Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
California citrus and murder/suicide were the best, so juicy. The jilted surfer's suicide ef-
fort seemed sincere, but the cushioned fall only broke both legs. He had to stand trial, get con-
victed and begin a life sentence before successfully hanging himself.
Mother and child were doing fine, seen most mornings at the local coffee house, open-
minded in their quest for a loving LTR, vegan, not over forty, non-smoking, bi-sexual OK.
An irate tenant compelled to demonstrate tenant's rights drowned the landlord in a toilet
when the landlord came by to demand rent payment. It was only the tenth, which is what?
Five days late? Which is bullshit, you rotten motherfucker, if you know about tenant's rights,
and if you don't, you need a few laps in the toilet bowl, if you get my drift. The tenant put more
social injustice to rights by setting the house next door on fire to cure the blaring TV, which,
by the way, had pissed him off for way too long, and those fuckers needed to know just what
kind of bullshit they'd gotten away with until they didn't. They didn't call it Canna Screws for
nothing, and the place screamed with culture shock to arouse an aspiring writer. And it wasn't
hot, as in sultry, humid and hot. And it didn't choke on bumper-to-bumper traffic except on
weekends, and only guys of African descent could get laid on demand, but Caucasoids could
occasionally score some secondhand leg. And nobody talked with a southern accent.
How good could it get? That first summer of the Brave New West celebrated priorities
restored with a Super Glide showing only four thousand miles for only four grand. Nobody
reeks revenge on poverty like a poor boy with a windfall. Harley Davidson had been out of
reach since '68 when Harris Pollman got a Sportster and lit up the flames of desire in the
hearts of all the other guys on campus—flames that would not die in some of those hearts. A
nutcase and founding member of Jews for Jesus, Harris sounded like a brimstone kvetch when
he preached for Jesus, yet he alone in the campus crowd could muster the seventeen hun-
dred clams for a new Sportster. Of course his suburban Jewish parents gave him the dough.
So what? He had the focus to spend it right. He never let anyone drive it, but he took me on
back once, and the feeling stuck.
The jump in cubic centimeters and engine rumble felt huge. Great minds think alike, and
so do middle class minds; in the 80s Harley Davidson came clean. The big V-Twin wasn't for
greasers anymore but for old Triumph and BSA riders. Some tattooed toothless wonders still
rode Harleys. They enhanced the “mystique.” Harley Davidson reached out to the new guys
who had money, the preppies and yuppies. The motorcycle wave that covered Europe in the
60s wanted to wake up from its workaday world.
“Hey,” Pedro said. “Only a dollar a mile. Ha!” Notably thin and heavily inked with jail-
house doodles, Pedro said the odometer was broke, but he knew the motorcycle had four
thousand on it, because he kept track.
“Hey, you know the ape hangers are long, so I pulled them back. You know.” The ape
hanger handlebars pulled down from altitude to waist level put my hands where my pistols
would have been if I was a gunslinger. The context was not lost on Pedro, who drew imaginary
