Oklahoma Hits Home
Oklahoma hits home
UP FRONT
David Edwards
As THIS COLUMN IS WRITTEN, JUST OVER one month has passed since brooding malcontents masquerading as patriots parked a rented van in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and walked away. Moments later, the van’s awful cargo—a crude but potent ammonium-nitrate bomb—exploded, bringing down half the building. In all, 168 people died, 19 of them innocent children; more than 400 others were injured.
Among the dead was one of us.
Margaret Goodson, a Kawasaki Vulcan 500 owner and enthusiastic member of the Honda Sport Touring Association, was a 22-year employee of the Oklahoma City Social Security office. A claims representative, she was at work on the first floor of the Murrah Building the morning the bomb went off. It took seven days of digging to unearth her body. She was 54 years old.
“She had always dreamed of traveling around the country on a motorcycle,” says painter/carpenter Ron Goodson, Margaret’s husband.
It wasn’t until the age of 46 that Margaret began to turn her dreams into reality. Two-up day trips and poker runs aboard Ron’s Kawasaki KZ650 were fun, but Margaret wanted her own bike for the overnighters and weekend tours she and Ron had planned. MSF classes came next, followed by hours spent circling a vacant field on a 125cc dirtbike.
“She took to it well,” Ron says. “She told me that after riding one, she couldn’t ever be a passenger again for any length of time.”
An early crash on the 125 shook Margaret’s confidence, but Ron was there to help.
“I got her cleaned up and talked her back on. I was so proud of her,” he remembers today.
It wasn’t the last time Margaret’s enthusiasm for motorcycling would be put to the test. A short stint on a Yamaha XS400 passed uneventfully, but her next streetbike, a taller, heavier Honda CX500 Twin, gave some trouble. At stops, especially on the crowned roads of rural Oklahoma and Arkansas, even tip-toeing couldn’t keep Margaret from dropping the bike. On one trip, she fell domino-style into Ron’s Kawasaki Concours, which also tipped over in a puddle of spilt fuel and broken footpegs.
“That became known as our Trip From Hell,” Ron says with a laugh.
“Altogether, I think she dropped that Honda four or five times. We had to spend an extra day in a motel, she was so nervous and upset.”
But undeterred, apparently. Margaret traded the CX for a Kawasaki 550 Spectre, a four-cylinder cruiser with a low seat height. It was a good match. Soon, she and Ron were logging up to 10,000 miles a year on their bikes and planning riding vacations to Wyoming, Georgia, Texas and Colorado. Joining the HSTA put them in touch with likeminded riders.
“In effect, motorcycling became our social life. There were just so many neat places we looked forward to riding to,” says Ron.
In time, Margaret’s trusty Spectre gave way to a new, cream-and-turquoise Vulcan 500 cruiser.
“Me, I agonize over every big purchase,” says Ron. “But she just walked into the dealership, sat on the bike and said to the salesman, ‘Okay, I’ll buy it,’ just like that. It fit her like a champ and she liked the belt drive, the bigger gas tank and the extra gear.”
To celebrate the purchase, Ron bought Margaret a fringed, whiteleather jacket.
“You should have seen her on that bike,” he says, fighting back the tears. “Red boots, red gloves, white helmet, white jacket-she looked really cute, like the circus come to town.”
Lately, Ron and Margaret were forced to curtail their long-distance rides. Margaret’s doctors discovered bone spurs and warned against riding altogether. A crash or even hitting a pothole the wrong way might punctun her spinal column, they said.
Margaret didn’t care much for th doctors’ orders. An operation alleviate the problem somewhat, and the coup was making plans to trailer their bik> to HSTA events this summer, whei they’d unload and take part in day trip and other festivities.
“She was looking forward to ridin again. She called it therapy,” Ron says* “We never had a bad experience on L motorcycle trip. Everywhere we went, people wanted to know how we were doing, where we were going. Margaret really loved motorcycling.”
In the weeks since the bombing, Ron has busied himself fixing up an old GPz550. He says he hasn’t thought much about the people who set off the explosion that took away his wife.
“All 1 cared about was gone after 9 o’clock on April 19th,” he says softlyy and the tears Row again.
A terrible irony here is that in attack ing the gray, featureless monolith that i^ the federal government, the misguided jackals who perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing reminded us that our government indeed has a face, that it i made up of individuals-ordinary citi zens with hopes and dreams, familie and friends, fears and frailties, and, ye even silly, frivolous things like moto ' cycles. Had the bombers studied civic instead of explosives, that much woul have been clear. In fact, back in 1863 Abraham Lincoln stated plainly, anbrieRy, that the national vision had al ways been a “...government of the peo pie, by the people, for the people....” Good people.
Like Margaret Goodson.
Ron Goodson has asked that readers wishing to help in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing send donations in the name of Margaret Goodson to The Mayor’s Disaster Relief Fund, PO. Box 1146, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73101-1146. The fund is open to the immediate families of anyone who was killed, critically injured or severly impacted due to the April 19 bombing.
