Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A guy who wrecked his motorcycle and got a deal on an Atlas front end is who. How dumb
and distracted of me; I didn't even ask about the goofy front end. Ah, well, it was Norton at
last. Call it luck or faith in a muse confirmed. That Norton cruised up and down the Lowcoun-
try coast and inland to the Red Hills, crisscrossing many miles to freedom restored. Reunited,
we winged over marshland causeways like one more loon or mallard with a mind of our own.
Many people said they loved the city magazine because of what it could record, which was
so important, lest we forget. Lip service was plentiful on beauty and execution. But a provin-
cially sodden backwater will often muster pleasantries as an outlander sinks in the pluff mud.
The magazine cost more than it made. I rode more miles, because the open road felt more like
home, a place of solace in movement.
South Carolina is cracker country with a few twists. It's where Strom Thurmond mounted
his presidential campaign as a Dixiecrat and mounted his . . . er . . . uh . . . Negro housekeeper
too. History oozes out of South Carolina. A motorcycle is timeless, oblivious to society or his-
tory. It gave meaning to a soul in flight.
The magazine, like any holdover exhibit, ended. The little town settled back to how it was,
which felt, alas, like it wasn't.
Many marriages ended naturally in the 70s, so it seems harsh to call them failed, especially
when they only gave in to practicality. Starvation, foreclosure and waning prospects were the
downside of
for better or worse
, and things got worser and worser. Marriage based on ideals
and the love all around us among twenty-somethings did not often last to thirty something.
Looking back, the fork in the road seemed inevitable for mates of such different approaches
to life. The ending should have come sooner but like most endings got postponed in deference
to improved conditions right around the corner.
The Norton went next, till it was down to two cans, cat food and cream 'o chicken, perfect
for a writer and two cats.
A young man can get back up and jump back in, maybe not so convincingly as those guys
who spring from their shoulders onto their feet, but new action waited just down the road as
a matter of faith. And necessity.
Billy Prieshard was new in town and already dating former contributing writer and deb
du jour Delia DeNerien hardly a month after she'd split up with her old boyfriend, an original
redneck Republican. Billy was old hat, a traditional southern son but a might different on ac-
count of his fancy pants ways that he
shore as shit
didn't learn up in Myrtle Beach, where the
Prieshards had lived and died these last few centuries.
I'm here to tell you they's something not
right with that boy . . .
Billy Prieshard wasn't to be trusted on account of being from up the road, which wasn't
as bad as a Yankee but it Was. Not. Home. Nobody would leave home and come in some-
wheres else to fleece a few flatlanders but a carpetbagger or worse, a scalawag. Besides his
apparent crimes against society, that godforsaken boy could not be trusted on political prin-
