Best Christmas present ever! (Binghamton Press Article December 17, 2014)

An old coot remembers his first bike; the best Christmas present ever. 

by Merlin lessler

It happened two Christmases in row! The best presents a boy (in the fifties) could hope for were under my tree. But, I had to wait an “eternity” to play with them. The first time it happened, I was seven; it was a set of electric trains; I didn’t get my hands on them until late in the day, after my father finally had his fill, “showing me how.” The next year it was a bicycle; I didn’t get to ride that until the following spring. My sister, Madeline, and I both got bikes that year, second-hand, but freshened up with a new coat of paint. We didn’t care; they sparkled, as did our eyes when we saw them under the tree. But, into the basement they went for three long months.    

Finally, the first robin arrived in Binghamton and the bikes came out. We lived on Chadwick Road; it was too steep to learn to ride a bike on so my father helped us push them up the hill to Moore Ave, a flat street with hardly any traffic. I can still remember the exhilaration of staying upright while he pushed me. I remember even more vividly, the terror I felt when I looked over my shoulder and discovered he wasn’t there. I panicked and crashed to the ground. He eventually convinced me that I’d kept the bike upright all by myself and didn’t need his help, except to get started. I hopped back on, and like Hop-a-long Cassidy, my cowboy hero, rode off into the sunset. One problem; I didn't know how to dismount. When I came to a stop, I simply fell over.  

My sister solved the problem. She raced ahead, jumped off her bike and caught me as I came to a stop. Later on, I just stopped near the curb and put out my foot. It wasn’t my fault; the bike was too big, like everything in those days. We had to “grow into” stuff: shoes, clothes, skates, sleds and yes, bikes. I went around in oversized jeans (we called them dungarees) with a six inch cuff, shoes with wadded up newspaper stuffed in the toes and to top it off, I had to use a curb to get on and off my bike. 

I developed a deep relationship with that two-wheeler. It allowed me to leave behind my three-wheeler and the ridicule that went with it. I don't think a cowboy ever loved his horse more than I loved that bike. It was freedom; it was status; and it taught me how to fix things. I learned to take it apart and convert it into a racing bike, by removing the fenders, reversing the handlebars and raising the seat. Sometimes, I decorated it with red, white and blue crepe paper and rode at the tail end of the parades in downtown Binghamton. A lot of kids did. We also “clothes pinned” a piece of cardboard to the fender support so it would flap against the spokes and made it sound like we were riding motorcycles. It didn’t take much to entertain a kid back in the fifties.    

My mother loved the bike too. She sent me off to Bill Scales’ market on Pennsylvania Avenue just about every day. My favorite errand was a bread run. I always snuck a slice out of the middle of the loaf; it was the price my mother unknowingly paid for delivery service. I lost my concentration on one of those bread runs, distracted by the freshness of the bread I guess, and crashed into the side of a delivery truck. I was only slightly injured. More startled than anything.  A neighbor passing by ran to my house and yelled in the door to my mother, “Come quick; Merlin has been hit by a truck!” Mom got a terrible scare, but I paid for it. Once she discovered I was OK she started yelling, and kept it up all the way home! Those gray hairs I allegedly gave her were painful for me too. The bike got fixed and served me well for years. Then, the year I turned 12, I found a lightweight, English bike, with hand brakes and three gears under the Christmas tree. It was brand-new and the exact right size. I was ecstatic, but I’ll always think of that used, repainted bicycle as best Christmas present ever.

My sister and I the year we got our first bikes

My sister and I the year we got the English bikes

My friend Woody (on the back) and I (last year on a trike)

Greenhorns at West Junior High (Binghamton Press Article September 7, 2014

Greenhorns! 1954 style.

By the Old Coot, Merlin Lessler

It’s that time of year again. Back to school time. It’s a big deal when you’re going to a new school. That was the case 60 years ago for me and the rest of my sixth grade, Longfellow Elementary School graduating class. We were swimming out of our little pond on Binghamton’s south side and merging with the graduates of seven other neighborhood schools around the city in the big pond at West Junior High School. It was a short journey in miles, but socially, it was a continent away.

My friend Woody (Walls) and I were conned into spending our summer vacation as indentured servants to Woody’s older brother, Stewie, and his friend, Vincent DiStaphano in return for their protection when we faced greenhorn hazing on the bus that would pick us up at our old neighborhood school and take us to “West.” Woody and I witnessed this ritual every September from a safe vantage point on the playground next to the bus stop. We watched the greenhorns board the bus, spiffed up in new school clothes, relaxed and cocky. We peeked into the windows and saw upper classmen shove them like rag dolls to the back of the bus as it pulled away from the curb. We also saw them at the end of the school day, the last kids to totter off the bus, hair mussed, shirts pulled out or turned around backwards, and a look on their face signaling terror and defeat. Yes, we knew what to expect, and bought into the salvation offered by Stewey and Vinnie, hook, line and sinker.

We spent that entire summer of 1954 as lackeys, running to the store for bottles of soda and a candy bars, doing yard chores, washing family cars, shagging fly balls. Whatever Stewie and Vinnie asked, we did! We were the lowest of the low in the neighborhood pecking order that summer, but it was worth it if it would save us from the greenhorn massacre awaiting us in September.

