My Last Ride
I was sixteen when I begged or conned my father into cosigning a loan
to buy a new Honda 50. They cost a whopping $330 at the time and I was
determined to be the first of our gang to have one. I negotiated the
deal for $325 and told the salesman I didn’t need a helmet. My father
had dropped me off at the dealership and left to play poker at Herbie’s
bar. He told me he didn’t want to see my first ride because he didn’t
like the sight of blood. The salesman let me drive around the back of
the car lot for a few minutes, as I practiced running through the gears.
No motorcycle license required back then. After 30 or so stalls I
started to get the hang of it and was ready for the road. I pulled onto
Main Street and rode a few blocks, planning to take a left at the light.
A cop in front of me also had the same idea until I smashed into the
back of his cruiser, scrapping my entire left side and destroyed the
Honda 50 with less than two miles on the odometer. It was my first time
on a bike and while I don’t remember the pain from the accident or the
scabs healing, I do remember making twelve loan payments for the Honda
50 that never started again.
Now move ahead ten plus years later. Coming out of Nam I met a bunch of
vets at a neighborhood bar whose plans in life were to go to community
college and collect the GI bill, sell a little import and enjoy life
back in the states. One particular character was a barrel-chested man of
many dimensions: a biker, hiker, pool player, wine connoisseur, chess
player, bridge player, reader, a lover of life.
Skip ahead another ten years and we’re now hanging at a new bar. This
night we had gone early to play duplicate bridge. At one table two
grannies, in no uncertain terms, told us THEIR table was nonsmoking. My
partner, the biker, slowly took a cigar out of his breast pocket, pealed
the wrapper off, licked it in preparation for lighting and proceeded to
chew it during the three bridge hands we played. We had top hands
against the intimidating gray-hairs and he never lit it. Back at the bar
where we were regaling everyone over the biker trumping the grannies’
intimidation tactics, I drank shots while the biker nursed a beer.
Finally, the biker asked if I wanted to go out back to do a “doobie.”
Standing in the moonlight the biker said, “Well, do you have a “doobie”
or not.” A ploy of his he worked too many times on me. Of course I did
and after firing it up he said to me, “Let’s go for a ride.” I told him
of my first and only experience on a bike and he shot back, “You’re a
wimp.” So he was going to intimidate me, just like the grannies. He was
triple-dog-daring me.
That was my last ride on a bike. We went up Birch mountain at a high
rate of speed, around curves I wasn’t prepared for, past the old Nike
site with the road under repair. All the time the biker is laughing and
screaming, “You gotta love it.” What seemed like eons, but has probably
fifteen minutes, we were back idling in front of the bar. I asked him if
he wanted to come in for cocktail, acting nonchalant until my legs
stopped shaking. He said, “No thanks. It’s a good night to ride.”
Dave Jackson
Columbia, CT
August, 2007