Social Work......

When I was a much, much younger man, and trying to break into social work, the county prosecutor came to my work-release office at the county jail one morning.

“Come with me. I have a challenge for you, “ he said.

We walked together to a large common holding cell called the “Drunk Tank,” where sat a thin, solitary old man with untied shoes. He glared at us with blood-red eyes, his thin straight hair springing up from his flaking pink scalp like prairie grass.

“Let me out! Lemme outa here, you two. No cause for keeping me.....”

The Prosecutor grinned at him. “They found him late last night sleeping in Pioneer Park, wrapped in an old piece of canvas. Got him a rusty old bicycle, a can of pumpkin pie filling, and 38 cents.....no identification and he won’t tell us his name.”

I looked at the old man, who plucked at the sleeve of an old wool coat slick with dirt and grime, his skeletal fingers never still. I tried my social work smile: “Can you tell us your name, sir? The quicker you do, the quicker we can maybe get you out of here.”

The old man glared. “Tom. Dick. Harry,” he snarled. “You pick one. I ain’t drunk...I ain’t no drunk. Turn me loose!”

I turned and looked at the prosecutor. “Can’t we just do that? Just cut him loose?”

He grimaced, and replied, “no... they’ll just pick him up sleeping in the park again. If he gets jailed again for vagrancy, he might do thirty days in the county.... and would that do anyone any good? Hear that?”

I nodded, hearing the mute hubbub of the awakening county cell block on the other side of the wall. Inmates shouted and screamed, steel doors clanged.

The prosecutor leaned against the bars. “Judge Rabideau thinks this would be a good challenge for you and your new department. Find the man a job, any old job, find him a place to stay, any old place, and we’ll cut him loose.... since he won’t give us a name, a family, a place of residence, I think I can hold him in here for some while.”

“Don’t need a job, “ the old man muttered. “Had one of them. I ain’t done nuthin,’ I ain’t no drug fiend... take me n’ my bicycle to Highway 14. Cut me loose.”

“Highway 14,” muttered the prosecutor. “He keeps goin’ on about Highway 14. What’s with Highway 14?”

“Highway 14,” I said, looking again at the wild hair on the old man’s scalp. “Scenic drive... Washington side of the Columbia River gorge... .ride it all the time on my motorcycle. Helluva road... he’s got good taste in roads!”

I leaned forward, social work smile pasted on. “Do you live along the river, sir? Lyle, Bingen, White Salmon, Hood River....any of those towns? Have you got family on the river?”

“I ain’t done nuthin’ to nobody....no call to hold me.... Highway 14.... turn me loose!”

We turned to go.

“Was he drunk when he was arrested,” I asked the prosecutor.

“No... he wasn’t.”

“Well,” I muttered. “Guess I'll see what I can do......”

On the way back to my office I stopped to talk to Old Tuffy, our booking deputy.

“Anything turn up on the old man in the tank, “ I asked.

“Nope. Nothing. We damned near had to break his fingers last night when we printed him..... wouldn’t straighten them out... Took three of us! He went to bite me, the goddamn old nut case, and I told him if he bit me I’d break his head open...... didn’t bite me none, then, nossir.”

I stifled a grin, entertained by a picture of the skeletal old man sinking his few fangs into the fat deputy, and Tuffy moving fast enough to break open anyone’s head.

“Well, no criminal record, then, at least?”

“No,” Tuffy sighed regretfully. “Nothing yet... prints might not be any good, though.... had to mash his fingers down on the print card.”

Three days later we still had no information on our strange old man, but I thought I had the problem solved. I had finally begged him a job from an old friend who ran a potato storage shed, a job sweeping the cutting floor for minimum wage, and a shared room at a recovering alcoholic facility. When I explained my solution to the prosecutor, he readily assented. “Yeah, get the old bastard out of there... he’s even driving the drunks nuts!”

I had Tuffy unlock the drunk tank door and waved the old fellow to his feet. “Let’s go, sir! I got you a job and a place to stay and we are outa here!”

“Don’t need a job, “ muttered the hard old man. “Give me my bike back.....”

“Well, you have to have the job.... where’s his bike, Tuffy?”

“Maintenance shed..... dissolving into rust.......”

