Old Yeller

   I got my very first bicycle as a birthday present when I turned ten. Before that I had only ever rocked a Big Wheel, so getting a real bike was kind of a big deal. A rite of passage.
 
   What a beauty. The bike was a Free Spirit, which was a sort of knock-off Schwinn that they used to sell at Sears. It had a coaster brake, a banana seat, a chain guard, and all the expected accoutrements of a proper cruiser.

   It was a sweet ride, for sure, and probably the coolest gift that I had ever received. As a bonus, it also represented a passport to personal freedom, since it had the potential to boost my range of travel from home base by approximately a shit-ton.
 
   There was just one problem: The bike was canary yellow.
 
   Don’t get me wrong: I was more than willing to overlook the yellowness. But yellow was a certified sissy color amongst the six hundred bullies who stalked my neighborhood, just looking for excuses to throw punches. So desperate they were to share their pain. I just knew I’d get pummeled if I rode that bike anywhere during daylight hours.
 
   So, Old Yeller sat in the garage, unridden, for about a week while I pondered the situation.
 
   I couldn’t help but wonder: Why on earth had my dad picked out a yellow bike?

*          *          *

   Upon careful reflection during that week after my tenth birthday, while my new bike sat and collected dust, I came to realize that this was not the first time that my dad had pulled this kind of shenanigan.
 
   I had always known that one of my dad’s preferred mediums was complex psychological mosaics, but up until then I hadn’t been able to see the pattern. That yellow bicycle helped bring some things into focus. I’ll cough up two quick examples, just so you’ll understand what the hell I’m talking about: Winter coats and Haircuts.
 
   Back in the 70s and 80s, as some of you may recall, boys’ winter coats were colorful, playful, puffy things – like ski jackets, for the most part. Usually, they had stripes or block patterns or cool designs. That was the style. Some of my buddies had winter coats that were the school colors or the colors of their favorite football teams. Way cool.
 
   Unfortunately, as much as I might have desired to own and wear such a groovy coat, I can attest that no such fashionable winterwear was ever worn by yours truly while I lived under my dad’s roof. For me, it was always puke-green London Fog coats. You know, like the kind of trench-coaty thing you’d see on Jack the Ripper or a playground pervert. According to my dad, London Fog was the best. “You just can’t beat London Fog,” he’d say, with the authority of a salesman at Macy’s.
 
   To me, my London Fogs were downright embarrassing. For starters, they just weren’t cut right for a kid – they hung all the way down below the goddam knees and they had these enormous, ridiculous collars and pockets and what have you. For another thing, there was simply no way to hang one correctly on my emaciated frame without it looking like an ill-fitting part of a Halloween costume. I looked like a little Lord Fauntleroy type and/or some kid from out of town who didn’t know any better.
 
   Friends and enemies concurred: The London Fog coats were a real problem. My friends offered me their condolences along with plenty of advice for better living. My enemies offered me snowballs stuffed full of gravel and/or dog turds, thrown hard and straight at my dorky head.
 
   As for haircuts, my second example: My dad always took me to this rickety old barbershop on Bradford Street on the first Saturday of each month. It was the kind of place that was full of cigar smoke and know-it-all veterans from the Big One and yellowed old pick-a-style posters of crew cuts from the 1950s. When you’re a kid, you just go where your parents take you for a haircut. But I had enough sense to know that this was no place for me.
 
   Although it was a two-chair shop, I somehow always got Earl, an old-school barber who only had one hideous hairstyle up his sleeve: the venerable Dumb and Dumber bowl cut, trimmed plenty-wide around the ears. Awful. Just awful. Especially for a kid like me with more than my fair share of visual challenges to overcome. You see, I was a skinny stick-of-a kid with a disproportionately large head and a set of wing ears. What I needed most was some sort of helper haircut – something that provided some counterbalance to my misshapen head and ears. Plenty of contemporary haircuts would have fit the bill. Instead, I got the old bowl, every time, courtesy of my dad and the Bradford Street Butcher. Many a time I broke down and cried, right there in the barber chair. God’s honest truth.
 
