Husband’s bike ride to train became a national story

Bikes, once the province of young teens, have gone mainstream. More and more streets have bike lanes to control their flow.

Chicago has bought 750 bikes for a Divvy Rental System to make bikes available to those who don’t have their own wheels. Over the next year the city will have 4,000 bikes in 400 biking stations for riders who reject the car-centric culture we are so used to.

No rental service yet in Arlington Heights, but we certainly have bike enthusiasts. The slots at the railroad station often overflow.

In 1954 when we moved to Arlington, there was one bike locked to a telephone pole at the station. And it belonged to my husband.

Grown-ups weren’t riding bikes in 1954. Locals traditionally had been used to walking long distances. There were commuters who walked in from Buffalo Grove every weekday and stowed their boots, in season, under Runge’s porch at Dunton and Willow. There was a plowed sidewalk from Runge’s to the station.

We lived on Oakton Street almost at Wilkie. To leave me our Plymouth to do errands and to trundle our four children to various activities during the day, Richard began his day’s commute to the Daily News building in Chicago on his bike. He took off early along Oakton to the corner, then turned south to Elm where there was less traffic, and across Elm to a convenient north-south street that would take him into the center of town near the station.

This route took him past the home of Al Leech, a reporter for United Press, who was so impressed with Richard’s “fine disregard for suburban mores and social customs” that he put a story on the UP wire about the one bike parked at the Arlington train station every morning, and its one rider who parked it there.

All over the country editors picked up the story and from all over the country Richard was soon hearing from college friends surprised to see him and his bicycle looking up at them from their morning newspaper.

There are all kinds of pioneers, but Richard didn’t feel much like a pioneer the day a nice guy he remembered as “something of a goof-off in high school” pulled up next to his bike in a convertible with a motor boat hitched up behind.

During his biking days, some mornings when it was blustery or very wet, I would bundle the kids into the car and give Richard a ride to the station. One morning, I remember, the car died at the station. Richard got on the train and left. I don’t remember how I coped.

If the rain was a mild spring refreshment, Richard would raise his umbrella and carry on, confirming for other commuters “his fine disregard” for the elements as well as the social mores.

Now it’s 60 years later and we live a lot closer to the station, but when Richard takes the train to the Loop, as he often does, he still rides his bike to the station.

But he is no longer alone as he locks it up there.