Arthur Lee Brown was walking down the sidewalk on Canal Street in Natchez when I pulled up next to him on the bike and asked for directions to the Under the Hill Saloon, a bar of some notoriety.
Arthur Lee Brown
He pointed and told me where it was and where to turn and I asked him how he was doing.
He’s from Natchez, lived there all his life, family in the area, relatives, kids, no wife. He’d been in a gang and he’s done with that. He did a 12-year stretch for a piece of bad luck; one guy had a gun, another guy died and somebody had to go to jail. Today he’s looking for a job. But unemployment is high in Natchez, among the highest in the state that has the highest unemployment rate in the country. And he’s a felon.
I asked him why he didn’t leave and he replied, “And go where?”
As he talked, I could see the rage in his hands. He had beautiful hands and I asked if I could take his picture.
I ordered a beer at the Under the Hill Saloon, four well-dressed white folks sitting at the bar and a young white girl behind it. I took a sip and got back on the Revival and rode out of town.
Tonight I’m at the Colonial Inn in Greenville, Mississippi, my second motel of the evening. My first had been the Relax Inn, where I had a forty dollar room. I took the luggage off the bike, put it on the bed and the cops showed up, a couple of squad cars across the parking lot followed by a bunch of banging on doors. As the banging was going on, Lenny from next door stopped by and told me what a nice bike I had, and did I want to ‘buy something, weed, anything you need.’
I’ve known guys like Lenny; 40-some years old, still working nickel-dime hustles, still trying to score. I said “no thanks” knowing that he’d be back, knowing that he’d try to sell me something and that I’d refuse, knowing that it would escalate, knowing that I had an expensive and fragile motorcycle parked in front of my room. He went back to his room and I loaded the bike and rode down the road to the Colonial Inn and got a fifty dollar room. Cops haven’t been here yet.
I had breakfast at the Little Easy Cafe, cheesy grits, collard greens and a veggie omelet. The chef is a guy named Jay who’s spent his career in the restaurant business, and what he wants to do is write.
I wrote about Ashley the other day, her tears and fury over the SCOTUS Roe decision in the parking lot of the Edelweiss. What I’ve been thinking is that a 15 year old child made a decision to keep a fetus and continue her pregnancy and that the cost was her life. (Sure, she can still go to medical school and became an astronaut and travel the earth and write novels, but how much are we going to ask of this woman?).
It was the visceral nature of her rage that I think about. The sense that for her, the SCOTUS decision was intensely personal, that the court was denying her her choice and her sacrifice. The decision that set the course of the rest of her life had been hers, nothing abstract about it. She wasn’t expressing pride or regret, but ownership and autonomy. And now this feckless enterprise was taking that decision away from her and making it theirs.
For me, an old white guy accustomed to having the world my way and viewing oppression safely through the filter of my media, to see that rage up close and in person was frightening. And inspiring. And worth writing about.
Left to right: Cameron, Chandler, your host, fellow customer David McClellen
I stopped at Toad Suck Harley Davidson in Conway, Arkansas for a quart of oil. The service manager, Cameron, confided that he would rather ride a sport bike than a Harley (sacrilege in that part of the world, particularly for a guy who works in a Harley shop). He wants an Aprillia. The young guy washing bikes, Chandler, has a liberal girlfriend and he’s going to school to become social worker. Fellow customer, David McClellen, grunted when I told him I was a commie, but he talked to me for another 45 minutes.
The photo below, from the left, Cameron, Chandler, me and David. The t-shirt cost $43.00.
Pro tip: when possible, stay at locally owned motels instead of the chains; the money stays local, and they’re a lot more interesting.
In the Army, I was a reconnaissance specialist assigned to the 1/1 Cavalry Squadron at O’Brien Barracks in Schwabach, West Germany. We spent several months of the year in the field and I needed a knife, a heavy, general purpose knife for all the cutting, prying, slicing, scraping, tasks living in the field and sleeping on the ground and in jeeps and tracks and eating out of a mess kit required. I bought one at the PX, probably in 1976.