   “Whya cryin’?” my dad would ask. “Just cuz’yer car doors are wide open?” He’d laugh because my protruding ears were a joke for him. “It’s just hair for chrissakes. It grows right back.”
 
   “Do you think it’ll grow back some before Monday?” I’d ask my dad, choking back tears, looking at my mutilated mug in the mirror, knowing full-well that if my hair didn’t grow back by Monday, old Donny McNulty and any other bully that happened to catch a glimpse of me would be delivering extra-special beatings on account of them being even more enraged than usual by the mere sight of me.
 
   “Monday? No way, José. Hair doesn’t grow that fast.” My dad would harrumph and then chuckle some more. “If it did, old Earl here would be a millionaire by now.” Dad would have a look around the barbershop to see if any of the old vets or regulars were laughing at his car door or millionaire jokes.

*          *          *

   Just so you know: I was able to dodge those idiotic haircuts and winter coats soon after I got my driver’s license and got myself a steady job at Pizza Hut. Thereafter, I had the wheels and the means to choose my own adventures in style. And, believe me, I did.

*          *          *

   Anyhow . . . I’m only bringing up the London Fog and barbershop business as evidence, Exhibits A and B if it pleases the court, in establishing the existence of a Pattern.
 
   You see, my dad must have known that the weird winter coats and dumb-dumb haircuts and sissy-colored bicycles (and countless other atrocities) made me more of a marked man than I would have been otherwise. He knew damn well that I was a target even without all those embellishments. He’d seen the scrapes and bruises and black eyes. He’d seen the torn-up school clothes. He’d probably heard some of the secondhand stories from my mom about me getting pounded before, during, and after school. How could he not have known that his kid was a punching bag that could have benefited from flying a little below radar?
 
   I don’t think I would have fared any worse if my dad had patted me on the back and stuck me with a “Please Kick Me” sign. Or if he’d went ahead and named me Sue. But the thing is this: I don’t think my dad was trying to toughen me up like Sue’s dad in that old Johnny Cash song. I mean, I don’t think he was trying to do me any favors.
 
   I think my dad knew damn-well that I was a weakling with very little chance of defending myself if things got rough. And I think he was taught to despise weaklings and to pick on them whenever he could. He was taught that as a kid while he was growing up, for sure. And then in the Army too. There was no way for him to break that spell, even if one of those weaklings happened to be his own kid. He just had to pick a little where he could. It was a reflex.
 
   Don’t get me wrong: My dad was always very generous. He still is. But when he pours a glass of generosity, there’s usually a pinch of bitters swirling around at the bottom, down under the ice.

*          *          *

   Getting back to Old Yeller . . .
 
   There it sat in the garage, with me afraid to ride it through the neighborhood, on account of me being able to clearly picture myself getting clobbered. The bike sat there long enough that I figured it would start drawing attention if I didn’t take action soon. Another week might have gone by. Who knows?
 
   And then it happened. My dad started sniffing around, asking me about it. “How’s the new bike been ridin? I bet it rides real smooth,” he asked (and then answered). “Did you tell your friends about how you got it for your birthday?”
 
   “I haven’t ridden it yet, dad.”
 
   “Well, why the hell not? It’s a great bike. You should ride it. I wish I had a bike like that when I was your age. Jesus, I woulda been riding it all the damn time instead of just letting it sit around. Bikes need to be ridden or they’ll seize up on you.”
 
   “I’ll get to it, dad. I’ve been at the pool a lot, I guess.” I didn’t have the guts to tell my dad that I was afraid to ride around on a bright yellow bully beacon.
 
   “Well, you should ride it tomorrow. After I get home from work, I expect a full report,” my dad winked and grinned when he said that. I figured he knew something that I didn’t know. Maybe the bike was really fast or something.
 
   “OK. I’ll ride it tomorrow, sure thing.” I tried to inject an escape clause: “If it’s not rainin’ or somethin’.”
 
   “Good. That’s good,” my dad said. “Good,” he repeated as he folded up the newspaper. “Hey, this Saturday we’re gonna go get haircuts at ten.” He winked and grinned again.