We booked him out, and tried to have him sign for his possessions -- a piece of dirty canvas, a can of pumpkin pie filling, and 38 cents -- but he wouldn’t sign. I shrugged and gave him the stuff anyway. I opened the maintenance shed and wheeled out his machine, an old Raleigh three speed crusted with rust....... “Nice wheels, “ I said in my social work voice.

“You never had no cause to hold me.... none a’tall,” the old man said, spitting on the county floor. “No cause a’tall.”

I signed out a county van, put the old man and his bike in it and drove him to the alcohol center. I introduced him as best I could to the staff, who rolled their eyes at each other. I gave the old man written instructions to the potato shed, and held out my hand. He didn’t take it, of course, much to the great delight of the alcohol people.

“Well,” I said to him. “I got one favor to ask of you.... will you tell me your name, now?”

“Tom. Dick. Harry,” snarled the old man. “Pick one!” The staff of the alcohol center dissolved in laughter.

The next morning my phone rang; it was my friend at the potato shed.

“It’s probably a big surprise, but your ol’ No Name didn’t show up for work.”

“Yeah, that is a surprise.”

He laughed over the wire. “Just for fun, I called the alcohol center..... he missed bedcheck and breakfast this morning, too.”

After thanking him and hanging up, I sat there for a moment, a wide grin splitting my face. I got up and went to my supervisor, the undersheriff. “Gotta have some time, okay?” He looked up, uninterested, “ yeah... just sign out, make it up when you can.”

Picking up my helmet from the coat rack, I borrowed a pair of binoculars from a line deputy and then went out and started up my Honda 305 Scrambler. I left the town and crossed the Columbia River over the old Kennewick bridge, the waters swift and cold far below. Across the river, the road over the Horse Heaven Hills curved away to the Oregon border forty miles south. I ran the old familiar curves easily and smoothly, the bike purring beneath me like the well-tuned, smooth twin it was. As the sun broke through high, thin clouds, my joy steadily rose and I soundlessly sang a Credence Clearwater Song behind my helmet shield. “Proud Mary keep on turning.....!”

At the crest of the Horse Heavens, the Columbia River Gorge opened up below me, the river now a silver thread far below, Highway 14 another thinner silver thread running alongside....and the purple and gold fields of eastern Oregon spread like a huge blanket beyond the far bank of the river, and to the west, the soaring volcanoes – Mt Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Hood, the great peaks that had mesmerized Lewis and Clark and so many of the early pioneers – sat in timeless and regal splendor in the morning sunshine.

I swung the bike into a turnout, and pulled from my coat the field glasses I had borrowed. It took a few minutes of slow sweeping, but then ... there he was, an almost unrecognizable dot, an old man on a bicycle, slowly pedaling west, slowly making his way along one of the most beautiful highways in the world. I was suffused with joy. “I’ll be damned,” I said softly. “You old bastard! You must have ridden all night to get down there!” I slapped the tank of the Honda lightly with both hands. “He’s loose,” I laughed softly. “The man is loose and gone! Damn .. I wonder what his name was! I’m gonna wonder that forever!”

I laughed some more, and sat savoring the lovely scene before me. And then I put away the glasses, started the bike, and turned around. It was time to go back and do some more social work.

The Everlasting Debt.....

I am thankful for all the students with whom I once worked.... Over the years their laughter and smiles and tears and everlasting, unquenchable spirit and courage seeped through my skin, percolated through my soul, and burnished and finished me into something better than I once was, something better than I had ever hoped to be.... They think I gave them a lot; what they don't realize, not even yet, is that they always gave me more than what they got from me. What they did, in fact, was to give me a life and a purpose.... they have validated every breath I've ever taken, and I will never be able to repay that debt... never.

Ishpeming....

Rain threatened in Ishpeming, Michigan, and we stood holding our helmets under an eave at the still shuttered American Ski Hall of Fame. We'd just ridden through the mining district of Houghton, Michigan, and the rusty iron and brick ruins of the old mines had turned me introspective.

"My Grandfather was born here, in the 1880's," I said.

"Do you remember him," Red asked, leaning against the glass doors.

"He bit me once," I said. "I was doing my four year old strut on the keyboard of a piano and he came over to lift me off. I bit him, and he bit me back! Good guy, though....."

