Man of LaMancha
Our Fourth Saturday Miles 9940-9970 November 22
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Our Fourth Saturday Miles 9940-9970 November 22My car radio is tuned to 89.3. NPR is always on Saturday mornings early when I go to meet Rich for a ride to breakfast. Before I can turn it off, I hear the unwelcome reminder that 40 years ago on this date President Kennedy was shot. And the flashbacks come. It’s around noontime in 1963. I’m a graduate assistant at the University of Missouri in Columbia. I’m teaching a class on Social Problems. Our topic for today is the possibility of violence in America. Suddenly a graduate student friend bursts into the room. “The President has been shot,” he yells. Considering our topic, I think it’s a set up. He says it three times before I believe he is serious. We dismiss and go downstairs to huddle around a radio. They say the same thing. We sit in shock for four days, not wanting to see what our TV shows but unable to pull ourselves away. For Christmas of 1963, Bobbie and I were planning to go home to Texas so our children could see their grandparents. We would stop enroute in another town close to Dallas so they could meet their great-grandparents. Now I didn’t want to go. But we did. I walked in the door. Someone mentioned “Kennedy’s death”. My grandfather said, “He was told not to come.” End of subject. In all these years I have not been able to read about that day. I have not gone to any movies about his death. I have a humorous record making good-natured fun of the Kennedys. I played it often before that day. Not once since. I have William Manchester’s book about President Kennedy in Camelot. I haven’t opened it in 40 years. I did not want to recall that time on this day. Now I want to forget. If I can’t do that on a bike in the cold, I doubt I can do it at all. From various places in Greater Liberty, we rendezvous at Mt. Gilead Church about 10 miles out on Plattsburg Road. Our fourth November Saturday ride is underway. Michael and Eileen Calabria, Richard Mark, Steve Hanson, Kevin Brasfield, Krysia Gorniki and Rich Groves have come. Originally I planned for us to ride from Biscari Brothers. But with 25 miles of hills separating us from breakfast and two hours to get there, Rich and I decided we should shorten our ride. Riding sweep comes easy for me. I may have ridden further this year than anyone else on the ride, but everyone here is a faster rider. Even so, I would hang back on days like these to make certain that no rider got left behind. Everyone here today has answered my call to come ride. I owe it to them to look out for them. I could not repair their bike if it broke down. But I could summon help with my cell phone and wait with them until it arrived. Today is our hilliest ride. And it’s colder than I first thought. I stop to exchange my gloves for a pair of mittens. I’m the last to arrive at JJ’s. On the sidewalk by the front door, they have chalked a message on a portable blackboard: “Welcome Bikers and the Red Hat Society.” We pull two tables together and take a seat. Dale comes a few minutes later in his car. We add a third table.” Is this Iowa?” Dale asks. He took a couple of wrong turns coming here and thinks we’re further from home than we are. Jennifer comes to greet us. “We want to make a donation,” she says. She hands me a check. “Next time you come for breakfast, we have to plan our benefit for your ride,” she says. With One Week To GoNovember weather can turn suddenly brutal. I did not dare come to the last days of the month with many miles to go. But I did not expect to have only 30 miles to ride with a week still to go. I must ride. If not everyday, at least most days. I can’t walk if I don’t. But I must not ride these last 30 miles until next Saturday. The good folks at Mill Inn are expecting us. I’ve been looking forward for months to the last quarter-mile of my 10,000—once around the Jewell quad in memory of the 30 years I taught here, then down Franklin Street past Second Baptist Church where I am a member, to our town square. Once around the square in salute of all the businesses that supported my ride. Then another block out Franklin to Rotary Park, in recognition of the Greater Liberty Challenge issued by their president, Kelly McClelland. So the miles I ride this week will be off the books. Maintenance miles I will call them, keeping the bike and my body in working order. Then on November 29, all bikers are invited to join me at Biscari Brothers Bicycles at 7:30 in the morning for our 30 mile round trip to Excelsior Springs and the Mill Inn. Ride with me back to Liberty and around the quad and our town square and past Rotary Park back to Biscari Brothers for the celebration.
Announce it and they will come. That’s what Carol, Bobbie and I are thinking as we sit at Hy-Vee early on a Thursday morning and plan our chili dinner fund-raiser for a week from Sunday. The 600 names in my email address book later that day receive an invitation. The Liberty Sun on the following Wednesday carries a front-page story and invites everyone to come. The chili is on and the aroma welcomes us in when our crew comes Sunday morning before 9 o’clock to the church. Betty Boutcher cooks our church dinner every Wednesday evening and is here to work her culinary magic again today. We quietly assemble all we need for the day as Sunday School takes place. When it ends we move into the fellowship hall to set up tables and the silent auction. We are ready as church ends at noon to receive those who come. Come they do. From other churches. Other towns. Other states. From the MS Society. People I haven’t seen in years and have sorely missed. People I have only just met. Bikers come. Bridge partners come. Family come. Colleagues from the college come. From the newspaper and TV they come. Food, fun, fellowship and funds for two good causes—all of these in great abundance we have. How fitting that we are seated at round tables, for the setting has an air of Camelot. “Let it never be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, known as Camelot.” Before three o’clock has come we have departed this place, back into the raw cold of late November, warmed for days to come by memories of our brief shining moment. More than $2500.00 the good folks who come contribute to my two causes. A few hours later the Chiefs beat the Raiders on a last second field goal. Then in our family room, my wife and sons and daughter and son-in-law and daughter-in-law and granddaughter play a spirited and hilarious game of charades. A fitting end to a most perfect day. Channel 41 News at 5 o’clock reports to all of Greater Kansas City the good time we have had.
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