Their Sales Came On Two Wheels

Five years ago, I wrote about "Bicycle Day."

During the first "bicycle boom," bicycle makers debuted their new models on what was then called Presidents' Day. At that time--the last two decades of the 19th Century and the first of the 20th-- the holiday was observed on George Washington's Birthday, 22 February.  Later, Lincoln's Birthday (12 February) would be observed and, finally, during the 1970s, the two fetes would be merged into Presidents' Day, observed on the third Monday in February.

"Bicycle Day" was a big deal in the days before motorcycles and automobiles because it was the first mode of transportation that was potentially faster--and lower-maintenance--than horses or horse-drawn carriages.  The bicycle also remains, to this day, the only amplifier of human energy, meaning that it's the only known device that can take the energy a person would expend to walk or run and turn it into a faster form of forward motion without any other input.

Bill Clinton, riding indoors

Just as the bicycle has been called, with good reason, as the "parent of the automobile and grandparent of the airplane," Bicycle Day can be seen as the forerunner of other retail traditions.  As motorcycles and, later, automobiles became the "main event" of American capitalism, companies debuted their new motorcycle and car models on Washington's Birthday and, later, Presidents' Day--and dealerships held sales and other events to mark these events.  

Some car and motorcycle dealerships continue the custom to this day. More common, however, are the myriad of Presidents' Sales, on everything from lingerie to Legos, in brick-and-mortar stores as well as online retailers.  In some circles, Presidents' Day has come to be known as the "second Black Friday" or "second Cyber Monday," as store owners and website managers stoke their "bottom lines" after the lull that follows the Christmas-season rush.

Ronald Reagan with first wife Jane Wyman, presumably during their Hollywood years.  When was the last time you saw someone smoking a pipe while riding a bike?

Whether or not they are aware of it, those businesspeople are carrying on a tradition brought to them on two wheels, via Bicycle Day.

(Photos are from The Bicycle Story.)

She Saved Jews On Her Bike

 In 1994, I took a bike tour from Paris to the southern Atlantic coast of France.  Along the way, I stopped in Bordeaux for a few days.  Wine isn't the only reason to visit:  Like other French cities, it's rich with architectural and artistic treasures.  

One of them is the Palais Rohan.  Originally built for the Archbishop of Bordeaux, it became the Gironde department's prefecture and later the Bordeaux Hotel de Ville (City Hall), the function it serves to this day.

In the parking lot were spaces reserved for various city functionaries--and Nazi officials.  The latter retained their markings and were not used, half a century after the city's, and France's, liberation from German occupation.

(I tried to find photos--which I'm sure I took--of those spaces.  If and when I come across them, I'll post them here.)

I am reminded of that encounter today, the anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau's liberation by the Allies (with African-American soldiers at the front).  The United Nations has designated today as Holocaust Remembrance Day.  

So why am I writing about it on a blog about bicycles and cycling?

Well, as I've mentioned in other posts, many people escaped, or helped others, escape death by pedaling away from the advancing storm or by riding from house to house, village to village, to warn people or deliver things that would help residents weather the attacks, hide Jewish refugees (or themselves) or pass on messages.  Cycling is faster than walking or running, and it's easier to evade roadblocks, checkpoints and other obstacles on a bike than in, say, a car or bus.

For that reason, Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, includes a bicycle. Marie-Rose Gineste, a social worker in Montauban, France, donated it to Yad Vashem, where she was enshrined as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985.

On 26 August 1942, Pierre-Marie Theas, Bishop of Montauban, followed the example of Archbishop Jules-Geraud Saliege in nearby Toulouse and issued a pastoral letter condemning the deportation of Jews.  He knew that, for full effect, it needed to be read from all of the pulpits in his diocese.  He thus turned to Ms. Gineste to ensure that the letter would be replicated and distributed in time to be read the following Sunday, 30 August.

Marie-Rose Gineste in 1943

"It was with great enthusiasm that I accepted this mission," she recalled.

Remember, there was no Internet in those days.  And she knew that it wasn't feasible to send it through the post office, as the Vichy authorities would surely censor it.  So, she hopped on her ancient steed and delivered the letter to all of the parishes in the diocese.

That Sunday, the letter was read from the pulpits of all except one of the parishes, where the priest was a known Vichy sympathiser.  That pronouncement, along with that of Archbiship Saliege a week earlier, is seen as a turning point away from the Catholic Church's earlier passive attitude toward the Petain government and a signal to French citizens to protect Jews from deportation.

The bicycle Gineste rode.

But Ms. Gineste didn't stop there.  Bishop Theas noticed her commitment and called on her to find shelter for Jewish children and adults at various religious institutions and supply them with false identities. She accomplished those tasks, and more:  Gineste also obtained ration cards from government offices and warehouses, or received them from sympathetic government officials.  Working with Jewish clandestine organizations, she ensured that the cards went to Jews in hiding.

Marie-Rose Gineste, at her Montauban, France home in 2000, just before she donated her bicycle to Yad Vashem..

I believe that every bicycle has a story.  If they could talk, I don't think any of mine, or those of just about anybody I know, could recount anything as intense or important as what Marie-Rose Gineste experienced on the bike she gave to Yad Vashem on her 89th birthday!

Note:  All photos in this post came from the Yad Vashem website.

Riding With The People

Today Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed in the United States.  If I had Napoleon's prerogative of re-inventing the calendar, there are some holidays I'd do away with. But I'd keep this one.  Perhaps I'd restore it to his actual birthday, 15 January.  But I understand why it was moved to the third Monday in January:  It's easier to keep government offices, schools, banks and the like closed for three consecutive days than it is to close for a day in the middle of the week.  Also, who doesn't like a three-day weekend?

Seriously, though, there aren't many other people more deserving of their own holidays.  He truly was a martyr for a just cause.  But for all of his seriousness of purpose, he seemed to really enjoy himself sometimes.  At least, he looks that way in the photos I've seen of him on a bicycle--and there are more such photos than I ever expected to find.

Martin Luther King Jr rides bicycle with William Wachtel (the son of King's lawyer, Harry Wachtel) on Fire Island, NY, 3 September 1967,  Photo from Hofstra University collection.

I get the sense that riding a bike was, for him, a release from the rigors of touring, speaking and preaching--and the tension from FBI spies and CIA snipers lurking allies who became rivals when, among other things, he announced his opposition to the Vietnam War.

Also, from the photo, and others I've seen, riding a bicycle was a way for King to show that he was one of the common people.  When he was assassinated, in 1968, the dawn of the North American Bike Boom was just starting to flicker.  American adults  were, for the first time in half a century, mounting bikes and taking early-morning or after-work rides--or, in a few cases, riding to work or school.  Bicycles were still ridden mainly by those who were too young--or poor--to drive.  

I can't help but to think that those bike rides were at least one reason why he gave speeches that instructors (including yours truly) have used as models of good writing and effective communication for their students.  As lofty as his rhetoric could be, it reached all kinds of people:  Anyone could understand it.  In the above photo, he's on level with a young boy; when he rode a bicycle, he experienced the places where people lived in a way he wouldn't have if he were in a limousine.  And people saw him eye-to-eye--as, I suspected, he wanted to see them. 

Which, I believe, is a reason why he would call the the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic--or, more precisely, the President's inept or callous (depending on what you believe) response--as the racial, economic and social injustice that it is. He had an acute moral compass honed by, among other things, his bike rides.