Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 7-8 the charging bull
Back to previous chapter

My first real car story begins here. A charging driver intentionally drove his car close to my bicycle on a clear unobstructed day as I returned home from paying my newspaper bill.

I was a news carrier from ages 12 to 16 and each Saturday morning I traveled to the west side of town via bicycle to pay for the week’s papers. Americans expect a reward and subsequent protection for undertaking capitalist enterprise like delivering papers, but if you conduct business off a bicycle then you are at the mercy of any predator.

This particular predator narrowly missed a defenseless unprotected person while using a one ton vehicle as a weapon … but moreover he did it while I was precariously balanced on the very edge of the road. In short, I was honoring the car-bike code as required by society, but the predator refused to keep his side of the deal. Fuck you he says, I am the bull of the road, and if I want to horn a cow, then I will oblige.

Of course this wasn’t the first time I’d seen this ‘funny’ trick, and everybody who does it thinks they’re being original. And I want to add something here: as the years passed, I discovered that assaultive drivers have a high recidivism rate and tend to come back at you more than once, especially if they get away with it the first time.
 
Today I would consider ‘intentionally driving close’ a legally defined assault, but in the early 1960’s I didn’t understand legalities, so I simply yelled at the guy after he passed. I didn’t issue a threat or call him ‘fat-boy,’ I merely voiced my displeasure with his action and used my big mouth to do so.

Charging-bull wheeled his car around. Uh-o, here comes the assaulter again … wow am I terrified? Let me say here, I have been scared sometimes when cars came back, but not this time. I rode into a strip-center parking lot to get away, and he followed. Remember when the cows run, the predators give chase, and he was pursuing me because his sense of freedom and my freedom were clashing.

Pedaling across the lot I ducked behind the light pole while he bulled past in a charge, turning and charging again a couple three times. I doubt he would’ve killed me outright, but one bayonet to the throat was enough to warn me off for a lifetime.

Eventually I worked my way over to a 12" high curb where I exited the lot, and left him stewing in his metal can while I made out across an open field (back when towns had open fields).

But it didn’t end there. Although charging-bull never bothered me again, I discovered he worked at the gas station and parked his car on the side, usually with the windows rolled down.

___________________________________________________

Chapter 8        Burning the bull

One afternoon I came up behind the charging-bull gas station and threw a lit match on the car’s torn upholstery and ten minutes later flames were pouring out the driver’s window.

A second fellow, who happened to be with me that day, was unaware what I stepped away to do, and we both stood in front of Hook’s Drug watching the assaulter’s car burn up. At a later time, that friend’s mother, for a different reason, told me I couldn’t play with her sons any more … and this last recollection clearly proves my personality was not a smooth match with raising good children. She was a single mom doing her best, and I honored the restriction.

Only now, years after I burned that car, I have come to understand that people sometimes become friends through fighting. Maybe charging-bull was an ordinary garage hand who had trouble making friends, just like me, and was merely saying hello by intentionally driving close. But when he turned back and pursued me across a parking lot, that’s bullying. Even so, perhaps I should try to find him after all these years so we could share a good laugh about his car’s misfortune and become fast friends after all.

This is the very first time I said anything about setting that car on fire. And to accurately account for myself, I was involved in numerous acts of retaliatory violence during my school years grade 7 through 11, which in all cases was outright anti-social behavior.

Most my actions were petty in nature, but in retrospect were quite alarming to most members of the social order. I broke in and stole the school newspaper money, hurled a snowball across the room at a teacher, stole another boy’s award winning science project, flipped-over my physics teacher’s desk, threw eggs at people, helped steal school AV equipment, broke into a couple places but stole nothing, broke into buildings and stole stuff, vandalized a few places, stole lumber and tools from new houses to build tree-houses on other people’s property, painted a horse green, stole science lab equipment, ignited a can of home-made gunpowder on the hood of a car, periodically threw full ears of corn at cars, threw rocks at cars, threw eggs at cars, threw eggs at houses, stole chocolate milk from milk-boxes, shoplifted gum and pens and cigars, vandalized two churches, and stole 5 or 6 bicycles or more. It’s hard to believe I also had passing grades and wasn’t arrested a time or two.

It’s astounding as I look at this list for the first time that each and every thing I touched negatively was also something I wanted to belong to. I wanted to be on the school newspaper and be a scientist and own a horse and make movies and build houses and go to church and visit important people and be popular … but I didn’t even know it was possible to be a part of something, and my inner destruction and willful manner made it impossible.

Chapter 9) The car-wash night
Index of chapters