Bruce’s Rocket Bike Ride Down Halsey Hill

Not all of the stories posted on “Heard it on the Mountain” took place on the mountain.  If they did we would have called the BLOG “Happened on the Mountain”.  They do all involve people who lived on the mountain or their friends and family.  Many of the stories are not original from the poster but rather stories we have heard over the years.  Please, feel free to share your memories in the comments section below each blog or send them to Tony to be published.  Speaking of heard it on the mountain, here is one that has been told hundreds of times and is one of my favorites.

In the 1950’s and 60’s Jean and J.C. Hudson lived on Halsey street in Saint Joseph, Mo.  We lived in Kansas City, Mo.  Neither of us could afford to travel to the beloved mountain in Arkansas every weekend.  So, we supplemented our need by being with family from there.  It seemed like almost every weekend one family would travel to the other family’s home to visit. 

The Rocket Ride happened one Friday evening just about dark.  It was right after we arrived from K.C.  We would leave just as soon as Dad got off work Friday and sometimes we would get to St. Joe before dark.  When we arrived the folks would go in to the house to visit but, for us boys ,it was game on to see how much fun we could have before dark and this Friday was about to deliver some outstanding fun.

It was Jimmy who pointed at a bicycle laying in the yard and said he and Donnie had rode it down the hill (Halsey Street) all the way from Mansfield, the top of the hill, down to Blake, the bottom of the hill and successfully made the turn on to Blake.  That was a good thing because it is a tee intersection at the bottom of the hill.  Bruce replied, “big deal.”   Jimmy said, “Yeah, but I never used the brakes all the way down.”   “Did you pump?” Bruce asked.  “What? Are you nuts?  Of course we pumped.  All the way down to our house!” “I can too and I’ll pump all the way down!” Bruce fired back.

You see, Bruce was the oldest of the four (Bruce, Jimmy, Donnie and Tony) and by his own declaration the smartest and coolest.  Talk about cool, his hair, clothes and taps on his shoes said it all.  Have you seen the early pictures of Elvis Presley?  That curl in front and ducktail behind was Bruce.  He would spend what seemed like hours in the bathroom getting every hair exactly right.  He was the Fonz before there was a Fonz.  He often wore tight jeans (with turned up cuffs) and tee shirts to show the girls his ripped chest and to show the guys he was the coolest.  When he was not around his parents you could probably see his red Pall Mall cigarette pack rolled up in the sleeve.  The coolest of cool though was his taps.  In that time, most shoes had leather soles and did not wear well on city sidewalks.  So, someone came up with the idea of putting a piece of steel on the portion of heel and toe that wore out first.  That way, the taps as they were called could be replaced rather than the entire heel or sole.  Yes, back then they actually repaired shoes.  Bruce worked part time selling magazines door to door.  So, he was able to convince Mom and Dad to allow taps.  Bruce took it a step further and got horseshoe taps.  They wrapped completely around the heel cap surface that touched the ground and yes they were horseshoe shaped.   Now, if you had horseshoe taps, you were the coolest of cool.  Since Bruce was the oldest and strongest and could beat us up, we conceded he was the coolest.

After some bantering, Bruce grabbed the bicycle and started up the hill. Calling Halsey Street a hill is about like calling the Colorado River rafting experience a boat ride.  It is one of the steepest residential one block stretches of pavement you can imagine.  Almost every home has a retaining wall or steep terrace so that there could be a level area on the lot to build the house.   The area is known as King Hill and a city water tower is located there.  So, let’s just say the best known directions in the neighborhood were up and down, particularly at the Hudson house.  Their home was located about midway on the block.  It was a great vantage point to watch the hill overwhelm those who tried to go up or down.  Going up, many bikes, cars, skaters, and pedestrians would give up about the time they got halfway.  Going down, this is where many decided they were in deep trouble and would careen into one of the yards hoping to stop more gently in someone’s yard rather than at the Blake street intersection at the bottom of the hill.

