Radio Daze

Radio Daze

LEANINGS

We MADE AN ODD PICTURE, I SUPPOSE, and that's why the local cop kept cruising by for another look. It was a hot summer night in the little town of Quincy, Florida, and my wife Barbara and I were sitting on a park bench in front of the courthouse, eating fried chicken in the dark.

This is not normally the kind of thing we do for fun, but the circumstances were unusual. We were flying around the country, using up six weeks of carefully hoarded vacation time, circumnavigating the U.S. in our old yellow 1945 Piper J-3 Cub (the kind with 65 horsepower, that barely makes it over the Rockies). We’d flown late that evening, landing at the Quincy airport just as we ran out of daylight, with a humid mist forming in the dense forests of north Florida. Hitchhiking into town, we checked into a motel and then walked down to the courthouse square in search of something resembling dinner. A fried chicken place on Main Street was just about to close, but they obligingly made up two more boxes of extra crispy before shutting the lights out.

So, there we sat on the park bench, crunching away, 10 o’clock at night, listening to the cicadas and tree frogs chrip and croak in that swelling chorus of swamp and forest creatures you hear only in southern climes. The local cop and an occasional carload of teenagers cruised the square, but the night was mostly peaceful.

We were just about down to the cole slaw and the honey and biscuits, when I realized that some hidden movie director had written a sound track for our visit. Really loud music was filling the air, coming from no discernible direction, bouncing off buildings, trees and statues, growing in volume, drowning out the frogs and insects. It was that drum-machine-and-synthesizer brand of imitation rock ’n’ roll that makes you want to tap your fingers—on the SCAN button of your radio.

Suddenly, the source of the music hove into view on the town square. It appeared to be a motorcycle of some kind, hidden under a gigantic fairing, a stereo system and five or six pieces of matching fiberglass luggage. We could tell it was a motorcycle because

there were handlebar grips sticking out, and the person seated amid all this stuff had to put his feet down at the stop sign. The rider accelerated across the square and rode out through the other side of town, music blaring. We could hear him for miles, spreading joy and showering good motorcycle fellowship all through the dark streets of Quincy.

“What an idiot,” Barb said, when it got quiet enough to talk. “I think I’d rather hear loud exhaust pipes.”

“You can get arrested for those,” I said.

I did a quick check of my blood pressure and adrenaline level and found, to my displeasure, that they were way up. What was going on here? Two of my favorite things have always been riding motorcycles and listening to rock V roll music, and here was this guy doing both at the same time, making me wish that a good on-board electrical fire might strike at the very heart of his sound system. Me, a guy who has spent his whole life (okay, at least 15 or 20 minutes) trying to cultivate a liveand-let-live attitude about everything. With the possible exception of airliner hijackings and Neil Simon screenplays.

The problem was a matter of degree, of course. Just as it is possible to like boxing without randomly beating people up, it is possible to like music—even really loud music-without forcing it upon others. I’ve never understood the boom-box mentality, mobile or otherwise. It seems to be another form of littering, like throwing paper cups and styrofoam ham-

burger cartons out your car window; audio grafitti written large with a spray can of noise on a clean wall of air; a strident form of insult to the people around you. Idiots, I realize, we have with us always, but it saddened me to see this form of idiocy combined with motorcycling.

The concept of putting a radio on a motorcycle in the first place, I also have to admit, is a little strange to me. Nothing wrong with it, I guess. Some of my best friends like radios on their touring bikes, and I wouldn’t hesitate to sit down and eat at the same table with them, or even lend them tools, and I’d probably let my sister go out with one, if her husband and three kids didn't object.

It’s just that, to me, motorcycling remains a sort of Primary Activity, one of life’s basic pleasures that works best unadorned, a thing too pure in its sensations and enjoyment to invite other diversions while doing it. It’s a pastime worthy of full attention, like skiing or scuba diving or napping in Traffic Safety School. Music is another primary input, and I prefer to listen without too many distractions. Music and riding are separate things to me, and I would no more listen to a radio while riding a motorcycle than I would ride a motorcycle around the infield during a Rolling Stones concert.

Perhaps I’d feel differently if I put on the really long miles, as some hard-core touring riders do, and had an exceptionally comfortable bike with a good seat and wind protection.

I have hit some pretty boring stretches of highway where the idea might have surfaced for a moment, but so far I've resisted the impulse to listen to a radio, even crossing the Great Plains. (Okay, once or twice I started humming to myself, and then there were the Tony Orlando and Dawn hallucinations in ’76 . . ..)

It’s all a matter of personal taste, but I think the first time I’m tempted to listen to a radio while riding a motorcycle, I’ll probably go out and search for a worse road or take a less reliable bike. Maybe the Triumph, where fear of rod-knock occupies the whole mind and where valve clatter, however deafening, is a kind of music to the ears. Peter Egan