Renting BSAs with lies, cash and a borrowed license.

Used to be, in olden times, (of yore) a garage redolent with intoxicating fumes of internal combustion engines, on 18th and Troost. I was 14, and visiting my grandmother's house for the summer on Manheim Rd. right off of 39th and Troost. I lived in Tulsa at the time, but would move back to my native KC for high school and beyond. But this was summer, and I had adventure on the mind, having outgrown model airplanes and AirBoy comic books.

On a trip downtown, the streetcar passed the above-mentioned garage, and I saw, in the flash of passing, a tangle of motorcycles and a sign that had "RENT" in the message. I had ridden small motorbikes in Tulsa, anything with a motor on it. I recall a Whizzer, a sort of motorized bicycle. But i was up for bigger game. I was hard/firm on the path of an obsessive limerance with motorcycles and it has never left me, though my riding days are over. Through the years I've had mostly Harleys, but those were interspersed with other brands, British bikes among them.

I got off the return streetcar at the garage that rented BSAs and wandered through them, my hand floating over fenders, gas tanks, seats, headlights. Taking time to read the full sign I was informed these chrome and lacquered beauties were available to anyone with a valid license and a certain amount of cash for deposit and hourly fees. I would fulfill these requisites.

I borrowed a license. I had brought lawn-mowing and pin-setting money with me from Tulsa. Two days later I was back at the BSA garage of dreams.

There were no pictures on driver's licenses back then. Within minutes I was revving a BSA. One minor setback: I started to sign my real name to the contract. The man who was in charge, looked at me with narrowed eyes, said, "Not your license, right?" I flushed. He said, "Oh, go ahead." Took my money, stated a time limit, waved me out. Not exactly a business model for today's litigious society. Life was good back then.

I rode up Troost for awhile, turned west, ended up in the Plaza, and pulled into Winstead's. I left my BSA parked next to a sedan, and swaggered inside for a burger. I ate it seated on my freedom express dream machine. Then I kicked it alive, headed south for the open roads. Hair blowing, bugs peppering my face, this was living. Then it almost wasn't. Some woman in a Chevy ahead of me slammed on her brakes, and I slid sideways until I hit the bumper, part of me under her car. I was okay until she took off. The rear end of the car lowered enough to catch part of an arm and leg, then she was gone.

Mainly road rash and bumper scrape, my injuries looked worse than they were, and the BSA had suffered no ill effects, a scratch or two. A learning experience. I told the adults responsible for my summer welfare I fell out of a tree. Nutty kid, they shook their heads in total belief. The incident did nothing to curtail my passion. I rented more BSAs that summer, and, at 15, I was the proud owner of a Harley knucklehead. Paper route money bought that motorcycle, even though my folks forbade me to even ride on the back of one. So how is it possible to own a motorcyclle with no plate, no title, no driver's license, and no parental consent? That's a story for another time.

Writing Advice: do not take.

Many years ago, a few weeks before a nice long trip to Hawaii, I wrote fifty pages of a novel and sent it off to two publishers. One I can't remember, and one was Charles Scribner's Sons. The reason I remember Scribner is because they had published F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway--and they answered with a short letter. I submitted just to take the leap, get in the game so to speak. And once in Hawaii, I forgot about it. Weeks later, on my return, I had envelopes from both publishers; back then, they answered more swiftly. Now, they may not answer at all. Anyway, one note was a rejection. The other was from an editor at Scribner who said, (and I am paraphrasing as I no longer have the note) "I enjoyed what I have read of (Forgettable Title) and would like to see more. You have a clever, ironic style--don't lose it. Keep us apprised of your progress." And it was written on fine linen paper of high rag content, with a fountain pen!

Where is that novel, now? I don't know. I immediately went on to other things, job, women, the proper attire for whatever I was at that stage. I never went back to that novel. Why? I'd been validated. Sort of. It was the old "I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me" Woody Allen sort of self esteem trick. Or perhaps The Fear of Success. The wiring. Who knows how it was formed in those early years.

Whatever, I'm making up for lost time these days. Submitting more, writing more, and hopefully, better.

But one bit of advice, if I may: don't discuss your current project. Doing so sucks the energy out of it. And this: don't take my advice or anyone else's.

Some will tell you to write so many words a day. Some will tell you to work in a library. Some will say only work in the dark hours of morning. The key word is work. Work a little. Work a lot. Up to you. But do write.

