Fork in the Road

By Patti Cary

     As a young girl, my family spent many summer days awayfrom our home, vacationing at my grandmother’s modest country house in Clearlake, California.  Clearlake is a one-horse town consisting of, back in the Seventies at least, a saloon, a post office, a liquor store and a Baptist meeting hall. 

     For parents, I guess it was a quiet oasis away from the stresses of the “big city”.  For kids, unless we were water skiing at the lake, it was pretty much torture. Sometimes we stayed there for as long as three whole weeks. 

     In the summer of 1975, I was thirteen years old.  On one particularly dreadfully hot and boring day I had run out of Archie comics to read, annoyed my siblings, pouted, stomped and cried myself into a particularly ridiculous tizzy.  Imagining I’d run away, I stormed out of my nana’s house.  Despite my grand theatrical efforts, no one seemed to notice.

I made the short walk up to the main, two-lane highway that led out of town.  In the blazing heat I got as far as the stone bridge above the nearby creek and did the only thing I could think of to do - drop pebbles into the trickling water below and watch cars zip by to what could only be more cool and interesting destinations. 

     Even in my limited lifetime, I was sure I deserved to spend my precious time in a more glamorous place than Clearlake, California.  Overlooking the creek with my head in my hands, I wondered what I’d done to deserve such a tragically dull life.  

     I recall I was wearing very short cut-off jeans, a Peter Frampton t-shirt, a black bandana tied around my neck and a pair of dusty black Keds on my sockless feet.  My stringy, brown hair hung to my shoulders and a very large pimple mocked me from the side of my nose. Cars and trucks rumbled quickly by, shaking the ground and the little bridge where I stood, moping.

As I contemplated flinging myself into the creek (a short drop which at worst would have possibly resulted in a twisted ankle) I was startled by the approaching rumble and roar of distant mayhem.  I had never experienced such a sound.  I looked up, turning towards the highway, putting my personal sorrows on hold to see a steady stream of very loud motorcycles coming down off the incline heading in my direction.  Finally.  Something interesting.

Not far past the bridge and just off the road was a lone cinder-block building, the liquor store that supplied my steady summer diet of comic books and Three Musketeer candy bars. I soon understood the dozen or so bikers would be making a pit stop at the store, just yards from where I stood. 

     In shock and awe, I watched the chopper parade snake by - wild looking men with long hair and crazy moustaches, leather clad and weather worn.  Some had sexy, hard looking women riding along, slung on the back seat like baggage. Some rode solo.  There were dozens of them and the sound of their arrival was intoxicating.  I was transfixed, frozen in my tracks.

Soon the little liquor store parking lot was overrun with a noisy crew.  Most of the bunch sat on their idling bikes, revving their motors and shouting insults back and forth.  A few wandered the parking lot, smoking and carrying on.  I wasn’t scared but I still couldn’t move. 
     Then it happened.  One of the bikers broke off from the crowd and was pulling a u-turn, heading back in my direction.  When he pulled his shiny metal machine up to the curb in front of me, I stopped breathing.  I tried to pretend not to notice him by studying the dirty laces on my sneakers.

I remember his hair was black and thick and choppy with bits of grey on the sides.  In my thirteen-year-old mind, he looked old.  He was probably thirty.  He didn’t seem as grizzled or rough as the others.  He wore the uniform of boots, jeans and a large belt and he was sans shirt under his tight black leather vest.  His strong, tan arms were the most wondrous thing I’d ever seen.

He revved his bike at my side until I had to look up.  He didn’t say anything.  He simply tipped his head in the direction of the space behind him on the seat where he’d made room for me.  He winked and smiled and I think I smiled back but then quickly looked away. 

     I felt an odd mixture of excitement, danger and defiance but before I could even fully grasp the situation, the bikers’ pit stop was over and the group was rallying and heading on up the highway.  The line of motorcycles took off in an orderly formation, away from Clearlake, away from the monotony.  My new friend lingered a moment longer, popped his bike into gear, winked again and sped off to join the tail end of the departing parade.
     I stood motionless for what seemed like a day, then, I high-tailed it down the dirt road back to my grandmother’s house, feeling very different and very alive.

Back safely on her boring porch, back with my boring family on our boring vacation, I couldn’t help but wonder what Betty or Veronica might have done.

END