8-Tracks: Evel Knievel had nothing on my old bike

Long before I was terrorizing the mean streets of Toledo, Ohio, in my first car (a 1972 Toyota Corolla with a hole in the floorboard that would soak unsuspecting passengers when I drove through a puddle), I was terrorizing those same streets on a bike.

These were the days when kids would actually go outside and actually hang out with friends - in person, not online.

My bike was an old hand-me-down that I'd paint a different color every couple of weeks. No gears, coaster brakes and handlebars that would slip if you leaned on them too hard. That's the one I was riding when I broke my wrist jumping over some kid's pedal car off a plywood ramp, trying to be just like Evel Knievel.

I envied the kids who had those cool bikes with the banana seat and the sissy bar on back. Some even had a big gearshift mounted to the frame, between the handlebars and the seat, right where a boy who tended to crash into stuff probably didn't really need a big gearshift to be mounted.

We'd go off on excursions clear across town, my friends and I who fancied ourselves as a gang ("The Draggers") even though we were 11 and had to be home before the streetlights came on. We'd put pennies on the railroad tracks and collect old beer cans and copy down the phone numbers of distant payphones because, well, you never know when you're going to need something like that when you're 11.

Eventually, I graduated to a 10-speed. It was fast, but it couldn't jump a pedal car worth a darn.

If you have suggestions for this column, we'd love to hear them. Send to tom.szaroleta@jacksonville.com. But if you're truly old-school, call me at (904) 359-4548 or totally baffle your kids and write your ideas on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope with a stamp and write Tom Szaroleta c/o The Florida Times-Union, P.O. Box 1949, Jacksonville, FL 32231 on the front.