Red looked at me with that puzzled look she gets when she isn't sure of what I'm trying to say.

"I remember my Grandmother more," I said, squatting on my helmet. "You know those pasty shops we've been passing? She'd make those, and I'd watch..... they were good! Baked meat and vegetable pies. Delicious. She was always laughing, too... had a great head of white, braided hair...."

The rain began in earnest, hammering down on the streets.

"Don't suppose he saw rain much, my Grandfather. He went into the mines early.... like all the others. Cornishmen. Thousands of them came over here to dig these mines. Spent nearly all their lives under ground or deep down in some great ditch... but now, now I get to ride my motorcycles in the free air and falling rain, and one of my grandfather’s great-grandsons just graduated from Princeton. Three generations from a mine shaft to a Princeton University library....the American story! We owe them... we owe them so very much."

She smiled and touched my shoulder.

"Got an old clipping off the web, my Grandfather and his dad were inducted near here into the Order of St George... a fraternal and protective club for miners.”

A smiling gentleman arrived to unlock the Ski Hall of Fame doors, and we visited the modest hall for a half hour. They had a great exhibit of the army's Tenth Mountain Division, but nothing about the National Ski Patrol from which the Tenth was spawned. The small omission irritated me... irritated me greatly.

Later we geared up and started the bike. "Did the Cornish ski?" Red asked over the intercom. "They didn't," I replied. "Finns came here, too. They built the ski jumps and ski trails."

As we idled down the main street, I saw the entrance to an old cemetery and, on impulse, turned into it. We crawled along the single lane, looking at the elegant, weathered stones. I pulled over and shut the bike off.

"They're here, some of 'em, I know they are......"

Red hugged me. "Do you want to look for them?”

"Nah," I said, starting the bike. "It's Saturday, the office is probably closed..... and we have a long way to go......"

We got back on the highway, heading west, toward Montana, just as they had once done....

Frank and the trip not taken......

"Are you really going up the Alaskan Highway? With your sidecar, kid, and all?"

Frank stood in my office door. He was our ninth grade science teacher, and not a particularly good one. He had begun teaching at age 22; had taught in the same room for nearly thirty years; had no interests outside his job; and lived with a nagging wife and a daughter with problems. He was deathly afraid of retirement. He also rode a little 350 Kawasaki belt-drive twin to school. I was surprised, both by the fact that he was standing in my doorway, and by the question he'd just asked.

"Yessir! Sure are! Next spring.... why?"

He gazed out my window. "I've always wanted to go up there....ever since high school. Be a great trip......"

A sudden compulsion came over me.

"Frank, why don't you go with us? Your little Kawi will handle those roads....with Josh and Red and the sidecar, I probably won't be going much over 50 miles an hour.... Hell, buddy, just tie a tent on the back of that thing and let's go!"

"Really? Your family wouldn't mind?"

"Hell, no!" I laughed. "The more the merrier I always say! Trip like that would do you good.... won't recognize yourself when you get back!"

That night over dinner I told Red. "Hey, guess what! Frank is coming with us to Alaska!"

Red stared at me thoughtfully. "No, no, he isn't. He'll never go....."

"Yes, he will." I said, slightly irritated. "He told me so!"

"No," she said again. "He won't go."

For the rest of the school year, Frank and I studied maps, camping gear catalogs, and ride reports. We had the trip planned to the mile, and Frank began accumulating the camping equipment that I had already owned for years. He was very excited, and could talk of nothing else but Alaska. "I'm so grateful you invited me," he would say, over and over.

But Red kept saying, over and over, "no.... he won't go."

I really should learn to trust my wife's instincts regarding people. She's never wrong. Days before we were to leave, Frank was standing in my door again.

"Hey, Frankie! What's up?"

"Well, I'm not going."

I was shocked to the core. "Not going! What do you mean, not going?"

"Well," he said reluctantly. "My wife doesn't think I should spend the summer in a tent." And that was it. No argument, no discussion... no further story. Frank got a job teaching summer school that year to angry, unhappy adolescents -- while my wife and child and I rode up to Alaska.... Rain, mud, bears, mosquitoes, and some of the most awe-inspiring scenery we had ever experienced were characteristics of a tour we talked about for years.

