Brewbrother
Objectivist
In 1968 my family moved to Asheville NC for my fathers job. It was a rural area and not much for young teens to do so I begged, pleaded and saved $46 from odd jobs and talked my dad into letting me get a motorcycle. I looked and hunted for a motorcycle I could afford and ended up with a 1954 Jawa 250 from a guy who got his draft notice. That Jawa was the cutting edge of Czech motorcycle technology. It was a street bike but dad sprung for a set of knobbies and it became a dirt/street bike and was a good runner. We lived in an area of town called Swannanoa or as we called it swannanowhere. It did afford some awesome dirt trails, logging paths and parkway service roads that I soon learned like the back of my hand. After a few weeks I started to meet some fellow riders and made some friends. One of the best riders was a guy named Frankie and he had a need for speed. If there was a risk to take a jump to be made or a speed record set he was on it. I rode with him for several weeks and visited his house fairly often. He lived about 8 miles down river near the reservoir and his folks had a nice spread with a good size barn that we used for repairs and the occasional gas fill up. One afternoon he asked if Id like to drink a beer while we washed the mud off our bikes. I was all for it although at the time I could have counted on one hand the number of beers I had ever had in my life. We were having a good time washing bikes and sipping Pabst beer and as I was staring out the barn door a limo eased down the driveway.
I had never seen a limo, but Frankie had and he grabbed the empties and tossed them in the trash can and put the lid on it and said not to mention the beers if anyone asked. We watched that limo come to a stop. The driver got out and opened the back door and a well dressed man emerged, looked around and started to make his way to the barn. He came in with a huge smile on his face, hugged Frankie asked who I was and then asked Frankie where his mother was. Frankie replied that she was in town doing some shopping. He engaged in some small talk and reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of gum offered it around and unwrapped a piece. He lifted that lid to throw away that wrapper and thats when he saw those beers. Well I could see him go from happy to disappointed to angry. His face started getting red and he demanded to know why we were drinking beer. A vein popped out on his forehead and he asked me where I lived and what my home phone number was and where my father worked. So I told him and he said I had to leave and I couldnt come back until he said I could. Needless to say he scared the guacamole out of me and I figured if he called my dad I wouldnt be able to sit on that bike, much less ride it. That was a long ride home for me and I got back to the house and waited for the inevitable. Sure enough as soon as he got home he whipped my ass good, and grounded me for a month. It seems to be a faux pas for Billy Graham to call you at work at admonish you for your sons beer consumption. Especially when he is drinking beer with Franklin Graham. I shared this as I was talking with my dad last weekend he reminded me of that little incident. He laughed and said of all the people in North Carolina that could have caught you drinking beer, the Reverend Billy Graham was about the worst possible choice. The bad part was that he called dads work and said This Billy Graham and I need to speak to .. It made it around that building in less than a minute. He said they had a calm conversation about how difficult teenagers can be, the need to be forgiving, and how they both shared that burden. Looking back on it, its a hilarious situation, but at the time not so much.
