Chicago, early May, 1903
Joe walked to the bicycle assembly shop on South Clinton Street slower than usual. The news that he would give to the workmen today would not be pleasant. He would not deliver it gladly, the hollow in his stomach that rose before the sun that morning told him. His sleep had been restless and he had awoken more than once during the night. He couldn’t resolve the paths his brain was plotting this morning. It had taken him ten years to earn the money he and his two brothers used to buy into this business. In less than nine months, that money was all but gone. He should be assembling high-end bicycles today, not wondering how to pay the rent.
Yesterday, Joe thought the business had money and a good plan. Today they had neither. The bicycle they were producing was clearly one-of-a-kind: a three-speed changeable gear bike that was supposed to change the bicycle world. It’s inventor, Peter O’Leary, had touted it as an investment path to “one day soon” making an automobile, and make them all millionaires. He had convinced his family—and many in town—to become his partners; today they had only become partners in debt. The bile in Joe’s stomach was palpable.
Joe’s mind wandered back in time to the day he and his family arrived in America from Switzerland—dirt poor and dream rich. They were ready for anything when they learned about homesteading. Free land ‘out west’ came with a seeming endless supply of ‘money-on-the-hoof’ in the form of very large trees. It was dusk-to-dawn back-bending work clearing those massive trees, but they accepted it happily and with Swiss vigor.
The trees came down too quickly. The custom sawmill they built and operated had slowed cutting as the supply waned. They were one of many small mills for whom this was all too apparent. Regretfully, they had to sell out to a larger mill operation and dismantle their own. The money they put in their pockets tickled their dreams in the way that only money could tease.
Peter O’Leary tweaked their interest the day he peddled up the rut-filled road to their farm on a strange-looking bike. He looked oddly wrong perched on that delicate machine—a burly man in a bowler hat– but he was amiable enough. He had heard through the grapevine they were looking for an investment opportunity. “This was it!” he exclaimed, holding the bicycle at arm’s length away from his portly frame. “Nobody else had variable speeds yet; this is the first!” was his overly enthusiastic sales pitch.
Joe and his family listened to Peter with rapt attention, though they knew little of the economics surrounding this potential adventure. News traveled slowly in rural America, and they were unaware that investing in ANY bicycle manufacturing operation was risky. Nobody wanted bikes in 1902—they wanted automobiles. Had they known, they would have held onto their largesse a bit longer.
Peter was a fast talker. They initially mistrusted his enthusiasm, but the more they listened, the more it intrigued them. It sounded simple—raise a pile of money, set up an assembly plant in Chicago, ship in parts from both coasts, ship out bicycles, make lots of money, repeat.
In reality, it was not that easy. They were poor country folk without deep business smarts: Swiss craftsmen and farmers by heritage, not financiers or admen. Joe’s gut had warned him the signs they were reading all too good to be true. Intuition should have saved them, but greed took the upper hand—and betrayed them.
When truth caught up with intuition in Chicago, fascination with bicycles had already turned to automobiles. Here, it was common knowledge that the explosive bicycle business of the ‘90s was oversupplied with cheap products, but they were too far into it to stop. Not only could they not sell enough bicycles yesterday, they couldn’t even make them today. They were a long way from making automobiles. Curse you O’Leary!
There was only one thing to do. Joe couldn’t hold the workmen if he couldn’t pay them. The uncertainty surrounding their enterprise killed the enthusiasm he once held. It was apparent now that something was wrong when O’Leary stopped sending the drive train gears from San Francisco. Joe was looking for a way to keep his end of the bargain but could not build enough bicycles to fill the few standing orders they had. His brother John could not raise any more capital from inside their small circle of friends, relatives and hometown residents. Today, they faced eviction. O’Leary had stopped communicating two weeks ago, but the list of things that bothered him was already long.
In order to assemble a bicycle, he needed parts from both coasts. If he ordered parts for fifty bicycles today, it would be a month or more before they all arrived at the shop. O’Leary was not prompt about paying the bills or supplying parts. If he could get his hands on the cash in Chicago, he could pay the bills, order the parts he needed, keep the wheels in motion. Complicating the assembly, when the parts from third-party suppliers arrived, often they were poorly made and unfit to use. This was supposed to be a high-end bicycle, not a department store product. He was stressed to breaking wondering how long he could hold out.
Yesterday broke his back. At noon, he received a telegram from O’Leary saying there would be no more payments to suppliers until July. Today was May 15. Without payments, there would be no more parts arriving until August, no more bicycles completed until September. If he could not fill orders, he could not pay the workmen. He was being strangled!
At 2 pm, he got a phone call from the landlord, the rent had not been paid for three months and he was threatening to lock the doors if the account was not brought current immediately. Damn O’Leary! He thought there was enough cash on hand to buy three month’s rent, but he could not pay the workmen if he turned this over to the landlord. Without parts, both these options were gone—and what about the next three months? The chance to sell bicycles all summer was a fast-fading dream. He left early; he needed time to think.
When he arrived at the front door this morning, the space between a rock and a hard place had disappeared. The heavy chains over the front door meant the decision had already been made. He read the yellow notice posted on the door and his bile rose again. Hard as it was to see this, it was even harder to accept. It was over.
It took him a few moments to collect his thoughts; they converged in a place he was not used to going. Remorse, resentment, anger, revenge—he had had enough! There were eight bikes inside that they had finished yesterday. They were worth about $250 to a re-seller and were scheduled for delivery to a North Chicago bike shop today. Was their business really bankrupt? If so, the cash from that sale would buy he and his brother, Frank, three months in Chicago. Was this still HIS company, weren’t these still HIS bikes? These were foul thoughts; stealing went against his core. But this was not stealing, just reclaiming personal property.
