Bob Burke, Johnny Seery, and Jimmy Smith in 1954 at the start of a two-week bike trip from Newton to Mount Monadnock.
The Pleasure of Bicycling throughout Newton During the Early 1950s: In September 1952, a few of my bike-riding buddies and I were about to start 8th grade at the old Weeks Junior High School in Newton Center. It was a time much different from today. We felt safe biking on almost any street or sidewalk in Newton, and motorists had far more patience with cyclists than they do now. Bicycles were used almost exclusively by kids, and most drivers also had kids who rode bikes. Just about all parents in my neighborhood let their kids ride without adult supervision, and those that didn’t were considered a bit odd. We avoided major roadways because we had a network of side roads throughout Newton before the Mass Pike wiped most of them out.
Two unrelated developments were radically transforming how fast and how far we could go on a bicycle. The first was the introduction of improved lightweight Raleigh 3-Speed bicycles from England. These were dramatic upgrades from the Schwinn balloon-tire models that were popular immediately after World War II. We purchased ours with money from summer lawn mowing and house painting. The second crucial development was the opening of Route 128, one of the state’s first fully divided highways.
The Pure Joy of Biking on the New Route 128: The day before school opened, we made a spur-of-the-moment decision to sneak our Raleighs onto the new highway. We made certain there were no cop cars anywhere in sight, and we headed north.
The road was wide and open, and the surface was smoother than anything we had ever ridden on before. Picture it like a gigantic version of today’s bicycle paths where cars and bikes mixed nicely with complete deference to one another. Our bikes hit full throttle and I felt a rush of adrenalin and a sense of total freedom that was indescribably empowering. Our goal was to reach the top of Bear Hill in Waltham, and we got there in less than half the time we thought it would take. On the way back, we raced even harder and were quite giddy when we reached the turnoff to Route 9 and home. We liked school and we liked school sports, but not nearly as much as we loved the freedom of experiencing all of this in a single day. It was the first time I felt anything close to a spiritual experience in life, and I immediately wanted more of it.
We were avid butterfly collectors, birders, campers, and hikers. Our Raleigh 3 speeds allowed us to reach places we knew nothing about just a month earlier. The following year, we organized overnight camping trips and a year later, three of us embarked on a two-week bicycle trip to Mount Monadnock. We carried a banged up portable radio in those days before rock and roll to listen to classical music on CBC Toronto, but more to country and Appalachian folk musicians who came through late at night from WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia.
A Fearless Start to Summertime Racing: During the following winter doldrums, we began thinking about starting a summertime racing program on Route 128. There were times I thought we were nuts to even think about doing this, but one mild Saturday morning in mid-February we tested an 8-mile course from Newton to the top of Prospect Hill in Waltham. Everything clicked nicely. Over the next two summers we drew kids from Newton and beyond for weekend late-afternoon races. We peddled without helmets or other types of protective gear and knew nothing about head injuries or basic rules of the road. The pressure to sluff off safety concerns and increase our speed intensified with each outing or race. We imagined that we were fearless and totally invincible.
A Humbling End to Our Illusion of Invincibility: Near the end of August in the second summer, a swift reckoning for our foolhardiness came hard and fast. I was racing at top speed down the steep incline of Prospect Hill Park Road with eight cyclists bunched closely behind. I hit a giant pothole just as we entered a side street that led to Routes 117 and 20. My front wheel collapsed, jettisoning me over the handlebars and onto the street, where I was immediately hit by the first three bicycles behind me. A few seconds later, four of the five other racers crashed into us. I was able to look up briefly to see that we were all sprawled on the hard road surface.
I was banged up far more than the others and it would take six painful stitches to fix the damage; but our immediate concern was explaining this mess to our parents. They knew we were out biking, but they had no idea we were racing on 128 or that we had been doing so for more than a year. I told my folks only that it was a “freak accident” when we called for help in getting home. Much to my relief, they accepted our story without too many questions, but I began to feel a sense of deep guilt about how this incident could have threatened the trust they placed in me and in my judgment.
