B607 said:
Chicago...pfffft! And if you come downstate in Illinois where I live, you could leave your bike with no lock in Shelbyville, Sullivan, Bethany, or Findlay (towns closest to me) and it would be there the next day. I never lock my bike, my truck, or my house. There is virtually no crime here. My neighbors are from Chicago. They came here 15 yrs ago to escape the gunfire and ripoffs in the big city. I like it like this! Gary
Ha! Have I got a Moultrie County bicycle theft saga...
Three or four years ago, my girlfriend and I had a Saturday morning road trip planned that would take us that direction. I mentioned our plan the night before at a local bar, provoking someone to say, "that's over by
Gays--they've got Adolf Hitler's bike."
I expressed disbelief. "Well, I don't know if it was
really Adolf Hitler's bicycle," he relented, "but they've got one sitting out there that says 'A.Hitler, 1938."
Next morning, after stopping for lunch at Shelbyville's Courthouse Inn, we proceeded to Gays. As we approached, my girlfriend said "did that sign say something about an two-story outhouse?" "You musta read that wrong, dear," I replied as I turned off Highway 16 into town.
We took a left on the town's center street, and immediately saw a shack on which a someone had spraypainted "Motel 6."
Hopeless day for photographs, overcast with light rain, but we decided the "motel" deserved an attempt at one. As my girlfriend was focusing the camera, she whispered, "they're looking at us," and nodded in the direction of some residents standing inside their front door. "I'll go talk to 'em," I said.
"Say, we were just traveling through--had a fellow tell us you had Adolf Hitler's bike here," I said, "is that true?" "Oh
that...yeah, guy over there owned it, but it got stolen a couple years ago," said the resident dejectedly. Then he brightened up and offered, "have you seen our two-story outhouse?" "Why...no," I replied, "my girlfriend thought she'd seen a sign about that." He indicated it a couple blocks behind us, and we promised to have a look.
Wheeling the car around, we saw a sign in a nearby yard, handpainted on a piece of plywood:
THIEF -- I WANT ADOLF'S BIKE BACK.
Photographs did not turn out. Don't know if the sign's still there...