Bicycle Christmas

A bicycle. A Hopalong Cassidy shirt, pants, gun and holster. A red corduroy shirt.

I got them all one Christmas Eve night when I was 10 years old.

I read recently most memories may not be exactly what happened, and will no doubt leave out details that may be critical to the memory. But the gist of the remembrance will no doubt provide some foundation to our lives.

I know those presents added elements to my life that remain with me today.

For instance, the bike, although not new, had been repainted by my dad and a family friend, spruced up with a Christmas bow, and thrilled me. As I recall my younger sister and I had been begging for bicycles for ages. To 9- and 10-year-olds, ‘ages’ meant weeks, months, years, forever. Santa brought both of us bikes, one was red and the other blue. I’m not sure which one I got, but I do remember I wanted the red one…whether that is the one I got I haven’t the foggiest idea. Within a minute I didn’t care…it was a longed-for vehicle for expanding my boundaries of adventure.

On that bike I could explore streets I hadn’t walked on, roads I hadn’t wandered down on foot. I was able to ride up and down driveways, chase dogs, carry friends on the handlebars, and get my foot caught in the spikes of the wheel causing me to crash and land crying.

Now the Hopalong Cassidy outfit was a biggie. Brown pants and a shirt of brown and tan, a cap pistol in a brown leather, or perhaps fake leather, holster. Oh, I was decked out to ride in any neighborhood without fear.

On that Christmas Day, I rode my newly acquired bike full speed, racing my sister, made a corner too quickly, fell, ripping a hole in the Hopalong pants, and hobbled home shamed to admit I couldn’t ride my bike as well as Hoppy could ride his horse. He never fell off his horse Topper.

And the remembered red corduroy shirt was a Christmas gift my sister and I received every year beginning perhaps that year. As I recall we got red corduroy shirts for many years after that, and I feel the pull to purchase such a shirt every December.

I don’t know if my need for a bike has ever dwindled, since I long for Santa to gift me a motor scooter this year, allowing me to wander in unexplored places with the wind in my face and a childlike feeling of freedom.

It is doubtful I will get the scooter, a Hopalong suit, or even a corduroy shirt. Santa understands my desires may not have changed, but my age certainly has, and cowboy paraphernalia is hard to come by these days.