And some just want to tell you what to do. To them: up ya nose widda rubbah hose.

Wing Walking, Out Bad, and Ayiti.

The first short story of 2014 just went out to some top tier literary reviews and already got a rejection! It's about a kid who graduates high school in the 50's and decides to take a year off before college. He spends the summer painting the house and outbuildings of his old man's farm property, and he lives on the farm while doing this. He's paid for this endeavor and he uses the money to soup up a 1942 Ford coupe, starting with a 1957 Canadian truck engine, bored out, Isky cam, etc. It's also the first story in a collection entitled Hot Rods from Hell. The boy, Billy Altair, has a new 33rpm stereo he got for his birthday, but only one record: Victory at Sea, a very symphonic long play album, and it fills the old farmhouse and surrounding environs with big booming music. One day, he sees a colorful biplane buzzing the place, and the story gains momentum. It surprised me, the way this story skidded around some turns and the way it ended, too. It's about 4,500 words and it's called Wing Walker.

Out Bad is a book by Donald Charles Davis http://www.agingrebel.com/ and it is, in a word, electrifying. He rode with the Mongols, a heavy-duty outlaw group in California and other states. It's mainly about the targeting of the Mongols by federal agencies, and its title comes from the ejection of a member by stripping him of patch and privileges and any further association with the club.

It's a self-published book, and it suffers from odd page makeup in places, plenty of typos, and mixup of sentences, but it's a good book through all of that, by a very intelligent author, and may even be an Important Book. Journalist Davis chroncicles the moral, financial and criminal excesses of the undercover agents who penetrated the club.  The flagrant abuse of power and tax-generated money is shocking and disgusting, especially when the targets of that abuse are disenfranchised Americans. Mongols and other clubs are easy marks for the federal agencies that went after them. And the people within those agencies are the ones who could not stand up under harsh investigative procedures themselves--or even fair, unbiased procedures.

Ayiti by Roxane Gay is visceral and eye-opening. Packs a bunch of wallops, and pulls none. The title is the Haitian native pronunciation of Haiti, and however it's pronounced, you will not think of this place of poverty and beauty the same after reading the series of gritty vignettes about explosive anger, pain and the inescapable dogfight of daily existence. She is the author of An Untamed State, available for pre-order on Amazon

Road iron Motorcycle and Book Club Buys Prescott, Arizona

(A deal's a deal. If a Book & Bike club buys your town, accept it.)

Last night's dream. This kind of outlaw club with a fleet of grey Harley-Davidson Servicycles (the 3-wheelers they used to make to do everything from sell ice cream, to police utility work--tank shift and a box between the rear two wheels) bought a town in Arizona. So they owned it. But the town wouldn't recognize the sale. In my dream, the sale was legal. The only spokesperson for Road Iron was a slim woman with short hair and tattoos, wearing a t-shirt and jeans and high boots that look like horsey-type boots that are usually worn with jodphurs. She was exasperated with the town.

That's about it. No rhyme, no reason. A book & bike club bought a town, and a specific one at that. Prescott exists. I looked it up and it's a town in the middle of Arizona of about 34,000 people. I've never been there, never even heard of it, to my conscious knowledge.

One detail, as the dream fades, is that the club didn't ride these 3-wheeler utility things, they rode choppers like outlaw clubs do. The fleet of Servicycles were parked somewhere near or in Prescott. Waiting to deliver books, maybe. There was noise, chopper sounds, revving, hollering. The lady seemed to be the leader, perturbed that the town didn't recognize the sale. Hey, wouldn't you?

Then I woke up. Piecing it all together, maybe the takeover of Hollister (CA) in 1947 by bikers was the neural input to start this thing; I've read about it lately, in more than one book. The lady looked like someone who used to have a gallery in Paola. But the rest of it is a mystery. Some cultures believe dreams are our real life, and this daily thing we do is but a dream. Somehow, the walls of the corridor we travel waver and become transparent enough to see into a parallel world. And that's a Pandora's box of musings and meanderings.

