NOSTALGIA

A busy Monday and a full Tuesday. However there is a little time  left for some bicycle nostalgia.   

In the 30s automobile traffic was not a problem, and we kids were a bicycle riding society. Our bikes were heavy, had balloon tires and coaster brakes, not the sophisticated multigear lightweights of today. Since braking was applied only to the hub of the rear wheel there were no dreaded head over handlebars accidents. 

In good weather we rode to school and left our wheels in the provided racks. Even then we chain locked them. After school we traveled to whatever empty lot (field) where we would have our unsupervised ball games.  Football in the fall; baseball spring and summer.

In the West End there were two lots on the corner of Grant and Seventh, one more at Lee and Seventh, another on 8^th near Clinton and one on Stelle directly opposite Hubbard School. Kenyon Gardens in the Cedar Brook area between Stelle and Randolph was also a football site. 

Besides the tennis courts in Cedar Brook Park and the High School field there was a city owned clay court on the corner of Hobart(?) and Sherman. 

We were not reluctant to ride our bikes out to Hadley Airport, which was about five miles away. By the late 20s, Hadley was no longer the terminus for the airmail. The large commercial Newark airport had replaced it. However, many private planes, including autogiros and a metal tri-motor Ford plane that the Bell Labs used for an airborne laboratory, continued to be based there. The Tri-motor's hanger site today sports a Red Lobster. The airport and hangers were on the other side where the mall is.

Also between New Brunswick Ave. and South Washington Ave there was a half mile dirt (auto) race track . On weekends it was possible to ride there and climb a tree to watch the cars.