Clear, Timeless and Compelling Memories: The crash put an end to our racing days, but we were close to turning 16 and thoughts of getting driving licenses, dating girls, and travelling to even more distant places had become all-consuming obsessions. We thought that cars would give us even greater thrills than Raleigh 3-Speeds, but they never really did. Memories of those two years have remained the clearest and most compelling for all of us over the decades as we keep recalling the lure of open and unexplored roadways, how we became self-starters who organized all details of our trips and races, and the way we bonded as close friends who never had a serious argument.
The Present: On a recent weekday, I was traveling north on Route 128 looking over at a 20-mile backup of bumper-to-bumper traffic inching south from Wakefield to Route 9. At least two-thirds of those vehicles contained just one passenger each, and it was pretty apparent that the stress of long work commutes and scattered family obligations left most of those folks with no other real choice. I could not help thinking that almost 65 years earlier, my friends and I had biked home from Lowell along that same route around midnight in a torrential summer “Northeaster.”
A day or so later, I was driving on Walnut Street in Newton, giving wide berth to just 8 courageous individuals who were cycling to work. These two examples – a huge snake of a traffic jam and just a few dedicated cyclists – sum up the unfortunate imbalance between motor vehicles and other forms of transportation that has become the norm since World War II. In the 1950s, Route 128 was a highway of boundless freedom when we hit it with our Raleigh 3-Speeds. It’s anything but that now for those who must commute on it daily. The same is true for almost all of the main commuting routes around and through Newton.
Village 14 has presented a robust and often contentious set of discussions about these and other serious transportation and development related challenges. I have some thoughts from my past professional experiences that I’d like to share in the coming weeks and months. I hope others will also share from their experiences as well.
What an amazing story. Thanks for sharing it, Bob.
Fabulous!
Great story!
It reminds me a bit of a group of house-painters from Ireland my parents had hired in the 1980s – it was their first trip abroad, they were staying in West Roxbury and our house was in Needham, and one night on their way back they took a wrong turn off Great Plain Ave. and ended up riding their bikes in the breakdown lane of 128 south for a few miles in the direction of Dedham. Luckily a sympathetic trooper pulled them over before they got to the Route 1 interchange and escorted them back to a local road.
In Holland they have bike paths alongside the fences of most motorways. If only .001% of the 99 gazillion dollars that’s been spent on 128 had been similarly earmarked at some point.
Thank you, Bob!
Great story Bob
Thank you for sharing
Excellent story, Bob!
Such a great narrative Bob. And that photo of 128 in 1953 is startling. Today that highway is terribly dysfunctional; I avoid it if at all possible.
One thing that struck me about the story is the sense of freedom you and your buddies felt on your bikes. Obviously riding on 128 is no longer an option, but I so wish my own kids grew up in a time that was less programmed and reliant on electronics. We make sure they get outside to exercise and enjoy the fresh air, but too often they are content communicating with their friends online or just playing video games or watching YouTube. When I was growing up here, a generation after you, most of my time April through mid-November was spent outdoors… often on a bike. I think that’s how I grew to love this place.
I love the old photo on the bikes!
Two questions: were these two years during 128 construction, or was it already open to cars but there was just not very much traffic?
And you could get CBC on over-the-air radio here? That’s not still possible, is it? Getting Canadian radio and TV was one of the perks of living in Detroit.
That photo convinced me. Let’s go for shutting down 128 on Sundays for teenage bicycle races. We’ll call it the Bob Burke Road Race ;-)
I’m with Jerry. We could close the Pike and do a ride to the Berkshires too, while we’re at it.
Thanks for the great story, Bob. I love the old photo of you and your friends.
The feeling of freedom you felt on your bike is shared as a great memory of mine as a young girl and my son’s too. I had one of the big ballon tire bikes that I rode with my friends both to school and to explore everywhere we could. My son, still an avid biker, loved to disappear for the day on his bike going on one adventure after another.
It’s different for my grandchildren. They all have bikes but don’t get to feel that freedom of adventure we did on a bike. Being as totally independent as you can be for a young age. Two of them love snowboarding and describe a feeling of flying that sounds pretty awesome. But there’s still something different about taking off for the day with friends on bikes that’s will be forever lost.
This was the most interesting and entertaining thing I’ve ever read on V-14. Awesome! Thanks to my fellow Weeks Jr. High alum Bob Burke for sharing.
Wonderful story, Bob!
Jerry, How about a tour of newton on the Mass Pike, between Route 16 and Newton Corner??
