# Antique Whizzer and Bike Stories-- Free



## Goldenrod (Jan 8, 2019)

This is a free sample of one article I wrote for the Whizzer newsletter.  12 copies $30 per year.   Whizzers for sale also and much more.    Send me a PM for more information.                                                                                          


                                                                                                        Whizzer Stories We Have Prodded Out Of People

                                                                                                                              By Ray Spangler and Al Blum



I don’t remember the names or places but it doesn’t matter. I wear my Whizzer shirt so that people will remember their personal connections to the brand and slowly unwind their golden yarns.

My favorite is a typical $30.00 Whizzer in South Carolina. No instruction manual was with it so the lad peddled it to the highest hill in town and let it roll down while he moved the mysterious levers until it popped to life as he lost control and slammed into the side of a house. The engine flopped out, the bike went another direction and he was knocked out under a window. An old lady stuck her head out, looked down and yelled, “That damn fool dun Keeled hisself this time!” That’s how he knew that he was alive. Armed with his newly discovered knowledge of the lever system, he put the engine back into the frame and tried again.  You don't get bruises learning how to knit. 

One kid walked past a new Sportsman that had just burned a girl’s leg as she was learning to operate it and her father asked, “Do you want to own a cheap motorbike?”

Another kid helped a neighborhood friend put out an engine fire and later bought the Whizzer cheaply because he was willing to investigated how to put on a new gas line.

A kid in Elgin, Illinois had an uncle who was a carpenter, attending a family gathering. He looked at the teen and said, “Tell the neighbors that you and I will build a new porch for a hundred dollars labor.” After the kid learned how to use tools working wood, the uncle took him to pick out a Whizzer kit at the Schwinn dealership and begin another mechanical lesson. The boy later became a policeman but couldn’t solve the crime of how two of his Whizzers disappeared from a storage shed he shared with other people. I told him that they may be in one of our local collections.

I bought two Cushman Step Throughs in Chicago and it had an old title from my hometown of Plainfield, Illinois. It was worthless because kids had covered the entire surface, front and back with the names and address of all successive owners but never sent title into the state. They didn’t pay attention to the warning that was clearly printed on the document. I called the person who still lived in the same house forty years and asked if he would send it in for a fresh title. He did and signed it over to me. I found out that a farm kid was driving a new scooter in 1957 to my future high school, while I was still in Jr. high.

A Chicago policeman had the perfect job, getting paid to cruise around alleys looking for criminals and old bikes for his collection. One day he hit the motherload. Forget the felons, an elderly lady had just gone to a nursing home leaving a garage full of antique pre-war Schwinns and parts that her husband had collected while he had a dealership. He became a very motivated bike hoard investigator. The house was also full so he built a new, extra-large, garage to store and organize his new side business.  He really loved his wife more than he loved the bikes.  He found her in bed with another man, walked out to the yard and shot himself in the head with his service revolver.  He should have shot his worst, pre-war bike or a spare fender.

One of my original bikes was owned by an elderly lady whose father owned a Nebraska dealership. Her brothers got to ride Whizzers all around town but she was too young. She begged her father to save a new one for her as he went out of business. It is a rare S 10. The 24“ frame must have been chosen to fit her younger body.

An Illinois collector was visiting someone and they steered him to a Whizzer owner down the street. He didn’t own the bike. He was keeping it for a kid who went off to Korea and didn’t come back. Since then he had moved it several times to different houses. The Whizzer guy offered an amount of money and gave closure to his responsibility for the promise he made all those years ago.

Like Gene Zoss, most kids got theirs by saving money and trying to alleviate safety concerns in their family. How did Froggy from the old Our Gang Comedies die? His parents bought him a new Cushman 50 and he was delivering newspapers off the back as his friend was learning how to drive it. The kid made a U-turn in front of a truck. The kid was OK but Froggy was the first one of the gang to die. An Illinois collector found a Whizzer that had a description of an accident that listed the location and name of the child, hand stamped into the side cover. It didn’t describe any injuries but it sounded like it was done by a distraught father. The Whizzer’s new owner switched out the morbid cover and still has the bike.

The majority of owners must have taken a chance, learned mechanics and became something special – a long distance explorer with a wind-in-the-hair pride of accomplishment. Sometimes this condition lasts into old age as we ponder the adventures of previous owners as we add our own history to each vehicle.

The pictures show part of my basement and the elderly ladies' Nebraska bike.  If you guys are ever near Chicago you can sneak down and pee on them.


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