Talking Back

The day started out well, I woke up. I woke up on my boat. Then while walking bent over in the low cabin, my back let me know it didn’t like the hard cushions it was sleeping on last night. “You work to hard for 56, and your sleeping arrangements suck,” my talking back said. I told it I was holding out for a woman with a nice bed and didn’t want to spend my money on one, it seemed frivolous. How much fun can I have sleeping by myself?

I loosened up gradually, made some coffee. I had spent the night on the boat last night because when I got there it was late. I had to put brake fluid in my boat. No, my boat doesn’t have brakes. The head-gasket started leaking and the motor rusted tight, rings to cylinder walls. Brake fluid fixes that, while you sleep. I applied force to the iron bar that I made to fit the flywheel with two bolts to fit the flywheel's holes. Sure enough, the motor turned. Problem solved, now to go buy a head gasket from the tractor dealer. My boat motor is a marinized International Harvester Cub Lo-Boy motor. Tractor motors take a lot of abuse, turn slowly and last forever.

Having accomplished that, I rode towards home, stopping at Denny’s to fuel up the body, which wanted more caffeine and some food. I can get the senior menu. I just think that’s so cool, pulling up on my Harley while the Muzak plays “Honkey Tonk Women” (!?!) by the Stones. Boomers in senescence, not going out gracefully. I read the paper and joke easily with the waitress. It’s a skill us old guys get. I noticed it enviously when I was tongue-tied and young.

Reading the paper at Denny’s, just like a few thousand old farts across the land. What’s in the Herald? More men being crazy. One fatally, one just enough to go to prison. What’s wrong with us guys? Is it the same thing that makes Jake go into a yard with 3 pit bulls and chest up to them? I suspect it is.

The first story that grabbed me was a very sad story about a woman whose husband committed suicide. There is a picture of them in happier times, she with her trendy punkish blond hair ala Blondie and he with his Eric Clapton suit and hair. Both are holding a beer and smiling. I can almost hear the jukebox playing “Cocaine”. She apparently felt the coroner’s office was insensitive when they gave her back her husband’s bloody rosary beads and the suicide note that said he didn’t believe in God. Also, she can’t pay back the towing company to get the 20k Jeep Cherokee that she still has to make payments for. She leaves her email address with the reporter who passes it on. Maybe someone can help her. I know I sure can’t. It’s a little late for that and I think the kind of help she is looking for is green. Suicides don’t pay off in the life-insurance game.

The second story is a little better. Dude gets busted for pot, growing pot. He then keeps his guns, including a machine gun, and practices at the range. The FBI informant who nails the dude for being a felon in possession of a firearm says the gun range is a militia training gun range. The range denies it, says it was a joke. Not only did dude keep his weapons, he wrote certified letters to the IRS about it. This is why one should not be one’s own best customer if one wants to deal drugs.

I wrap the money in the receipt; some big old fat boy gets out of an SUV (I won't call it an American Lard Wagon) parked right next to my bike in the almost empty parking lot. The waitress comes by and asks if I’d like anything else, I tell her I’m busy watching the fat boy next to my bike, and the money’s on the table and I leave. I walk up to the fat boy who is 6’5” 300 some pounds and he moves over while he’s talking to his wife and kid. I’m acting like Jake, now, territorial. On the way home a youngster on a rice rocket tries to ride with me, but I start passing cars and taking too many chances, he hangs back, content to look like a racer.

I have just defended my territory again. Against what? Some family guy that got too close to my bike and a kid who could only afford a cheap motorcycle. Men, do we ever grow up? What’s makes us so crazy? I think I’ll add this to the list of things I need to work on. It’s a long list, and if I have a chance of finishing it, I’ll have to be 100 and in good shape. Maybe the first thing I need to do is grow up a little, and change the way I ride when I get a little p.o.’d. It’s a little like playing with guns, I think. The danger gets to familiar, and then the damn things go off.