As it always happens in the logging industry, the wood eventually runs out and the crew moves to another location. My Dad had been cutting and hauling for a local person in Livermore and the wood ran out. Dad then went to Rangeley looking for more work.  He started working for D.C. Morton in 1957 and the whole family moved away from the farm to the big City of Rangeley. We gathered up all our belongings and loaded them in the back of his dump truck and off we went. Of course, I just had to bring my trusted set of wheels.  After all, I did pay for my bike with my own money that I had earned working in the woods during the summer. It was my companion that kept me out of trouble and never argued back.

We moved into a house on Pleasant street.  I was 12 years old and it was the first time my family actually lived in a city. But this time, only 5 of the kids moved into the new place. It was the first time in our lives we had some of those new-fangled inventions to keep us occupied. We actually got a television so we could watch The Lone Ranger, or Lawrence Welk, or Hopalong Cassidy and many other time-consuming shows. But Mother still had the rule, if the sun was out, we had to be outside. There was a lot of new things we got to upgrade our style of life. We had a telephone, water that came out of the faucet, an inside washing machine, but most of all an inside toilet that one could just flush. It did get cold once in a while using the back house during the winters living on the farm.

When school closed in 1959, I did not have a job that summer, so I had to find ways to keep me busy with my trusted bike. Just touring around Rangeley, got to be quite boring and not enough open space such as the farm had.  I decided, I had to do more. So, I got permission to ride my bike to Strong to visit one of my older brothers. I was going to stay there a day or two and then pedal on back to Rangeley. After a couple of days riding around visiting old places, I became quite bored, as usual, and I was about ready to bike back to Rangeley.  On my last jaunt about the village of Strong, I was speeding down Church Hill for my last flying fling. I was almost to the bottom of the hill and I saw a young fella from Strong coming across the flat in preparation for pedaling up Church Hill. He spied me and when he did, he intentionally took to the yellow line.

Now, I recognize a challenge when I see it and was not about to let a Strong boy beat a Rangeley boy, so I took to the yellow line also.  I figured I had the advantage because I was still flying downhill. As we got closer, it was quite apparent that the Strong boy was just as stubborn as I was. Neither one of us was about to chicken out. We met.  Front tire to front tire, handle bars to handle bars, forehead to forehead. Down we went into a pile in the middle of the road. Two bikes and two boys just laying there In absolute disbelief. Blaming the other for not being smart enough to turn out.

The bikes did not look the same as when we began the day and we had to carry them back home.  It was time I was to start back to Rangeley, but the front tire was no longer a nice round circle. I took the front tire all apart, took out the spokes and did my best to make the rim a perfect circle again.  I got it almost perfect, at least perfect enough I could peddle on back to Rangeley. It was this trip back I was about to learn something else. You see, Rangeley to Strong is mostly downhill. That would make Strong to Rangeley mostly uphill.  Here I was, on a single speed bike and a not so perfect front wheel, but back home I traveled.

 Things went as well as expected under the circumstances until I reached the top of the hill by the AT trail and the S curves.  I stopped a moment to rest on the last part of the guard rails. As I was sitting on my bike and leaning there just chilling out, a big bull moose came around the corner on his way to Small Falls and spied me.

Now folks, I was not about to peddle back down the hill just to get away from Bullwinkle. He became quite curious and continued directly toward me. I kept judging the distance between us and looked for something to change Bullwinkle’s mind.  Perhaps a shoe or something such as that would do. But I was not going to peddle back down those curves. Decision time was fast approaching, and my mind was in full thinking mode. What am I going to do? At the last moment a tourist was driving back home and was on the way toward Massachusetts and chased the moose on down the road.   I made sure to thank them as they both went by. I was not going to peddle back down those curves. This was just one of the challenges that I had to conquer with my trusted bike. The next challenge was carrying the bike up the AT trail to the top of Saddleback and ride on down back into town. That went well.

ya all have a nice day now

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