Man of LaMancha
Church of the Open Road Miles 7795-7825 September 28
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- Ansare and Yahya Miles 7825-7855 September 29
Church of the Open Road Miles 7795-7825 September 28Today is Sunday. I’ve missed church several Sundays in a row. That’s not like me. I grew up in the church. Preachers and Sunday School teachers made me the person I am. My life orbits around Sundays and church. But I can’t bring myself to go today. I want to go. But I need to ride. So it’s the Church of the Open Road I visit today. First to the post office to drop off 30 more of the 600 letters I’m sending to members of the Liberty Area Chamber of Commerce asking them to accept the Greater Liberty Challenge. There’s a chill in the air this morning. For the first time since early April, I’m wearing my yellow GoreTex windbreaker over my yellow HateBusters T-shirt. From the post office out Withers Road past the community center, through Glenaire and across I-35 into Pleasant Valley. I turn right up the hill just past the big QT truck stop and ride through a residential area over to 76th Street where I turn left. Up and down hills for several miles, across Shoal Creek Parkway and over I-435, I come to Highway 152. A right turn brings me back toward Liberty. Traffic is picking up as noon time nears but is lighter than at any other time of the week. Ordinarily I would avoid the 152 bridge over I-35, going either north on Church Road to Highway 291 or south to Pleasant Valley. Today, though, I want to ride up Kansas Street onto our town square and check out the final hours of Liberty’s Fall Festival. Everything was perfect yesterday. Temperature in the 60s and not a cloud in the sky as the parade came up Kansas past the square and back to the junior high on Franklin. Laura marched with her dance team, and when the parade was over, her parents and Bobbie and I joined the crowds at the carnival. We visited all the booths around the square. We had hot dogs and funnel cakes and watched the older girls from Laura’s dance team perform. I couldn’t have made it around the square on my bike yesterday. The streets were filled with people. The crowds have gone now. Soon the booths will steal away to back yards and parking lots to await other festive days. I’m home in time for all the family to gather. Dave comes from Kansas City, Brian from Lee’s Summit, Debbie, Ed and Laura from across town. We watch Dante Hall perform his football magic before we gather around the table for a marvelous dinner. “Papa, can you play with me?” Laura asks as we finish. We retire to the basement while others clean up the kitchen. Ansare and Yahya Miles 7825-7855 September 29That email from Al Ansare at 5 AM changed my plans. A 75-mile day and a late breakfast at JJ’s in Plattsburg gave way to lunch with Al and Yahya. Breakfast at Denny’s at 15th and Broadway more than five years ago was the last time the three of us were together. We are to meet at Baptist Lutheran Medical Center where Al is a chaplain and go to the New York Deli for lunch. Al can’t get away, so Yahya and I drive to a nearby Captain D’s and get three #1 Fish Dinners. Yahya and I have been close friends since that day more than 20 years ago when I took my students from Jewell to serve as tutors at the masjid where he was imam. We liked each other at first sight. In the years since we have traveled the country together, visiting schools, prisons, churches and other places where people would listen to us talk about the Human Family Reunion and How to Like People. Yahya planned to come to Disneyland to meet me when my cross-country ride ended. But Zakia, his wife, was expecting their eleventh child, and he stayed home to be with her. When I had ridden from Orlando to Kansas City on my way to Anaheim, Yahya planned a reception for me. At two o'clock in the afternoon on a hot June day in 1987, I met Yahya at the Gregg Community Center for a ride through the black community to the Freedom Fountain a few miles east. Al Brooks was there. And Larry Schumake. And Lucile Bluford. And Shah Waliallah. All long time friends; all prominent community builders in the Kansas City area. Al is Director of the Human Relations Department for Kansas City, Larry is Director of the Black Economic Union, Lucile is Editor of the Kansas City Call, and Shah is Imam at Masjid (Mosque) Ahmed. All this has been arranged by Yahya Furqan, Imam at Masjid Omar, a dear friend and Chariman of the Faith Committee that planned my ride. None of those asked to serve on this committee refused, and membership included major religious communities and races: Father Milan Bajich, Pastor of St. George Serbian Orthodox Church; Rev. Vern Barnett, Director of the Center for Religious Experience and Study; Rev. Bob Brumet, Pastor of Overland Park Unity; Dennis Jenkins, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; Rabbi Mark Levin, Temple B'nai Jehudah; Jim McKinney, Heart of America Indian Center; Rev. George Steincross, Pastor, Second Baptist Church, Liberty; Rev. Webster West, Pastor, King Solomon Baptist Church, Kansas City, Kansas. In the world as I would have it, these religious communities and races would regularly work together on projects to benefit them all. To my knowledge, though, BikeAmerica was the only project being worked on jointly in Kansas City that summer. At William Jewell, at AT&T, at the Gregg Community Center and at the Freedom Fountain, The Human Family Reunion came alive. From the hearts and minds and souls of The Faith Committee sprang this gathering of young and old, black and white Christian, Jew, and Muslim. As we stood in the shade of the mobile stage brought to the lawn of the Gregg Center for this occasion, we felt warm and safe and secure. To know that we were there to celebrate our family ties, that it had taken us all of our lives to come to this place for this purpose, that after today we may never again come together: all of this gives to each second of our sharing today an eternal significance that we all intuitively recognize. And as each of those who address the assemblage steps to the mike, we embrace. And without embarrassment or reservation or planning, each of us says almost in unison, "I love you, my friend." Bob and Jean are with me again. And on their tandem, they ride across the city like the pied piper, an entourage of children in their wake. Before we leave the Gregg Center and again when we get to the Freedom Fountain, Bob breaks out his tools for emergency repairs to a child's bike; his payment, a smile and an energetic pedaling away. Shah is near my age, and he pedals to the Fountain and back to the Center on his young son's bike with its banana seat, handlebars above his head and frame so small that he cannot extend his legs to pedal. Yahya's bicycle is borrowed from a friend who must be a giant; it's the biggest bike I've ever seen, a frame so large that mounting and dismounting is the trickiest part of the ride. Biking the tree-lined streets through the black community as integrated riders, calling and waving to everyone I see, being responded to in kind, kindles in me a feeling I haven't felt since high school when I strode the halls of Huntsville High yelling out greetings to students, teachers, administrators, and anybody else who chanced to be about.
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