“Please Mommy, can I have a pony, please, please, please? I’ll take good care of it, feed it, brush it, love it. Pleeeeease!”
Actually, I had a pony. Well, not a pony, but a real horse. It was a working horse. I got to cut cattle and bring in the cows from across the river. I had miles and miles of Forest Service land to ride. I had a saddle but no cowboy boots because we couldn’t afford them. I managed without them and rode wild and free on the country and logging roads.
It wasn’t a pony I lusted after. It was a bike. Not just any bike. It was one I had seen in the Sears catalog, the only avenue for commerce in the isolated Idaho valley where I lived. It was a blue Schwinn girl’s bike. It was beautiful. It had a companion red boy’s bike that would have been swell for my brother.
Big problems: No money, and really, no good place to ride. Mainly just gravel roads. Mom and Dad had owned a struggling farm since the big boys in Boise bought the local dairy. We could barely make ends meet. However, I could still dream about that glorious bike.
Finally, when I was in the eighth grade and my brother was in the sixth grade, Mom and Dad said they might let us work for a bike. Since we were already helping a lot around the place, we had to see what we could do to add to the tasks to get credit for the bikes.
I milked cows, we trapped squirrels and we chopped thistles. We worked all summer long. I helped with the branding, butchering, driving the tractor and bucking hay bales. My brother did mechanical work on the equipment and drove tractor. (In Idaho at that time you could drive on your own land and the county roads as long as you were big enough to stand up on the brakes and stop the tractor!)
Still, no bikes magically appeared. Winter came with its 3 to 4 feet of snow and temperatures of zero to 10 degrees — and sometimes 40 below. We couldn’t do a lot of work so the bicycles seemed like a far-away dream. The Christmas tree was void of bikes.
Spring came and with it another chance to gain credit working. The barns needed mucking out, the fences needed repair, calving and feeding bum lambs was added to the work mix, and it was time to think about the garden. We got to it with visions of bicycles dancing in our heads.
We spent a lot of time and effort in the granary. We had a real mouse problem. We had several feral cats that regularly patrolled the barn but they had been remiss with the mice. My brother and I had been setting traps regularly but failed to catch all of the little pests. However, we persisted.
It was around Easter. There was still some snow on the ground, though the gravel lane to our house was bare. We were looking forward to horseback riding, fishing and warm weather. One morning Dad told us at breakfast that we needed to do a better job with the mice. He said he appreciated what we had done, but we needed to be out there more regularly. We were hurt over his lack of appreciation, but had to acknowledge that we still had a mouse problem. We immediately went out to check the traps.
As we opened the door we were overwhelmed. There in the middle of the granary sat two Schwinn bikes, a red boy’s bike and a lovely blue girl’s bike — with basket, fringes on the handlebars and a rear rack. I will never know how my parents managed the money to buy those bikes but they were gorgeous.
I kept mine for the next 25 years, moving it many times and continuing to ride it. I finally gave it to my daughter, afraid that I might fall with it and demolish what is left of my body.
I still loved my beautiful bay, white-faced, quarter horse mare, but my exquisite blue Schwinn bike sat right beside that “pony” in my heart.
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