Great idea Isabelle. I’ll talk to the Mass Dept of Transporation. I’m sure it can’t be hard to shut down our major highways for a bit of fun ;-)
Thank you, Bob, both for the thoroughly engrossing remember when, and the poignant present-day scenario which is all too familiar to many of us. Food for thought.
Thanks for all the kind comments I’ve received here, by email and at last evening’s Highlands Area Council meeting. I’m really thinking about getting back on a bike and would appreciate any suggestions about how I should do it and whether I should buy or rent. . At 81, I’m not about to make any long term commitment.
Just a few quick points from questions I have received from you and others.
@Jerry, Isabelle and Doug. I’m certain we could get the 4 area councils to endorse closing either 128 or the Mass Pike. The State wouldn’t dare turn us down if all 4 councils were pushing for it, but David Olsen might hit me for conflict of interest.
@Julia. 128 had been open to cars and trucks for about a year when we began riding on the roadway and Harry Truman was still in the White House. As I stated earlier, we had no problem mixing as far as I can recall.
@Julia. We were able to bring in both CBC Toronto and CBC Montreal. We also tuned into many other “clear channel” AM stations from Del Rio, Texas, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Des Moines, Iowa, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Saint Louis and Philadelphia. But our favorite was WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia which came in loud and clear when we were camping on Mount Monadnock. We were introduced to some of the great country, blue grass, gospel and folk music of southern Appalachia and there was something about listening under the stars that made it totally relevant for where we were and what we were experiencing. The station played Dr. Ralph Stanley’s “Heading for the Gloryland” every evening. We learned the words and sang it while we biked. That’s when became a “folkie”. Great stuff.
@Michael. I emphasize with your Irish painters because I almost did something similar while I was in, of all places, Ireland. BTW. I went up 128 the other day from Route 9 to Route 20 and tried to determine if it would even be possible to bike on it today. I figure the chances of survival at around 50%.
Thank you, Bob! What a great story—It was a better time in many ways.
Joan
What a well-written commentary, Bob. I also have vivid memories of that same era: rushing over the streets of South Brookline, after school, to a skating pond 2 miles from my house; riding in the middle of the street, with no cars in either direction, my skates slung around my neck. Racing there and home again before dark, alone. I was 10 years old. Not a worry in the world. Those days were formative in ways that most people today can’t fathom.
I loved this. I remember the early days of 128, but never biked on it since I didn’t get my drivers license until the spring of 1958.
I grew up biking all over Brookline when drivers were happy to share the road. (The good old days!) I occassionally even dared to bike past Cleveland Circle (when it was still a circle) all the way to Chestnut Hill!
Thanks for writing and sharing this, Bob.
Bob, GREAT story. We lived on our bikes in Oak Hill Park. I’m a Meadowbrook alum and 10 years behind you so 128 was out but route 9 worked well for us on our summer rides to Farm Pond in Sherbon. We also loved the VFW Parkway and Route 1 after Friendly’s opened in Dedham with their Legendary Awful-Awful, now Fribble and nowhere near as thick or good. Summer night rides to the Carnival in Sacred Heart’s parking lot and many trips to the Paramount theater were a staple. Thank you for the trip down “Memory Lane.”
@Peter, Lois and Helen and Andy. Thanks for your stories and updates which are remarkably similar to my experiences 10 years earlier; Cleveland Circle, VFW Parkway, Route 1, Brookline. I’m wondering when the freedom to do all these things ended.
There were some differences between the early 50s and your experiences. It wasn’t safe to be on Route 128 with a bicycle after about 1956 and I’m pretty certain that our three and a half day haul to reach Mount Monadnock in 1954 was a unique undertaking for kids our age at that time.
That said, I was really bowled over by all the cyclists who wound up at City Hall to end the 2018 Tour de Newton in June and the surprisingly large number of cyclists I’ve seen on the local roadways this summer. Something is beginning to happen and I’m getting a bit more hopeful that autos and cyclists are learning to live with one another. A lot of people have put in a lot of time to make all this happen and they deserve our thanks.
I went to Monadnock this past Saturday to do some hiking (I didn’t reach the top) and to swim back and forth on a beautifully secluded small lake that is still almost exactly like it was when we first found it in 1954. I’m still on a high from it all.