by Tom Cunliffe
We paused at tiny wooden towns that could not have changed since the 1950s. Even the women serving in the stores were dressed like fashion plates from my mother’s Home-maker magazines. Some grain had been harvested and cattle flashed by from time to time, flicking their tails in the afternoon. The road wasn’t smooth, but it certainly wasn’t the worst we’d seen, so although our backsides felt every bump we made good progress. All in all, it was country to pass through fast. Perfect for our new mood.
A few miles short of the border we crossed a bridge which I somehow knew would be my last contact with the railroad. In the distance a train was coming, so I dismounted, jumped the fence and scrambled down the bank to throw myself flat on the ground as I had when I was a schoolboy. Roz pottered slowly on. She knew what I was up to.
In those days it had been steam that was the prime fascination, the smoke belching from the funnel, the 6-foot driving wheels pounding to the pumping of the pistons and the shining steel connecting rods, all blurred by speed. Steam has gone from America as it has from Britain, but in the United States, the railroad retains its essential spirit. Perhaps the alchemy stems from the sheer size of the diesel locos, maybe it is the impossible length of the freight trains, or the continental distances travelled. Probably they are all factors, but what grabbed me about this one was the name of the railroad company. In the days when I was having my school cap blown off by the London express, my train books showed images of massive American locomotives. Instead of a prosaic ‘LMS’ – ‘London, Midland and Scottish’ – they bore the lyrical ‘Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe’. This giant red locomotive had ‘Santa Fe’ emblazoned down its sides as it rumbled under my bridge, hustling its standard mile or so of what looked like cattle wagons. I had seen it with my own eyes and so, like Tennyson with his rainbow, the child became father to the man.
I walked back to my bike, ruminating on the unpleasantness of having to grow up, and caught Betty Boop at the Texas border. Roz was lounging on her beside a stark sign with an unequivocal message:
‘Don’t Mess with Texas!’
I could buy that.
‘Drive friendly – the Texan way,’ encouraged a second hoarding on the other side of the featureless road. That would suit us too.
Properly encouraged, we plunged ahead.
With the exception of Alaska, the Lone Star State is by far the largest of the Union. Its territory is greater in area than the combined mass of Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts and the substantial area of New York. The population approaches 15 million humans and, at last count, 13 million head of cattle. We careered across its seven hundred or so miles in two days, stopping only to sleep and eat, with the usual half-hourly rests for rehydration. The roads were as good as we’d hoped, and since we saw almost no traffic we took liberties even with the 70-mph limit. Setting off before breakfast, the sun would be a red ball in the low haze ahead of us, with the cotton crops and cattle ranges misty after the cool nights of early September. Countless small oil pumps clanked steadily in the dewy fields. The same deal as Kansas, only more of it.
The towns were generally well-maintained and the whole state presented an air of prosperity and self-confidence, yet it was here that Roz confronted the power of chance. We had just restarted after drinks in the country town of Hico, south-west of Dallas – wide, straight streets, farmers in 10-gallon hats carrying livestock in clean pick-ups, silhouette cowboy 10-feet high over a bar door – when we slowed down for a crossroad. It was as well we did, because a truck came hurtling around the corner, shedding a rusty 45-gallon oil drum as it rattled away. What followed had a horrible air of slow motion. The drum rolled across the street, directly under Roz’s front wheel from my perspective. I waited for her to go down, praying that the thing was empty and therefore not weighing half a ton. For what seemed like seconds, drum and bike came together as if magnetised. Roz had frozen momentarily, but suddenly revitalised herself and heaved back hard on her brakes. Her rear wheel locked and blew dirt, but the front kept slowing under control. As the back-end came around to meet her she put her outside foot down. The bike seemed to slide sideways, then stopped as the drum missed her front tyre by a yard. It looked like spectacular riding. She had followed her instincts and they had done exactly the right thing for her. There was nothing to be said, except that it obviously wasn’t her time to get hit. Our luck was definitely in for the time being, so we wheeled back to the Coke machine and had another.
