Some Bike History in Salem Reporter

It was nice to wake up this morning and read in Salem Reporter a piece by the late Sue Bell on some bicycle history in Salem!

It was interesting especially as something produced by a person who did not seem to have any great interest in bike transport. 

She led with an image of progress, a kind of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" trope, the idea that kids growing up recapitulate the progress in transportation and independence we have made as a society:

Who hasn't, as a youngster, asked Santa for a bike all their own? It's almost a rite of passage into independence that young people learn to ride a bicycle.

In this reading bikes and bicycling are an inferior stage, and full adults move past it.

Consequently, a focus in the piece was municipal effort to regulate scorching and bad bicyclist behavior. Immaturity is aligned with bike use, on this view. She cites the Statesman criticizing

outrageous behavior around town and their lack of courtesy in cursing within the hearing of young women attracted to their antics.

And then shifts to the exceptional feats of long-range bike trips, and not on changes in city transport.

In the end, the piece is entertaining as a cabinet of curiosities, but does not really help us place the bicycle in Salem history. And maybe it doesn't need to.

Still, there is so much more, and the piece's omission of the first bike bill in 1899 for a statewide system of side paths has to be at the top. It was not a success, but at the time it was a big deal.

February 21st, 1899

If you are interested in more:

• Part of a series on Harry Scott, whose shop is still open today, "100 Years Ago Today: Harry Scott Reopens Around the Corner at 147 South Commercial Street" (2019)
• Ben Taylor appears in the Salem Reporter piece, and here's more on him: "The Story of Salem's First Bicycle: Ben Taylor talks with Fred Lockley." (2013) The building he's in front of has been misidentified persistently, and here's more on that: "Smith's Brick, not Nesmith Building, was Home of the WCTU Ramp Memorial Hall." (2020)
  
• A note on nostalgia and the way bike history gets framed, "A Slightly Cranky Note about Romancing the Penny Farthing." (2016) And on that trope of progress, "The Narrative of Autoist Triumphalism and a Family History." (2015)
  
• Maybe best overview here, "Geer Park: New Site for Pump Track offers Deep Cut of Local History." (2016) And more on the end of that bike bill and thoughts on contemporary politics, "Pedaling Licenses: Repealed in 1913, but Will the Legislature try Again?" (2013)
  
• A little on the way scorching was gendered, "Some Thoughts on Scorching." (2015)
• A couple pieces on bike dealer, and City Councilor, Arthur H. Moore, whose shop site and apartment building still is on High Street across from the transit center. "Arthur Moore Building Built by Bikes" and "More on Arthur Moore! A 1948 Profile." (2013)
• On an important bike dealer, then car dealer, and mayor and legislator, "Santiam Bicycle's Building in Transportation History: The Story of Otto J. Wilson." (2012)
• On Paul Hauser and Watt Shipp, two more important bike dealers, "Early Bike Dealers Hauser and Shipp Remind us of a Better Downtown." (2012)
• And before he was Governor, a glimpse of urban transport in "Oswald West Bikes to Depot, Apprehends Forger." (2019) 
• And, lastly, though I have some quibbles with Bell's bike history here, an appreciation for her when she passed away in 2019.