I did a lot more pushing than riding on the wild side with the Allstate. Clunky with fifties styling, the 175 would be a classic today, but at the time, it was just old and wore out. I'm still not sure whether it was a motorcycle or an exercise machine, but my mother approved of it because I spent more of my time trying to crank it as opposed to actually driving it. I don't see why she was acting so concerned about my health anyway since most of her statements were on the order of "You and that (fill in blank) are going to be the death of Me yet". Most people who knew me would have bet the other way around.
I soon replaced the Sears Allstate with a Yamaha 100. The Yamaha wasn't much better with its muffler baffles cut-short by a previous owner. In order to keep Officer Grubby Jackson, my beleaguered neighbor, legal advisor and member of PCPD's finest off my back, I packed the mufflers with steel wool to quiet it down. Sometimes, I would be going down the road and the screw holding in what was left of the baffles would let go and a slug of steel wool would launch out the back like a miniature torpedo, startling more than one stray dog and once almost taking out a hippie hitchhiking down the road. Neighbors and acquaintances padded the distance they followed me, just in case.
Mikie was highly impressed with the speed of his new hog. The Honda 90 had a fancy new metric speedometer, and caused Mikie to brag to anyone who would listen about having it up to 90 kph. It took two days of arguing and a seldom-opened math book before he was convinced. Neither of us had to worry about careers in higher, or even lower, mathematics.
It didn’t take long before they became our first motorized ATVs and we quickly outfitted them for our new passion, deer hunting. These two wheel ATV's were precursors to our ultimate off-roader, a Renault. The dang little box shaped thing never got stuck in wet muddy conditions. We would just get out; put it in gear and put a little pressure on it and it would slowly move across whatever muddy clear-cut we were on.
Deer hunting was a relatively new sport around Phenix City in the 1960's and the main whitetail population was at Fort Benning and the surrounding area to the South of us. I hunted rabbits and squirrels at AJ and Hattie's little farm near the Salem-Shotwell covered bridge north of Phenix City in Lee County for years and never saw a track. Now, some of the biggest bucks taken come from this area. But, unfortunately for me (not to mention AJ and Hattie), they have passed on and the children sold off the place to a local brick company to mine clay. This particular company was notorious for being exceptionally stingy about letting you walk across any part of their properties much less letting you actually hunt on it. If they could have put up a privacy fence, they would have. That attitude was to become most people's mindset today.
Dang shame, it is.
In those pre-camo times, our hunting garb was mainly recycled olive drab Korean era fatigues from Goodwill with an ammunition belt across our shoulders carrying enough 00 buck shells to land at Normandy, shotguns slung in a scabbard behind us. Our knives, dangling near our knees, were suitable for gutting a deer or chopping down small pines. Things, that today, would have a swat team out, drew not even a second glance as we rode down Broad Street past the police station on our way to an afternoon of deer hunting. As often happened, we met Grubby patrolling the south side on our way out of town. Throwing up his hand, he undoubtedly breathed a sigh of relief knowing that we were safely occupied with our guns and posed no headaches for him the remainder of the day.
Like most of our grand schemes, we hadn't planned on what to do in the unlikely occurrence that one of us would actually shoot a deer. That was so far removed from the realm of an actual happening that the plan we did have bordered on a daydream that skipped from shooting any legal buck to showing the massive buck to adoring family and envious friends before entering him into a local big buck contest as a sure winner. So, it naturally followed that Mikie shot a small spike not long after we arrived at our hunting site near Seale, Alabama. The sun was moving behind the tips of the longleaf pines as we tried to make a travois after having found out we couldn't drive with him dangling between us. Finally, in desperation, Mikie got on his motorcycle and I struggled to set the deer on the seat behind him. Propping the spike against Mikie, I draped the legs over his shoulders and tied the deer on. We started rolling down the dusty dirt road toward town with the spike riding shotgun behind Mikie. As the less than professionally tied slip-knots slipped, the deer tilted backward forcing Mikie to bend forward, low over his gas tank. The effect was that anybody that looked, saw what appeared to be Mikie's motorcycle being driven by a deer with me in hot pursuit.
Grubby had pulled over our mutual neighbor, Preacher Jones, and was lecturing the wobbling preacher when Mikie and his deer rolled past. Preacher Jones was a man of the cloth who faced sin and temptation daily, both in the flesh and the bottle, and generally yielded. His main claim to fame was when a member of the congregation was asked about the preacher's errant ways said "Well we didn't need much of a preacher and he was the least we could find.".
I saw Grubby's mouth hanging wide open as he stared in the direction the deer had just passed on Mikies motorcycle. His chew was dribbling down his shirt as I blew past chasing the deer. I really wished I could have seen his face when the pressure built up and the baffles, followed by the slugs of steel wool, shot out the twin tail pipes in a rare double barrel release. And we were gone.
They say Preacher Jones preached one of his finest sermons about demon rum on Sunday Morning with Grubby sitting in the front row.
Can we have a hallelujah, brother?
© LCM3 2003
© LCM3
Rimfire at Idlehourwebs dot com