I'll start off by relating some of the Christmas bicycle memories I have. The period before Christmas was always a busy time in the shop. This was before the mass merchants had the effect on the market as they do now. It actually always began in the late summer when the bicycle distributors would offer extended terms and special deals to dealers for the Christmas season. We would also gather all the used left-overs from the year before and cull out or recondition them for Christmas. We would start getting the new bikes assembled and the used ones on sale about the time school would start in the late summer. The reason for this was that we sold the majority of bikes for Christmas on lay-away and it gave the customers plenty of time to have them paid out before Christmas Eve. We built a lot of wheels and painted a lot of frames and installed lots of tires and tubes and cables etc. I can remember buying Bendix coaster brakes by the case and going through them pretty fast. We assembled lots of new bikes, both what we sold and what the customers bought from other stores. Some years, bikes would be in short supply like when Raliegh came out with the Chopper and you had to place a qualifying order for all the other models just to get the Choppers. We tied a tag onto each bike sold and listed the sale price and what ever payment the customer had applied to that bike. Some customers would pay like two dollars a week until it was paid out. We had customers that bought a used bike for each member of the family and then came back a year or two later and bought used bikes for the whole family all over again. They may not have been new, but they were new to them. A lot of years we sold as many used bikes as we did new ones. We always held the lay-aways till Christmas Eve and the only time we ever opened on a Sunday was if it fell on Christmas Eve, but we only opened about 2:00 pm till 6:00 pm in that case. Christmas Eve was always the busiest day of the year with customers coming in to pick up their lay-aways and we spent most of the day tying bikes onto the roof of station wagons or in the trunk of cars. You always hoped that you had everyones lay-away ready for them to pick up and not be missing anyones bike or have a part missing or damaged. We always tried to keep an extra bike or two for that situation, but like with the Raliegh Choppers, it was hard to do. Most years we sold about everything we had. I remember one year my mom and dad gave me a nearly new 5 spd. Dayton Eliminator for Christmas. It was purple and had red stripped tires. It was one of my favorite bikes as a kid. Here is a pic made in the front of the shop just before Christmas Eve one year. And we had a bunch more in the rear too. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!!! Thanks!!!
