HOLLY NADLER
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Marty Nadler used to say to me, whether or not he was talking to me at the time, “Summer’s here. Time to lock up your bike.”
Well, I don’t like to think of summer folk being, like, a Brinks Robbery Gang meets Bonnie and Clyde. It’s just that the more numbers of people you absorb on these shores, the more you get of everything: nuclear physicists, abstract expressionist painters, operatic contraltos and . . . bicycle thieves.
Yes, last Friday morning I walked out back to my wood-walled yard and discovered my bike was missing.
Now this is one of the crummiest bikes on Island. I rather liked that about it: the rusty handlebars, the dust and rust-encrusted chains, the kickstand that will support nothing heavier than three feathers and an olive, and two raggedy canvas sacks that look as if they rode atop a donkey along the Oregon Trail. There are additionally some things about the bike that a thief would discover after a half-block’s usage, probably causing him to abandon it as the kidnappers ditched their obnoxious charge in The Ransom of Red Chief: Out of the three gears, the middle one is useless, and when the pedal is applied to stop the bike, the brakes screech loudly enough to make everyone in the vicinity abandon what he or she is doing, including picking up a lost $20 bill in the street, to find out what the racket is all about. It’s a disturbance that makes the owner smile very winningly like a mom apologizing for her wailing baby on an airplane flight.
So why have I always appreciated these grave imperfections in my bicycle? Because I assumed it made it un-stealable! Oh, sometimes I’d throw the lock around it if I left it in some openly public place. It can’t always hurt to take Marty Nadler’s advice.
So my bike was gone, who knew where or why? I mentioned it to the first four or five friends and acquaintances I ran into on Circuit. Then I got tired of talking about it. I preferred suffering in silence, not that that comes easily to me, the silence part.
At the bike rental outfit down on Lake street I asked if they had any cycles for sale. They did – about 10 of them. They looked pretty good but they were all priced at $180. I guess I’m just getting old and my memory stretches back to the days when you could fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco for $16. So $180 seemed like an inconceivably high amount for a used bicycle.
I called John Stevenson of Cycle Works, my bicycle guru for lo these 40 years, and made him an offer: Could I buy a new bike in the lower-middle price range (I was thinking $300-ish), put down $100 now, and pay the balance in the middle of the month? He said sure. In his own brand of triage, he takes extra care of his car-free customers.
Early Monday morning I found my bike.
It was 7:15 a.m, and I was walking Huxley across Ocean Park for one of life’s great pleasures — an early ramble on Inkwell Beach when only a few stray souls and dog-lovers are out.
As we approached Sea View avenue, I saw what looked like my bike leaning up against the metal rail along the cliff. As I drew closer, I recognized the ratty bags, the non-hip, high handlebars, and the chipping flag-blue paint. My head even did a spin as I realized the thief had attached the lock from the upper chassis of the bike to the rail. How thoughtful!
And then I remembered. The hazy events of Thursday afternoon returned to my memory like the guy in The Manchurian Candidate realizing he’s been brainwashed. On Thursday, feeling a little flu-ish, I nonetheless had to travel to Healthy Additions to pick up a bottle of Resveratrol (that’s the stuff that makes red wine so healthy, without the fun) that’s been keeping my chronic Lyme under wraps. It seemed worth doing, so I pedaled down to the bus stop, locked my bike to the rail, caught the bus, then checked the schedule at the Steamship Authority to see when the #2 or #3 could take me up the road a piece. It was going to be a long wait so I decided, as lousy as I felt, to walk up the hill.
Suddenly I was in the last scene of Camille deciding to climb the Eiffel Tower rather than to complete the final poop-out on her deathbed. This was not good. I dialed my future ex-husband, Jack, who now lives in Vineyard Haven, and asked if he would pick me up at Healthy Additions and drive me home. Being a kindly man whom no woman in her right mind would ever want to divorce, he said yes.
You see the hidden plight in this scenario: The bike was totally forgotten.
After I was reunited with it and my memory, I had to ask myself a two-fold question: Would I rather my bike be stolen, or would I rather find my bike yet realize that I’m too stupid to live?
I think that’s what Hamlet was getting at with “To be or not to be.”
Just to let you know, the schedule is in place for the Union Chapel preachers this summer. The first is set for June 26 with the Rev. Dr. Dorthy Waton Tatem, district superintendent of the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, Philadelphia, Pa. In this column we’ll be letting you know again in the week leading up to Rev. Dr. Waton Tatem’s service, and each program thereafter.
We’re very excited to announce Oak Bluffs writer Thomas Dresser’s new book, The Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard: Colonization to Recognition, has just been published and is available locally. The book is a history of the tribe, with interviews and brief biographies of key members of the tribe. Tom has scheduled a talk at the Oak Bluffs Public Library on July 15 and a talk at the Senior Center on June 17.
At the Oak Bluffs Public Library this week, there will be a Young Artists Painting Workshop on Saturday, June 4, from 10:30 a.m. to noon with children’s librarian, Sondra. Take your artwork home or exhibit it in the library’s June 25 art show. Free. All ages.
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