I think back to those summers when we children were free of school and responsibility, banding together into our little groups, loosely organized according to the graded caste system imposed upon us by our schools. We ran and played with our friends, enjoyed lemonade and the neighborhood swimming pool, played the latest NES games, and rode our bikes everywhere and nowhere. It was the bike that was the defining factor of a young middle-school student’s influence in the neighborhood back then. It was a display of one’s status as well as a key to the rarest of commodities – independent mobility. But with independence came a certain degree of trepidation, because the farther a child travels from the safety of his yard, the more his safety rests in his own hands; and on a bike, safety in numbers was little more than a bluff. These were the days of wooden swords and makeshift armor, pinecone fights, bullies, and barking dogs; the days when knights, jedi, cowboys, and samurai battled back to back against enemies unnumbered for ultimate supremacy on the hot concrete of the cul-de-sac. The days seemed endless and we were as old as we had ever been, with the world stretched out before us and the thought of tomorrow never crossing our minds.
This story begins with the introduction of the enemy known as the Yellows, who came on the scene one summer initially as baseball team rivals of an acquaintance of ours. At first it seemed to be of little concern to us; my brother and I were more than content to allow the rivalry escalate to whatever degree the participants saw fit. It seemed that the boy and his brother would bother our associate everyday, and it escapes my memory how it first began, but I believe it was with a pinecone. A toss heard around the block and the beginning of a faction war that would continue almost all summer and stretch from one end of the subdivision to the other. You see, I was never involved with the extracurricular sporting activities subsidized by our schools, so I had not been called into the rivalries that had been instilled in some of my peers. However, as a leader of my respective street, I was compelled to join the campaign, adding my forces to those of the other streets belonging to our school. In the end, our headcount averaged about 20, which was supported by the 8 with whom I regularly dealt. Of those, I usually rode with 2 or 3 other people, including my brother and the friend who was with us during the backyard battle the year before. This however, isn't the story of the war, but of one of our little campaigns - the first and last 'big one' in which I recall being directly involved.
The bike raid was not a new concept, but it was something we had not experienced before the Yellows, who attacked some friends of ours with rocks and pinecones in a sort-of adolescent drive-by. Of course, this was generally considered bad form, since my lot was of the classical school of mano-a-mano dueling, so we began carrying rocks with us in the hopes of ambushing them on the next pass. Twice more they came, hurling more debris each time, and we laid on with everything we had, but found the cyclists infinitely harder to hit than traditional pedestrian assailants. In addition, they wore skater gear, which protected several parts of their bodies and made them unafraid of getting in close or even wiping out.
It was around that time that we decided to fight them as we had fought others before, focusing on the leader of the formation, then chasing the remnant to their base. There were only four of them and they were growing more daring with each passing day, making more passes each time and yelling provocative insults all the while.
Two days before we would make our first raid, I carried my wooden longsword to the house of our associate and asked my friend to bring his lance as well. The lance turned out to be the critical element of our plan, since it was the perfect shape for the plan we intended to hatch. Little more than a discarded pool cue with an improvised basket guard made from a ‘Big Gulp’ cup, it was the longest and straightest of the weapons at our disposal.
We had seen them preparing near their hangout in the park by the swimming pool, collecting ordinance in bike baskets and the like – already decked out in their indestructible skater armor. We waved at them, yelling and shaking our backsides, doing all that we could to get them to deploy as quickly as possible. We were wearing our own rag-tag armor as well: knee pads, elbow pads, soccer guards - I had on a hard hat, my brother wore a football helmet, and our friend wore his signature Texas Rangers junior baseball helmet. I am sure we were not the most intimidating opponents those rich
Their momentum was a big part of our strategy, so we ran as fast as we could as if to somehow escape them. Our flight stirred raucous verbal abuse and shouting from our highly excited pursuers who undoubtedly pedaled all the more swiftly. We rushed to a large tuft of pampas grass where we had hidden our weapons and turned on our heels to meet the curb as they closed on us. We were bombarded by a hailstorm of pea-gravel, acorns, sweetgum seeds, and pinecones as they raced upon us. So much so that we advanced with our heads down, unable to see our targets.
I lunged in with my sword and missed, my weapon being promptly run over as the leader passed. My brother met the ground before reaching the street, taking too many hits to continue. But the man with the lance, executing a classical baseball belly-slide, thrust his pool cue into the spokes of the leader’s front wheel. The lead bike came to an immediate stop, turning end-over and hurling its stunned rider onto the street like a ragdoll. Regrettably, I only saw a part of the crash from under my helmet, as the whole thing happened before I could return to my feet with the hilt of my broken sword still in hand. As if in slow-motion, two of the remaining three bikes smashed into the tumbling lead bicycle, leaving the second man on the street, and the third afoot working to free his ride from the tangle of wheels and tubing we had made.
Unable to retrieve his weapon and suddenly feeling in well over his head, our friend fell back, essentially fleeing the field, while my brother and I were left to fend for ourselves with a broken sword and a broomstick.
I do not recall exactly how the leader and the other rider managed to get away, but their two comrades left them behind, only stopping to check on them once they were well away from the action. One of the defeated pair was crying like a baby and the other was cursing like I had never heard before. I am certain that both would have readily attacked us if our cowardly associate had not suddenly appeared with his two cousins to bombard the living daylights out of them with their own stockpile of prickly tree castings. My brother and I made a tactical retreat, deferring to the might of our debris-hurling backup as the enemy pair separated their bikes and fled in humiliation.
