by CDR Jack D. Woodul, USNR(Ret), artwork by Carl Snow
by CDR Jack D. Woodul, USNR(Ret), artwork by Carl Snow
Puresome’s mental movie begins with a long, ground-level shot of an empty, open country road and its white median strip. Chickadees chirp from the bar ditch thickets, but it is otherwise quiet. Gradually, blurs appear in the distance, a low rumble turns into a roar and 12 brawny figures on dirt bikes roar directly into the stationary, low-angled camera.
The motorcycle squadron is led not by a sullen, sneering Marlon Brando, but by Youthly Puresome, whose person is not decked out in black leather jacket and cool dude shades, but with dirt, scratches and rents in his Levis. It seems like a good time for this movie to fade, dissolve and end. While it would have been way better to be a shocking story that could never take place in most American towns, Puresome figgered that just being able to walk away from this particular figurative flick, like some landings, qualified as a good deal. Getting back to being a cool dude could come later, after some repairs.
As any accident investigation will point out, prangs are the result of a chain of events. Puresome’s chain started way back in the Misty Dawn of Prehistory when motorcycles figured near the top in expressions of fashionable adolescent rebellion. Such rebellion was hard to come by in the Portales of those days, and Puresome had to be happy to spend his small poke on an ancient Harley Davidson that had graced its owner’s garage in a state of disrepair for some time. Eventually, he coaxed it to tentative life, and Youthly putted down Portales’ Main Street in a cloud of oily smoke and a shower of small parts and chain links, much to his satisfaction and the annoyance of farmers in town to visit the Dairy Queen. He spun out enough times to put some nice scars on his legs, and he reluctantly sold the hulk to another lusting adolescent when he had to go away to the university. The whole motorcycle thing got sublimated in the quest for Golden Wings and whole new possibilities of semi-adolescent rebellion. But the Wild One always lurked in the background, waiting.
So it was that Puresome ended up in the Big Red Fighter Squadron with the job of avionics/weapons division officer. The avionics lads did their twidget thing to the ancient gizmos in the Crusaders without need for much input from Youthly, other than the occasional shoot-the-stuff game of acey-deucey with their chief. But happiness was four warm guns in the pointy end of the Crusader, and they were tended by the “BB Stackers” of the ordnance shop. These folks tended to be large, burly sorts that could happily hoist 2,000-lb. bombs all day, and Puresome found a soul mate in Chief Large, who held illimitable dominion over them and the oily secrets of boresighting and feed mechanisms.
Unfortunately, the CAG had dictated that the Big Red Fighter Squadron would bolt on wing pylons, much like two extra vertical stabilizers, that would carry the deadly Mk 76 blue practice bomb for attacks on the dirt targets at NAS Fallon. While there was great howling from the pilots about the effect that the pylons would have on the maneuverability of the mighty F-8, there was even greater howling about entering the air-to-mud realm of the attack pukes. But for the ordnance shop, there was the challenge of sorting through bushel baskets of rat-eaten, corroded wiring harnesses that had been passed on by Miramar Crusader squadrons that had been percussively sublimated upward into Phantoms. After much teeth gnashing and only a couple of tailplanes being knocked off by errant bomb racks, the squadron pilots could go out at night and rain practice bomb death on dimly lit targets, often reporting hits on possible land.
Safely back at NAS Dallas, the ordnance shop decided to celebrate surviving their recent crucible by having a party. Since their division officer had recently fought a loud, enthusiastic (though ultimately unsuccessful) fight with the TAR officer in charge about transporting the shop’s many motorcycles on the next deployment, it was decided to invite LT Puresome and his Child Bride.
A toasty Texas afternoon found the ordnance folk and their wives and girlfriends in a back yard with some cases of beer and burning hamburgers. Parked around the yard were motorcycles of all sizes and stripes, and polite conversation deferred to detailed discussions of their oily secrets. Eventually, as the stack of empties grew large, it suddenly became mandatory that the division officer take a tricked out Harley Hog for a spin. “No hill for a stepper,” thought Puresome, “I’d rather be dead than look bad, and I used to be an ace, as long as I stayed away from gravel….”
