Bike memories of Newark

I lived in Newark from age 4 till 10.  I still think of it as home.

I learned to ride a bike on Hungtington Terrace on a old full sized coaster break, no gears women's bike.   It was way too big for me, but somehow I managed.

I sometimes rode to the grocery store or the "variety" store on errands for my parents.   My incentive was that I got to keep any pennies in the change and put them in a big display sized liquor bottle my father got through his liquor store in Passaic NJ.   (When I finally cashed the bottle in, there was around $40.00 in pennies... a huge fortune.)  The Variety store was on Osborne Terrace (one block down and two blocks over from our house.)  and I think the grocery store was on Wolcott Terrace (three blocks up and two blocks over.)   At the grocery store, I was fascinated by the gripping gadget the grocer could use to grab things off tall shelves.   They also had a sliding ladder to get more stuff from upper shelves.   I didn't have a basket or bike rack, so I'd wrap the bag around the handle bars and ride off holding on for dear life.   It put the bike pretty off balance, but I don't remember dropping anything.

Another bike excursion was the to the local library.   The branch on Osborne Terrace is still there:  http://www.npl.org/Pages/Branches/Weequahic/Weequahic.html

Actually I didn't go to the library much, though I read 3-5 books a week.  My father was into encouraging reading, so he picked up 5 books each week for me.   I would now call a lot of these books high end adventure:   Studs Lonigan, Captain Blood, Horatio Hornblower Series.   Later he got me more serious stuff like Melville, Dos Passos, and Hemingway...but that was after we moved to Springfield.

Sometimes I would just take off and explore.   Anything further away than three blocks in any direction was foreign territory.   I remember going down Hawthorn Avenue below Bergen Street.   It felt like another world.  There were factories, and bars, and railroad tracks.  I thought it was very cool and certainly a big adventure.

I still like to explore new territory by bike.   You cover more territory than walking, but move at a pace slow enough to take in new sights, sounds, smells, worlds.