade, he and I discussed a number of things that later became fodder future projects. But, back to the bicycle expedition…
It was a balmy June Ohio morning on the day that we started our trip at daybreak, not too hot and not too humid. Fred’s bike was newer and cooler than mine. It was one of those lean English jobs, green frame as I recall, three gears and skinny wheels. I usually followed Fred because he knew where he was going and on the grades his low gear and a lightweight bike gave him a big edge over my lumbering Hawthorne. Downhill, the Hawthorne was great and smooth. Uphill, it was a relentless beast.
When we began the climb on Route 30 out of Chester, West Virginia, then a two lane highway, I had to get off and push the bulky Hawthorne. Most of the grade was just too much to pedal even for Fred on his lightweight bike. So, we pushed our bikes up the long grade to Hilltop where there was a small restaurant/store, maybe a bar and gas station too but memory eludes me. I think it was six or seven miles if my long-term memory serves me right from the bottom to the top. As we pushed, we talked and made plans for a number of things, most of which we actually did sooner or later. Some three or so hours later with aching legs, we made it to Hilltop. That sure put a huge dent into our time estimate. For the return trip, we anticipated the downhill run to Chester would be measured in minutes not hours.
It was a little after 10 A.M., so we stopped and rested for a while to prepare for the fun we knew we would have on the roller coaster type hills that were coming. We filled our canteens from a hose, had a snack (Twinkies, I think) and headed off refreshed into the arms of adventure.
Several hours later, we had made some fairly good time, screaming down the long hills getting up as much speed as possible to minimize the amount of pushing necessary up the uphill side. The speed we attained seems incredible to me today and I might add we had no protective gear on at all. None! Nada!
On some of the long downhill legs, we actually passed cars. Fortunately, traffic was fairly light. It was near the bottom of one downhill run that I encountered a beat-up pickup truck pulling out of a little dirt road onto the highway right in front of me. The driver obviously didn’t see me and was startled when he realized that a Hawthorne had him in its sights. Fred was well ahead thanks to his high gear and pointed as he passed the side road. If he hadn’t alerted me, I may have kissed part of my anatomy goodbye right then and there as a smudge on the side of the pickup. The truck was about 100 yards ahead and my only recourse was to go behind it off the pavement. There was no way I was going to stop. The driver was akin to a deer in the headlights. Pedaling was useless and breaking too hard was dangerous.
Downhill was where that old Hawthorne and gravity got along well. The driver of the truck turned left up the hill and got a good eye of me passing to his left. When I hit the dirt on the side of the road things got really dicey, really fast. With a plume of dust billowing, I left the pavement missing the truck by ten feet or so. I slowly applied my brake and my momentum slowed as I bottomed out and started up the next grade. I was still moving fairly fast but uphill on the dirt let me discard a lot of speed. I applied my brakes harder. That was a mistake. The bike sidled sideways and I fell off into, fortunately, a patch of tall grass growing between the pavement and a fence about ten feet from the pavement. I hit and rolled for what seemed like forever through the grass. Looking back, anything sharp, hard or dangerous could have been lurking in the tall grass.
My first coherent thought as I rolled to a stop was an image of being impaled on something in that stand of grass. I shuddered. I was lucky, no other word for it. Incidentally, the pickup driver never stopped.
When I came to a complete stop, my second thought, beyond a pain in my shoulder where I had made initial impact with the ground, was about the damage to my bike. Sitting up and dusting myself off, I saw Fred riding up with concern etched on his face until he realized I was in reasonable shape. His concern quickly turned to adrenaline-driven laughter when he saw me spitting and sputtering debris collected from rolling through the vegetation. The good news was that I had survived more or less intact with a slightly torn shirt and so had my mighty Hawthorne except for a few scratches and a bent front fender which I more or less straightened out.
We arrived at Fred’s relative’s place about an hour before sunset. That was about three or four hours later than we initially estimated. Since his relatives lived on the west side of Pittsburgh, the actual distance was about five miles less than to downtown Pittsburgh which made our trip about 35 miles. We had significantly underestimated the uphill pushing time and managed only two and one half miles per hour. By the time we had made the first hill pushing that heavy Hawthorne, I was bushed.
I know we had some fun at their house but dang if I can remember doing what. I can vaguely remember their house and the dandelions about to take over their lawn. Our stay must have been less than memorable. I do remember a conversation that Fred and I had under the stars that night about Procyon, the main star in Canis Minor, the two-star dog, as it set in the western sky at sunset. We scoffed at how anyone could take two stars and make a picture of a dog out of it. It may have been that discussion that started us on a course to win the Buhl Planetarium Astronomy Award several years later.
At dawn the next day, we thanked his relatives for their hospitality and headed for home as the sun rose in a perfectly clear, azure sky. Little comes to mind about the homeward bound leg until we reached Hilltop. The last thirty or so miles apparently were uneventful, filled only with a lot of pushing interspersed with exciting downhill runs. The real thrill was ahead of us. It was for all practical purposes all downhill to Chester from Hilltop, all six or seven miles of it.
At Hilltop, we had a couple of bucks left between us and grab a little chow about four in the afternoon. We discussed our downhill strategy including the turnout road to shed speed about a quarter of a mile before the highly traveled road at the bottom. You wanted no part of trying to stop at the red light at the bottom at the speeds we were likely to attain. So, the turnout road was a long inclined cobblestone driveway that we had staked out as our gravity-assisted emergency brake.
We started out down winding Route 30 into Chester. We just coasted because the grade was long enough that building up speed was the least of our worries. We would hit the brakes a bit to keep from giving gravity all the advantage. Most of the turns were fairly gradual and we were stable on decent pavement. In one place, we encountered a 49 green Pontiac making its way cautiously done the hill. Fred shifted gears and passed it. I was about 30 yards behind and could not get any more speed out of the pedals. I was at gravity’s mercy but I was traveling fast enough to also pass the Pontiac. The white-haired driver shook his head knowingly as I passed and appeared to be muttering something that I probably didn’t want to hear. By that time, we were about half a mile from the bottom; we gradually tried to slow our descent. At those speeds, too much braking could spell disaster. Neither of us wanted to go home and say, “Look ma, broken arms, broken legs, and broken head.”
Fred had increased the distance between us (dang his gears) and my right foot applied the brake very slowly. This ride was great—good, smooth and fast. I made the last turn before our turnout driveway breaking system and saw Fred had successfully negotiated the inclined driveway and was waiting on me. The distance closed so fast that I was concerned that I might overshoot. To keep the suspense from building, our strategy worked flawlessly. I hit the driveway and started up the hill; about halfway up, I started applying the brakes and came to a stop right in front of him. Fred was grinning from ear to ear. “Was that cool or what?” He shouted, obviously pumped by adrenalin.
“Cool!” I yelled as I petted the horn casing of my trusty 1947 Hawthorne Deluxe. I never felt so alive in my short life. My heart felt like it was about to pound its way through sinew and bone and pop out of my chest. We did it and loved it. We vowed to never do it again. We figured that it was better not to press our luck.
Besides, while the stiffness and soreness from the previous day’s exertion had worn off during the first couple of miles of the return trip, it was probably an omen of what was likely the next day’s pain. The rest of the way home was relatively easy going and we made it four hours before dark, aglow in accomplishment.
That was the start of bigger and better things for Team Crossen-Prescott, some dangerous, some not; most successful, some less so and only one dismal failure. I don’t recall what happened to the old Hawthorne; it has become merely a fond memory.
© Copyright 2010 D. R. Prescott (UN: donprescott at Writing.Com).
All rights reserved.
D. R. Prescott has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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