Visiting Vern and a long ago bikeride

Last Sunday Karen and I drove to DeWitt to visit her stepdad, Vern Becker. He is staying in West Wing Place and will soon be going into hospice. He has cancer in his neck and has chosen not to undergo radiation treatment.

Those of you who get Sue’s emails know she, Linda and Diane were upbeat about how chipper he was when they visited him a week ago. We found him to be in a good mood too. His sisters Betty and Edie were also visiting and we all had a nice little chat even if his part of the room was packed to the gills with visitors.

A couple of weeks ago when we were there I wanted to drive by my Uncle Ralph and Aunt Helen’s drug store and house. I couldn’t remember exactly where they were so when we got home I emailed their daughter, my cousin Leah, and asked for the addresses. It’s been so long, she didn’t remember them anymore either.

When we found out we were coming to visit Vern again, I emailed the DeWitt library and asked them to look up the addresses for me. They passed the request on to the historical museum, but I did eventually get them and after we left Vern, we drove by the two places. The drugstore has been combined with the storefront to the right and is now vacant and for rent. We drove around back to look at the access to the upstairs apartment where I visited my aunt and uncle once. More on that in a minute. Then we went over to their old house. It seemed familiar but I think it is a different color now.

When I was in high school, probably about 1964 or 65, my friend Virgil Ronald “Bub” Sheriff and I decided to ride our bikes to visit my aunt and uncle. Bub and I were acolytes together at Grace Episcopal Church. We served together at every Saturday morning Mass. Because we did this so often, we knew the church service better than just about anyone except the priest.

Anyway, we set off for DeWitt on our bikes. Mine was a Campi 10-speed and I think Bub’s was a Huffy 3-speed. My Campi was one of the first 10-speeds in Cedar Rapids. My folks got it for me when I graduated from 9th grade. They got it at Pazour’s on C Street SW, right down in Bohemie Town. Campi bikes were made by Camagnolo, the company that makes such great bicycle deraileurs. Mine had both a front and back Campagnolo deraileur and Magistroni pedals and sprockets. The pedals had racing stirrups that are the source of a different story. Right Diane?

I also put on an after market speedometer, rear view mirror, and a bell. Most bikes of this time had 26″ balloon tires. The Campi had 27″ low profile, high pressure racing tires. Since the speedometer was probably designed for the 26″ tires, who knows if my speed or distance readings were ever accurate.

We left from our house in SW Cedar Rapids south on Bowling Street to Highway 30 (the Lincoln Highway), then east in a straight shot to DeWitt, about 60 miles away. We figured that at 15 miles per hour we could make it in about 4 hours. We did pretty well keeping up that speed, being in much better shape than these days. We did make a couple of rest stops but did not count that in our elapsed time.

Interstate 80 was only just being built around this time so Highway 30 was still a very busy motorway. We were concerned about cars approaching us at high speeds from the rear so we devised a little strategy. When there were no cars coming we would drive on the edge of the pavement and slipstream one another. We would trade off every mile or two. It was the job of the guy in back to keep an eye out for approaching traffic in his rear view mirror. When he saw a car coming, he would ring his bell two times and we would pull over onto the shoulder to be out of the way. When all traffic had passed, he would ring once and we would go back onto the pavement. That worked pretty well.

We arrived in DeWitt and stayed a day or two. The only uncomfortable thing was we got our arms sunburned on the way. Uncle Ralph lent us some long sleeved T-shirts for the ride home. Only he would have something like that in those days.