Thursday, the 28th of February will be my 50th birthday. Needless to say, reflection remains a way of life. My mother recently sent a photograph from 1973, in it I have that straight hair, wear a paisley hippie chick shirt, tight blue jeans, with an obvious teenager attitude. I am ricocheted back to a time before two-wheelers were my obsession. It was all about boys, music, boys, and well, yes, boys. Motorcycles found me at 16, cutting class, smokin’ dope and riding passenger with my buddy, Paul on his new ’75 Superglide to Providence Rhode Island, for that first of many a magical afternoons.
I would hitchhike downtown, (kids hitchhiked, it was safe way back then) to waste the precious moments of my youth, to sit on a wall in Willimantic, Connecticut, the armpit of New England, when one day, walking up from the local head shop, I see an red K-Model Sportster in a merchant’s window. An odd juxtaposition for a brilliant ruby ride to be encased in a world of mortar and brick. It was for sale, at three grand, insurmountable money for a teenager in the early seventies.
I longed for my freedom through a driver’s license, and within two years, I was meeting long haired, rugged young men on steel wheels, and was sheathed on the back roads, on top of rocks and within the fields of my unknown feminine wiles, my life road, as a biker chick had begun. I turned 18 at a tiny, ancient clubhouse, quietly, without fanfare, as I shouldn’t have been at the clubhouse. Consider the felony.
Barely finishing High School, thanks Mr. Pride, our Art teacher and Mr. Harrington, who let me use a calculator in business math. My over-active major was studying sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. As I began to make the new friends I still have today, and bury others, from overdose, gun-play and stupid drivers, I experienced single woman more often than one of the ol’ ladies. When I asked a guy for a ride, after barhopping on a Friday night, he responded, “You want to ride so bad, why don’t you go buy your own?”
The rest is, as they say, history. Ah, my history. As a thoroughly modern woman who is now hitting the half century mile marker, I also felt life as a long haul trucker at 23 and a dozen years as a Parts manager for two H-D Dealerships. I became a published writer and photographer who worked hard for the slight money. The Harley Gods have shined on me with numerous motorcycles since that ruby red sighting so many years ago. I have my Shovelhead, bought during that nerve damaging '80s snowstorm, both inside, and outside a shop in East Hartford. I share my love of this life, openly, and on my sleeves, the old Panheads and Knuckleheads continue to rule.
I am a Connecticut Yankee in Dixieland. I am blessed with a great husband, but no human babies. I am gaining on my Bachelor’s degree in Art Education, while working within the public schools.
Getting to fifty has been hard on me as of late, several surgeries from the aging process, and had I known I would live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. I remained surrounded by a hedge of protection from God above and the love of my ALL my brothers and sisters in the wind, both here and gone. Lost in the '80s, reborn in the '90s, I am still a child of the '70s. Plus, I love the music of the '60s, and fortunately I was born to be here with you today.
