Benton Courier - SHEARON: Young, wet and on the road

I was visiting with some folks on mysaline.com the other day, and we were talking about memorable experiences in riding motorcycles.
This brought to mind my first real road trip.
I was 22, still had hair (and quite a bit of it) and had just purchased a new motorcycle. I was living in Houston, where I managed a furniture rental store. I have a checkered past.
I decided to visit my parents, who lived about 600 miles away in Hernando, Miss. It was raining when I left about 4 a.m. And cold.
After about 45 minutes of this, I decided to stop and at least wait for the sun to come out before continuing. I spotted an all-night truck stop. I pulled in and slogged up to the entrance.
I walked in and for a moment, enjoyed the sounds of people chattering and the smells of fresh-cooked breakfast food — eggs, bacon, coffee and such.
Then it turned into a scene from a spaghetti western.
Seemingly as one, the conversations stopped and everybody turned to look at the soggy, long-haired, bearded stranger standing in the door.
Great.
It stayed silent while I went through the buffet line, paid for my food and sat down at a booth.
A fellow came up and told me I needed to move my bike because where I had parked it, it just might get run over. I thanked him for the information and assured him that at that point, I really didn’t care. Not the answer he was looking for.
Still quiet.
Another fellow came up. He looked to be around 50. He had a tray of food in his hands. He came to my table, stopped and just stood there staring at me.
I realized that if I let him speak first, he was probably going to say something that was going to draw a negative reaction, which would result in me being on the receiving in of a pretty sound thumping from the denizens of this particular truck stop.
So, with no other really good options, I smiled. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
He had obviously been waiting for me to come out with “What are you looking at?” This sudden departure from the cowboy script seemed to take him off guard. He stood there with a blank expression, then sat down.
Holy cow! And, as in the bad movie, conversations resumed. People turned back to what they had been doing. If there had been a barroom piano, it would have picked up on some raucous drinking tune.
To be honest, I don’t remember much of the conversation I had with the fellow. I was just thankful I wasn’t having to take on a room full of truckers out to have some fun with a long-haired biker dude. The last fight I’d been in was in the eighth grade — and I lost.
I stuck around the truck stop until the sun came out, then I continued on my way.
I managed to miss Interstate 55 (the weather was pretty bad) and ended up quite a bit out of my way in New Orleans, which was freshly flooded from a hurricane (so that’s where all the rain was coming from).
I gassed up at the only gas station I could find that wasn’t under water and called my dad from a pay phone there. He was somewhat amazed that I had managed to miss an entire interstate highway. He told me how to get back on track.
I eased through the flooded streets, got back on I-20 and headed west, easily finding I-55 this time. But, it was late and I was cold, and when I got to Baton Rouge, I’d had enough. I pulled into a motel. I must have really looked rough because they put me in a wing all by myself.
The room had a king-sized bed. I shed my rain-soaked clothes, crawled into the bed and decided to take a short nap.
I awoke hours later. I was about as hungry as I’d ever been. I put on some fresh clothes and went exploring. Luckily, the motel had a 24-hour coffee shop and I had some pie and a soft drink before heading back to my room and that wonderful bed.
Day 2 of the trip wasn’t nearly as bad. I stopped in Jackson, Miss., to buy a jacket to wear underneath my rain gear and that improved things considerably. By the time I got to Hernando, it had quit raining. My parents were horrified that I had ridden there on a motorcycle, but they were so happy to see me, they got over it quickly.
I made the trip home in one day. Being young, I didn’t realize you aren’t supposed to make 600 miles in a day on a 400cc motorcycle.
It was nearly 30 years before I took another trip that far. It marked my retirement from the newspaper business. It was a short retirement.

Robert Shearon is news editor of the Courier. His column appears periodically.
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