The Death Machine: A True Story
Man, good times, good times. My first and only bike for a long time, my parents bought at a tag sale when I was 2 1/2... I started riding it when I was 4, 1973 when we moved to a house on a much safer dead-end road with a long driveway. Before that I had an AMF tricycle, the kind with the large (16"?) front tire, solid rubber- also a yard sale find. My little brother got a new but much smaller Radio Flyer trike a little later.
The first bike was a black 20" Ross, with dual top-tubes and dual canti tubes in the frame, 4 small tubes, a frame they used later for Stingray type models, predecessors to the Barracuda. It had full chrome fenders, a coaster brake, some white graphics that were illegible on the frame. Inexplicably it had 10-spd type drop-bars turned upside down- weird and I never did get an explanation for why it was like that.
In about 1976, the other kids on the street started getting cool BMX and bicentennial bikes. I remember one kid at the end of the road having a coppertone Stingray, fenderless, but he never let anyone near it, so I'm not sure that it was actually a Schwinn. Another older kid had a 2-speed Typhoon, red, and I never believed him until much more recently that it had a 2-speed rear wheel... it did and I would love to find that one today. We beat on it in the fields behind their house.
Pretty much anything became a BMX bike and got ridden plenty in the woods. Fenders came off, chainguards came off, we found any kind of tall bars, especially with a crossbar to put pads on, and knobby tires. Preferably not gumwalls but somewhere along this time, my ugly Ross gained a whitewall front tire. I think it had an S-7 wheel because I remember struggling mightily to get a tire on it. Probably my cheap dad bought a wheel at a yard sale.
I never had a new bmx bike. The Ross became one though- stripped down, a Carlisle Thorn-Proof diamond-tread knobby on the rear, and a tall seat post and skinny seat borrowed from a 10speed. I rode as fast as the other kids on their fake-shock, plastic-fendered Huffys and jumped off a lot of home-made plywood ramps.
I also built a lot of model cars, and had plenty of paints around in small jars... one day the Ross gained some silver tiger stripes and the words "The Death Machine" on the down tube! Another time, given lots of after-school time and my dad's well-stocked shop, I build a bracket out of angle aluminum and old lamp tubes, with 4 barrels for launching bottle rockets. Note to self: do not wear shorts or flammable clothing when trying to do this. Also note that the handlebars are rarely at the right angle or elevation for bottle rockets to go anywhere near where you planned. Also note that they are darned hard to light when moving. Also tell me you were not shooting them at the school bus. But I didn't hit it, Mom! A mechanically skilled 11 yr old is a dangerous thing.
Well in spite of getting a BRAND NEW Kia (yep, Kia) 3-speed "English lightweight" when I was 12, and then a maroon Columbia mountain bike at 14, I still rode the Ross. Especially when it was cold out, that Carlisle tire could scream when skidding- for a really long time downhill if you lean forward and sway the rear end back and forth.
The bike survived a lot of abuse, riding in foot-deep water, sand pits, jumping, rock-strewn trail riding. Never broke it, though I broke that Columbia MTB frame twice under warranty. It even endured ghost riding and horrific crashes.
At last though, it met its end, in the late summer when I was 15: A friend's father backed over it with his electrical contracting Dodge panel-van. The frame was twisted, the fork bent over, a crank arm bent into the frame, the wheels were mangled. We tossed it down over the edge of the gravel pit and threw firecrackers in after it.
Fast forward to 2004. My dad is cleaning out the house, getting things in order to move to a new place in Florida. Under the steps from the garage into the kitchen, there are the fenders from my old Ross, stashed just like the day in about 1978 when I took them off... decent chrome still even though they were on a concrete floor. One big bend in the front end of the front fender where I ran into a cedar fence post. I grabbed the fenders and brought em home. They ended up on my Ross "Downtown Rat", my first attempt at a Build-Off bike for RRBBO2.
Thanks for reading and have fun!
--Rob