A Very Good Run......

It had been a good run -- over Lolo Pass into Montana, then over Beartooth Pass into
Wyoming, and then over the Bighorns onto the High Plains. The bike, with the cylinder heads I had to have rebuilt because I had screwed up and timed them 180 out, ran sweet and cool – but in a campground at Springfield, Missouri, I hurried an oil change and stripped out the threads for the oil filter basket.

“Damn, “ I said to the Redhead, who sat on a picnic table watching me.

“What happened,” she asked gently.

“Ah, hell.” I looked at her and rubbed grease off my fingers. “Stripped it! Can’t believe I did that! I’ll try and borrow a big wrench somewhere and put the damn thing in anyway. I just hope it lasts the trip!”

I borrowed a big crescent wrench off a drunk in a Chevy and slowly and carefully
tapped the cross-threaded nut into the soft aluminum of the engine case. I tightened it
as much as I dared, and then I started the old Wing up and we both watched the gravel underneath
for new oil drips, our hearts in our mouths.

After a moment, the Redhead looked at me.

“It’s not leaking, huh?”

“Nope. And that’s good. That’s real good!”

The rest of the Missouri Ozarks went well, and then we dropped into velvety Arkansas,
with its twisty roads and heavy, muggy air. And then we were in Louisiana, where the red eyes of
alligators gleamed in the Cypress swamps at night, and New Orleans, our destination this trip,
lay less than 100 miles ahead.

We stopped at a convenience store to refuel. Black and white youths milled around the
pumps, both speaking a beautiful, soft and lilting dialect that we could barely understand. A black
man, drinking from a wine bottle in a paper sack, looked at our license plate.

“G’lawd, man,” he sang out.. “You is a long way gone, now, hain’tcha?”

I grinned at him, “Yessir.. A long way gone is a good way of putting it!”

“Washin’ton,” he said. “Nevah been thar.... no, I hain’t!”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Just like this place!”

He grinned at me.

I went inside to pay for our gas.. At a formica-topped table drinking a coke, sat the oldest
black woman I had ever seen. Her face was corrugated and lined and weathered, like pine
wood boards that have been in the wind for fifty winters. ‘Over a hundred years old’, I thought to myself, ‘she’s at least a hundred years old.’ She watched me as I put my helmet down on the counter and dug for my wallet.

“Y’all wear that big thang to protect yore brain?”

Her voice was vibrant, surprisingly youthful, and she stared steadily at me with gleaming
eyes that I could barely see. And then, somehow, I sensed the merriment in those ancient eyes..

I grinned at her and said, “ You are telling me that is hardly worth the bother, huh?”

She laughed gently. Her laugh, like her voice, was youthful, gentle, compelling.

“Why’y’all ride them thangs, anyhow? Doncha get wet when it rains?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “We get wet sometimes..... but it’s cheap this way. And fun. We feel free when we ride.”

The old lady took a deep swallow of her coke. She stared at me for a moment.

“Wahhl...,” she said. “That’s awright, Ah guess. All freedom ...even the middlin’ kind ... is
worth havin’.”

The young black girl waiting for my card said to the old woman gently, “ leave him be,
now, Auntie, he’s got somwhar to go....”

Outside my wife stood by the bike talking to man with the bottle in the bag.

“Who were you talking to,” she asked.

“Some ol’ lady that knows more ‘n me,” I answered.

“Quite a few of them around!” She grinned.

“That’d be ol’ Auntie,” laughed the man with the bag.

We geared up and pulled out, accelerating gently in the dusk, watching for the shining eyes of deer on the road and for the first glow of New Orleans. So far, it had been a very good run.