I was with the Captains Lewis and Clark, and their chief guide, Saca-ja-weah; I was at the battles of Adobe Walls, the Custer fight, the Fetterman Massacre; I was at South Pass, and almost all along the Oregon Trail, the gateway to our modern nation; I was at Antietam, Gettysburg, Pea Ridge, Chicamaugwa, Shiloh........
Shiloh! Yeah, I was at Shiloh.....such a beautiful place name, and such a sad, haunted place. Sit down near Bloody Pond, near dusk....sit quietly and listen to the faint sobbing and cries in the gentle night air..... if you can't hear them, if you aren't moved by where you are, you don't deserve to be there..... Nossir, and those old boys's sacrifices were wasted on you....
Yeah, Bloody Pond, to which the wounded of the battle would crawl to try and slake their dreadful thirst.... The wounded -- some blue, some grey -- made their way there.... and then the muddy pond went red. Blue and Grey, but the same red mud, the same red blood.....
I've been where the Comanche rode, and the early Texas Rangers, with Walker Colts and rawhide bags of cold flour, riding just as hard, hunting their mortal enemies, the 'Comanch'..... Cynthia Ann, Quanah Parker, Charles Goodnight, John Coffee Hayes.... I've ridden where giants rode.....
And I've done it on my touring motorcycles.... Many of us ride bikes for pleasure, for distraction, for show, but I rode my bike because I loved it, and then, mile by mile, the motorcycle gave to me my whole nation, showed its history to me, mile by mile, county by county, state by state....... It was the best thing, next to Red, that has ever happened to me....that first, mutiple day tour, so long ago..... Thank God we took it!
