Northern Hills Homeowner's Association

Toastmaster Speeches

Toastmaster International speeches

I joined Toastmasters a few months ago.

Now, I can't watch a public speaker with wanting to count the "ah"s. It has given me confidence, and I have met some really great people.

I recently gave a speech that other Toastmasters say they enjoyed, so I thought I would post it here.

I invite you to join a Toastmaster's club near you, you will never regret it.

This was my 6th Toastmaster speech for an audience.

Madam Toastmaster ,Fellow Toastmasters, and welcome guests.

I want to tell you today about an event in my life that I call “Brothers, Bicycles, Baseball and Bridges. The story takes place in Corpus Christi, and involves my older brother and I.

I was in the fifth grade, and my brother, who was only 15 months older than I, was in the sixth grade. For Christmas, we were given identical bicycles. They were nothing real fancy, not racing bikes, no gears to select. Just plane bicycles. They had the touring bike handlebars, and the book carrying platform over the rear wheel.

We always got identical gifts. My parents always treated us like twins. We got pajamas alike. We got shirts alike. We got shoes alike, and now, we got matching bicycles. I always thought this was cool, I think my brother always felt he had to wait a year extra for everything.

I remember that we had an unusually cold Christmas that year – especially for Corpus Christi. It was just above freezing, and it was switching between a thick fog and light rain. We didn’t care.
We finally got our bicycles! We rode up to Casa Linda Elementary and drove on the sidewalk. Round and Round we rode our new bikes.. We never noticed the cold turning our ears into ice crystals. The school had covered sidewalks, and that gave us a dry place to ride our new bikes. We must have put 20 miles on them that day.

That spring, we were allowed to ride our bikes to baseball practice. The practice field was a few miles from our house. We both played for the White Sox. My brother Bill has always been known as “Big Penry”, and believe it or not, I was known as “Little Penry”. Big Penry played first base, I played outfield. Along the way to practice, there was a Texaco Station that had one of the old bright red, lever-style Coke machines. We would drive our bikes to the front of the machine, stand on one leg, drop in a nickel, and then push that lever down. At the end of the push, you would hear the Ka-lump of a 10 ounce bottle of coke as it dropped to the bottom of the chute. My brother would move forward, and I would drop in my nickel. Ca-chunk. I would stick the bottle into the opener. If you opened the bottle too fast, the coke would come boiling out of the bottle before you could take your first sip. Bill always chugged down his first coke before I could get my cap off, so he would circle around, buy a second coke and drink that one with me. I remember how those cokes burned my tongue and always made my eyes water.

When baseball was over, our trusting parents left us to mind ourselves and be good boys.
“Check in every few hours”. The rule was “If you leave the house, Call Mom at the office and let her know where you are going.”

I sometimes went down the street to a friend's house, and my brother sometimes went to one of his friend's house. Most of the time we would stay at home and play together or have our friends come over.

Then one day we had a great idea. I’m not sure who is responsible for this idea. “Let’s ride over the bridge.” If you have ever been to Corpus Christi, you know that going across the ship channel is a large bridge, known as the Corpus Christi Harbor Bridge. This is the second highest bridge in Texas. It is twenty Three stories above the water. 235 feet! It allows the large freighter ships to pass under it. When it opened in 1959, I didn’t want to go over the bridge in the car with my parents because it was too high. Now, just months later, my brother and I decided to ride our bicycles over the bridge.

We walked our bikes up on the pedestrian walkway, then crossed eight lanes of traffic at the crest of the bridge so that we could ride our bikes down along with the traffic. After crossing over, we now looked over the entire downtown area. A steady coastal breeze pushed against our backs.

We looked back, saw no cars in the right lane, and gave a small push forward. We grabbed the handlebars, and held on. Soon, gravity did the rest We were now passing cars that were in the middle lane! Yeeeee hah! Over 60 miles an hour on a basic touring bike. The ride was over in an instant. We laughed with excitement. I don’t even remember getting home, but we made it before Mom did.

When my mother got home. She asked us, “Did you boys have a good day today?”
“Yes, Mom”

“What did you do today?”

“Oh…. Nothing, just played catch and stuff.”

Did I mention that my mother worked in an office building in the uptown section of Corpus Christi? Her office was on the 17th floor and it looked out directly at the bridge.

She looked at both of us and said, with her eyebrows raised. “You know, I saw the funniest thing today”.

“Yeah, what was it, mom?”

“I was looking out my window today at the bridge, and I saw these two towheaded boys who were riding their bicycles down the harbor bridge. They looked a LOT like you two.“

“Wow! I’ll bet they were scared. Did they make it alright?”

My mother nodded knowingly, reading our eyes. “Yes, I believe they did, and I’ll bet you that if their mother ever finds out about it, those boys will be in big trouble, WONT THEY?”

“Yes, I guess so, Mom.”

From then on, our bicycles were only used for getting to baseball practice. I got my driver’s license at the age of 14, so I really didn’t get to take any further bike adventures.

Of course, whenever I go back to Corpus and cross that bridge, I can still visualize my brother ahead of me, with his shirt full of wind, holding on for life in the summer of brothers, bicycles, baseball and bridges.

Email us
jpenry@satx.rr.com

Links

Toastmasters International Web Page