Puttputt the Bike Man
Mondays through Thursdays at approximately 7:25 a.m., a man we call Puttputt rides his bike down our street. The bike’s an old Schwinn with thick, white-walled tires. He’s put a motor on it that sounds like a high-pitched chainsaw. It backfires like a pack of firecrackers every 50-feet or so. I hear him coming from five blocks away. The man himself looks to be about forty. He rides the bike low like it’s a crotch rocket, wears a cap and a goatee, and carries an overloaded backpack. He’s always in black and there’s always a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. Clamped to the handlebars is a police-style spotlight, presumably for night riding, although I never hear him at night.
           I have to assume Puttputt knows how loud his bike is. He’s sitting on it after all. But I’m not sure he understands how loud it is from our point of view – and by ‘our’ I mean the entire town of Corvallis. Saturday, on my way to the Farmer’s Market, I heard him somewhere ahead of me. Couldn’t see him, but the sound was unmistakable. When I finally got to the corner of 3rd and Adams, I saw him four blocks over to my left, cruising alongside trucks and traffic, presumably not caring one hoot about the noise he added to the mix. At a picnic on Saturday, I mentioned Puttputt to my friend Avery who’s a student at Oregon State. He lives in a dorm on the interior of the campus, nowhere near roads. He knew at once who I was talking about. Mimicked the sound of Puttputt’s bike so well that we all knew for sure we were talking about the same person. These days if I see Puttputt when I’m out walking, I start to hum the Wicked Witch’s melody to myself, the one you hear when she rides past Dorothy’s spinning window with Toto clutched to her chest. I’ve even started to cackle in public when he rides by.
           Earlier in the week, I heard him on his way home from wherever he goes from Mondays through Thursdays. As usual, it was about 2:55 p.m. I’d been out walking so I had my camera with me. I stopped, held it up, and waited. Seconds later I got three shots of him as he passed in front of me. I felt like a detective. I’d been scheming for months about how to catch him, what to say if I did, how to be polite but firm if we were standing face-to-face. My 95-year-old neighbor Ann giggles when she confides she’d slash his tires given a chance. She was a pilot so she’s familiar with loud things, but this guy gets on her nerves. But now that I have his picture, I’m not sure what to do with it. Turns out, I’ve grown to rely on Puttputt. Like it or not, he wakes me up a little ahead of the time I’d prefer to wake up four days a week. That’s been good for me. I also think about the noise I’ve made in the past. Blasting Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder or the Isley Brothers from my car, singing along at volumes no good for anyone but me. I’ve heard that he could be ticketed for being a public nuisance, and he surely is, but am I the one to bring him down? His bike disturbs the peace of my comfy life. Is that enough to disturb his? Or would it be kinder to give him time to grow out of it, get a better motor, move to another neighborhood? I don’t know the answer. All I know is that I haven’t done anything, and I don’t think I will. He’s added color to my life and I’m oddly grateful.
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Three lovelies from the same glorious plant. I’d post my pics of Puttputt, but I don’t like sharing pics of humans who don’t know I’ve captured them.
