Friends,
Ted Ernst sent the following educational email to me in response to my Philips post, and I thought I would re-post it for the listmembers' edification. I never heard or read the term "camel back" applied to the top tube on my Philips 3-speed before Ted's email last night: the top tube went straight back from the head tube in a normal fashion, but curved downward about 4-6 inches ahead of the seat tube to meet the seat lug of the reduced-height seat tube (19" tall, as I recall from so long ago).
Thanks, Ted, for the always-welcome vocabulary lesson. (And not just because I'm a writer, either... :-)
Appreciatively yours,
Jon Spangler (who just completed an almost-6-hour Bike-and-BART round-trip expedition to get to church (for 3 hours) in San Francisco since the SF-Oakland Bay bridge is closed for major reconstruction and other engineering marvels this weekend) Alameda, CA USA
Begin forwarded message:
> From: "ternst" <ternst1@cox.net>
> Date: September 5, 2009 11:00:11 PM PDT
> To: "Jon Spangler" <jonswriter@att.net>
> Subject: Re: [CR] Old Philips brings back bent-top-tube memories
>
> Hey jon:
> That type of frame was called "camel back"/
> We sold a lot of them.
> Many were 18" with 26" wheeels.
> The 24" wheel bikes I think had 16" frames.
> That really dates us.
> Ted
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jon Spangler" <jonswriter@att.net>
> To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2009 9:45 PM
> Subject: Re: [CR] Old Philips brings back bent-top-tube memories
>
>
>> Bob,
>> Your Philips revitalization brings back memories of my 19" Philips
>> 3- speed with the bent top tube. It was my first multi-speed bike,
>> and I got it in 1963 when I was eleven and had outgrown my
>> Schwinn Sting- Ray. I was very short, and that bent top tube was
>> the only way I could fit an "adult" bike. It was a pretty blue-
>> green color, and it survived lots of abuse in my pre-lubrication-
>> awareness days....
>> That summer, the Philips became the ticket to my first real job,
>> delivering prescriptions for Carl Ondre (our family's pharmacist)
>> at Medical Center Pharmacy in Redwood City.
>> Yellow Cab was charging 50 cents per prescription to make
>> deliveries, so I offered to make them on my bike for 35 cents
>> each. Carl took me up on the offer once his surprise and shock
>> wore off. (My mother still insists that she has no idea where I
>> got that entrepreneurial streak.) I rode all over Redwood City
>> during the next few summers (including up into the hills on
>> Jefferson) with a map in the back pocket of my Levi's and the
>> twin rear racks full of medications and other drug store
>> products. I didn't lose many of them to breakage, either...
>> I bought my first Bianchi three years later, with the first $100
>> I'd saved from making those deliveries on the Philips. My folks
>> and my friends could not understand why I wanted such a fancy and
>> expensive bike (over $100!) when everyone else rode a Schwinn
>> Varsity (costing only $69.99 back then) instead. But I was hooked
>> on lively derailleured bikes, and I have been a Campi partisan
>> ever since the Valentino gear on that marvelous blue bike, made
>> possible by the folks at Philips and Sturmey-Archer.
>> Thanks for the memories,
>> Jon Spangler
>> (taking a break from packing up the house in Alameda, CA USA)
>> On Sep 5, 2009, at 6:27 PM, <classicrendezvous-
>> request@bikelist.org> <classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org>
>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Message: 1
>>>> Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2009 18:10:37 +0000
>>>> From: Bob Hillery <rhillery@hawksi.org>
>>>> Subject: Re: [CR] Old Phillips - corrected link
>>>> To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
>>>> Message-ID: <W7407623496321771252174237@webmail10>
>>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>>>
>>>> Corrected flickr link:
>>>> http://www.flickr.com/
>>>>
>>>> ooops.
>>>>
>>>> Bob Hillery
>>>> Stratham, NH, USA
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>> _______________________________________________
Jon Spangler Writer/editor Linda Hudson Writing
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