I made my way to Tennessee, Some more really pretty country. I came to Nashville. Wow! This where the Grand Old Opery was. I new that from the show on television called He Haw it was filmed in Nashville too. There had to be a lot of famous people here. Maybe I’d get lucky and meet someone famous, maybe I’d get their autograph. If I did I’d give it to my mom, she loved country music. My mom....so there I went again thinking of home, thinking of my mom, and how worried she probably was. Then I remembered why I left. I was all grown up. I can make my own mind as to what I want to be and do. Down the road I went. I made my way to Alabama. Down through Birmingham. I remember that there was a lot of trouble down here. Riots. KKK. Yankee go home. Wait a minute I’m a Yankee, I thought. Better be careful down here. I made my way south thinking about my goal of Florida.
I needed some more gas so I took an exit and when I went for my brakes I felt the front one grind. Crap! I didn’t think I was going to have any problems. I thought everything would be just fine. Until now I didn’t have any problems. I was so close to Florida. How much further would I need to go? It was late in the afternoon, and it felt like it had to be in the 90’s. I thought I would still be alright to ride the bike after all I still had another brake. I also thought it might be best to make the turn toward Texas and head to my Mimi’s.
I headed toward the next large city, Jackson, Mississippi. It was starting to get late in the afternoon. I don’t remember how far I had gone and I kept thinking about my front brakes. I didn’t have much money left. How was I going to get them fixed? Did I really need the front brakes that bad? Surely I could still make it to Texas with one brake. My Mimi, would help me I’m sure. I had been to Texas many times while on vacation with my mom and dad. Mimi was full of love and she was strict with us kids. She once made it a point to tell my folks that, “children should be seen and not heard”. She expected us kids to stay outside, which was fine with us because we didn’t want to be around the adults anyhow.
I remember having a lot of fun in Texas. There was Padre island, where we would spend all day and get sunburned. We didn’t know about SPF back then. I also remember a place where my mother loved to go, it was a restaurant at a place called 5 points. The only thing we went there for was Dr. Pepper over crushed ice. Man was that great. We all and there were 5 of us kids got our own glass of the great elixir, 10-2&4, Dr. Pepper. Then my dad would drive us out over the causeway or we would go down to the longshore docks. In the evening we would make a trip down to the T-Heads and check out all of the yachts that the rich people owned. Other afternoons we would go out by the breakers and seek out sea shells. We would find some small ones that had hermit crabs in them. We would collect sand dollars and star fish that had washed up on shore.
