Yesterday, I learned that the Pee-wee Herman’s bike will be permanently installed at The Alamo, the actual red and white cruiser used for all the stunts in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. My first feeling was, oh yes! But then I got another feeling, the feeling you get watching a magnificent stallion canter around a coral and think, that animal needs to be free. And then your fingers get itchy, so itchy! And then maybe you unlatch the gate and scream, run, Midnight, run! Perhaps tears chart clean paths down your dusty face as ranch hands descend upon you, some swiftly mounting their trusty steeds in an attempt to reclaim the elusive Midnight. So. That’s what our plan will be for Pee-wee’s bike, minus the part where we get caught, because how stupid and amateur to do such a thing without any forethought. 

I really wish you’d stop referring to our plan as ‘stealing.’ It’s not stealing — it’s ‘freeing.’ We are freeing the bike because it was built for adventure. I think Pee-wee (God rest his soul) would agree. You worry the bike itself might be a replica? No…no. No! I refuse to believe that. I trust in the integrity of Paul Rubens’ estate. 

Your dad’s moving truck isn’t the only reason I’m recruiting you. You claim to have tactical training (whatever that means) but I assume it will be something we need. So the plan will be to swap out Pee-wee’s bike with a replica. I know a guy, a gear head whose garage is stuffed floor to ceiling with cranks and chains and pedals and frames, a true fanatic who could probably put together a perfect duplicate, probably from memory. And I know someone who knows someone that works in custodial services at the Alamo. That is to say, someone that should have the keys to everything. This will have to be, at least in part, an inside job. 

After the Alamo has shuttered for the day, we’ll perform the swap. Details can be figured out later, but what’s more important now is planning where we will go and what we will do with Pee-wee’s bike. We’ll have to put some distance between ourselves and the Alamo before taking it out of the truck, and of course we’ll have to just tell everyone it’s a fake, but we’ll know the truth. I’m tempted to stay in the southwest and California, to stay true to Pee-wee’s original adventure, but I feel like maybe the bike should see the other side of the country?

Okay, let’s think of Pee-wee’s world: A candy-colored playscape, pop-art, irreverence, a little subversive. I think that’s the kind of environment the bike would like to adventure through. No, not me, the bike! Seriously? Anyway, I can see the bike cruising downtown Charleston, through the historic district, right past that colorful row of townhouses, pink and yellow and turquoise and robins egg blue. Oh, oh! And definitely Miami, the Art Deco District, definitely at night. I think the way it’s lit will be a great parallel to the way the Cabazon Dinosaurs are lit up at night in the movie, don’t you?

Moving north, we’d probably want to go by Ripley’s Believe It or Not in Branson, MO, even though I suspect they might have ripped off the their exterior design from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. The bike has to whiz by some of the big monuments: Mount Rushmore and The Gateway Arch, for sure. And then… just the magic of open road. Preferably miles of empty interstate flanked by vistas that kind of warp and shimmer into the distance. Do you remember when we took that road trip to see the total eclipse? There was that expanse of highway through South Dakota, the Black Hills or the Badlands or maybe both, and it just looked like another planet, those smooth and craggy rocks jutting for the sky like fossilized spirits. That’s something that we— I mean the bike— needs to experience.

And when the adventure is over? When the candy-cane colored 1953 Schwinn DX has breezed past the The Corn Palace and the World’s Tallest Concrete Gnome and bubbling creeks and rollicking green hills? You’re right. Of course you’re right. I think, in the end, we do return Pee-wee’s bike. Because that makes sense, too. Even the stallion Midnight, finally free in the wild steppes, probably has a spot where he prefers to pause and rest; to thoughtfully chew desert grasses and contemplate his life.

---

Casey Jo Graham Welmers was named after a Grateful Dead song. She grew up in rural northern lower Michigan and holds a BA in English, Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. Her most recent work is published or forthcoming in Stanchion, Bending Genres, Major 7th MAgazine, BULL, wildscape. literature journal, JAKE  and others. You can find her practicing written and healing arts from the Great Lakes state and at caseyjo.carrd.co