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Jake Grady and Mildred sat on the rear porch of the house and drank iced tea poured from a glass pitcher. It had plenty of ice and just the right amounts of lemon and sugar. It was a hot stretch of weather, with the humidity high and the temperature never dropping low enough to allow a good sleep at night. Mildred was busy with her crochet work, but Jake had no project this afternoon. He seemed to be restless this afternoon, for he fiddled with his glass, and his eyes darted to every corner of the porch and lawn. Mildred looked at him from the corner of her eye but didn't ask any questions. She knew Grady. It wouldn't be long before he broke the ice and told her what was on his mind.
"You know," he finally said, "when I was a lad, I thought it was funny when people talked about good sleeping weather. I figured they didn't have anything more important to talk about. Now that I'm older, what do I talk about? Good sleeping weather."
Mildred barely looked up. "That's deep," she replied.
He grinned his boyish smile in response. She sometimes wondered if he knew its effect and did it on purpose. She decided that he didn't. It was just one of those unconscious gestures that drew her to him.
"You know," he ventured again, "there is a parade coming up in town."
"Yes, I noticed that they have had one every summer for the last fifty years."
"Jim Herkimer has an old flathead Harley. He bought it in a basket twenty years ago and is just getting it ready for the road."
"And let me guess, he's going to ride it in the parade."
"Well, not exactly."
This caused her to look up sharply. "Jake, you don't think you are going to ride it, so you?"
"Oh, no, no, eh, not just me, anyway."
"Not just you? Then who.... Oh, no, nothing doing. You are not going to get me on the back of that murdercycle."
"Now, Mildred, I was riding them back fifty years ago, and I haven't forgotten how."
"How did you say you got that scar on your leg?"
Grady looked at a cloud floating overhead. "Shark bit it."
She had to break into a laugh at this. "You are the most obstinate old cuss I have ever met. Now if you can get serious, the strawberries are ripe, and we need to go pick some tomorrow."
This meant a trip to Cox Ridge early in the morning. The field was nearly thirty miles from home, a log way to go to pick some strawberries. But everyone agreed that Wilber Cox raised the best berries in three counties, and the trip was worthwhile. Grady carefully picked out the cardboard berry boxes they would take in the morning. New ones only cost ten cents, but he and Mildred could remember all too well when ten cents meant something. To them it still did.
The early start was to beat the heat. Mildred concocted up a mix of water, molasses and cloves that was supposed to be what the old time farmers had always drunk to prevent heat exhaustion when haying. Jake tolerated it because Mildred thought it was good for him, but he would have much preferred a Coke.
In the morning fog lay in the valleys and made driving treacherous. This didn't daunt them for that's how it is every summer. When the sun rose high in the sky, it would start burning off the fog, and by ten o'clock it would be a bright, clear day. Until then, their feet, legs and hands would all get wet and clammy from the moisture-laden strawberry bushes. Dyed in the wool strawberry pickers pay no attention to any discomforts.
In a half an hour they had the twelve pints they had set out to pick. But who can stop when the action is hot? The couple decided they should pick another half dozen to give to friends and neighbors unlucky enough to be tied down to full-time jobs. By the time many of the stores opened, the strawberry pickers were home in front of the fan. Of course, they might take a nap, too, but that's allowed when the heat and humidity reach record levels.
Since making her first quilt for many years, Mildred had got right back into it and had worked with many patterns. Now she was making a special one to enter in the fair. This one was a sampler, and in each square she tried to capture a taste of a different era, representing the changes that had occurred in the lifetime of her little town. These had
been many. This coast had been colonized three hundred years ago, so there were noticeable gaps in the quilt history.
Her mother and grandmother, though, she remembered their tales of hardship and she painstakingly stitched their stories into progressive squares. Jake was openly fascinated with the work, and he would sit and watch her by the hour. Sometimes he would doze off, and she would smile to herself as her fingers flew, deep in a contentment she had not known since she was a little girl. Sometimes she would re-tell the stories that had been handed down to her, of the Indians and the English and the tunnel the children hid in when the enemy struck. Later such tunnels were used as part of the Underground Railroad, and pride came into her voice as she told of the lives that had probably been saved.