"I told you Frank wouldn't go," grinned my wife. "Yeah...how'd you know that about him, anyway?" She just smiled.

When we returned, however, Frank was openly hostile and went out of his way to ridicule me and our trip, and to constantly try to make my wife and me out as irresponsible parents and very foolish people. It got so bad I had to admonish him publicly during a faculty meeting. Never close friends, we grew further apart.

Several years after I retired, a colleague ran into me in the street and said, "have you heard about Frank?" I slowly shook my head. "Cancer... prostrate....but they think they can get it all....."

One morning several weeks later my wife woke me up and said gently. "Hey, Hun ... Frank died Thursday night, 65 years old.... his obit's in the Yakima paper." I went on to take a morning shower, where unaccountably.... I wept for old Frank, who wasn't a good teacher, who never became my friend, and who never went up to Alaska. I hope he rests in peace.... but I have my doubts.

All of them.......

For thousands and thousands of years, most men and women lived lives of true desperation. Most lived on just a few square yards of earth, scraping at it from first light to dark, wringing a poor sustenance from the reluctant dirt that more often than not was then stolen from them by the stronger, the better armed. Most people lived and died within a few miles from their birthplace, never seeing what was over the nearest hill.... and most lived lives that could be best described as wretched......

Think about them the next time you swing your leg over your truly marvelous motorcycle, think of them as you change your horizons effortlessly, seeing wonders that none of them ever dreamed of, think of them when you stop at a clean, bright restaurant and imbibe enough calories in an hour that would have kept them alive for a week......

All my rides are haunted... haunted by those who came before, upon whose blood and sweat and labor and misery are my joys based.... in some way, I try and ride for all of them...all of them.

Homecoming.....

He kept coming back to it, the sleek gray bike with the high chrome pipes and black vinyl bench seat. For three days in a row now he had come and stood mutely before it. He reached out and touched the shining rubber grips with his finger tips, gently, like a lover tracing the palm lines of a woman’s hand. The fuel tank was narrow and angular and paneled with rubber. He could smell the acrid, fresh rubber of the tires.

“How much again,” he asked.

The irritable salesman brought the front legs of his tipped chair down smartly and squinted at the boy through a cloud of tobacco smoke. He sighed, bored with the question.

“$895 plus tax and license. Out the door.”

“Is the insurance gonna be much,” asked the boy, his faded army jacket had the outlines of corporal stripes and a combat patch.

The salesman shrugged. He drew hard on his cigarette and then stared at the boy.

“Glad to be back, glad to be home?”

The boy didn’t look at him.

“Home where,” the boy asked.

And then.

“How’s the gears work?”

The salesman got up, walked over, pointed down.

“See that lever down there? Push it with your toe. One down for first, all the rest up…..just like a car. This here’s the clutch lever…… it’s easy, really.”

The boy nodded, almost imperceptibly. He then walked to the salesman’s desk and dug from a cargo pocket a thick roll of currency. One by one, two by two, he smoothed the wrinkled and torn twenty dollar bills, which he stacked on the gray desk. As they both watched, the stack grew.

The salesman stood perplexed.

“Is this gonna be cash,” he asked, scarcely daring to hope.

“Yeah,” said the boy. “All cash. How long’s the paperwork, can you do it tonight?”

“Hell, yeah! You’ll be riding it outa that door right over there!”

Twenty minutes later, the motorcycle idled smoothly in the wide doorway of the bike shop…. outside the door, acres of city lights were now sparkling in the summer dusk, gleaming against a lilac-hued sky. The boy released the clutch lever with a jerk, and the bike bucked and stalled.

The salesman grabbed his arm.

“Nah, man! You gotta let it out easy, let out the clutch easy and twist the gas easier! Gotta be smooth on that throttle, man, smooth.”

The boy smiled, and restarted the bike. He gunned the throttle a couple of times, and then looked up at the salesman.

“You know that question you asked, about being home?”

The salesman nodded.

“Well, I’m not any smarter than when I went over there….so…I don’t know, man, not a clue really…….”

The boy let out the clutch, and the bike wobbled off into the street. He made a shift, then another, and then his taillight faded into traffic.

The salesman stood for a moment, and then he lit another cigarette…. and walked back inside.

Misperception.......