His stomach turned a few more times while he wrapped his head around a plan. He remembered that the latch on the loading dock door was sticky and did not always hold if it was not wiggled just right when closed. He had run out yesterday to make a plea to the landlord and left closing up to Frank. He couldn’t find the landlord, and he had not returned to the shop, but spent the afternoon walking home, alone, thinking about what he might have to do tomorrow.
He walked around the back of the shop, checking for witnesses while he skulked. It was early yet, 6 am; the morning light was still dim and few were up. At the door now, he looked left and right, and then left again. Assured that he was alone, he grabbed the handle of the heavy overhead door and yanked. It was not latched at all. Then another thought crossed his mind—he could get the bikes out of the shop, but how would he move eight bicycles to his flat without a wagon? He didn’t have an easy answer. While he slowly lowered the door, he heard a rustling sound come from behind the crates piled up near the shop foreman’s office.
It was dark inside, what little light that came through the large windows at the front did not reach the back of the shop to reveal the source. He switched on a small light that hovered over a bearing press. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a furtive shadow darting around the corner of the foreman’s office.
“Who’s there?” he shouted.
“Joe! Its me, Frank!”
“Frank, what are you doing here?”
“Uh… collecting some personal things. How about you?”
“Stealing bicycles. Damn, this is a mess, Frank. What are we gonna do?”
“Not much we can do, Joe. You saw the notice. I guess O’Leary made that choice for us already. I checked the bank account yesterday after you left. Empty. Zero. There was a transfer out yesterday around 2:45. He didn’t leave us a dollar. I tried to find you, but couldn’t.”
“Frank, stealing is all wrong,” said Joe, “but what O’Leary did wasn’t right either. Not a matter of two wrongs turning out right, just trying to keep it from getting’ worse for us while we figure out how to deal with it. These bikes were paid for when O’Leary took that money yesterday. No sense letting good go to bad. I figure we’re just holding onto them for interest on the $10,000 we used to buy into this mess.”
“Never see that again in this life,” Frank remorsed. “Too bad. This all looked good in December, now it’s upside down. How we gonna get these out of the shop, Joe?”
“Don’t know… let me think,” offered Joe. “Can’t roll more than four at a time, and we don’t have time to get them all out that way. Wait… milkman comes by at 6 am with an empty wagon. Figure he’d like to make a buck on his way back to the dairy, Frank? If we can get these crated up, he could drop them off at your place.”
They worked quickly. Crates were already prepared; the bikes were ready to go, just shove them inside, nail some tops on and push them out to the loading dock. Joe walked out onto the loading dock to listen for the milk wagon. The Chicago air was stagnant, it was unusually hot for May, but it had rained last night for the first time in a month. The foulness of the day rose up out of the cobblestones with the steam. Within a few minutes, he heard the familiar clop, clip, clop, clop of the milk wagon horse on the street. Joe hauled the heavy door up by its chain.
The sounds he made triggered a flashback. He turned around, paused, and in a brief moment the entire American Dream chapter crashed to the front of his brain—the sound of horses and chains dragging huge trees along the forest floor, whirring steel blades throwing sawdust in the mill—then hammers striking nails on a coffin lid. Inside the coffin—purloined bicycles. It was over. There was a hollow echo in his stomach. Fifteen years ago was a long time ago; yesterday was another lifetime. That dream was over.
The rising sun did not relieve the stench of manure, sawdust and garbage in the alley as the two men pushed the crates out to the loading dock. Frank stepped off the dock to hail the deliveryman. In a few silent minutes, the bikes were loaded, and their new life was well underway. They stood silently in the alley, watching the milk wagon disappear with what remained of their fortune.
“It could have turned out a lot different, Joe” Frank remarked wistfully.
“Yeah, Frank, story of our lives so far,” pined Joe. “Work like a bastard, save your money, then watch some shifty idea man take it all away. We didn’t go wrong, Frank, just didn’t see it all in time to avoid getting taken. It was a gamble, but an honest one.”
“Joe, what are we gonna tell John, and Eb, and the others back home,” queried Frank.
“Tell ‘em the truth, Frank,” Joe snapped back. “It hurts plenty, but they gotta know who stabbed ‘em in the back. Maybe we can pool what money we got left and get a fancy lawyer to go after him?”
“Don’t figure there’s much future in that, Joe,” Frank muttered scornfully. “Just throwin’ perfectly good money after bad. O’Leary was dishonest, but he wasn’t stupid. That money’s gone, Joe. He’s already burned it, probably got a pile of debt building that auto-mo-bile he was always talkin’ about. Think they’ll make out any better than we did? You’re still dreamin’. Let it go, Joe. You got any change? Let’s go get some coffee and a sausage. Start a new dream.”
Dawn crept up on them as they walked into their new lives. It wasn’t the first time they had been broke. They were near penniless when they came to America. Eventually, they would put some money back in their pockets, but their pride was scorched today. The bicycle business had been a whirlwind affair that they had both gotten swept into. Joe knew that dreams and hard work were a good team, but he hadn’t figured out the relationship between desperation and deceit until it was too late. O’Leary had taught them a new lesson. They had built their world around honesty and trust, but it turned out to be a rigged game with O’Leary dealing. Money changes everything.
As the two men walked away, Frank’s arm around Joe, brothers and best friends, their next dream was just beginning.
Author: Al Tietjen
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