The People At Number 63

My 90-year-old mother still lives in the house that she and my father bought in 1987 when they moved back to eastern Pennsylvania. It was a homecoming for them: they had left the area in May 1965. I was born in Pittsburgh, in western Pennsylvania, in June 1965, and I never thought of the Philadelphia area as home even though I lived here with my parents and my sister from early 1988 until late 1991.

I didn’t own a bike during that period. I didn’t even ride a borrowed bike. On the traffic-choked roads of this very densely populated area, the prospect of cycling never presented itself to me. And it was pretty clearly not on the radar of the rest of the family. I’m not sure how many decades you would have to go back to find the last bike Mom or Dad owned. The last bike-like thing of my mother’s is this torture device:

As for my sister, the bike that came with her when she moved here in 1987 still hangs from the ceiling of the garage:

My sister now lives in sunny Florida, where her old bike might find new life. But, no. If we’re being honest, then eventually this barely used Raleigh Rapide from the now defunct Racine Cyclery is destined to be sold on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. In a moment of curiosity about the bike’s history, the new owner might Google the shop sticker still affixed to the seat tube and discover my blog. Hello from the past.

Sifting through the past has been one of my most time-consuming jobs since I arrived at Mom’s house last month. In 36 years, a lot of things have been pushed into dark corners of the basement. But there’s no more bike stuff, not even a tire pump or ugly old helmet with plastic yellowed by age. We weren’t a cycling family.