Bikes and big dogs

Scott-Gill-with-wife-Angie — Scott Gill with his wife Angie

ROCKWALL, TX (June 22, 2014) In summer, we have movie nights nearly every evening, and sometimes the kids will join us. We’ll pop popcorn and settle in for a late night. It’s brutal on Angie and I the next morning (I teach summer school right now) but it’s fun being together. One evening we watched the 80’s kid hit, The Goonies, and right at the scene when the kids are all riding their bikes to find the entrance to “One Eye’d Willy’s” cave, my 15 year old asked, “Dad, did y’all ride your bikes everywhere like that when you were kids?”

I told him we did and he mumbled how cool that must have been, like the activity had been banned or something. I hadn’t really thought about it, but what was so common in my childhood is more the rarity today. I mean, I see people riding bikes, but it is some kind of training or a race and I only see kids riding around town on rare occasions, like an animal that has gone endangered. Why is that? In my kid summers, that was our transportation, if we wanted to go somewhere, and we did every summer day, we hopped on our bikes and peddled there having all sorts of adventures in the process.

My buddy, Richard, lived about a mile away, and our summer routine went as follows: meet up early, ride our bikes to an abandoned ball diamond for a game of “ghostman baseball” (a game we developed having one pitcher and one hitter), then on to the neighborhood pizza parlor to grab a lunch pie; finally, we’d ride somewhere else for an array of basketball, exploring, you name it. One day as we zinged across some abandoned parking lots behind a set of storefronts, we spotted a flatbed truck with two big dogs. I’ve always called them Pit Bulls because back then some made national news by killing a few folks. Who knows what they really were, but it didn’t matter because they barked and curled their lips and soon jumped from the truck to give chase.

Richard didn’t see them until they were on top of us.

I banked right, Richard banked left, and both dogs went for him, each taking a side of the bike as he peddled with all his might. I screamed for him to keep going and Richard worked that bike like a hamster on a new wheel, constantly turning back to see the menaces nipping at his heels. He turned left down another street and the dogs followed. Now, this sounds cruel but I laughed so hard I couldn’t stay on my ride; it was just one of those terrible, but funny moments watching my buddy nearly smoking his tires and the dogs trying to eat him the entire way.

I followed; decided I should do what I could to draw them off. Then I saw something on the street, a piece of plastic, a reflector, then, a few more yards, a brake caliper. The dogs ate the bike! I followed the trail of parts like breadcrumbs and made the block circling back to Richard’s house.

He was flat on his back in the front yard, the stripped metal skeleton beside him. He said the dogs chased him for the entire block and he rode so hard, parts peeled off with every turn.

I saw Richard a few months ago for the first time since high school and, in front of my son, we laughed at the retelling of that adventure. It was our own Goonies for sure—our own adventure. Now, I know that after this story, bike sales will go down even more in Rockwall. Many of you are probably saying, “Exactly, that’s why we schedule our kids’ entire summer!” And, in a sense, you’re probably right, we do live in dangerous days and letting the kids just ride around all summer and find their fun will probably net some trouble too, but oh, at all the adventure lost, and the stories! Which is why my son had such longing that night while watching the movie and why I, right now, would love to go get us a couple of bikes.

By Blue Ribbon News guest columnist Scott Gill of Rockwall, a teacher, coach and author of Goliath Catfish. Follow his blog at scotttgill.tumblr.com.