[Photo above by Brian Wegman on Unsplash]
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I know I’ve promised a tale or two about dirt bikes and this is one from my younger days. We had been living in or around Murphy, NC for a while and we tended to move around the area based on where my mom got work (as a teacher). I’d been without a dirt bike for about a year and was ready to move up to a bigger one. My parents called my brother and I into the kitchen one day and announced, “we’re moving to Turtletown, Tennessee!”
I was twelve and my brother was eight. You can imagine our responses. “Turtletown! That sounds crazy! I don’t want to move to Turtletown!”
Of course, our responses really didn’t matter, but my parents at least tried to make us feel good about it. My dad offered, “We’ll be back out in the country again and I can get you a new dirt bike. There are about 300 acres of forest land with trails to ride on behind the house we’re going to rent.”
“Hmm…” I thought to myself, “I’m not going to complain right now because I want the dirt bike, but I’m not too sure about Turtletown.”
This particular story won’t focus on this element, but Turtletown was the best childhood year I can remember. I only lived there for one school year (7th grade), but I had the time of my life. I had friends quickly and boy did those country girls look good (and they were boy crazy too).
Turtletown at its peak had a pickle factory and an elementary school. When we moved there, it was down to just an elementary school. Today it’s just a community (no school, no pickle factory). It did and does have beautiful, deep woods and critters all around. More importantly, it has wonderful people.
My dad kept his word and a few weeks into the move, he got me the new dirt bike. It was a used Hodaka Combat Wombat. It was huge and heavy (and broke down all the time). I had to learn to use a clutch for the first time which was a good thing. My previous training motorcycle was the little Honda XR 50 that so many dirt bikers learned to ride on. It had three gears, but no clutch (perfect to learn on). Now, I was moving up to something I could barely straddle on tip toes, it was heavy and had a clutch and (probably) five gears. The thing is, when you want something bad enough, you push yourself. My dad went over the basics in the yard and I took off on the aforementioned trails.
Like many riders, I learned the hard way a lot. I fell over a few times in the woods. The bike was heavy for me to lift and balance on as a twelve year old. It stalled at times as I learned to manage driving it with a clutch and using that to keep power up on a steep hill. But, I pushed through and got pretty good with it.
I got too comfortable and (with encouragement from local boys) started going down the paved roads to get from trail to trail. There really was no traffic to speak of in such a deep woods community, but it was illegal. Some helpful parent saw me and called to report my dalliances to my parents. My parents felt they should respond and so I was grounded for a month. No dirt bikes, no leaving the house after school. Thankfully, that was in the middle of winter and it was not a time I was trying to get out much anyway.
After two weeks, I was starting to go stir crazy. Then, we got the big snow! About 16 inches fell and stuck. Wonderful! We made snowmen, had snowball fights and no one was going to school. Lucky for me, my parents started to go stir crazy being trapped in the house with me and my brother that winter as well. Thus, came the great adventure.
My parents couldn’t drive in the road conditions as they were. They didn’t have a four wheel drive and all-wheel drive SUV’s weren’t really a thing yet. We needed some groceries and there was a convenience store only about two miles down a dirt road from our house. So, they decided to lift my grounding early.
“Tim,” they called me, “we need you to take your little brother on the back of your motorcycle down to the convenience store for some groceries.” They sent us packing with a list of needed items, cash and a couple of backpacks for each of us to load up. So, off we went. “Go slow,” they said.
“Sure thing!” I replied. Meanwhile, I was thinking, “yeah, sure I’m going to have fun, not worry about speed.”
The dirt bike was equipped with knobby tires for mud which got pretty good traction in snow. I did have some fun cutting circles in the snow at various points along the way. We were dressed for the cold, so not too worried about falling over in the snow if it happened. My little brother was pretty used to me driving him places, so he didn’t seem to mind as I took some time along the way, swooshed the bike around in the snow making big, unnecessary figure eights and sliding around in the snow.
To get to the store, you had to cross the wooden bridge over the creek at the end of the road. That’s where the challenge came as we arrived at the back side of the convenience store. The creek was crazy swollen and flooding the bridge! Now understand, I’m talking about a wooden bridge that had probably been there for forty years. It was only about two car lengths long and one car width plus a few feet wide. On that day, it wasn’t visible except at the entry and exit edges because the creek was pouring over it. We couldn’t get the groceries without crossing it and we were dressed for the cold, but not for swimming.
I pulled up near the edge of the bridge to assess the situation. I watched as a truck and a Jeep both pulled up to it and turned and went back. For my twelve year old mind, that was like a dare. The Jeep people were still nearby and watching. I told my little brother to hang on tight. Off I went.
I knew not to accelerate on the bridge so I got my speed up right before it, then kept the power on steady as I plowed through the creek and what proved to be waist deep rushing water as we rode across into the parking lot of the little store. We were soaked, but we made it (foolish as it was). We went in and got warm and bought our supplies. Then we loaded up and did it again to get back home.
My parents would have grounded me for life if they’d seen it or a video of it. They didn’t. I think my little brother enjoyed it. He really didn’t know how to explain it anyway, so we just went in and got dry and warm and delivered the groceries. The grounding was lifted and I immediately went back to riding on the roads when I pleased.
Please kids, don’t try this at home. It was a different time back then and what I did was a lot safer when there just wasn’t that much traffic on the road. I think it would be problematic to do that today, even in Turtletown.
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Story 2 in the Turtletown Series is only available by signing up for the free newsletter. Click here for Tales from Turtletown #3: Friendship and Trout
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