I was stationed at Fr. Riley, Kansas together with my friend Jake after we both finished intelligence officer training in Baltimore Maryland. Jake and I rented a 2 bedroom duplex in Chapman Kansas which was a small town close to Fr. Riley.
Jake brought his Harley chopper with him to Fr. Riley and used to ride it on the weekends. On one of those rides he hit a pot hole in the road and wrecked the Harley. Later when we were both assigned to Vietnam, I bought Jake's wrecked Harley for $500 and stored it in the back of my parent's garage in Aurora, Nebraska. I also left my car with my parents while I was stationed in Vietnam, but that's another story.
After I came back from Vietnam and got out of the army, I stayed with my parents in Aurora for about a year. I worked driving for a local seed corn company while rebuilding the wrecked Harley. After I finished rebuilding it I took my 12 year old sister, Susie, for a ride around town. Susie was amused at how people looked at her like she was some kind of disgusting biker chick.
After a year I enrolled in a 6 month truck driver school in Omaha, Ne and rented an upstairs studio apartment in one of those big old houses in Omaha that had been converted to apartments. After I had been there about a month I noticed that there was a storage shed in the back that looked like it wasn't being used. I asked Jim, the apartment manager, if I could bring my Harley to Omaha and store it in the shed. He said it was OK with him so I did it.
I went back to Aurora, rented a U-Haul trailer, and loaded up the Harley. I secured it in the trailer by running wire rope cables diagonally inside the trailer and then I tightened them down with turn buckles. When I got back to Omaha, Jim helped me unload the Harley and store it in the shed.
I used to go out early in the morning on the weekends and take a leisurely ride along the Missouri river. One Saturday morning when I had just come back from my ride along the river, Jim, the apartment manager, came out to see me as I was putting my Harley back in the shed. He said that his 14 year old daughter, Anna, had asked him if it would be OK for me to give her a ride on my motorcycle. Jim said that he saw how carefully I had secured the my motorcycle in the trailer and thought it would be OK if I gave Anna a ride. I said, "Let's plan for tomorrow morning. That will give me a chance to get a helmet for Anna."
Sunday morning Jim brought Anna out and introduced her. I had bought a silver Bell helmet just like mine for Anna and we spent some time adjusting the helmet padding to get it to fit right for her. I then took Anna for a one hour ride around that part of Omaha. When we got back, she thanked me for giving her a ride and gave the helmet back to me. I returned the helmet to her and told her it was hers to keep which really made her face light up.
I'm sure she had an interesting story to tell her friends at school the next day and she had the helmet to prove it was true.
