Batesville's Own Bicycle Guru

By Julie M. Fidler
A 75-year-old Batesville man keeps in touch with his childhood through spokes, wheels and shining chrome.

Wallace Biddle still has his very first bicycle, a 1946 J.C. Higgins, red and white. His parents gave him the bike as a birthday present when he was 12 or 13. He put it into a barn when he began to drive.

Biddle grew up on a cotton farm southwest of Bay, between Jonesboro and Truman, in Craighead County. “It was a really small town,” he said. “There’s nothing there now. My dad ordered it (the bike) from the Sears & Roebuck catalog.” Sears’ store brand was the J.C. Higgins. Before that, it was Elgin, according to Biddle.

“It cost maybe $10 at the time,” he said. “It would probably cost $70, $80 or $90 now.”

Before he got his bike, Biddle would occasionally get a chance here or there to ride neighbors’ bikes. His family worked the cotton farm, and times were hard.

“I was proud of that bike,” said Biddle. “I’d clean it up every night before I went to bed. When we got our first vehicle, and I began to drive, I just put it in the barn. And it stayed up there all those years.”

About 20 years ago, he thought about the old bike and decided to get it out of the barn. It was still in pretty good shape. Biddle set out to make it “good as new.”

“That’s what got me started,” he said.

Bikes decorate his home, a shop, a garage and the yard, and are hung along a wooden fence in his front and back yards.

Biddle wasn’t born knowing how to repair or renovate bikes, and it has been a learning process. “I worked in a body shop for awhile after I got married,” he said. “They let me sand, and eventually I got into painting … on cars, that is.”

When asked what tools are involved, he said, “Just sandpaper and paint, basically.”

Fixing that first antique inspired him to do more.

He won’t work on just any old bike, said Biddle. He most enjoys ones at least 50 years old. “It has to be 50 years old before I’ll fool with it,” he said. “I like bikes from the 1940s and ’50s.” Bikes he says his family couldn’t afford when he was a boy.

“I have some that I always wanted when I was a kid but couldn’t afford, the ones that were more expensive back in the ’40s,” he said. “I have those ones now.”

When asked if he has a favorite brand, Biddle said, “Oh, I like to work on like them all. I don’t have a favorite. I guess some of them would be Western Flyers, Hawthornes, which used to be Montgomery Ward, Monarch, Rollfast, Schwinn.”

He estimates he has 40-50 bikes right now. Where does he get them?

“I bought most of them outright,” he said. “I find them all over, go to bike shows and bought a lot of them on eBay.”

Biddle said the nearest show is Springfield, Mo. He plans to enter at least one bike and is re-doing some previous work to make it “show quality.“

A triple-bypass heart surgery a year ago this month made Biddle put his hobby on the back burner, but only for a little while.

“It was probably three months before I was back at fixing bikes,” he said. “I feel great now; a lot better than before.”

He displays some of his bikes in his son, Howard Biddle’s, flea market on Malcolm Avenue in Newport. Howard Biddle said the enjoyment fixing old bikes gives his father has probably helped him stay so healthy. “He’s in better shape than I am,” he said.

Biddle has done a bit of remodeling for others, including a Monarch, an Elgin and a late 1960s Schwinn Sting-Ray Pixie.

“I haven’t made any money,” he said. “It’s just a hobby. I enjoy looking at them when I get through with them.”

Biddle has five children: Howard Biddle, Steve Biddle, Theresa Duncan, Jeanette Biddle and Laura Robinson. He has nine grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. He was the husband of the late Dorothy Biddle. He belongs to West Baptist Church of Batesville.