Prairie Lunch Stop

Sometimes, when Red and I are out on the prairie, we'll stop at some greasy spoon and walk in, helmets dangling from sodden gloves, rain still streaming from our jackets, and most of the people inside will look away, and will try not to notice us.......will try to get back to where they were before we arrived.... before we came in, we two all free and wet and alive...... But, also, sometimes... I'll look across the tense dining room, and some old boy will slowly raise his head from his Senior Special bowl of soup. He'll look out the foggy window at our loaded bike, at my smiling partner, and the fire will begin to rise again in his rheumy eyes, and he will begin to nod to us.... At first barely perceptively, and then with increasing vigor, and we can see him sitting straighter, and breathing faster... calling on us to talk to him, to notice him and this joy rising in him like something long dead but rediscovered...... and so we do."G'day, Sir!" I'll say, sitting as close to him as possible. "Kinda wet out there!"And then he and maybe another one or two old boys, will come and talk to us. Really talk to us. They will speak of the bikes they had after the war, the Harleys, the Indians, the BSA Goldstars....the saddlebags of Mexican tooled leather, the shaved and ported cylinder heads, the Great Hillclimbs, the Saturday night flat track racing...."I loved that damned BSA! Loved it so much I was always afraid of it!"And they will talk of touring from sea to sea, from border to border, when the roads were all lumpy, coated with gravel and nearly impassable, and when the sleeping bags were always wet and cold, their girls' mothers always so terrified of the young them and their bikes. They speak of great bonfires on prairies and in woodlands, and of the cheap beer, and of the joy of being young and free, free from war and alive .... and the misery now of having lost it all. And I listen to them with all my heart, for I am them, and they me. And when we finally leave, waving to those who still have the fire, those with eyes still gleaming, we feel alive and reborn......and blessed. And the prairie calls to us anew...."Ride, ride, my children. It will not be forever, ride, ride.... my laughing children. Ride!"