Donated bike gives immigrant a new way to get around

In only 18 months of helping with Literacy Volunteers Fox Valley, Rod Yarger of St. Charles had built a good reputation for being able to tutor immigrants with no knowledge of English.

He now has a good reputation for finding used bicycles. But more on that later.

It was a natural fit for the agency to ask Yarger to work with Po Po, an immigrant from Myanmar who had been in the country with his wife and children for less than a year.

"Po Po came from Myanmar, formerly Burma, as a mistreated minority of that country, where he wasn't permitted to have any education," Yarger said. "He spent six years in a refugee camp in Thailand, finally got his immigration papers in order and was able to come to the U.S."

Yarger said that Po Po had a job at a local factory for a short time, but the business closed and he became unemployed - but highly motivated to learn English.

"I have been working with him for two months, about eight meetings, and he is responding well," Yarger said. "He has a vocabulary of over 150 words, and he has learned the alphabet."

During the course of their sessions, Yarger said that Po Po was trying to communicate a "real need" to him.

"It took some time to understand what he felt he needed, but we figured out it was a bike so he could get around and do things he needed to do for his family," Yarger said. "I started looking around for a used bike but had a hard time locating one. Finally, I just started checking with the bike stores."

Yarger said that Brad Davis of Mill Race Cyclery in Geneva became the hero of this story when he called and said he had a bike that might work for Po Po.

"We went down and made sure it fit him OK, and it was perfect," Yarger said. "And then Brad said Po Po could just have it, the bike and helmet, and it was like a new lease on life for Po Po.

"He took his bike home to Batavia and he was riding it around that first day, and he was just so excited," Yarger said. "Brad Davis did a wonderful thing for this family."

Those slow recovery signs: "It's a recession if your neighbor is out of work, it's a depression if you are out of work."

Craig Frank of Frank's Employment Services in St. Charles says that's the time-tested measurement on how one feels about economic downturns and the road to recovery.

"If someone asks if the recession is over, the answer is, are you still out of work?" said Frank, whose agency has monitored the current recession closely since the stock market tumbled in October 2008.

"The job market is the first thing to change, in moving up or down," Frank said. "And currently, the job market is following all of the normal signs of a recovery."

Frank said that after the stock market bottomed out, his agency saw more temporary hirings. "But then temp-to-hire picked up in early 2009 and through the summer, and later in 2009 we started seeing more permanent hires," he explained.

Frank echoes what key economists have been saying the past few months about the pace of recovery.

"The whole process is much slower than previous recoveries," he said. "When times are tight and unemployment is high, people who are currently employed are not looking for jobs, even if they don't like their job."

When consumer confidence goes up and employed people start looking for other jobs, that's a signal that things are on a major upswing, Frank said.

"And when does that happen?" he asked. "I think we are starting to see it right now for the first time in a year and a half.

"This opens up more jobs, but, again, it's not going to unfold as quickly as it did the last time we had a recession."

Information about Frank's Employment Services is available at (630) 584-0820.

A Tastee Freeze comeback: Patrons of the Pop's Place Tastee Freeze restaurant on East Main Street in St. Charles hated to see "Pops" leave the area after so many years and open a new restaurant in Carol Stream.

But Tastee Freeze will rise again at the St. Charles location in a few weeks, if everything goes as planned, according to Mike Scott, whose family started the local Tastee Freeze operations in the 1950s.

Scott said the building at 818 E. Main St. is being fully renovated and that new owner/chef Joe Rocco has exciting plans.

At the parade: See you at the St. Charles Memorial Day parade this morning. My service club will be handing out the small American flags for kids along the parade route. Don't forget to stop down before the 10 a.m. start this year. The new mile race will unfold at 8 a.m. along Main Street, and there should be some pretty decent runners cruising from 14th Street to the Arcada Theater finish line.

I'll also be trying to fit in time to hit the pancake breakfast at Geneva United Methodist Church, another Memorial Day tradition that is hard to pass up.

dheun@sbcglobal.net