Bicycles of Yore

We have all owned or shared a bicycle in our time.  Two problems occur for any kid who desires a two-wheeler.  Firstly, you need to persuade your parents to buy you  one.  Then comes the most traumatic part - learning to ride it.  It causes you a lot of cuts and bumps and tears to the skin and trousers.  More dreadful is the humiliation of falling on and under and over your bike.  But after a great deal of physical and mental scars you eventually make it.  Best of all, you never forget how!

I'm back at my favourite activity -  rummaging through my collection of old school textbooks and discovering  how bicycles, both two-wheelers and three wheelers were very much a popular topic.  How different to today when children are more interested in luxury cars, Facebook and computer games.

So, let's go cycling:  From :

.......we read about Ah Chong ...

.... and his bicycle which costs forty-five dollars in the 1950s!

                               ***********************************************

My 1956 Primary School Malay textbook ..........

..... tells us about Basir and his

Ah Chong lives in the town and Basir is a kampung boy.  It seems that this two-wheeler, first invented by a man called Macmillan from Scotland held together the Chinese and the Malay and town and kampung.

What a shame that this tie is now broken.  Can you, today, imagine Ah Chong from the small town of Gemas and Basir from Kampung Tongkang Pechah  dressed up to the nines on their bicycle, looking like this?