Roz recovered from this fright with sterling resilience as we tore along eastwards down the temptingly fast roads. Soon, the open cattle ranges and giant cotton fields gave way to smaller countryside with an almost eerily English feel to it.
‘I can’t believe I’m in Texas, of all places,’ she remarked as we stopped to lean against the creosoted fence of a flowery meadow where uncannily British-looking cows chewed rich cud. Tall trees rustled gently in the summer breeze. All the atmosphere needed was the crack of a cricket ball on the willow bat. Even the morning temperature felt like an English summer’s day. But it wasn’t. As if ordered up by a scriptwriter to louse up a lovely scene, a straight-faced deputy pulled up beside us in his big, burbling Chevrolet. That would have been fine on its own. It was the flashing blue lights that spoiled the decor.
The policeman opened his door and climbed slowly to his considerable height. His shoes shone and he clinked gently under the weight of the usual array of homicidal hardware at his belt as he eyed the bikes neutrally. Then he straightened up and turned to me.
‘Sir,’ he began in a deep drawl, ‘five minutes ago I clocked you and the lady at 83 mph. I’m not saying it’s antisocial, I’m just remindin’ you it ain’t legal, but before I give you a ticket, you can show me your licence and tell me what kinda plate that is on the black bike.’
‘How did I manage to miss seeing him?’ I was asking myself, feeling as I always do when busted by a traffic cop – like being hauled up before the headmaster. Even so, I liked the way he made no personal issue out of our speeding. We had been travelling perfectly safely above an arbitrary limit on a straight road with no side turnings and nothing in sight. His job was just to collect the money from anyone careless enough to get caught. I mutely cheered the man for not giving me the hypocritical lecture about the dangers of speed that I received from the last policeman to nail me in the UK. The circumstances had been similar. The difference in attitude worlds apart.
The second remarkable thing about this officer was that he was only the second stranger to comment on my yellow, reflective Dorset number plate during the whole trip. Maybe folks hadn’t a clue what it could be and didn’t want to appear stupid by asking, but not this clear-thinking policeman. He was about to issue a well-deserved, on-the-spot fine and needed to know what sort of game I was playing.
‘It’s, er, British, actually,’ I stuttered lamely, groping for my driving licence. I knew from ancient experience that the paperwork was going to psyche him out, because unlike the equivalent document carried by an American, a British permit carries no photograph of the licence holder. For all he knew, mine could have belonged to King Kong.
To keep the social side of things moving while I scrabbled through my studded leather saddlebag, I began to explain myself.
‘I shipped my own bike over here rather than buying locally. Easier, I suppose. Beats the waiting list for a new Hog. Impossible to re-register. The bureaucracy…’
‘I could see you was from outta state, but I never heard of a plate like that. Where’d’ya land the bike? Galveston?’
‘Baltimore.’
‘Well, goddamn! You ride all that way down here?’
‘We came via San Francisco.’
The cop looked hard at me, but he didn’t pick up the ‘we’. Women who rode Harley-Davidsons 10,000 miles at a sitting were not part of his normal round of experience. He peered down at Roz’s Maryland plate and pushed his hat back an inch or so.
‘Did you meet this guy locally?’ he asked her. ‘
I mean, you’re a helluva long way from home too.’
‘I came the same way. We’re riding together,’ answered Roz.
‘What? All the way? With him? You crossed Nevada on that little bike?’
‘I’m afraid I did.’
There was a pause and for a moment I thought the deputy was going to ask how a girl with Maryland plates came to have an accent like the Queen of England. Instead, he shook his head, smiled very slightly, and put away his ticket book.
‘Welcome to Texas, ma’am… sir. You all have a good day, and keep it below seventy in this county until I’ve gone off for lunch.’
He touched his broad hat-brim, folded himself back into the Chevrolet and turned off the blue lights. As he drove off, I listened to the music of his car and was glad we’d behaved. The engine sounded like pure Wagner. Trying to outrun him in anything short of a fighter plane would have been plain foolishness.