From the PX at O’Brien Barracks
I got out of the Army in Europe and hitchhiked south; I used that knife to slice cheese and bread in small towns in France and shuck oysters on a dock in Spain (of course I cut myself, have you ever tried to shuck oysters?).
It was on my belt when I was attacked on a beach in Morocco (I used a rock from our fire pit to crush a man’s shoulder, it didn’t occur to me to reach for the knife). Later I used it to slice and crumble hashish as I wandered through the markets of Tangier, Fez, Rabat and Casablanca with stitches and a broken arm.
I used it to scrape the head gasket off my brother’s Triumph Bonneville in a campground in San Luis Obispo, cut choke cable housings to make a throttle cable for a Moto Guzzi Eldorado in Daytona Beach.
It was in my luggage when I moved to Tokyo and on my hip every day for 13 months as I rode a Honda XL250 through 21 countries across three continents; a sailors tool on a rented sailboat in Thailand, a camping tool in Australia, a backpacking tool in Nepal, a tool for cleaning chickens bought live in Zaire markets.
It was there when Eli (my son) and I rode to Prudhoe Bay and when Coco (my daughter) and I camped at the Grand Canyon and when Jane (my wife ) and I stared in amazement at the VLA (Very Large Array, a radio telescope in New Mexico). It opens freeze-dried packets and baked beans in a can with equal facility.
It’s here with me now, an odd and fitting talisman for my wondering, wandering life. And it’s sharp.
Ashley and Desiree are sisters on a road trip from Oklahoma City to St. Louis. They were packing their minivan in the parking lot of the Edelweiss this morning as I was strapping down my gear. Ashley walked over to say that she liked the color of the Revival, that her stepdad had a Harley but that it was all black and she didn’t like it. She asked if she could take a picture.
Ashley
We were chatting as fellow travelers do, knowing that we will never meet again. I asked her if she’d heard the news this morning (regarding SCOTUS reversal of Roe). And she started to cry. Ashley was raped when she was fifteen by someone she knew and that having the baby had been a choice, her god damned choice. Her daughter is now 13 and wants to be a lawyer.
Today I rode past the Riverside Gun Shop on a curvy bit of road outside of Eureka Springs. A couple of miles later I turned the Revival around and went back. Ron, the man at the counter, talked about his 21 year old daughter, she’s been promoted to front-of-house manager at Chick-fil-A and that’s a good job. I talked about Eli and Coco (my kids). He likes art and wanted to hear about Coco’s job at MIA (Minneapolis Institute of Arts). He visits Crystal Bridges museum in Bentonville and described in detail some of his favorite paintings. He doesn’t remember the artists.
Riverside Gun Shop
Blackberries grow wild around his house, they’re smaller and sweeter than farm-raised but you’ve got to watch the thorns. The dogs like them, too. Rattlesnakes are becoming a problem; they’d always had water moccasins and copperheads, but the rattlers are new. He found a young one outside the house just the other day. They’ve got armadillos now, too.
Ron’s boss, the owner of the shop is an Army vet and took our picture.
I’m in room 6 at the Edelweiss Inn in Eureka Springs, Debbie and Lee are in room 4. They’re riding new BMW boxers, R1250RSs and live in Creston, Iowa. They’re retired, no kids. He’d been a civil engineer for the Federal Government, she’d been a department manager at the Walmart store for 32 years. They’ve been riding together since the ‘80s. I suggested that the country was in bad shape, to which they enthusiastically agreed. They got quiet when I told them that I was liberal commie and we went back to motorcycle stories.
(Maybe I should have let them bring the heat. But my fear is that once they’re all fired up that I won’t be able to bring them back to motorcycle stories, that we’ll argue or stop talking. Need to think about that. Lee just walked by, waved and smiled. We’re good.)
Traveling well is the time and willingness to turn around and go back. When that unplanned thing flashes past at the corner of your eye as you’re motoring by and that thing sticks in your head, you need to go back. It seems most times worthwhile.