*          *          *

   Instead of me delivering my Bike Ride Report the next day, I got bent over my dad’s knee to receive one of the worst spankings that I’d ever gotten. It was definitely in the top three. My dad was as mad as a hornet. For good measure, he also stomped the guts out of two of my model airplanes, pulverizing them into tiny plastic splinters and shards. One of them was my favorite, too: a B-17 Flying Fortress that represented some of my very best work.
 
   “That’ll teach you to take care of your goddam things!” my dad shouted while shaking a wrecked airplane wing off his shoe. “You take a beautiful, brand-new bicycle like that and bang it up like that and ruin the paint job? Busted spokes and bent handlebars? And then you just leave it layin’ out there in the driveway? You didn’t even use the kickstand, for chrissakes. It was just layin’ there when I pulled up. I coulda ran right over it. Maybe I shoulda, huh? What the hell are you thinking? You were out there trying to show off today, weren’t you? Probably trying to stunt jump it like some big shot, and you fucked up.”
 
   I sat there speechless as my dad assembled the whole story. He was figuring it all out, putting all the details together. He could see it all just like he was right there when it happened.
 
   “You think that’s how you treat a bicycle?” my dad asked. “Well, do you?”
 
   I didn’t dare answer. My dad didn’t know what a Lone Rider was, and I didn’t have the energy to explain it to him, even if he would’ve offered me the chance. My butt was plenty sore from the spanking, and my head felt even worse from earlier. So, I just let it go.
 
   “Well, you just think about that for a while, while your mom and I have our supper,” my dad said as he walked out of my bedroom, slamming the door behind him and giving it an extra kick, just because. He mumbled something while walking down the hall toward the living room, but I couldn’t quite make it out. He started yelling something unintelligible when he got to the kitchen too.

*          *          *

   A few hours before my dad got home and got his fuse lit by the sight of the bent and scuffed remains of Old Yeller in the driveway, I had been riding up to the top of Eldridge Street. It took some grunt peddling to get up there, but I knew it would be well worth the effort. Soon I’d get to coast back down for a top speed run! Sweet. The bike was riding great. Real smooth, just like my dad had predicted.
 
   Unfortunately, just as I crested onto the flat spot at the top of Eldridge, I saw that old Sam Nettles was up there in the cul-de-sac, hanging out with a couple of his crusty buddies, dipping Skoal Bandits. “Hey numb nuts!” Sam yelled with glee as soon as he saw me. “What’s with the queer bike? Get over here so I can look at that thing! Why ya ridin’ around on a queer bike, queer? Huh?” He spit some dip juice for effect.
 
   I shouldn’t have tried to run away. Or peddle away, as it was. Trying to escape only makes it worse. But since they were all on foot and some distance away from me, I thought I had a decent chance for a getaway. But I guess I was too worn out from climbing the hill, because as soon as I tried to move it was like I was slogging around in slow motion. I had barely pivoted my bike and gotten off a crank or two when they got me. I heard a brass bell go off inside my head as a punch landed on my right ear and knocked me clean off my banana seat. 
 
   Lying there in the ditch with my brain ringing like Quasimodo, all I could do was watch and listen as Sam and his cronies, in wolfpack formation, chanted “Lone Rider! Lone Rider! Lone Rider!” and proceeded to roll my bike to the spot where Eldridge began its downhill descent.
 
   Then, with a jog that built up into a run, Sam side-trotted Old Yeller right up to speed and then let her go with a flourish. He hopped back to his pack with arms held triumphantly in the air. He was doing his best Rocky, I suppose. The bike went rolling on its own, right down the center of the road, gaining speed as it went, gunning for a new Lone Rider world record. It was not at all what I’d had in mind for a top speed run.
 
   Old Yeller made it more than halfway down the hill before the death wobble set in. I watched as my new bike lost control of itself, crumpled itself up into a yellow tumbleweed, and bowled itself right off the road into Mr. Alexander’s yard. It came to a sad stall right next to his bird bath. A bunch of robins took flight just before it got there to mark the occasion.
 
   “That was fuckin’ awesome!” Sam and his buddies hooted. There were high fives and bursts of laughter and congratulations all around. “Did you see that fag bike fly? Fuckin’ awesome.”
 
   I knew better than to do or say anything. I stayed in the ditch until they were all gone.
  
– O.M. Kelsey