We crossed the Sabine River into Louisiana with a thousand or so miles under our belts from Santa Fe. If there had been no signposts, it would still have been impossible to miss the change. All the way from that first vague surprise as we entered Virginia from Maryland, we had noted subtle differences between the various states, but there was nothing subtle here. This was something different altogether. Arriving in Logansport Louisiana on our back road from Texas was more like entering a different country than sampling a change of state. West of the river were ordered fields, neat farms and tightly run communities. Immediately over the bridge, the town huddled around a narrow main street crisscrossed haphazardly by the sort of heavy wires I recalled from newly electrified villages in 1970s South America. The sidewalks were crowded with people, almost all black. Shops were boarded up, and the smart, Texan vehicles were replaced by a diverse selection of boneyard bangers blowing blue smoke.
We stopped for much-needed fuel and were relieved of our cash by two hard-faced white women. When we walked out into the sunshine, the bikes were surrounded by young blacks. Anticipating at least verbal abuse or my gear being tampered with, I shouldered my way through to Black Madonna, gleaming and immaculate amongst the crowd. My unease must have surfaced from some deep-rooted and unexplored fear of finding myself at the wrong end of a colour bar. Whatever its origins, however, the apprehension proved groundless. Instead of grief, the bike was the subject only of admiration, while I was treated to a friendly barrage of good-humoured banter. I struggled to tune in to the sweet, Southern drawl while my own accent was being greeted with open incredulity, but as we mounted up, I suddenly felt totally safe. Freed from social anxieties, it dawned on me that the most startling difference between here and Texas had nothing to do with the human inhabitants; the bugs were back.
I had almost forgotten their impact on the early part of the trip. California had been reasonable in this respect, the deserts had been virtually bug-free, always excepting the scorpions who keep themselves to themselves unless thoroughly annoyed, and although Texas did feature a modest population of honest flies, we both felt that nothing more odious than a bluebottle would dare show its face west of the Sabine.
No sooner had we crossed the bridge than we ran into dense black clouds of what, from the biker’s sensitive standpoint, are certainly the world’s most disgusting bugs. Not content to burst singularly across your bike, your leathers, your teeth or your air filters, these bugs do it in pairs. Perhaps ‘couples’ would be a more appropriate description, because they spend their entire day engaged in the most athletic forms of sexual intercourse. After watching them for ten minutes I could imagine the courtship scenario.
‘Fancy a bit, Babe?’ asks Mr Bug, probably in an Australian accent, as he struts cockily though the dirt.
‘Only if you’re bug enough for a twelve-hour shag,’ retorts Ms Bug, outlining a frighteningly demanding schedule.
‘Twelve-hour shag? Nothing to it. Brace yourself, Sheila!’
And with that, he hops aboard. The pair take off, well and truly on the job, then spend their day flying around at low altitude, irretrievably coupled and no doubt having a rare time of it.
Because of this habit they have of public fornication, these essentially nasty creatures are universally known as ‘love bugs’. The name is their only saving grace. They were introduced into the Southern states some years ago by a caring authority who had been led to believe they would eat the mosquitoes. A sound plan on the face of things. Unfortunately, the love bugs found something else even more nourishing and tasty than the mozzies, so the original adversary continues to thrive, the love bugs have gone forth and multiplied in the best traditions of Noah, and the human population has to put up with a brand-new pest.
When any normal bug commits hara-kiri on a speeding motorcycle or car windscreen, it makes a bit of a splat and expires, leaving its recognisable remains for the undertakers to remove at the end of the day. Not so the love bug. These little chaps and their mates do not seem to have an outer body casing at all. They spludge themselves into a filthy grey ooze that spreads across an unbelievable area of clean metalwork, windshield, helmet or face. And because of their inexhaustible sexual energy, the innocent biker invariably gets two for the price of one.
As we negotiated the broken road out of Logansport bound in the general direction of Baton Rouge, still 200 miles away, we began to pass cars and trucks coming towards us that were barely recognisable on account of the bugs plastered all over their leading edges. Faces peered through opaque windscreens only partly kept clear by overworked wipers and washers. Every gas station was overflowing with drivers filling their washer bottles and wiping off their lights and screens. What happened to our Harleys almost broke our hearts.
