By Seán Malone and John Sweetman
August is the month that time pauses for 10-year-olds. Hitting a fly ball to left field? The ball seems to hang in the air forever, but maybe at 10 years old, we were closer to the ground than we are now.
In August, a month with no holidays and nothing special, we young lads could pretty well devote ourselves to diversions of mostly wandering uselessness and occasional trouble-making. August was the end of garden chores. And the days appeared to last forever with no rain and constant sunlight.
We all had bikes and loved fishing or just fooling around. Bikes at that time were fat, tired, heavy clunkers with maybe three speeds on a gearshift that rarely worked, augmented by an ineffectual rear-tire braking system that was not as good as just putting one’s well-worn shoes down on the ground.
We took off on our bikes with some vague destination in mind, but rarely went in a straight line, as diversions were often taken … many of these were down steep gravel roads. That may have been the reason why, at the end of August, we all had red mercurochrome marks all over our exposed skin areas and needed new school clothes.
We also learned a bit about the concept of “gravity.” Downhill was easy. Uphill was a lot harder. Later in life, Seán and I realized that gravity was no longer our friend.
With those old big balloon-tired bikes, we always could carry a great load of “stuff.” Fishing gear, bottles of pop, sandwiches, and fire-building items. Occasionally, a bit of local contraband snuck in as someone would snag a cigarette from a parent, but even at that age only the bravest would even attempt anything to do with that habit. Baloney sandwiches, pop, and leftover breakfast rolls were our fare, as we could always get some type of berries on any journey.
A great mission on our bike trips was, however, meandering … Fishing. Or at least that was the idea, whether the actual act came about or not. Usually, fishing involved building rafts, forts, and, if the day lasted long enough, a fire.
In the following, Seán relates a Burma Road adventure.
I bought my first bicycle from an old family friend for $3.00. His name was Cappy Berard. The nurses in the maternity ward started calling him “Cappy,” short for Captain, because he weighed 13 pounds at birth.
Cappy’s bike wasn’t much. It had no fenders, which left a mud streak down your back when it rained. Cappy came to Cove for a visit one summer. He didn’t know that peaches came from trees, and we spent hours eating “windfalls” that had fallen to the orchard floor.
Mom yelled at Brother Mike in the back seat: “If you don’t stop cutting up, you are going to walk.” Mom was our den mother and drove Mike Kennedy and Bobby Billings home up Burma Road, one of the most dangerous roads on Vashon. It is steep and a single lane, with a canyon on one side. The road had been recently graded, and the county had piled the excess gravel over the edge of the canyon. Mom was driving Dad’s new Oldsmobile Super 88. She pulled over to the side and yelled at Mike to get out, which he did.
The front wheel was deep in the soft road. As Mom turned the wheel to get back on the road, the Super 88 slid off the road and fell on its side, only stopping when it came up against a 12-inch alder, preventing tragedy. Nobody could lift the heavy doors to get out. Mike climbed up on the uphill side of the car and was able to help lift the heavy doors. Everyone climbed out to safety.
Dad complained that the body shop didn’t repair all the damage.
Dad made $600 a month selling memberships to the Plumbers’ Union. He worked across the state and frequently drove in the wake of a bus to save gas.
Mom told us, “Don’t eat any candy that Rod gives you, as it has been in his pocket and full of lint.” Rod bicycled all over Vashon and even pedaled to Sunrise Ridge on Mount Rainier. We would run down to Beall Road if we saw Rod coming to listen to his stories. Because his bike had wooden wheels, we could hear him coming a long way off. On the back of his bike was a bundle of water-witching sticks, which he would use to find water and dig a well, all for $25.00. Scuttlebutt had it that, in Rod’s later years, kids would throw rocks at him on his bike.
