“Brian!” came my dad’s quivering voice over the phone. He sounded shaken and even disturbed, like a nut had come loose in his brain … or he had just joined a cult. “How come you’ve NEVER bought me a retirement gift like your brother did — one that is all-consuming and a total bottomless pit?”
His voice wasn’t accusatory. In fact, I think it was his way of saying thank you. My answer: “Because I’m the good son and I think you should enjoy your retirement.”
A year or so back, my brother bought my father a vintage British motorcycle frame along with a greasy bucket of assorted parts. My brother — thoughtful lad that he is — figured the old gentleman needed something to fill his time. Every waking minute, to be exact, and even some of the sleeping ones. A project that would require endless, mind-numbing, nerve-racking, never-ending tinkering, wiring, assembling, cursing and mad scratching of the head with greasy fingers while mumbling things like, “Why doesn’t the (bleep) (bleepin’) (bleep) fit in there?”
Why? I’ll tell you why. Because it’s an old British bike that came in a greasy bucket. Why WOULD it fit?
My brother is a vintage motorcycle tinkerer. He loves the fact that the ratio of hours spent repairing to riding is 250-1. (The “1” is actually a single minute.) This is the same guy who is currently hobbling around in a boot-like cast after taking a spill on the trails outside of Ocala. His bike broke clean through both bones in his lower leg, and he now has a hunk of stainless steel the length of Connecticut bolted in there with the kind of rivets that hold skyscrapers together.
If his bikes aren’t breaking down, they’re breaking him.
But my dad isn’t even to the point of riding his bike, yet. Horrible, disfiguring injuries are just a dream at this point. He has been desperately trying to get the motorcycle ready in time for a vintage rally being held in Armpit, Alabama.
By the way he describes it, these are events that resemble something straight out of a Mad Max film. “Brian,” he told me after returning from the first one he met my brother at, “they never shower and all they do is sit around the campfire drinking whiskey straight from the bottle, eating grilled pork chops with bare, greasy hands and saying the most God-awful things, which usually involve chrome or ball bearings.”
Maybe it IS a cult he’s joined.
It was this rush to get ready for the trip that had prompted the phone call to me. The parts appeared to be allergic to each other and I think he was looking for a sanity break. Or maybe he just wanted me to tell him he wouldn’t be a bad father if he rolled the demon vehicle into the lake and told my brother it was stolen by gypsies.
He called again a day or so later while on the way to the motorcycle rally. It was early in the morning, and he informed me that he had just eaten a fried bologna biscuit.
Something about his voice seemed to be saying, “Do you understand what my life has come to?”
Later that day my wife mentioned how he had called her, too, and that he also mentioned the fried bologna biscuit. “Why do you think he would tell me that?”
“Why?” I asked. “Because he’s on the way to motorcycle hell where the only chance he’ll have to talk with normal people is if he’s lucky enough to get arrested when the campground is raided. We’re his only lifeline to normal society. That’s why.”
I haven’t heard from him in a coupe of days, so I’m assuming he survived and returned to Tampa where he belongs. I’m also quite certain that the bike still isn’t ride-able and that he’s sitting outside right now working on it while cursing my brother and quietly thanking me for never sending a retirement gift.