The Bike Racks In Front Of Flory's

Recently, I was looking through some old microfilm archived pictures from the paper, taken during the '50s and '60s. In the collection, I noted one of our former, very common local infrastructure items, a long silver-gray, slotted bike rack. Racks like this one could be found at a variety of locations in my youth. A favorite of mine was the one located in front of Flory's Drug Store.

Flory's (now the home of the Edward Jones office on the southeast corner of Cherry and Main St. on the Nevada Square) was my regular choice pharmacy, of the four local drug stores/soda fountain businesses. Each of those drug stores had its own loyal clientele, more so for the soda fountain preference than for the medicines they dispensed. In fact, prescription medicines were not nearly so widely used in those times. We just did not use very much, because it cost money most families did not have, and there wasn't an explosion of new drugs like there has been in recent years.

I liked the Flory's soda fountain because they had what I considered the best cherry Coke in town, rivaled only by the one served at the White Grill. You could go by most any time of the day and there would be several bikes standing in the racks located where the handicapped parking is assigned now.

As kids we rode our bikes everywhere. Most families only had one vehicle, and it wasn't used for hauling kids places. When you needed to go to school, you rode the bus, your bike, or you walked with friends.

There were bike racks on each side of the Square and in front of the Fox Theater. We had bike racks at all of the grade schools and at the new Junior-Senior High School. They opened the lock on the football field every morning and after school for bikers, so no one would steal any. Funny, there were not too many stolen bikes back then. I think it had something to do with the fact that everybody's bike was recognizable. We rode them so much they became like an extension of who we were, and most of our friends would have known which one was ours immediately upon sight.

At the hardware stores around the square, and places like Sears and Montgomery Wards, they sold bikes and the parts to keep them in good running order. It was seldom that you could find a young boy in Nevada who did not know how to take off a bike tire and put in a new inner tube, or put on a patch.

There were no easy options for some of our bike trips. The two worst rides were to Lyons Stadium and the pool at Radio Springs. Now remember, these bikes were almost all the kind (today they are called "coasters") that had only one speed and pedal brakes. If someone had a three speed, what we called an "English Bike," it was really a big deal.

The hill on Ash Street from the corner of the present swimming pool was a hard pull for a kid all the way to Highland Street and the turn to Lyons Stadium. We always had our baseball gloves hung over our handle bars. In fact, we rarely left home without them. Baseball gloves were something you broke in just for your hand. The smell and the feel was distinctive, and you did not want it to ever be very far from reach.

The ride to Radio Springs was the easy part, as the downhill section was on the way there. It was after a long afternoon of swimming and playing, that you had to face that incredibly steep climb back up College Street. Even though the ball field and the pool were on the edges of town, we rode our bikes anyway. No one would keep us from our activities, and not having a ride was the norm, not the exception.

Bikes changed a little after I got older. The guys who were about a decade behind me got into these smaller things that had little wheels and something called a "banana seat." It looked like it took more work to ride them, but you would see them everywhere.

Next was the era of the 15 speeds and the dirt bikes. None of us would ever do very much curb jumping on our old dinosaurs, they would have broken down. Not these later models. The young guys seemed to be able to climb or jump over anything on dirt bikes.

Now as I look around Nevada, I see few bike riders. Now and then I observe a few youngsters on their skateboards, but not very many bikes. It is as if the time when young boys enjoyed the freedom and range our bikes afforded us, has passed.

Some of the reasons are obvious. We don't let our kids out on their own very much anymore. It is too dangerous to let a kid roam, with all the predators there are in the world today. Also, kids in this era have grown up in a time when they are car pooled everywhere. Just drive by the schools in the morning and evening and look at the traffic.

The sad part of it all, is that like the paper straws we used to put in our cherry Cokes at Flory's, the prevalence of kids riding bikes has just about disappeared, in the same way.

I wonder how these young boys would feel if they got a chance to experience that same "go anywhere on your bike" freedom, just like we did as kids? I doubt that any of us will ever see one of those long gray angular bike racks around these parts ever again. To bad, like the hitching posts of the generation from the 19th century, they had a quality that is sadly missed.