When I was 10, I worked at my mother's tiny shop and at her stall at the swap meet. I didn't make very much at all. It was definitely child labor. But, I did earn enough to buy a motorcycle. This would be about 1979. Man, I miss the 70's. And I was barely even there for it.

So, as a kid in the 70's, your prospects for owning a motorcycle were rather limited unless you were born right. But buying a stolen one wasn't difficult. Easier than stealing one yourself, anyways. The local bully and I were slowly becoming acquainted by the end of 1979. He was a good source for stolen goods, I would find. One day I managed to get in a fight with someone right in front of him. It was only a matter of time, really. There were a lot of fights back then. Not just because it was the 70's, but because I lived on the merge between three different types of neighborhoods. On one side you had a rather working class trailer park that today we would call 'multi cultural'. On the other side were farms and orchards with large estates which stretched on until the mountains from my point of view. They were rather mono-cultural. Our home was at the edge of a relatively newly built middle class area. We were only just barely middle class, though. My father had passed away from a sudden heart attack before I was 6. Had he still been around, I guess we could have been middle class.

You know what? My father deserves more than just a sentence in a nowhere blog. Let me at least make him an aside. My father was born in Claremore, Oklahoma in 1928. I dunno much about his father, but I do know his mother was a Cherokee. He worked the oil fields with his father until nearly 1943, when he joined the Army to try to get away from the poverty, learn a new vocation maybe, and help his country. He lied about his age, my aunt would tell me. She said he was a very broad guy, and tall for his age, not unlike myself. He became a wrench in the Army Air Corps by the time he turned 16, and was attached to a bombardment group after some training. My father then went on to help create such hits as Iwojima, Truk Island, Okinawa, and the bombing of Osaka. This is maybe as good a place as any to mention that my mother was orphaned during the bombing of Osaka.

So this bully watched me as I dusted myself off. He tilted his head like he was thinking of something he wanted to say. I rubbed my head where it hurt and looked at him with one eye as much as I dared.

'Someone needs to teach you how to fight.' He said with mild disappointment.
'Uh...did I not just win this one?' I looked around. The other kid had gone.
'Only because you were bigger. You won't always be bigger.' I wasn't a whole lot smaller than he was.
'I dunno. I'm rather fond of my pizza.'
The bully smiled. He lit a cigarette and offered me one. He was maybe 15? 16?
'No, thanks. I'm trying to quit'. I struggled to get the words out as I straightened my back a bit.
'Ya like motorcycles?'
'What?' I wasn't prepared for this segue. But it wasn't any worse than my plopping my mother at the end of the last segue.
'C'mon. Lemme show you something.'

Not far from my house were a few other homes in the middle of construction as well as a good deal of brush and trees cleared for that construction. The bully went behind one of the brush piles and shortly reappeared, dragging a dirt bike with him.

'Ain't she a beaut?' He waved his hand over it.
It wasn't. It had been ridden hard and put up wet, and then dragged backwards through the brush he hid it in, and then, presumably, someone had beaten it with an ugly stick. Sometime during the night, something made a nest in it.
'Yamaha?' I thought I saw some yellow on the tank.
'You DO like motorcycles!'
 I loved them. What boy didn't?
He straddled it and looked at me over his shoulder.
'Get on. We're gonna go to the reservoir... And don't hold on to me like a fag. Grab the seat.'
The exhaust was under the seat. I had to swap my hands from one to the other to avoid them burning too much. There were no foot pegs for me. At any moment, I expected to be thrown free. I had never been on a motorcycle before and I now suspected the bully had very little experience on them as well.

The reservoir is where we all gathered to ride our bikes or motorcycles. It was hundreds of yards of dirt.  It was dry until summer when the mountains ran off into them. It was the middle of the week, and there were very few kids about. I watched as the bully clumsily went about putting the bike through it's paces. Eventually he rode up to me and nodded his approval. I looked impressed because I was amazed he was still on the bike.
'Now you try'. I froze.
'Do you know how to ride?' He asked.
I wasn't watching him that closely. I knew the grip was throttle. I knew the right lever was the brake, and that was the extent.
'Don't worry about the front brake. It doesn't work.' That cut my knowledge in half.

An hour later, and not nearly as many tumbles as I expected to have, and I was at least as good on the thing as the bully was. I was so fucking happy, grinning ear to ear. It was a great feeling of freedom. I felt like I was flying. I didn't want to ever give it back.

That's when she died on me. A short sputter and that was it.
'She's out of gas'. The Bully said as he walked towards me.
'You got any money for gas?' He put a hand on me to steady me. The bike was so tall I could only reach the ground with one leg.
'Yeah. I got some money...'
'Good. Take her back to your place. Keep it in the bushes there, but not too close to the homes they are working on right now or they'll find it.' He looked around like he was about to tell me a secret.
'She yours, man. Don't never tell no one about this OK?'
I didn't know what to say. I just kept staring at him. I was waiting for him to take it back.
He smiled. Like, a genuine smile. It was the first time I ever saw kindness on his face.
'You owe me two hunnert bucks, though. Remember, I know where you live.' He walked away.
I watched him until he disappeared in the distance. He never did come back for it. He had actually left it with me. It took me two hours to push the bike to it's hiding place. My left hand was killing me because I was using the clutch the whole time. I didn't learn until later you could put it in neutral.