Tonight’s WPCA-FM story broadcast was I Loved That Bike! At the time I recorded that story at WPCA-FM with Bob Zank at the controls, the story had yet to be published. You can find it now online in Some Short Stories and in print in the paperback Six Short Stories. One of my sons terms it “a horror story” but, really, it’s a story about an obsession. The guy just loved his motorcycle. There were two women that loved him, too and it’s the interplay that makes the story. And, no, I never lusted nor owned a cycle but I’ve known guys who did and I’ve known guys whose bikes cost them their lives.
I’m writing this while in the throes of moving to our new home in Osceola, Wisconsin. As we move and pack boxes, we are downsizing, something we could have done over a few years but somehow life gets in the way of those kinds of things. Marina says we are hoarders. Now, that’s a horror story! But everything we own has its story about our lives: when it came to us and how, where, how to value it and have we found it useful. So does anyone really need or might be interested in the several drafts of one of my novels? I doubt it. The wood stove liked it, though.
We have a deadline to be out of this home and it is feeling urgent. Tomorrow my son John comes to help me heft things that are too much for me to handle alone and son-in-law Mark will do the same the following day. And the day after that I have a funeral to do for Ted Smith, a former pastor and the closest thing I had to someone being a close friend. Like many men, I have few close friends. I miss that but it can’t be forced and now it’s a little late in life, which consists of a lot of “what’s this?” and “where’s that?” from now-blind wife of almost 60 years. That could have been me and I thank God for that, but I wish, also, that it had not been her, either.