The Three Penny Wrench, parts 3292 - 3295

  3292. My Schwinn was my first good bike.  I  couldn’t have bought it, I  came across it by accident in my cousin Joey’s garage after he went away to college. It was all rusted from being left out in the rain.  My aunt Lucy gave it to me for free because she didn’t know it was worth anything.

 3293. I  took it all apart and cleaned it up, removed all the rust and put it back together again. I  got the idea that I  wanted the bicycle to be absolutely silent and run with no squeaks or clicks, so I  removed the fenders and also the chain guard. I  even removed the kick stand because it was always clicking against the pedal when it came around.

 3294. After that I  decided that in order for it to be truly perfect it had to be a three speed, instead of a one speed coaster brake bike, so I  replaced the back wheel with an English wheel with gears.  At that point I had a perfect bicycle; the perfect combination of the speed of an English bike with the comfort of the seat and the shock absorber of the American bike.

3295. The only problem with it was that it had no brakes. The English wheel did not have the coaster brake, and there was no way to attach a hand brake to the Schwinn frame. To stop I  used my foot, dragging it along the ground, but as a rule, till I  figured out how to attach some brakes, I  was just always extremely careful.  That was very stupid, but then, as I  have said  before, I  was not a very bright child.