This Week's Story

[mhershon]

Telling Us Who They Are

Motorcycles take us to places we normally would not go in cars. We ride secondary roads that would only be tedious in cars. Motorcycles present us to small-town locals in a different way than if we were driving cars. Nod if you agree.

Especially if we’re traveling alone, folks are more likely to see us as fellow human beings. They’re more inclined to chat with us...and perhaps confide in us. Tell us who they are.

I’ve been back a few days from the trip I mentioned last month -- 3400 miles -- from here in Denver to Nashville, Tennessee, and back home via a couple of places in Kentucky and a couple in Indiana.

I realized on this journey that some of the ideas I’ve had all my life are not accurate at all. These ideas seeped into me somehow without anyone telling me that this is so or that is so.

These untested ideas are durable. They’ve stayed with me. Maybe some stay with you too. They’re not based on experience, nor on reliable testimony, nor on anything trustworthy. They’re not learned; they’re absorbed.

I was raised in Indiana. Somehow I learned that people from Kentucky, just south of us, were different from us, not as intelligent, not as evolved, not as sophisticated. They were likely to be racist, redneck bullies.

After the concert in Nashville, I rode north 75 miles to Bowling Green, Kentucky. In Bowling Green, I took the Corvette factory tour and visited the National Corvette Museum, both of which were totally worthwhile. Wonderful, really. I especially enjoyed the factory tour.

I left Bowling Green headed for rural western Kentucky, south of Nicky Hayden’s hometown of Owensboro. I was looking for Paradise, Kentucky because of a John Prine song. I rode on the Everly Brothers Boulevard, John Prine Avenue and the Merle Travis Highway. There was one of  Merle’s guitars behind the desk at my motel in Central City, Kentucky. 

I woke up early and rode to Paradise, only a Tennessee Valley Authority power station. Nothing to see. The motel clerk had suggested I have breakfast in tiny Drakesboro, halfway to Paradise, so I stopped there on the way back, at the Paradise Cafe. A counter, five or six booths.

I ate my biscuits and gravy and spoke briefly to the waitress. When I asked her for directions to a highway that might take me toward Bloomington, Indiana, she pointed to a guy sitting in a corner booth. He was wearing bib overalls and smoking a cigarette. He had a full beard and looked like that Kentucky archetype described a few paragraphs back. He’ll know, she said.

The guy turned out to work for a motorcycle repair shop in Central City. We fix anything, he said. He and I had what I’d call a great conversation. 

He told me to ride through Owensboro and across the Ohio River bridge into Indiana, a lovely bridge I hasten to add. We talked for maybe 15 minutes and unless I am easily fooled, we parted friends.

I thought about the guy as I rode from western Kentucky to Bloomington, where I stopped to see my old boss at the Yamaha store. I was still thinking about him and shaking my head as I rode to Indianapolis to see my family. I told my niece about the guy, still marveling at how I’d been so willing to pigeonhole him.

I rode home across northern Kansas as I usually do. I stopped for lunch in Belleville almost halfway across -- at the Bel-villa, a restaurant I know and like. As I left, carrying my helmet and gloves, one of the waitresses was sitting outside on a bench smoking a cigarette.

How’re you doing, she asked. Must be lonely, I thought, no one to talk to. She was fifty or fifty-five-ish, faded and careworn. I told her I was on my way home from a trip in Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana, that I’d been to a concert in Nashville and had a great visit with my family in Indianapolis.

I was just in Kentucky, she said, kinda surprising me. She looked like a Kansas farm wife, a woman who’d worked hard all her life and hadn’t found the end of the rainbow. Hadn’t been a hundred miles from home but maybe once.

No kidding, I said, expecting to hear that she had also visited family, maybe someone ill.

I went to Muhammad Ali’s funeral, she said.

I was stunned, I’ll admit it. Did you drive, I asked. Yes, she said. I thought, that’s 700 miles. As I looked at her, I knew she didn’t give a damn about a prizefight. She admired the man, what he stood for, and wanted to be there, to be part of that huge, sad goodbye.

My hat’s off to you, I said, thinking of her driving her old Chevy across Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky, to cry for a brave man she’d never met, to salute him for being who he was. We talked a few more minutes. As I was about to put my earplugs in and my helmet on, I told her I was gonna think about her all the way to Denver.

She watched me put on my stuff, back my bike out of the space and wave goodbye.

I kept my promise. I thought about her and the guy in the bib overalls all the way home. Evidently I’m still thinking about them.                                     

[oldbike54]

 Great article 

 Dusty

[DesertPilot]

Thanks.  That was a great reminder that people can surprise us in a good way.

[mhershon]

Desert Pilot, did you remember that story from CityBike?

[Gliderjohn]

Thank you for a wonderful story. Loving where you are coming from on what I have read so far. Yes, humanity can be found where least expected at times anyway. Cherish it.
GliderJohn

[mhershon]

Thanks, John!

[jwinwi]

Thank you Maynard. Definitely one of the highlights of what gets posted around here!

[mhershon]

Thanks, jwinwi!

[LowRyter]

Great story.  Reminds of another one.

One of my best friends was a grade school teacher in OKC.   Muhammad Ali came to visit OKC and several schools had an assembly to see The Champ.  Ali was so impressed with how my friend had organized his students and how well behaved they were, Ali went directly to see him, bypassing all the Education Brass, shook his hand, talked to him and gave him an autographed copy of his biography.

[Ncdan]

👍

[kingoffleece]

One of the many reasons to subscribe to BIKE and MSL from the UK.  If you like our mHERSON you'll enjoy all the other scribes-they ALL have personality and actually live with the bikes they write about.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Half way to Paradise.. great story, Maynard. 

[greer]

Thank you for sharing the story, mhershon.  I sure wish we'd known you were in BG, and we'll look forward to meeting you in Cedar Vale.

Sarah

[80CX100]

     I love reading your stories. 

     You remind me of Prine with your writing; such simple words and the turn of sparse phrases, and yet you capture and describe some of the deepest and most complex aspects of the human equation 

      Thank you for sharing

       Kelly

[redhawk47]

Great story, great trip.
One of the advantages of traveling solo.

Dan

[ScepticalScotty]

That was nice, brought a smile to my face. I have had a few interesting conversations in remote cafes over the years.

People are nearly all mostly just great.

[Scout63]

Great story Maynard.

[blu guzz]

when you ride a guzzi, you should not be surprised to have people come up to you either.  most civilians and a fair few motorcyclists will tell you that it is the first one they have ever seen or, they didn't know they were still in business.  100 years this year I said to a gent at the pumps last night.