Ducati

Early spring 1976 the Navy transferred us from Washington, DC to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. School was not yet out for summer vacation, so I went up first, hundred miles north. The U S Army graciously gave me a room in their BOQ at Carlisle Barracks; Linda, Malinda, Joe and Tass stayed behind in Fairfax until summer vacation started and the contractor finished our new home on the Conodoguinet Creek; and it was an easy two-hour-plus drive home to Virginia on Friday evenings and back to Pennsylvania on Sundays.

At first, Joe was not happy with the idea of the move, but he came up for an impressive tour of Cumberland Valley High School, which was several miles out Cumberland Pike, due west of our new neighborhood. Joe is a sociable person who makes friends immediately and adapts quickly, and by the time fall came, he was settled in, happily riding the school bus with new friends. Once, a few years on, when he arrived home from school later than usual and I asked why, he said he had stopped at the Honda dealership. Being a lifelong car nut, this seemed perfectly normal to me, who had stopped almost every day at one car dealership or other, walking home down Harrison Avenue during my Bay High years. At some time long years later, when Joe was on his third or fourth Harley, he told me it had been the Honda motorcycle dealership.

Joe lives in Winston-Salem but usually comes to visit at Christmas and for a week or so in July. He has traveled by plane or driven his Ford F-150 pickup truck, extended cab, 8-foot box, 4x4, and said he would drive this year, leaving details to parental assumptions. But when I arrived home from church Sunday morning a week ago, he was just getting off a Ducati.

It might have been pretty much OK to me, but I keep no secrets from Linda, for whom son on motorcycle still has his mom totally on edge, and he did spend some time in hospital years ago after being hit by a car at an intersection. Joe had told only Tass that he would be coming down from NC by motorcycle. Tass, Jeremy, Caroline and Charlotte came over from Tallahassee for the weekend, and Tass got a ride on the Ducati before Joe headed back to NC yesterday morning as I drove off to church. He stopped in Atlanta overnight with Lauren’s parents, heads on home to W-S this morning.

Tom hanging on in +Time