Sue Stauffacher - Tillie the Terrible Swede. How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History

A whiz, a whir,

A dazzling blur,

A flash of yellow hair,

A firm-set face,

A whirlwind pace,

A wheel that splits the air!

Too slow our eyes

So fast she flies

Around the tilted curve

With wheel a-cant

At dizzy slant

To catch her swooping swerve!

With swooping swerve

How cool her nerve!

She swings into the lead;

She holds her place

In maddest race,

As tireless as her steed!

The goal in sight

How wild her flight,

And how our senses reel

To see her rush

And hear the hush

When Tillie rides her wheel!

Anonymous
Indianapolis Trade Journal
March 26, 1898

For my niece Katie Hutchins, a perfect example of a young woman who is both beautiful and strong. And in memory of my Chicago-born Swedish grandmother, Ruth Karin Hammer (ne Erickson). S.S.

For my mother, Gilia, with love. S.M.

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Text copyright 2011 by Sue Stauffacher
Illustrations copyright 2011 by Sarah McMenemy

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Visit us on the Web! randomhouse.com/kids

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at randomhouse.com/teachers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stauffacher, Sue.
Tillie the terrible Swede: how one woman, a sewing needle, and a bicycle changed history / by Sue Stauffacher; illustrated by Sarah McMenemy. 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-375-84442-3 (trade)
ISBN 978-0-375-94442-0 (lib. bdg.)
ISBN: 978-0-307-98248-3 (eBook)
1. Anderson, Tillie. 2. CyclistsSwedenBiography. 3. CyclistsUnited StatesBiography.
4. Women cyclistsSwedenBiography. 5. Women cyclistsUnited StatesBiography.
I. McMenemy, Sarah, ill. II. Title.
GV1051.A48S83 2009
796.62092dc22
[B]
2010007083

The illustrations in this book were created using gouache paint, hand-painted paper collage, and black india ink on Langton watercolor paper.

Random House Childrens Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v3.1

Id like to thank Alice Olson Roepke, who has been educating audiences about her grandmothers famous bicycle-racing sister for more than ten years. Alice passionately shared her memories and Tillies scrapbooks and memorabilia with me. I also used several excellent publications from the nonprofit organization The Wheelmen to find out more about the history of bicycling and Tillie Anderson. I am particularly grateful to author Heather Drieth for her articles on Tillie.

For more information about Tillie Anderson, visit tillieanderson.com. Please visit The Wheelmen online at thewheelmen.org. S.S.

I n the old days, most girls came to America with a dream, but all Tillie Anderson had was a needle. So she got herself a job in a tailors shop and waited for a dream to come and find her. One fine day it rolled right by her window.

B icycles arent for ladies, Tillies mother reminded her. But Tillie wasnt listening.

From that day on, she saved up her money and dreamed of nothing but riding. Not the slow and stately sort of riding. No, Tillie dreamed of the speedy, scorchy, racy kind of riding.

If Tillie insisted on a bicycle, her mother suggested that she ride like the other young ladies did, making slow, graceful figure eights or completing circles around a maypole. Above all, Tillie was not to be seen with bicycle face.

B ut Tillie had other ideas. Im too weak to ride for long, she thought. So every day after work, she pedaled for half an hour in the fresh air, lifted dumbbells, and swung Indian clubs over her head.

T here was just one other problem. Tillie had found that riding in dresses and skirts meant spilling, not speeding, falling, not flying.

So

T illie used her noodle and her needle to make something entirely different from what was sold in the ladies shop where she worked. When Tillie took off her coat for her next ride

Her mother was horrified!

The neighbors were scandalized!

Tillies friends were mortified!

(In fact, some of them stopped speaking to her.)

B ut Tillie was satisfied.

They all think Im wicked, Tillie told her new friend, a bicycle racer named Phillip Shoberg.

Now you can enter a real race, Phillip said. Some women do, you know.

So Tillie entered her first century racethats one hundred miles!and broke the womens record by eighteen minutes!

H owever, the real racing excitement happened on the velodrome. For six days, women raced an hour and a half in the afternoon and an hour and a half in the evening. Riding shoulder to shoulder with the other racerswith no protective gear or helmetthe woman who could stay on her bike and ride the farthest claimed the prize money.