True to his claim, Bruce jumped on the bike and began pedaling down the hill with all his might.  Now, this bike was not anything like the sleek racing or mountain bikes of today.  It did not have ten speeds and fine tuned suspension.    Most bikes up through the 1960’s only had one speed and what is called a coaster brake.  By rotating the pedals backward, the rear brake was applied and there were no front brakes at all.  This particular bike actually belonged to Jimmy Stamps who lived up the street and it was an “English racer”.  It had skinny tires not the balloon tires we all had on our cruisers.  It had three speeds and that was amazing to me.  It was one of only a few like it that I had even seen.  It did not have a coaster brake.  It had two hand brakes, front and rear.  Now these brakes were on the handlebars and when you squeezed them at the handlebars, rubber pads located on the frame would close on the wheel like disc brakes on your car today.  There were cables that ran from the hand levers to the calipers to activate the brakes or at least that is the way the bike was designed.

Earlier, when Jimmy was bragging to Bruce that they had gone down the hill not using the brakes at all, they neglected to tell Bruce one minor detail.  Jimmy had since taken the insides of those brake cables out or had disconnected them from the calipers.  So, Bruce was pedaling for all he was worth down the great Halsey Hill with absolutely not one chance in the world that this was going to end up anything less than a monstrous crash.  We do not know if Bruce had a little twinge of fear or if he just wanted to let off his intense pedaling to show off to the gallery (us), you know “strike a pose” as he went by.  Whatever motivated him, he made that midway hill discovery I described earlier, that he was in a heap of trouble.  Bruce turned pale and his knuckles were white  from his death grip on the handlebars as he flew past the three of us watching from the side walk screaming, “Nooooo   BRAAAAAAAAKESS !”  to which the Hudson boys screamed back in unison, “Nooo  SHHHHHHHH___TTT !” as he accelerated even faster toward Blake Street.

The next ten seconds must have taken forever in Bruce’s mind.  You know, like seeing in slow motion a car accident in which you are involved.  Was he going to bail out and try to soft land into a Halsey street yard?  Could he possibly make the ninety degree turn onto Blake Street at this incredible speed? Would there be a car in that intersection when he got there?   Would some other car or person come out of a side drive or yard before he even got to the bottom?  These and a hundred other thoughts and plans ran through Bruce’s mind as he continued to accelerate with time for his decision running out. 

One plan was to jump off of the bike and run.  You see, Bruce was a track star in high school in fact held the school record for the half mile for a couple of years.  Right, wrong, possible, impossible, smart, not so smart I can’t say.  But, that is the way Bruce chose.  Just before he reached the end of Halsey he leapt from the bicycle and amazingly landed on his feet.  That is where the rocket part of the ride started.  Remember it is just getting dark, he landed on his feet and he had steel taps on his shoes.

We didn’t know if it was a fireworks show or a metal grinder’s convention.  Either way there were two streams of fiery sparks flying from his feet as he skidded down the street.  We did not know it at the time but, we were witness to the first barefoot land skiing event and remember skate boards were not even invented until a decade or more after this event.  Every time one of his feet came off the ground the sparks would stop on that side only to go off like a roman candle when he put the foot back down.  It looked as though Bruce was going to actually pull this show off.  He skidded for more than a hundred feet down Halsey and completely across Blake.  I don’t know if Bruce did not see it in the dark or if he thought he would step over it but there was a curb.  When he reached that curb on the far side of Blake Street  the Bruce Rocket went airborne.  He was going so fast that he completely cleared the sidewalk and a three foot high hedge on the other side of the sidewalk.   There were no more sparks; there was no loud explosion when he hit the ground.  In fact there was no sound at all.  Was Bruce alive? Was he dead?  We all took off in a full run down to the front yard where the Bruce rocket still laid in a motionless heap.   Amazingly he had survived.  The wind was knocked out of him and he had a few scratches and bruises.  I am certain he was so sore the next few days but you can bet Bruce Devoe would NEVER admit that he was sore or that he had done any less than outperform the Hudson boy’s bicycle ride.  Speaking of Bicycles, I have no recollection of where the bike ended up after the ride, or if Jimmy reconnected the brakes or if Jimmy Stamps ever even got it back home.  One thing I am pretty sure of is that the bike or Bruce neither one ever went on another Rocket Ride.

And that's the way I heard it on the mountain,

Tony Peoples