So the good lieutenant received a few discrete hints about the knobs and taps, stomped the kick-starter and off he putted down the street. After a suitable time, he managed a careful 180 and smoked back to the waiting group with what he hoped was suitable panache. More beer had been consumed in his absence, and it had been decided that the division officer’s wife needed to ride the Hog. “Yaaaaaaa! Tunita doesn’t know squat about motorcycles! And I know she’s gonna take the dare and go off and kill herself!”
Sure enough, Tunita hiked up her kilties and straddled the Hog. Puresome explained the knobs and taps through clenched teeth. Surrounded by silly-assed beer grins, she stomped the kick-starter and wobbled off into the distance. Her husband decided he better have a couple more beers to prepare himself for the inevitable. About the time he had convinced himself that life held no more pasta delights and clean silkies, Tunita putted back into the yard without tumping over. Though she later admitted having to have a neighbor down the street help her get turned around, the only thing missing from the moment was that it wasn’t a Triumph motorcycle. It was such a jolly moment that it was decided that the division officer had to join the group in motocross through the boondocks the next morning. One of the lads had recently had an operation that precluded sitting very much, and his dirt bike was available. It might be filthy work, but it had to be done.
A beer-less dawn brought the realization that it had been a long time since he had done much motorcycling, and, other than bogging through sand dunes some, he had never motocrossed. But his strength was as the strength of 10 because his heart was pure, and surely his thousand-mile-an-hour fighter pilot hands could hack mere bouncing through the woods. So Tunita dropped him off at Chief Large’s place, where he jumped on the loaner bike. The two then set off to join the other lads in the boondocks. The silly-assed beer grins of the previous evening had been replaced with silly-assed grins of anticipation of the oncoming demise of LT Puresome. No slack was to be cut, and the group blasted off down the trail at the speed of heat, with Puresome and Chief Large bringing up the rear.
“Yaaaaaaaaaa!” Puresome was bouncing along as fast as his learning curve would let him, whizzing through mesquite trees and clumps of cactus, eating dirt and trying to keep up. He was starting to get the hang of things when the trail ahead went through two trees that would clear his handlebars on each side by a couple of inches. Unfortunately, his left handlebar failed him and struck the tree. Youthly found himself launching into space and arcing into an arroyo. Time did its stand still thing until he hit the ground with some velocity, but he looked up just in time to roll out of the way of the descending motorcycle, which crunched down inches away from his warm body.
“Blaznabbid frastled ratsfannies!” Now, Puresome was mad. He grasped up the moderately bent motorcycle and kick-started it. Looking up at Chief Large, who had witnessed the octaflugeron, spin out and crash, he said “I meant to do that!” and blasted off down the trail with a vengeance. The good chief could only shake his large, helmeted head. He had already been going through the roster, trying to figger out the next officer he’d have to break in.
Puresome caught up. The rest of the day was spent mashing vegetation, climbing cliffs and daring deeds. The division officer, bloody but unbowed, joyously participated without further soiling himself or his mount. Finally, everyone had enjoyed all the motocrossing they could stand, and it was time to return to base.
When Puresome and Chief Large putted into his driveway, Tunita was waiting. About all that was immediately recognizable about her husband were eyeballs and teeth, shining through the dirt. Body parts were visible through new ventilations in the clothing, and small wounds had long since crusted over. Levis and shirt had been dealt a deathblow that no suds could ever revive. It was obvious that the foolish men had had a great time.
It had been a properly manly day. It was determined that the damage to the motorcycle was combat related and did not even rate an incident report. The ordies had done a credible job in trying to kill their division officer, and surviving the prang meant that Puresome had done a credible job in avoidance and was available for another try.
But Youthly’s daddy had not raised a completely stupid boy. Even though there were other motorcycles on other days, never again did a handlebar fail him and hit an unsuspecting tree. That was a huge comfort to Tunita and a great disappointment to the BB Stackers.