But when I was twelve I had recurring dreams. The same dream for three or four nights. It involved a reflective pool at dusk with monks moving silently around it, in robes with hoods that hid their faces in shadow. And trees outside of that, tall slim trees like columnar evergreens. There was nothing scary about this, to my twelve-year-old mind, but it was peaceful. It turns out a great-uncle died during that period, an artist, Jack Gage Stark, and the scene turned out to be in Santa Barbara--I saw it in a book years later. Jack lived in Santa Barbara, and was associated with that scene. But that's another story, another dreamscape. Kind of a remote viewing, if you will. Perhaps Prescott will reveal itself someday. 

All Downhill. Notes on skiing and life back in the '60s, unexpurgated.

Notebooks, sketchpads, dashing off words and pix at various bottom-of-the-mountain watering holes. The skis above are Head Masters 1960, available at vintageskiworld.com  Here ya go, from a little faded notebook circa '60s:

Write the speed, the exhilaration, the rapture of aspen skiing--how to stay, once here would I ever be able to afford to ski? This is more than just vacation intoxication. How do ski bums exist. Various cons, but that stuff doesn't last, tarnishes. A high point: two attractive girls skiid up to me on the mogul side, asked if I was an instructor, I replied no, what made them think that--it was my cannonball non-style, my mode of dress, Levi's, gaitors, plain dark waist-length jacket, no frills, no ski-shop shit (couldn't afford it anyway--though when in one of the pricey shops I bumped, physically, into Jill St. John as she was trying on a sweater, another high point for me, as we laughed and chatted), anyway, when the girls asked for lessons, it made the aspen dream even more real, I was mistaken for a townie not a tourist, a person who lived here, maybe even voted here, endured the summers, waited for the first snow. A sign?

The gin-fueled racing with Omaha guys and those rich Mexicans ("andale, arriba!") The owner of a Kentucky Derby winner filmed me (!) WEEKS in the mts. every day every condition, Ajax, even the expert runs, jesus what a feeling, getting better every day, carving with my edges, gaining control with the speed, changing goggle inserts for flat gray days, snow days, sunny so bright it hurts days, yellow, rose-colored, clear, blue goggles to suit conditions. Snowstorm, few on the mountain, quiet during the fall of snow thick at times but so feather quiet, stop to appreciate, man, the feeling--picking my way down, will the lifts be going? I see some, barely visible, as I ski directly beneath them, gray ghosts moving, empty. But if they shut down, then back to room, write some, drinks in town, drum up a couple locals, see what the prospects are.

Another sign, Butch the mayor's dog, follows me everywhere--some still call me Butch from high school. He was in a fight back of the Hotel Jerome, they threw out some bones or something, bunch of dogs there in the alley, fur flew--sounded like the end-all, I ran off a couple mutts, Butch okay, happy, maybe likes that action, maybe just glad to see me. I go into Jerome bar, find a stool, busy on a snow day, then practicality hits me, kids, school, living in a house, wife, she'd move, we just about moved to Billings. Single, i could do this easy. Easy. Save up a stake, then figure it out. But family. And no mistake about it, It would be sefish as hell. But guys do that shit. Chase the dream. Billings had Bear Mountain you see. I tried Burlington, VT too. Couldn't find a job.

Chart House, smell of expertly burnt meat, a black velvet grease-filmed painting on the wall over the cook-pit of a Tongan or some island guy, Tahitian, south seas, the only good painting I've ever seen on black velvet, the steaks are cooked on open flames, mesquite, damn they're exquisite, wash 'em down with coffee and booze. If I lived here I would have to have the steak, taste buds are at their best just off the mountain, on a day where moguls are defined in the sun, and the blood runs at a prime viscosity and the rhythm is there, mogul after mogul, maybe miss one or two, jump one, back into the easy swinging, easy carving, loose limbed gait, rapture doesn't come close to explaining it. Mindless, in the moment living, like the great philosophers suggest you do.

(That was in the 60's. On long skis. Stay and ski for life? Tried, but I didn't go that route, obviously. Many did--the subculture. I worked my way up and sideways in the ad biz, owned a couple of agencies, one successful, the other not. Between marriages I went to L.A. and wrote screenplays and TV commercials. Learned some things. Got homesick. And that's another story. But I never forgot the ski dream. It was the purest oxygen my soul ever breathed, the tao of something...there were other exhilarants I call them, accelerants, riding with a horde of bikers, floating on the thunder, half buzzed. The rodeoing, too. Bursts of violence, fear-sweat, the relief for not dying. The question of 'why' never fully answered, avoided in fact. Lots of that 'why.' So, of course, I began writing fiction.)