Lately I have been thinking about my earliest bicycling days. After I outgrew my kick scooter my parents got me a JC Penney's Swinger like this.
This one isn't mine (I found it online) But it is like mine. Between 1967 and probably 1970 a bunch of the local boys would race our bikes (muscle bikes of course). We were all into real racing so we found parking lots in the neighborhood (Tampa, FL - Sulphur Springs neighborhood). Back then this part of Tampa was a lower middle class to middle class urban neighborhood. I pulled up Google Earth and found three of the locations. Usually they were church parking lots because they were big and often vacant through the week. We marked out ovals and named the tracks after real tracks we were familiar with. The local paved sprint car/stock car track was Golden Gate Speedway several of us attended races there on Friday and Saturday nights. My dad was a Sheriff's deputy and moonlighted there working security for extra money. He earned more per hour from the moonlighting than he did from his actual law enforcement job. I went most weekends and was granted free admission. To represent Golden Gate we used the church most of us attended. I can remember rubbing into a another bike there in a turn and having his pedal take out some of my front spokes. Our legs and elbows were often a bloody and scabbed mess. We had no helmets or pads and often no shirts on. Another church had a paved banked area in front of it that we could ride up on at one end of a track. We called that one Daytona. I can't remember where it was but we had a dirt oval too. That was because the IMCA Winter National sprint car races were held at the state fairgrounds in Tampa every year.
One of the best ideas a kid came up with was to use the Greyhound dog racing track parking lot when the track was closed. It was right on Nebraska Ave. It was our drag strip. We could line up in the dog track parking lot and use the light at Juneau and Nebraska for our Christmas tree (starting light).
What a different day. Often we would get on bikes after breakfast and ride from house to house engaged in all kinds of adventures until it was time for supper. Just thought I would share these memories as I have a suspicion there are others here with similar experiences. Confession, to this day when I get on one of my bikes that old feeling of adventure still surfaces. Not doing any racing though. To put this in perspective I was 10 in 1968.
I wouldn't trade those times of coming of age in the late 60s early 70s for anything. The bike was a huge part of it.
Here is a present day Google earth capture that shows where some of this stuff happened. Thanks for tolerating my memories.
This one isn't mine (I found it online) But it is like mine. Between 1967 and probably 1970 a bunch of the local boys would race our bikes (muscle bikes of course). We were all into real racing so we found parking lots in the neighborhood (Tampa, FL - Sulphur Springs neighborhood). Back then this part of Tampa was a lower middle class to middle class urban neighborhood. I pulled up Google Earth and found three of the locations. Usually they were church parking lots because they were big and often vacant through the week. We marked out ovals and named the tracks after real tracks we were familiar with. The local paved sprint car/stock car track was Golden Gate Speedway several of us attended races there on Friday and Saturday nights. My dad was a Sheriff's deputy and moonlighted there working security for extra money. He earned more per hour from the moonlighting than he did from his actual law enforcement job. I went most weekends and was granted free admission. To represent Golden Gate we used the church most of us attended. I can remember rubbing into a another bike there in a turn and having his pedal take out some of my front spokes. Our legs and elbows were often a bloody and scabbed mess. We had no helmets or pads and often no shirts on. Another church had a paved banked area in front of it that we could ride up on at one end of a track. We called that one Daytona. I can't remember where it was but we had a dirt oval too. That was because the IMCA Winter National sprint car races were held at the state fairgrounds in Tampa every year.
One of the best ideas a kid came up with was to use the Greyhound dog racing track parking lot when the track was closed. It was right on Nebraska Ave. It was our drag strip. We could line up in the dog track parking lot and use the light at Juneau and Nebraska for our Christmas tree (starting light).
What a different day. Often we would get on bikes after breakfast and ride from house to house engaged in all kinds of adventures until it was time for supper. Just thought I would share these memories as I have a suspicion there are others here with similar experiences. Confession, to this day when I get on one of my bikes that old feeling of adventure still surfaces. Not doing any racing though. To put this in perspective I was 10 in 1968.
I wouldn't trade those times of coming of age in the late 60s early 70s for anything. The bike was a huge part of it.
Here is a present day Google earth capture that shows where some of this stuff happened. Thanks for tolerating my memories.
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