Learning To Ride

This is the 1969 Sears Mini-Bike my sisters and I would drive full throttle down Pine Drive in Roosevelt, New Jersey racing the Martins after they also got one to see who could make it to the sewer plant at the end of the road first. We usually did and they said we did something to the engine, but believe me all we did was start that little engine up. Then the neighbors who were home in the day complained that we were illegal on the street and making too much noise so we had to ride around the yard but not full-throttle. That wasn’t as much fun so I would take the bike into the woods and try to follow some paths, but the speed wasn’t there and neither was the race. Some years later I got a Kawasaki 250 and then a 440 and then a Honda 550 which I rode in Western Massachusetts. I rode to UMass-Amherst as a student and to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. The ride to Michigan from Massachusetts will need to be a whole other post.

Recently, I was listening to the song “Turpentine” by Brandi Carlile and she has a line about “wishing I was ten again so I could be your friend again” and it got me thinking about being 10 and what friendship is about and this brought me back to this 1969 Sears Mini-Bike and learning to ride in Roosevelt, NJ. It was a town of people who mi familia had little in common with unless you count diaspora, a word I didn't know then, but which explains so many unexplainable things to children after they have grown. We were the only Puerto Ricans (and Catholic in a Boricua way which is to say we lit a lot of candles in front of homemade altars) in a town of Eastern European Jews. This is why I know a little Yiddish. Through racing our mini bikes we kids found some ground to cover together. Until the grown ups stepped in and that was that. But it did take a few weeks because we would race after school before Mamá got home from work in Hoboken. Mamá would have been fine sitting down, lighting a Viceroy, and watching the race from a lawn chair but there truly is this thing called "peer pressure."

There is a lot more to say about Roosevelt and there is even a book written about this town. It brought together some amazing people and created its own Jewish cultural center, like Ben and Bernarda Shahn, Lettie Cottin Pogrebin, and the Rosskams and in Puerto Rico, Jack and Irene Delano. I’ll just write about the mini-bike for now. I can write more about Roosevelt later and how we got there. We moved to Roosevelt from El Barrio when I was 9.

On a noisy mini-bike I was so happy to be in green again after leaving Puerto Rico at 6 and happy to be friends with the Martins. Playing football with them sprained my fingers and being the pitcher for the girls baseball team hurts my right shoulder today, but we learned to ride together.

Maybe it's time for a Harley.

Click on "Learning To Ride" above for a New York Times article on Roosevelt, NJ.