For her 16th birthday, Pauline Edwards received a bicycle from her parents.

It wouldn’t take long for her to ride the two-wheeler into New York City, sometimes grabbing onto the backs of trucks as they rolled through the streets.

“If my mother ever saw that she would have killed me,” said Edwards, who turned 100 on Friday - and still has that bike.

Edwards celebrated the milestone birthday with her friends at the Tamaqua Area Adult Day Center, which she visits each weekday. Cake was served, and balloons decorated the table she shared with her daughter, Carol Carroll, of Lake Hauto.

“I never thought I’d be 100,” Edwards said. “I don’t feel it.”

She was born on Oct. 21, 1922 in Corona, New York. Her father was a Syrian immigrant, and her mother was born on a boat heading from Italy to Ellis Island.

The couple had four children, and would eventually move to Woodside, New York, and Queens Village, New York.

Edwards enjoyed spending time by the ocean, but never swam.

“My mother wouldn’t allow it. She was afraid I would go out too deep,” she said of her dare devil tendencies.

She also enjoyed roller skating, and recalled skating with a few girlfriends to the 1939 World’s Fair. Organizers were so impressed that they asked the girls to skate for the crowds.

“That’s because I could dance when I was on my skates,” Edwards said.

She studied art in high school, and had a passion for painting. One of her creations was featured in a Greenwich Village Art Show.

“She was a very talented painter. The whole house is filled with her paintings,” said Carroll, with whom she lives.

Edwards’ father supported the family as a pattern maker at a New York garment factory.

“We didn’t know we were poor. Nobody had money back then,” she said.

Her father passed away when she was 17 and to lessen the financial burden she was sent to live with an uncle. While with him, she got her first job as a cake decorator.

Her next job was at a record store in Astoria, New York.

“That’s how I know all the music,” she said.

She met her husband, the late Clark “Eddie” Edwards on a blind date to Coney Island.

“I fell in love right away,” she said.

The two eloped before the start of World War II, and she was with him while he was stationed in San Diego. When war broke out, her husband - a chief petty officer - served on the USS North Carolina.

“I was afraid I would never see him again,” she said.

Her husband spent 10 years in the service, and when he returned to New York from the Korean War, he got a job installing air conditioning and refrigeration units.

One assignment took him to McAdoo, where Carroll said someone told him about Lake Hauto. It piqued his interest because he loved Pennsylvania and enjoyed hunting, Carroll said.

“They rented a cabin for $100 for the whole summer when I was 13,” Carroll said. “In 1969, they bought it.”

The couple renovated and added to the home, but also maintained a home in Allentown. Edwards was widowed in 1973.

She worked making lampshades and retired from a Poconos gift shop.

“She’s in great health,” Carroll said. “All she takes is blood pressure medication and vitamins.”

She never wore makeup, and her daughter believes that is one of the reasons why she always looked younger than her years.

“I never drank,” Edwards added. “It made me sick. Why would I drink something that makes me sick?”

She used to take a bus each Wednesday to Atlantic City, New Jersey.

“She didn’t gamble. She would go to the beach and read books,” Carroll said.

Edwards and Carroll have taken trips together, including one to see the USS North Carolina. And just 4 years ago, they took a cruise to Bermuda.

“That was something,” Edwards said. “I had a lovely time.”

Her hobbies include reading and knitting. She has four children, four grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and four great-great grandchildren.