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Oct 17, 2024

Freedom on two wheels: Schwinns from Kern's permitted kids' first foray into wider world | Columnists | journalgazette.net

The Schwinn of the author’s friend Doug Carlson’s came in handy for his early-morning job delivering The Journal Gazette and his afternoon rounds for the News-Sentinel. It is intriguing the manner in

The Schwinn of the author’s friend Doug Carlson’s came in handy for his early-morning job delivering The Journal Gazette and his afternoon rounds for the News-Sentinel.

It is intriguing the manner in which the memory is sometimes triggered by hearing an otherwise stray comment, listening to an old song, seeing a photograph in an old shoebox you had long forgotten, or smelling a particular fragrance of perfume or cologne.

These kinds of things almost automatically connect you to someone or something special from the past which now seems almost inescapable or intangible — perhaps out of reach, as in a fog or light mist.

Stepping into an elevator the other day, I overheard a man speaking to another man about his grandchildren. He said he had gifted his granddaughter a new bicycle and that her surprise in receiving the birthday present was “like a kid in a candy store.”

I ruminated on that wonderful phrase. It took me back to South Calhoun Street in what had become an almost rite of passage of Fort Wayne kid-dom: going with your parents or grandparents to select your first or a new bike from Kern’s Toyland — not far from Rudisill Boulevard on Fort Wayne’s near south side.

If I live to be 100, I will never forget walking into what surely was the most inviting toy store in northern Indiana: wonderful children’s books like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys stacked and displayed among inviting shelves; Legos, Tinkertoys and Lincoln Logs aplenty, all in their new shiny boxes; and, above all, racks and rows of the most beautiful Schwinn bicycles I had ever laid eyes upon.

In fact, a section of Kern’s actually smelled of new rubber from all the bike tires; it was part of the store’s charm and personality.

I remember the sparkling Schwinn Bicycles sign that graced the front of the Calhoun Street shop, replete with that unique bike logo in the middle. Every time we drove past Kern’s, I would glance up at that sign because it was part of the neighborhood, like an old friend.

I particularly loved driving past Kern’s at night because the floor-to-ceiling windows lit up like a firefly and gave the passerby an even better view of all those bikes, toys and games. Kern’s was a kind of jewel box.

Our family purchased a number of toys there, yet it was the bikes that, for me, were the standouts. In fact, the bikes that came from Kern’s formed a fundamental, foundational part of my childhood and growing up.

In those years in Fort Wayne, Kern’s and Schwinn had an entire series of bikes to offer with inviting names that still ring in childhood ears long years later: the Lime Peeler, the Orange Peeler, the Grape Picker and the Apple Krate.

My yellow Stingray with the banana seat became a comrade to me; I kept it in a particular part of our two-car garage in Eastland Gardens in the same manner and with the same care that a rancher would lasso his favorite horse and lash it to a rail.

The kickstand, which I learned to whoosh upright with my right foot in a kind of Fred Astaire-flick fashion, was part of the rhythm of going for a ride around the neighborhood.

I remember riding my new Stingray for the first time to my friend Pat’s house, which was six streets and eight stop signs from our driveway. I felt so sophisticated, independent, free.

My friend Pat’s bike was a yellow Lemon Peeler Schwinn with a five-speed shifter, and he had set the pace for the rest of us. Years later, a yellow Schwinn 10-speed with those curlicue handlebars would become my new standard.

Almost all my friends had Schwinn bikes, and I believe almost all of them came from Kern’s.

My friend Jim’s blue Schwinn had a standard, upright seat that gave him particularly good control on streets without sidewalks. I remember his fleetness in navigating sharp, hairpin turns. Kids notice these things. Another friend, Rick, had a red Schwinn Hornet.

My favorite Kern’s bike was called the Schwinn Twinn, a brown and white tandem beauty that perhaps provided more hours of sheer fun and riding pleasure than any other bike our family ever owned.

There were three kinds of tandems; ours was the single speed. I remember riding it with my mom and my dad; with two of my aunts; and with endless numbers of friends.

My friend Doug, who delivered The Journal Gazette in Arlington Park for many years before the crack-of-dawn hour of 6 a.m., did so while riding his trusty Schwinn loaded down with saddlebags full of newspapers on both sides of the bike’s rear fender.

One autumn Saturday, we even decided to do something really daring: We planned a Tandem-directed, one-day visit to three Fort Wayne parks, ending up at that lovely pavilion that still stands in Foster Park near the golf course. There followed a couple of sets of tennis and a picnic luncheon near the slow-moving St. Mary’s River nearby. We had lashed a basket between us, replete with rackets and sandwiches and Cokes.

As kids, we felt so sophisticated and untethered. The songwriter Christopher Cross challenged us to “ride like the wind.” We rose to the challenge.

I am certain we felt no sense of the sands of time — rushing along as we were — almost suspended in our animation of fun, young and with all our road before us.

The Kern’s and Schwinn tandem was our mode of transportation, but it was something so much more: It was the bridgeway and catalyst from childhood to adulthood that gave us the first glances and vistas of the wider world and the chapters that would uniquely become the steppingstones of our lives.

Those common, wonderful memories are the grace notes of life.

As the years fly by, one finds that otherwise long-discarded or even forgotten objects — like childhood bikes or a favorite baseball mitt — become imbued with deep meaning. They speak to us from the past, reminding us that we all dance to the music of time, and all the while evincing parts of our lives that connect us to other people who mean so much more to us than any object ever could.

It is that the best things in life aren’t things at all. That is what makes remembering them so joyful, vibrant, and lyrical.

The late Steve Jobs said, “Your life is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

We were, in those years, in the immortal words of the poet William Wordsworth, “surprised by joy, as impatient as the wind.”

Timothy S. Goeglein is a Fort Wayne native living in northern Virginia.