I am realistic when it comes to keeping machinery clean. It’s a fine enough thing to maintain your motorcycle immaculately if you never take it anywhere other than the pub, but if you’re making 1,000 miles and more in an average week, you do your best and don’t get too upset by the odd splash of mud. Either that, or your life is a misery. Most evenings I would go over the bikes and shine them up a bit. I enjoyed that. What man with a pair of pliers tucked away somewhere in his soul wouldn’t have fun laying hands on two of the loveliest motorcycles he could ever own? And every night I left the windscreens covered with a damp cloth to soak off any bugs that had done themselves to death during the day. This policy paid off and as we roared across Texas, the bikes looked almost as smart as when they’d left Baltimore. Louisiana and the love bugs changed all that.
Within one hour at most from a standing start, my windshield was totally opaque; the forward curves of Madonna’s sumptuously painted black tank, with its perfectly executed coach stripe, were spattered all over with grey, acid death; the leading faces of my boots were more bug than black and my chrome and steel engine was merrily baking the fornicating little swine deep into its perfect finish. If anything, Betty Boop was faring even worse because she only had a small windshield of the type ludicrously described in accessory catalogues as a ‘fly-screen’. Roz’s leather riding jacket was literally soaked in dead love bugs. Her visor was impenetrable to daylight and poor Betty, who surely deserved better, looked ready for the knacker’s yard. It was small consolation that the whole population was suffering the same misery.
The imperfect solution was to fuel up every hour and to slosh down the bikes at the same time, giving ourselves a spray-off for good measure. Nobody minded, and we met some nice people in the queues for the water hoses.
‘Ain’t never seen nuthin’ like this before in the way of bugs!’
‘You sure have. They was here in early summer too!’
‘Yeah? Well, last year they only came once. How come it’s twice this time round?’
‘Those little guys, they jus’ love makin’ babies. Perhaps next year they won’t stop at all.’
‘Step aside there, an’ let the lady hose down her bike!’
‘How do you stand it, Honey? You poor thing. Why doesn’t your man buy a car?’ This from a large lady, looking at me as though I
were individually responsible for the whole vile show.
‘Same way as I do, I suppose,’ I butted in, picking a broken head out from between my top teeth.
‘Well at leas’ it’ll teach you to keep your mouth shut!’ The woman slapped her huge thigh and laughed. Her chum was even larger and blacker and was showing a magnificent amount of cleavage as she rinsed buckets of water over her ancient Pontiac’s windscreen. She winked disgracefully at me and said loudly,
‘At least they die happy!’ I was so wretched I tried not to see the joke, but the rest of the people waiting about certainly did. The big, healthy-looking lady was quivering like a jelly and I saw that I was suffering from a sense of humour failure.
‘Sort of like an airborne snuff movie,’ I said, brightening up. The women screamed with mirth.
There was obviously no spare money here, nothing much in the food stores, the supermarkets in the country towns were ill-stocked and the bugs were a serious tribulation. Compared with most Americans we had met, these folks seemed to have plenty to complain about. At least, in theory, they were far more disadvantaged than the Sioux on their Dakota reservation, yet strangely the country people hereabouts seemed to have worked out how to make the best of a poor hand of cards.
We dodged on southwards down a selection of minor roads, but the surface was so bad and the bug cloud so dense that in the end we capitulated to the delights of Interstate 49. The trucks were as awesome as usual and the cars did themselves proud with bad behaviour, but the flying menace definitely backed off. Plenty of them still meandered lecherously around the lower atmosphere, but the turbulence of the traffic seemed to push their adventurous couplings a few feet higher. We could now manage two hours between bug-stops if we had a mind to.
By the time we rolled across the swamps and into Baton Rouge we were exhausted by the heat and humidity, once again growing in volume, and by the sheer nausea of the insect genocide. Now, cruising weightless in the private swimming pool of the excellent hotel I had splashed out on to make up for our grisly day, life began to look almost normal. Palm trees surrounded the blue water, the sun dipped into their green fronds, the love bugs had ‘fucked’ off and nobody else came for a swim.