On this afternoon, he was not dozing off. "You know, I think I'll take Herkimer over a box of berries. He's stuck in that garage all the time and doesn't get a chance to go anywhere."
"Humph," replied Mildred. "If he wasn't busy building up hot rods and murdercycles he'd have the time to go picking berries. Oh, well, it's not his wife's fault, so I'm going to go along with you and make sure she gets her berries. It would be just like you men to get talking and forget all about them."
"Now......" started Jake, but he was quickly silenced.
"The fish in the trunk, need I say more?"
Ever eager to please, Jake loaded two boxes of berries into the car. He knew when to bail out of a losing argument.
Jim and Arlene Herkimer were seemingly stuck in the fifties. Jim still wore a white T-shirt, black pants and a ducktail, and Arlene was occasionally seen in honest-to-goodness saddle shoes. The radio would always be tuned to an oldies station, and most visitors had the urge to
buy a '57 Chevy within minutes of arriving. This was unfortunate, for Jim only had a hobby of working on old cars. His earnings came from fixing whatever rolled into the garage.
Jim led Grady directly to the old Harley, and Arlene came right along with them. Naturally Mildred had to follow.
"Isn't it great, Mildred?'" exclaimed Arlene. "I wanted to ride it myself, but Jim and I are going to be judges this year and we can't enter. I can't wait to see you and Grady on it."
"Now, I never said any such thing. These machines are much too dangerous to suit me."
"Oh come on. Just sit on it. Isn't it big and romantic? And you two will only be going twenty miles an hour at the most. Won't you ride it?"
Visions came to Mildred of a young man from long ago that she had dreamed of riding behind. He was two years ahead of her in school, and she had never had the nerve to strike up a conversation with him. Of course, in those days proper young ladies did not make advances to members of the opposite sex. She could only try to be noticed in the hopes her Adonis would pull over and ask if she would like a ride. How she had dreamed of that moment! But it had never happened, and she later heard he was killed in the war. He had died a hero's death, throwing himself on a hand grenade to save the lives of the other men. It had seemed a fitting way for the young man to die, a true hero just as she had imagined him to be.
Funny, it had been many years since she had thought of the boy. Now she was to be given a second chance for that special ride.
"All right, we can go in the parade. But that's it. I won't have you out breaking a leg or worse."
"Okay, Dear, I just need to take a little practice run, and I'll be set."
"No practice runs. Just the parade."
"Yes, Dear." Grady knew he had won a small victory, and he should stand pat. Mildred's words were to have a surprising effect on the parade, but who can foresee the future?
The preparations for the event were many. Jake liked to help some neighbors in the evenings as they worked on a float representing an old settler's cabin. Husband and wife would stand in front of it with their tools and gaze about as if looking for hostile Indians. One year Sam Curtis was carrying an original flintlock. He had also been sipping from an old brown jug tipped over his elbow. Unknown to anyone, he had both loaded. Apparently his vision of a hostile Indian was quite vivid, for he gripped his rifle so tightly that he somehow set it off and when the smoke cleared there was no longer a minute hand on the town clock. Curtis, his flintlock, and his demijohn were all barred from future celebrations.
Not only that, but to this day the town clock only had an hour hand. At town meeting a request for twelve hundred dollars to fix the clock almost passed, but then Francis West stood up and asked why Sam Curtis shouldn't pay for it. The obvious answer was that Curtis didn't have the money and the town did, but the request was voted down, and that was that.
While Jake helped ready this year's float, under strict orders to stay away from any demijohns that might appear, Mildred put the finishing touches on her prize quilt. All who saw it said it would win her the blue ribbon for sure.
