Sunday morning I’m riding back home to old Indiana on a great day from Poplar Bluff across southern Illinois.
Tom West (r) road his Harley down from southern Michigan arriving within 5 minutes of me to reunite with Dave Chastain (c) at his place in Bloomington around 4:30pm. Let the fun begin!
After a great grilled dinner on Dave’s deck and a bonfire Sunday evening into the wee hours we ride our motorcycles over to Columbus, IN to meet John Crofts (r) the next morning. We have a socially distanced breakfast and catch up on old times.
John is big time into Cummins history after his career there and also a bit of a history buff so he volunteers for walking tours highlighting the architectural history of Columbus based on the leadership and largesse of a few visionary leaders at Cummins who believed in creating a strong and vibrant community to attract and keep highly skilled employees. Many great and not yet great architects have enhanced their reputation on modernest projects in Columbus including Eliel Saarinen who designed the First Christian Church built in 1942. It was a beautiful morning for our almost 3 hour tour and a great chance to reconnect before we left John to his visiting family and headed back the 30 miles to Dave’s house.
It can’t be summer without one lane roads due to construction.
5 years ago this month Dave, Tommy, myself and David Bonitz rode our motorcycles through Selma, AL on our way to Key West. At this location in March 1965 Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis led 600 people on a 54 mile march from Selma to the capital in Montgomery to draw attention to equal voting rights but they were stopped on the Edmund Pettus Bridge after only 6 blocks by police and brutally beaten back to Selma. The widely broadcast images of the brutality galvanized Congress and LBJ to enact the Equal Voting Rights Act later that year. I haven’t caught much of the news on my trip but the beatings and protests seem to continue 55 years later as we struggle to be better. Can we be better?
Dave’s friend and neighbor Bill (c) who has recently gone through chemotherapy have got themselves a free, old Boston Whaler boat as a summer project to restore and go fishing in. The needed our help to get the rather heavy (waterlogged?) fiberglass boat off of the trailer and upside down on saw-horses to allow the cleaning and repair of the hull to begin. We had to put our beers down momentarily to strategize how to move the boat without hurting our carefully honed physiques. It’s not easy to age so gracefully!
Tuesday morning we’re back in line for construction again as we head down to French Lick to meet Tim Williams on his way to spend a little time with us in Bloomington.
We get back to Dave’s place around 2pm in what has become a very warm day. We assume our places on the driveway, in the shade, besides our road machines to hydrate with beer and some moonshine Tim imported from down south, infused with tangelos, blackberries and strawberries. It was very tasty and very powerful.
Tim should be completely worn out because he just finished 3 non-stop round trips from his old residence in Houston’s Woodlands to his other home back in Evansville. He left early this morning and hasn’t unpacked anything yet. He often has to miss these little college reunions we have every now and then because he’s running O&G drilling operations in fun places like Iraq or Angola but he made the extra effort to be here with us on our last day. We’re glad he made it and we’re glad we survived his moonshine too!
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