“… Havin’ fun sittin’ shotgun ‘cause I’ve come full circle.”
— song lyrics by Ben Kweller
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“I didn’t know you rode motorcycles,” the voice behind me said.
Sunday morning Bible class had just ended. I was marking my place on the front pew as song leader by stacking my songbook, Bible, and other assorted paraphernalia.
It’s just a habit. Goodness knows I’m not competing with anyone for Sunday morning front-row seating.
The voice behind me belonged to one of the sweet ladies at church. Before turning around, I thought for a fleeting second about her perception of me after learning I used to ride motorcycles. Then laughed at myself for thinking that sweet little church ladies might have questionable connotations about cycle riders.
Riding was something I did for almost 50 years before contrasting my aging reflexes and vision with the noticeably increasing number of drivers who have no concept of what they are doing at 75 miles per hour other than texting or talking on a cell phone.
“Yes,” I said as I turned her direction. “Steve Windham asked me back around Thanksgiving last year what I was doing. I told him, ‘Just sitting home bored, trying to dispel the ugly rumor that I retired.’ He said he needed help in parts and service at his motorcycle dealership, so there I am.”
Her questioning statement was understandable. It’s been long enough since I sold my last bike that someone who knew me only by my mild-mannered news reporter image could easily be surprised.
Truth is, though, I wanted a motor scooter way back in the sixth grade after my friend Gary Cornett did something that kindled one of my life’s more serious love affairs. Just as I threw a leg over my bicycle to go home for lunch, Gary rolled up on his Cushman. “Nice scooter,” I said.
Before I could start peddling, he hit me with, “Wanna ride it to your house for lunch?”
Some questions have only one logical answer at age 12. I thanked Gary, jumped once on the kick-starter and was gone. Arriving at home two blocks away, Mom met me with, “I don’t like those things. You could get killed. Eat your lunch and get it back to school. And I never want to hear of you getting on one again. Do you understand me, young man?”
“Yes ma’am,” I said. Another easy answer for a 12-year-old. Or at any age for a son responding to his mother.
Scant weeks later, my grandfather in Pittsburg invited me to go to W.R. DeWoody’s Western Auto with him. Yet another question with only one answer because I knew what he was thinking. A stop at the Piggly Wiggly parking lot where he would let me drive his ’57 Ford the remaining few blocks to town.
“And, don’t tell your grandmother I let you drive,” he always added.
Once inside, he sought help for his needs, and I went straight to the new Cushman scooters lined against the wall to fantasize. I was still dreaming when my grandfather found me, took the price tag in his hand, looked at it and said, “Two hundred and nineteen dollars!” Then whistled loudly, registering his opinion of the cost.
“Reckon you could ride that if I bought it,” he asked?
“I rode my friend’s,” I said as my heart raced. Then, just as fast, it flatlined. “I better not. If I bought that for you, your mother would have my hide.”
“We can keep it at your house,” I pleaded.
“Then your grandmother would have my hide,” he chuckled.
Mom still objected years later when I bought my first motorcycle at age 20. She continued to do so for the rest of her life every time I shared with her accounts of my trips traveling the U.S. Riding to Florida, crossing Colorado Rocky Mountain passes, or cycling through the Smokies. “I don’t like those things. You could get killed.”
“So, you see,” I told the sweet lady at church. “Me working for a motorcycle dealership is nothing new. It’s actually like coming full circle.”
Going in circles has been a positive and rewarding way of life for me. I started my publishing career at the newspaper in Center, returned for a short stint about ten years ago, and came full circle to presumably finish it there last year.
Full circles cross my mind every day at the motorcycle dealership. I look longingly at the variety of two-wheeled rides on the showroom floor and think, “Maybe just one more time—one more circle.”
I could even ride it to church.
—Leon Aldridge
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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.
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