Remember the chain guard

Tonight we had burgers with Chuck, Stacy, Charlie and Zach. Charlie had a new scooter which was lots of fun. He was learning how to come down the driveway and apply the brakes. Caught on real fast. Took me back in time to my first bicycle. It was second hand (what else - it was during the Big War, i.e. WWII). It was purple/maroon. Today I would call it my Morado Machine!! Had lots of fun on that bike, but I remember one trip to town that wasn't so much fun. It was in Beebe, Arkansas. I had ridden to town for a Saturday afternoon matinee. Popcorn, coke and one of the popular cowboys of the day (Lash LaRue, Johnny Mack Brown, Gene Autry, Hoppalong Cassidy and of course The King of the Cowboys, Roy Rogers). On the way home I was ripping along at a good clip, trying to outrun the bad guys, the ones in the black hats, when all of a sudden I decided to perform an evasion maneuver. I switched from the highway toward my left where there was a sidewalk. What I didn't count on was a drain tile leading to the sidewalk. This was further complicated by the fact that my right pant leg got entangled in the chain. The chain guard had been missing for a long time and I hadn't bothered to replace it. I would always roll up the pant leg on the right and it was usually no problem. On this occasion, however, the pant leg had unrolled and got caught in the sprocket. The coup de grace was that my body began leaning toward the right, just as I was crossing the drain tile. I couldn't throw my leg to the side to catch myself, so I went head over heels into the ditch. The last thing I remember was sliding off of the seat onto the frame of the bike. Saw a million stars and my voice went up into the soprano range. As luck would have it, nobody came to my rescue and I was able to finally come to and disentangle myself from the chain. Morale of the story -- don't let your boys grow up to be bikers, unless the bike has a chain guard!!