We had no way of knowing what lie in store for us now that we had utterly beaten down and humiliated the enemy. Their snappy yellow skater gear was now scratched and stained by the thousand rolling impacts of a full-speed bicycle pile-up and the mouth of the group had undoubtedly lost some of the confidence of his followers – followers who had realized they were now facing some kids who were not afraid to step up when attacked.
Meanwhile, we rebuilt our equipment, adding additional bits to our armor to protect us from rocks (particularly our faces) and prepared for the second phase of our plan, anticipating that they would attack us even more powerfully than the previous day. Matters were further complicated by the fact that our fellow the lanceman was grounded for his participation, having told his parents part of the story when questioned as to how he had sprained his wrist and torn the knee out of his pants. So we were out one veteran and our young associate (his two cousins included) was not mobile enough to take the fight off his own street. This left myself and my brother to carry out the finishing blow and re-earn our reputation as untouchables, effectively removing us from the war and absolving us from any possible retaliation. The original plan was for a dozen fully armed bikes to ride into the park and utterly destroy the operation there, then occupy the area, but since it was just the two of us, our goal changed. The enemy would still be crushed, but it would not be by our side of the subdivision, it would be by us – and after that, we were out. We even planned to tell them so. By that time, my brother and I had no intention of continuing with battles that had nothing to do with us but also had no intention of keeping it from continuing without us.
The sun rose early that weekday morning and our mother allowed us to ride our bikes to our caretaker’s house, the home of the young associate who was partially the cause of this war. We waited until we had the opportunity to take a ride on our bikes and returned home, where we loaded up with our gear, which included our lighter ‘riding armor’, new lances, plastic bags full of ammo (pinecones, acorns, and sweetgum balls), and a bag full of playground sand each.
Riding back to the battleground, we found a new assault already in progress, but it was different than before. The riders had dismounted and were using their bikes as shields (they had duct-taped some thick cardboard to the frames of their bicycles to defend them from bombardment) while they engaged in a projectile battle against the entrenched cousins, who were using everything they had to keep the aggressors at bay, including the water hose. In addition, there were only three of them instead of the initial four.
Calling out to each other, we charged in at our top gear, bringing our thick lances to bear. We intended to severely damage the Yellows’ bikes, dashing them to the ground with our lances while simultaneously scattering our foes like birds. It was a good plan in theory, but they saw us coming and mounted long before we reached them. They fled down the street as fast as they could but their single-speed freestyle bikes had only a fraction of the speed of our fleet 10-speeds and we were upon them faster than they must have expected. One of the Yellows slowed and tried to hit me with a rock from his saddlebag but I hit the breaks to match his speed and ran my lance through his rear spokes to return the favor. He skidded to a crashing halt an fell on his side, his locked wheel yanking the stick from my hand, but we held our speed as we chased the other two.
My brother closed on the leader with his own lance, but the same turned, having a stick of his own. My brother broke off as the Yellow made an attempt to send him endo with the stick. The enemy had to reach too far in an attempt to send the stick through my brother’s front spokes and was forced to drop it in favor of regaining control of his bike.
The two Yellows broke ranks and went their separate ways, so I called to my brother to head to their base in the park.
The Yellow base was essentially a picnic table and a jungle-gym with a hand-drawn yellow flag at the top. There was not much to destroy, but they had gone through the trouble of making the flag and organizing their arsenal atop the picnic table, so that was our target.
We swept in, finding the fourth man there without his armor. The boy ran without saying a word and we swept the whole table into a nearby trashcan and took the enemy’s banner forthwith. The last two came upon us as we were leaving and shouted at us, cursing as if we had urinated on their mother’s grave.
We were already past fearing them, but we knew we had the advantage at full speed, so rather than fight, we merely employed the SR-71’s most famous evasive maneuver: When there’s a bogey on your six – just open the throttle and leave him in your jetwash.
They followed us furiously even as we climbed our gears to our cruising speed and began tossing our loads of ordinance over our shoulders and into their paths. I recall that the stuff just bounced off their helmets and pads, doing little to distract them from us. They yelled and threatened, understandably upset, throwing the remainder of their weapons at us as we flew to our safe house several blocks away. We knew that with only two of them, it wouldn’t matter how mad they were. The cousins would take them apart if they followed us too deep into our own territory.
As we neared the end of our own street, I called to release the chaff, at which point my brother and I slung our sand into the paths of the two riders chasing us. They were taken aback by this tactic and looking back I saw that they had stopped cold as if they had hit a wall. I am not sure if it blinded them like we expected, but it certainly had the anticipated effect of stopping their pursuit.
As we rolled up to the house covered in dirt, sand, pine needles, mud, sweat, splinters, and bruises, we could see our defeated foes roll out in the direction of their own homes. Aside from a few minor encounters at school the following season and a bit of hearsay from unfortunates on the other side of the neighborhood, that was the last time we had any dealings with them. Peace had once again been restored and our reputation around the block had (for better or worse) been increased.
This is the second story in the main plotline detailing yet another of the main character’s adventures as a child. Though there was slightly more action than the first, the stakes were a bit lower. However, the greater scope of the story shows a great deal of development in the area of strategy – at least in a childish sense. Despite the fact that this account seems to describe the violent rampaging of unsupervised youth, it has within it an element of chivalry which reflects the interests of the main characters, in this case the two brothers and their friend. This account helps to further develop the main character’s past and establish his familiarity with ‘action’ as well as to further reinforce the concept of his willingness to fight for his friends.
Defend your ride!
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