…. when bikes had coaster brakes and there were girl's bikes and boy's bikes. We used clothespins to attach playing cards to the spokes for noise, the only speed was how fast you were pedaling, and crepe paper was wrapped everywhere for the kiddie parade. Now there are hand brakes and disc brakes, step-through bikes and cross-over bikes, (anyone bikes), music cranked up from phones or other fancy do-dads, multi-speed pedaling and electric bikes, and LED light strings to put on the spokes.

…. October 1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was 10 years old, prone to anxiety attacks, of course no name given to it, what would the neighbors think? I can remember the fear of those days. My Pops was the Civil Defense Director so I kinda, sorta, knew what was going on and that it was scary. Many people had Civil Defense shelters in their homes, ours was in the basement, the closet under the stairs. There were jugs of water and K-rations, whether my dad still had them for WWII or a surplus store, I don't know. I looked at that closet many times during those days and wondered how 5 of us would be able to live in there, nobody was going to say that we wouldn't be around anymore. I remember going outside one sunny afternoon and it felt like everything was holding its collective breath. I've never had that intense feeling again until the days after 911. Tommy likes to ride bike on a road that runs just outside of the fence along one of the airport runways. Cyclists mainly use it. There were dozens of towers scattered around that large open space. They all held missiles during the crisis. To be in Key West, at the southernmost point of the continental US, 90 miles from Cuba, with all of those towers took me right back to 1960.