I don't have a photo, but the frame is still out back. my first bike I shared with my little brother who is 2 years younger. it was a girls Western Flyer 20". I remember complaining that it was a girls bike, and my Dad welded a bar across the top and said, there, now it's a boys bike. my dad was an old farmer and as long as it ran, he saw no reason that we needed anything more.
now, there was another bike that always fascinated me as a kid. again, it was a bike that had been welded together, and has been reconfigured yet again, this final time by me. our small town had two parades each year, the first was a pet parade, where all the kids walked dragged or carted their pets down the main drag in town. you'd find dogs cats rabbits, horses chickens sheep, basically everything you could find in a small country town back in the 60s and 70s. the next parade was called the Almond Blossom Festival, and though most people don't understand why, we still have it today. way back in the day, my tiny town of Quartz Hill, and the surrounding area grew most of the world's almonds. this photo is of my parents, sometime back in the early 70s riding the bike when it was a tandem in the Almond Blossom Parade. in later years, me and my brother rode it in the same parade, as had my older brother and sister.
this is it the way I reconfigured it back in 2008. I basically took out all the girls bike stuff, used the front half and the rear triangle and put it together as a Ratrod Bikes build off bike.
this is the one that got me back into old bikes. my dad still had this frame out back and I decided to build it up. as you can see, it wasn't stock, but it also wasn't wild, that's not my style. in a way, if the original question had been worded differently, this would have been the bike that made me consciously decide to get into collecting, but as worded it wasn't the bike that started it all.