Still awake in the tent and listening to the Alaska rain drum down on the fly, I heard the big twins come rumbling in. Trying not to wake my wife and child, I rolled to the tent door, unzipped a little bit of flap, and looked out. The sun doesn’t set much in Alaska, and in the half-light I could easily see the three big Harleys and the hard-looking, patch-wearing men riding them. They picked a spot and parked the bikes not far from us, and then crawled off, open bottles of beer appearing in their hands like magic . Ugly fellows, all three of them... their stringy long hair plastered flat against their scalps, their beards scraggly, the rain coursing unheeded down their gaunt cheeks... big, mean looking men.

I sighed, and zipped the flap back up. Usually when riders like these appear, we break camp... we pack up, and move on down the road. Staying in proximity to them is just not worth the risk, especially when your pretty wife is on the pillion and your child in the sidecar -but we had just finished a five hundred mile day and I was very reluctant to wake them. I touched the cool metal of the loaded 870 Remington by my side, and decide it’s worth the minimal risk. We are close enough to the highway that the possibility of “social” trouble is probably remote. Besides, I’m very familiar with the pump gun... very familiar with it, and while I hope to never have to use it for self-defense, I would – in a heartbeat. “Turning the other cheek” only works in those societies that harbor a respect for the well-being of other people.

When I awake, the sun burns through the green tent fabric, and my wife still snores gently beside me, but my kid is gone -- his sleeping bag a limp, empty testament to his early rising. Hurriedly, I pull on jeans and boots. grap the gun by the barrel, and crawl from the tent. There in the bright northern sunlight, his uncombed hair spiky and his rubber boots on the wrong feet (again), my young son sat on a log in rapt conversation with three hard core bikers.

“Hi Dad,” he yells. “Look here, this man’s name is ’Pig!” Ha ha, Dad... a man named ‘Pig!’ Ha ha ha!’”

The three men looked at the shotgun at my hands and then at each other. Pig then grinned and said to me, “Josh here has been telling us about his life in a sidecar. Nice kid you got.......”

“Thanks,” I said, walking over and leaning the shotgun inside the sidecar well. I didn’t move far from it. “Hope he hasn’t been bothering ya....”

“Nope, he ain’t.........”

Josh stirred the muddy dirt at his feet with a stick, and turned to Pig. “So... tell me again, Pig, why dontcha take baths?”

Pig looked up at the sky. “Well, ya know.... I don’t go to school, got no pretty lady, and baths, well, baths just make me itch! All over!”

“Yeah, “ my six-year-old laughed. “Itchy all over! Me, too.”

“C’mon, son, “ I smiled. “Time to fix breakfast.”

While water heated on our camp stove, the three patch wearers broke their camp, striking their cheap discount store tent. Pig stuffed his old army sleeping bag into a black garbage bag, and then carried it and two similar bags to his shovelhead Harley and dropped all three of them on the muddy ground by his rear wheel. He grinned at Josh and me.

“Matched luggage!” He shouted.

Josh laughed and I grinned.

In moments, the three were ready to go. The sky had suddenly clouded over and the omnipresent rain had begun again, but the patch wearers paid absolutely no attention to it. Josh and I walked over and huddled under a small tarp I had stretched the night before. Pig hesitated, staring at his bike, and then walked over to us, rain streaking his forehead.....

“Well, good bye little bud!” He grinned at Josh. “Hope you get your own bike someday.... but you know, you gotta be thankful for your sidecar, now, you gotta be thankful that your mommy and daddy care enough about you to take you with ‘em. That ain’t no little thing!”

“Okay, Pig, “ Josh laughed. “ I will...See ya later! Keep your rubber down!”

Pig laughed and then turned to me. “And you take care, ol’ son, that that there pump gun don’t go rust in this rain.” His voice was soft, level, his eyes direct.

“Yup, “ I said. “And...well.... thanks... thanks for what you said to him.”

Pig bowed his head, just once, and then turned and walked to his machine. Within a few minutes, the Harleys had all been started, and the three men headed out onto the highway, going south, the thunder of the their exhausts rolling up against the roadside peaks. I put the gun deeper into the sidecar away from the rain, and, while Joshie played with his hot cocoa, I carried a cup of coffee to Red, still asleep – and still safe – in the tent.