My Dad had a dream of seeing me be a great equestrian, or at the least maybe participating in local rodeos. Unfortunately I didn’t love horseback riding the way my Dad and brother did. I loved my horse, Lightening, but more as a pet. Lightening was the colt of my brother’s horse and it was hard to separate the two. So when my brother was goofing off racing his horse with a friend, my horse decided we needed to join in the race too (she was named Lightening for a good reason). I hung on for dear life as my horse took the “short cut” through the gulley and over the creek and through the woods. That incident and others where my life flashed before my eyes made me quite guarded when I was in the saddle.
Nonetheless I was devastated when Lightening was struck and killed by lightening. Sadly her name turned out to be her prophecy.
And this is how it came about that I got my first new bike….a John Deere ten-speed men’s racing bike. With part of the insurance claim my Dad took me to the John Deere implement dealer in Irene and I got my bike! I’m sure my Dad thought anything with the John Deere name on it had to be high quality and at the time I thought it was the best bike ever made. The year was 1971 and I had that bike for probably 20 years but with marriage, work, raising a family, somehow my husband and I lost track of the bike.
Since I started riding bike again I have said so many times….I wonder what ever happened to my John Deere bike?
Then this past August my husband surprised me with a John Deere bike exactly like the one I had growing up. He found it on EBay and probably paid too much (seeing John Deere goofed up and put their name on a not-so-good bike made in Taiwan, probably why they sold them only for 2-3 years in the early 70’s), but it is one of my favorite gifts I have ever received. It brings back a lot of great memories and it is an example of what a great guy my hubby is.
5 comments:
I if you could please post a Picture of the John Deer bike
john Deere bike a mean
I had a John Deere bike in the late 70s. I bought it with money from my paper route at the John Deere Dealer in Yankton. It was a pretty nice bike!...flat black paint!
Nothing runs like a Deere! This is a bad picture of the bike my husband got me on EBay....but as you can kind of tell, it is also the flat black with just a small stripe of green and yellow on the seat post. It has a silver JD emblem on the handle bar stem. This bike also happens to have a JD bike pump attached to the frame. I guess those were rare, at least that is what our auctioneer friend claims.
Very cool. I do not remember any yellow ar great paint on mine but I do remember the John Deere sticker that was chrome and just the outline of the letters. If I remember correctly the handlebar tape was cloth and tan.
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