Those years were a very influential time in the growth of America and equally influential in this young lad’s life, who was just entering the double digit years old. Living in California put us right in the forefront of what was happening at the time. I spent a lot of time between family and scouts, camping at Big Sur and we also lived fairly close to the Monterey Fairgrounds. I was also able to ride my bike to Fisherman’s Wharf to fish, the Naval Post Graduate school to learn to swim in the outdoor, Olympic sized pool and down to the mudflats to learn how to smoke. The beach was also within a bike ride and that is where I learned about undertows and resuscitation – me being on the receiving end. One of my favorite things to do was to sneak out of the house, hop on my spider bike with the banana seat and baseball cards clothes pinned to the front wheel and ride down to the fairgrounds. On one of those occasions, I happened to be standing in the fairway, in front of the Ferris Wheel, with my short sleeved yellow and black striped shirt and buzz haircut. I think I had my back to the camera man, perhaps looking up at the ride. Well, a picture was taken that ended up on the front page of the daily newspaper, which ended up in my parent’s hands and we all ended up in the living room together. Everyone had a big laugh about how much this person in the picture resembled me, but of course it couldn’t have been me because I was home, grounded that day. Grounded for what, I really don’t remember, but I probably deserved it.
I used to go to the fairgrounds for the fair, but there was much more going on there. I was a little too young to understand the significance of The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, The Mamas & The Papas, along with others playing there. I could hear them from my house and as much as my young mind could comprehend, I knew it was something; there was change in the air. I wasn’t that bad of a kid. I went several hours of our first day in Monterey without getting in trouble once. As a matter of fact, I think I went all the way into mid afternoon trouble free. But of course, that all ended as I decelerated from 40 mph to 0 mph in less than 2 seconds. I’ll explain. We were a family of eight kids, although I think at that time there were only five or so kids so far – still a handful. My dad and I had a discussion right before he left for work that went something like this:
"Glenn, I want you to stay in the yard and out of everyone’s way today."
"Yes Sir."
"And I want you to help your mother unpack."
"Yes Sir."
"If the movers need you to carry some stuff into the house, please help them."
"Yes Sir."
"But most of all, I want you to stay in the yard."
"Yes Sir."
He said, “It’s way in the back, it will be a little while kid”.
“But he wanted you to do it right away so that I would have something to do”.
Out came the mover with a yellow stingray bike with the banana seat in one hand, and the handle bars in the other hand. He handed them to me and asked if I needed help putting it together. Uh, no, whatdoyathink, I’m a kid or something? I can do it. I really had no idea, so I stuck the bars in and grabbed the bolt in the front that clamps them in place and twisted that thing as tight as I could with my “Kid Fu Grip” – that and 10 years of pent up energy.
"Hey Bobby, let’s go find some hills" I yelled. My brother and I jumped on our bikes and off we went. Having come from Florida, even the smallest slope in the driveway was a big hill to us, so imagine how excited I was when I got out into the neighborhood. We had moved to La Mesa, Spanish for table top or something like that. What it really meant was there were a lot of very steep roads for a ten year old flatlander. I proudly brought my brother to a road I found that had a little slope to it and looked to him for approval because you could coast down this road without even peddling! He looked at me and laughed, then said to follow him, so I did.
As we coasted to the road he found, my eyes got wider and wider and my jaw sank lower and lower as we got closer and closer. I stopped the bike, straddled the cross bar and looked straight down Bergin Drive. When I say I looked straight down, I don’t mean the opposite of looking straight back, I mean the opposite of looking straight up. This was a kid’s dream come true. My brother told me that he conquered that road, and then he dared me to do it. I don’t think he really did and I know he didn’t follow me as I gave myself a little push start and headed down. Dare me? Yeah, right. I didn’t have a horn, or reflectors or lights, or even tassels on the hand grips, but I did have a speedometer. When I started going so fast that I was not able to gain anymore speed by peddling, I looked down at the speedometer. I was going 42 mph. I lowered my head, got into the tuck position and tried for 50 mph. That’s the last clear thing I remembered for the next 15 minutes or so, due to a curve in the road down near the bottom. It seems that my ‘Kid Fu Grip’ was not enough to sufficiently tighten the handle bar bolt. I heard that I turned the bars with my hands, but the bars were the only thing that turned, the bike kept going straight until it hit the curb. I went flying ass over tea kettle and hit the sidewalk chin first and blood started gushing everywhere.
A Navy officer pulled over and went running up to me and asked who I was and where I lived. I told him my name, which of course he didn’t recognize, and I told him I had no idea where I lived. We did not have a phone in the house yet, wherever the house was, so he scooped me up, put me in his back seat, pulled out a handkerchief and put it on my chin. We then raced off to the hospital. I ended up with five stitches in my chin and a fierce admiration for Bergin Drive, along with a scar that I can still proudly produce 40 years later.
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