Roping the Saucer!!
So at the risk of sounding like a bitter old codger (and it’s a risk I’m willing to take since I are one) “Kids these days have it made.”. I recently saw a 3 year old on a pocket bike. Yep it’s true. I watched him go full tilt into the family sedan. Mom was horrified, but dad stood there grinning like he just figured out he may not be using the college fund for college after all. Hello 60 inch TV and a Viper!! Now this may shock and appall you but I know the father and he is pretty low on the “good thinking list” himself. The kid was picking himself and the bike off the driveway and between tears he was trying to figure out how he was gonna top this stunt for a sequel. Hey MOM see if Caesar’s Palace is booked….Evil Knevil who? Oh yeah and cancel the paternity test we have confirmation!!
Way back when and I’m talking mid 60’s here I was a strapping lad of about 13 when my older brother went and bought himself a Lambretta motor scooter. He then proceeded to ride it for about 500 miles and went and joined the Air Force. The motor scooter just sat in the garage languishing the time away. BUT…while this object looked to be a cold inanimate machine it was really a evil metal soulless warlock busy plotting it’s escape from the dungeons of inactivity. Low and inaudibly to grownups it called to my adolescent brain with a larcenous urgency. Whispered lessons of lock picking and basic scooter maintenance floated in the ether until it found me and directly invaded my brain. The call was answered, the lock picked and in no time I was flying through the fields and ripping down wooded paths ready to run down “Little Red” or the “Big Bad Wolf” if either one was unlucky enough to be traveling my racetrack. For that matter little old granny better keep her ears and eyes open too or she’ll be wearin tire tracks up and down her back!
I was careful. I would only ride when my parents were away, which was a lot. Snagging my father’s lawn mower gas and believing I was getting away with it. My lil’bitty mind could not comprehend that I was surrounded by tattletale relatives and large mouthed 20/20 sighted neighbors. As time went on my delusions of invisibility grew and I got more ballsey by riding home on the road. But I was safe because I was going faster than the human brain can comprehend what the eye is showing it. If by the low chance anyone did see me they would not know it was me cause there were so many large people riding powder blue motor scooters in the country. BUZZER SOUNDING…. “THANKS FOR PLAYING…….JOHNNY TELL HIM WHAT HE DIDN’T WIN!!”. (REALITY CHECK: In my 13 years on this planet I had never seen another scooter.)
Sorry I get a little verbose…...especially when my meds finally kick in. Where was I? Oh yeah! So I get sold out and my mother says I should buy the scoot off my brother since I been riding it so much! Wah?!!!! You know about me riding it?!!!! Over a summer I get a bunch of odd jobs and in the fall I send my brother $100. Now the scoot is mine…all mine!!!! I rode it until I got my license which was nice cause at that time for a motorcycle license all you had to do was prove you had a motorcycle. Now you got to take college courses, perform a miracle and jump moving locomotives to prove you can ride. So I registered it and BAM I had a license!! Now I was riding it to High School when the weather allowed and sometimes if it didn’t. I remember riding it the 8 miles to school in a blizzard because I got up late only to find they cancelled school. She was pretty good in the snow too. Not fast, but steady.
When I finally sold her she was real tired. I ran into the guy I sold her to years later and he said eventually she was running backwards. I thought “That’s odd!”. But later found another person who had a machine (scooter) that also ran backwards. 5 speeds in reverse are we having fun yet?
So I won’t bore you with the woods bikes but just be content with saying I barely survived the murderous apple trees, dead leave covered bottomless pits and suicidal rocks. Add to that the high voltage electric fences of farm country. But my riding techniques were honed to a razor edge by that insanity. Not to mention a slight limp and an eye twitch I can’t seem to shake
Now I’m 17 and I have saved a grand over the summer working 3rd shift in a textile factory and I am going to get a car. I have lined up a job in a lumber yard for after school and need the car for transportation. My father is working overtime and my mother enlists me to drive to pick him up. We are early and while cruising up the super slab we approach the local big time Honda dealer (the only other motorcycle dealer is a small garage that deals in Bridgestone’s). My mother tells me we are early and have some time to kill and directs me to pull into the Honda dealer. I figure what the hell at the least I get to see some nice bikes but soon reality sets in and it feels more like the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders having a tease fest WITH A REALLY HORNEY BOY AND I’M THE REALLY HORNEY BOY!!
My mother ends up looking at this beautiful dark green CB450. Ticket says $1,150 and she says she bets they will take $1000 cash. I tell her that is all I have and I need a car with winter coming. She pushes it by calling over a salesman and my temper quickly adjusts it’s needle into the red zone. The steam coming out of my ears rivals that of those old western movies where the train blows its whistle. Then it’s gone as I watch my mother and the salesman size each other up. My rage is replaced with pity. Pity for the po pitiful unsuspecting salesman. He thinks he is on his own turf and NOBODY bests him on his own turf. What he has critically overlooked that it may be his turf but it is only rental property. My mother has the deed to this part of the universe and owns it lock, stock and barrel! I know from dealing with her for 16 years that if there were any super being looking over us it would be dialing 911 right now and telling the operator that the fabric of space and time was about to rip open and swallow a salesman whole after doing nasty, vile, abominable damage to his id.
Before long the quivering lump of lime Jello is stammering and I see the look of conquest in my mothers eyes. Then he plays his hole card “Of course I’ll have to talk to the manager….” And my mother slips the safety switch back on. Off he goes to put antibiotics on the oozing wounds and tag his tag team partner, the Manager. I take this time to restate my intentions of getting a car and start ticking off the reasons why a bike is a bad idea and a car makes sense.
Dear reader have you ever had to shoot down a idea that you loved? No fun! Beside me was a beautiful 450 Honda that was within reach and my MOTHER was teasing me with owning it but now I have to be the adult here and tell her “NO!”. If I had any luck the manager would have us thrown out for destroying his #1 salesman in such an inhuman way. It was then my mother made the statement that fried my frontal lobe to the golden brown that it is yet today. She said “ We are going to get a new car and you can drive ours this winter.”. GET ME A CHAIR! I gotta sit down! NO MAKE IT A BED! I gotta lay down! NOOO MAKE IT A COFFIN!!! I MUST BE DEAD!!!! The car she was talking about was a 1963 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport! AND I COULD DRIVE IT? I told her I would have to drive it to school and to work and would need it any time I wanted it. I stood there waiting for the frying pan to the ear or the broom handle to the 5th vertebra but all I heard was “Yeah sure.”.
By the time the salesman and the manager came to us my mother had racked a new banana clip and set the selector to full auto. As backup a blackout KBAR was strapped to her shoulder upside down and frags hung like fruit from her belt harness. She spit a couple of galvanized nails at them for effect as they approached and then took them both down with extreme prejudice.
So to make a long story …er ….well…longer. For $1000 I had a beautiful 450 Honda with 2 brand new tires, a matching helmet and a very nice 1963 Impala SS. The helmet and tires were afterthoughts. Mom decided the deal was not sweet enough and by then they would have agreed to gold plate it if she asked! Not a bad day, not a bad day indeed! I do think my mother could settle this mideast problem pretty quick. Just two little problems, where will all the people go when she kicks them out and are their doctors and hospitals able to cope with Mass Cast Iron Concussion Syndrome (MCICS)?
Quite possibly the best thing about those goings on was the fact that for the rest of my life I got to blame my motorcycle madness on my mother. Thanks mom! And to the salesman and manager we encountered that day I now issue a sincere apology for the hideous scarring to their psyche’s. Hopefully they enjoyed their new careers as night watchmen after they overcame their irrational fear of the dark and of small willful militant women.