I'll never forget that 1^st day of school in the fall of 1954, the day we left behind our safe playground at Longfellow to board the Junior High bus for the first time. Woody and I hung back at the bus stop with our protectors, waiting for the doors on bus #1 to open. Our nervous classmates must have wondered why we were so calm, in light of the pending doom that awaited us on the bus. The doors opened; Stewey and Vinnie scrambled over to bus # 2 and yelled, "See you later, Suckers!"

We looked at each other in disbelief, and then over at Denzel Kelly, the Longfellow bully we were leaving behind. He stood on the playground grinning, as his older brother, Chuck, grasped our carefully combed hair and dragged us to the back of the bus, laughing and cackling, "This way, girls! I've been expecting you." We were pushed, shoved and mussed up right along with the rest of the freshman class, made to stand at attention, to respond with "Sir, yes sir," to endure being called sissies, babies and girls by Chuck and his gang of junior high bullies.

This went on for a week or more, coming to an end when the upperclassmen got bored and found more pleasure in singing derogatory songs to the bus driver, like, “We love our little driver, yes we do, yes we do. Oh we love our little driver, yes in a pigs rear end we do!”

There was one student for whom the greenhorn ritual didn’t come to an end, Earl Landon. He could yodel. So, everyday he was forced to stand in the aisle on the bus and perform.  He did it all through our junior high years, yodeling his way to and from school most every day. If it weren’t for him, it probably would have been Woody and me in the aisle, playing our band instruments. Woody his clarinet and me, my French horn. Thank you Earl! The whole thing taught me a valuable life lesson. Never duck out on your fate. Face the music; it will cause less pain in the long run.

Footnote #1 -  Denzel ultimately transformed from school bully to south side good-guy. He even saved me from a beating late one night when I was walking home alone and was grabbed by some members of a west side gang. He happened by, just as things were getting rough and charged into the fray like a knight on a white horse.

Footnote #2 -  I reminded Stu Walls of this incident at an AZ reunion this summer, but he disagrees with my memory of that summer of 1954. He claims it would have been much worse for Woody and me if he and Vinnie hadn’t protected us. He’s made the same claim for 60 years and I still don’t buy it.  

Footnote #3 – Earl Landon died in February 2012. A good guy! A Longfellow classmate I’ll never forget.

Woody, Top picture, top row 2nd from left.

Me, bottom picture center of row 2 (bow tie and all)

White wall tires made us cool! - Binghamton Press Article August 10, 2014

Cool cars! 1950’s autos with port-a-wall tires.

By the Old Coot, Merlin Lessler

White walls were the only tires acceptable to teenagers in the fifties. It was “uncool” to drive, or even ride, in a car with blackwalls. It announced to the world that the owner had no taste - the equivalent of strutting around in a black suit, high water pants and white socks. The problem us “cool” guys had was our fathers’ indifference to our taste in tires. They all sang from the same hymnal when we pestered them to pay a few extra dollars for white sidewalls. They claimed that white wall tires weren’t as strong as standard blackwalls, that the color was achieved by bleaching and it weakened the sidewall. It might have been true, but we didn’t care about tire safety; we cared about our image. Good old “free enterprise” provided the solution, Port-a-walls, those flat donuts of white rubber that fit under the rim, turning a blackwall into a whitewall. For three dollars, we were able to convert a drab family sedan into a "cool" machine. I spent many hours removing tires from my parents cars, painstakingly going through a laborious process: taking the wheel off the car, letting out the air, jacking up another car on the tire to break the bead, slipping the port-a-wall under the rim, pumping air back into the tire with a hand pump and then remounting the wheel. I often had to repeat the process because the port-a-wall would shift when the tire popped back into the rim. Then, and only then, did I feel cool behind the wheel of our family car, my left arm hanging out the window, an unlit Marlboro hanging from my lips and best of all, glistening whitewalls adorning the spinning wheels below. 

Even my mother’s 1953 Hudson Jet was cool, this scaled down ¾ sized Hudson. (“A car for the lady of the house.”) But mom’s Jet wasn’t just cool because of the whitewall tires. It was also cool because it was a world champion coaster. It could glide farther than any car on Binghamton’s Southside. Every day after school we rode into the nearby hills of Pennsylvania. Traffic was light and cops were scarce. We didn’t have much money for gas, so we sought routes where it was possible to coast for long distances. We sped recklessly down the hills and around the curves so we could make it over the top of the next ridge. My mother’s Hudson Jet beat all comers; it hardly lost any speed as it coasted up a hill that brought other cars to a halt.

When we coasted, we turned off the key to minimize gasoline consumption. On one after school ride, I accidentally turned the key off and then back on again while the car was still in gear. BOOM! It backfired; I thought a cannon had gone off. I did it again and the same thing happened. I’d discovered something that ultimately cost my parents dearly. I made it backfire whenever I wanted to scare or impress someone strolling along the side of the rode. I didn't know that the bang was caused by the ignition of unburned gas in the exhaust system. It didn’t take long before it blew my mother’s muffler to smithereens. And then, a few weeks later, it did it again. My father became suspicious. He doubted that replacing two mufflers on her car had anything to do with faulty equipment or shoddy workmanship at Brown's service station on the corner of Pennsylvania and Vestal Avenue. The truth came out when I blew the entire exhaust system off his pride and joy, his 1958 Edsel. It was a financial disaster; the lemon of the century had two mufflers and two resonators. All four had to be replaced. I was cool! And, then I was a pedestrian.