61' Schwinn Flying Star Mens (VG)

[Jesse McCauley]

This great looking Schwinn was owned by a local to Southside Richmond, VA in the 60's, he got this bike new in 61 under the Christmas tree to deliver newspapers with.

He took very good care of this bicycle, he ended up buying a Huffy krate bike with his own paperboy money so he could get a bit of speed (I also scored his OG Huffy Rail w/ T shifter)

Great guy, fantastic story, I'm going to write it all down and make sure the stories stick with the bikes.

All that said, seems like this is a pretty seldom seen men's bike in really great shape.

 

[jimbo53]

Cool bike! Not familiar with this model, but the CAbe College of Bicycle Education continues to educate me!

 

[mruiz]

Yep, hardy ever seen these days. Hell aint much seeing at all. Nice find.

 

[bricycle]

Krate I Mean Great story.

 

[island schwinn]

I have the only other complete one I know of,but not as nice as this one.
It's a beauty,to borrow a phrase.

 

[Jesse McCauley]

So this gent and I talked for maybe half an hour, he was really gracious and supportive of the local cycling advocacy / history efforts I'm up to etc.
He told me his bicycle story and I asked him if he would mind sending me a written account. Here are his words:

"The Schwinn

The 26" bike came from the North Pole and was delivered by Santa Claus to our house in the Blackwell area of Richmond's southside. It was probably around 1963. I was 10 yrs old. Never did figure out how Santa got it in the house considering we had no fireplace or chimney. It was my first personal mode of transportation besides roller skates which connected to your 'good' shoes and eventually pulled the shoe soles off. The bike was used mainly for transportation to and from neighborhood stores, visiting friends and relatives, running errands and going to baseball parks.

The Huffy

In the later 60's the Schwinn introduced the 'stingray'. I had a paper route delivering the Richmond Times Dispatch (which was the morning paper). I decided to save my paper route money to purchase a stingray. My decision was based mainly on the fact that when it came time to collect newspaper fees, some people would rather sic their dogs on me rather than pay their bill. So I needed a faster bike. It was also hard to 'pop a wheelie' on the Schwinn.

I saved my money for months to buy a stingray, which I think was about forty dollars. I went to Western Auto (Southside Plaza) but they were out of stingrays. All they had was 'The Rail'. So I bought it. I took some ridicule from my friends because the bike was so long. But I was able to out run dogs, so that was all that mattered."

 

[irideiam]

Jesse, trying to reply to your PM, it says you need to delete some messages as you inbox is full...Thanks