They were right. The judging was held in the 4H building on the night before the parade, and even in a town whose residents excelled in all manner of crafts, Mildred's sampler quilt stood alone. A steady stream of folks walked through the building, looking at the pies, and vegetables, afghans and paintings; and all stopped the longest at the sampler quilt. It was simply breath taking.
In the morning the winners in each category would stand on front of one of the floats and hold up their winning entries while parading down Main Street. Grady assured Mildred that she would be able to hold up her quilt with no problems, for the big buddy seat with the rear rail would hold them both on securely.
Finally the starting time of eleven approached. How very hard the people of this little town worked to make this celebration a success. Jake and Mildred had a place about two-thirds of the way back, just in front of the horses. It was thought that if the horses saw the motorcycle, they would not be scared of it.
Bertrand Reece led off in front of the other flag bearers, ninety-eight years old and still wearing his old Army uniform. People breathed a sigh of relief after he passed, for they were sure he must expire from the heat and effort one of these years. Then came the fire department's oldest truck, which was still on call even though made in 1927.
Next came Mrs. Mallet's Tiny Tykes ballet class. Some of the little girls were very serious in their colorful sprite costumes while others laughed with glee as they pirouetted down the street. They were a crowd pleaser and received a solid round of applause.
The old cabin float even had a couple of live lambs on it this year. The wife stood at alert in the doorway while the husband sadly held the remains of a broken brown jug. This brought a good laugh from people in the know.
Finally Jake's turn to join came. Herkimer had already started the machine in deference to Grady's age, so they just climbed on board and off they went. Mildred quickly gained confidence and held up her quilt for the crowd to see.
Now back sixty or seventy years ago, people started modifying their motorcycles by removing the clutch return spring. This was called a suicide shift. People tend to think that term refers to any foot clutch, but it does not. A proper foot clutch can be engaged in gear and the rider can get off and leave it, as in the case of a patrol officer making a quick stop. With a suicide clutch, if you are stopped at a light and your foot slips off you are on your way. To where, who knows.
Herkimer forgot to tell Grady about the suicide clutch. Heck, that was the way he liked them. Jake, on the other hand, was used to original factory equipment.
The first hundred feet went like a dream. Jake hammed it up by pushing down the clutch and revving up the machine. The third time he did this the muffler blew off and the old Hog backfired and roared. This sent the horses in back of them into a stampede, but their young riders managed to steer them away from the crown and down the road by the Post Office. The two old work horses that pulled the cabin float woke up and reared, which scared the lambs into jumping from the float and into the crowd.
Jake pushed in the clutch and brought the Harley to a halt before he hit the rear of the cabin. Not knowing any better, he took his foot off the clutch and the bike surged forward, narrowly missing the float and giving the work horses the equivalent of an X-Lax. To avoid the young ballerinas Grady swerved up over the sidewalk and tipped over Crazy Mary's popcorn stand, before clipping the rope holding the petting zoo and releasing the animals into the general melee. A big billy goat somehow hooked Mildred's quilt and ran the wrong way down Main Street like a grounded sky writer.
Back in the street, they missed the fire truck and scattered the flag bearers. All except for Bertrand Reece. He thought he was being attacked again by German soldiers and held his flag low in the lance position. He made a few lunging steps before falling forward to the ground. But he was right back up, yelling, "I'll kill the Kaiser" at the top of his lungs. While he lived another six years, his mind never returned to the present, and people had to pay close attention to what they said in his presence.
They came to the bridge over the river, and Jake shifted to second, then to third. He knew about the clutch now, and when they entered Route 17 he ran it up to fourth and let it purr at fifty. A huge smile was painted on his face. Some things don't change in fifty years. A nice warm day, a good motorcycle and your best girl on back. What more could a man want?
As for Mildred, she put her face against his neck and squeezed him tightly. She had found her own hero. Seventeen or seventy, when people fall in love, the emotion is the same.
©2002 StoriesByEmail.com
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