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AuthorHouse

Chapter One

It all started around the summer of 1975, on Ponderosa Drive in South Daytona, Florida. My father had just retired from the United States Air Force. He was known as a mustang. He enlisted in the Air Force, but later went through officer candidate school and became an officer. He wore his uniform proudly and demanded respect from his family. I didn't know much about respect, but I know I was scared of my dad as a kid.

South Daytona was the perfect neighborhood to grow up in the '70s. I was eight years old going into the second grade. That seems a little old. My dad always said I failed kindergarten, but mom said I was too young, and I was kept out of school for a year prior to entering first grade. My sister Beth said I was too immature, and that's why I was held back a year. She assured me it was not due to remedial reasons.

I am the youngest of four kids. Beth is the oldest; she was going into high school. Dawn is next, and she was going into high school as well. My brother Charlie was going into seventh grade. Charlie's real name is Irven Wayne Elmore Jr., but he is and always will be Charlie to me and to the people that lived on Ponderosa Drive. Charlie was going into seventh grade.

Just down the street was the coolest family on the block, the Murphys. The youngest was Sean, and at the time he was my best friend. He was a couple of years younger than me. Pretty rough and tough, he always had a black eye. Next up was Jojo; she was about a year or so older than me. I always thought she was so pretty, and really cool. Then came Mike; he was older than me, but younger than Charlie. Topping it off was Terry and Chrissie; they were about the same age as both of my sisters. Terry was always nice to me, like my sister Beth. But Chrissie was wilder, like my sister Dawn.

Mike Sr. and Suzi were the parents of the Murphy house. A couple kids were hers, a couple his, and Sean was a product of both. Any chance we could get, Charlie and I were at the Murphys. The Murphys had motorcycles! Sean raced a 50cc Indian on a flat track, and Mike raced motocross. Just when you thought the Murphys couldn't get any cooler,

Mike Sr. had a chopper. It was a raked-out Harley Davidson with a coffin-shaped tank with a graveyard scene painted on it. Mike Sr. would tune Mike Jr.'s motorcycles, and Mike would have to run the bike up and down the street so Mike Sr. could hear how it sounded. That always got me and Charlie out of the house. To see Mike going so fast had us in awe. Charlie and I were bit by the motorcycle bug.

I'll never forget the day I came home and saw Charlie's first motorcycle. It was a faded red Kawasaki 100cc Enduro. It finally happened; a motorcycle made it to the Elmore house, and I was as excited as Charlie. Charlie always was my hero, and now this solidified it. Charlie bought that motorcycle with the money he had saved from his paper route and mowing the lawn. My dad did not believe in buying us cars, motorcycles, and expensive shoes. You want it, you buy it.

Later Charlie sold that bike and bought a brand-new, right-off-the-showroom-floor Yamaha RD 400, two stroke. This was the bike of the '70s, and Charlie tricked it out with pipes, bars, and a quarter fairing. The bike was always clean and shiny; too shiny, in fact. Charlie once rubbed Armor All onto the seat, and Mike was sent flying off the back when Charlie was giving him a ride, resulting in a broken wrist. The RD 400 was later stolen right out of the garage.

The only bike that was faster than the RD 400 was the Kawasaki 500 and 750 Mach III Triple. These were also two stroke and called triples, because they had three cylinders. I was never in the loop; I just would come home one day to find a new motorcycle in the garage. And this day was no different. There was a Kawasaki Triple in the garage, and once again I was excited for Charlie.

During this time I was working little jobs. I was cleaning the cigarette butts out of the ashtrays in the mall from six to eight pm, Monday through Friday. It paid $33.50 a week. I put every cent in the bank. I also had an afternoon paper route, but it was the cheap paper. The morning paper was where the money was. I would have to collect $4.50 a month from the people's house that didn't mail in the money. I was not a big fan of collecting. I liked people and wasn't shy, but people are not at their nicest when you are asking for money. I was happy when they would give me a five and tell me I could keep the change.

There was one house that had a real pretty girl who always answered the door. She was really nice and would give me a five. One day I went to her house to collect, but nobody answered the door. Before getting on my bicycle, I peed in their driveway. Not for any particular reason; I just had to pee. The next day when I was delivering the paper, I heard the girl yell out of the window, "Don't ever pee in my driveway again!" Needless to say, that month's collection was on me.

One day I was folding papers and placing them into the canvas bag mounted on my handle bars. Suddenly, I felt a headache like I have never felt before. I didn't know what was wrong; I just knew I wasn't in a good mood. As I was peddling down the road, I became very fatigued and hot. I saw Charlie coming down the road on his 500 Triple. He gave me a sideways thumb, which is what we did instead of a thumbs up. I flipped him off; to this day I don't know why I did that, it just felt like the right thing to do. I had a long way to go, and I was sick. Charlie turned around to ask why I flipped him off; I was in for an ass whopping if I didn't have the right answer. I said I was sorry, and that I didn't feel well. Charlie took me on my paper route on the back of his motorcycle. I may have been sick, but I felt like the coolest kid in the world.

In sixth grade I didn't have much contact with the Murphys. Charlie was off riding his motorcycle with his high school friends, and I had met some kids in the neighborhood my own age from South Daytona Elementary. Roger, Victor, Rick, and Jimmy were my best friends. Sean was still my buddy, but we kind of split up.

In order to get to the elementary school, you had to cross over a canal via a footbridge. It was called a footbridge, but you could ride a bike across it. Victor lived just down the street from the footbridge, so I would stop by his house in the morning and we would ride to school together. One day on the way home, there were a couple of girls sitting on the railing on the footbridge. They were teenagers and looked like they smoked; we didn't want to mess with them. When we got to the footbridge, they put their legs up, blocking us from crossing. Victor and I stopped, and they told us to give them our lunch money. I said school was out; we spent our lunch money at lunch time. One girl asked if I was getting smart with her, and threatened to throw the cable and locks we used to lock up our bikes in the canal. They let us go that time.

The next day the girls were back, and I split the long way around. I rode my bike about a mile or so, and ended up on the other side of the footbridge. They had Victor, and he was on the verge of crying. I couldn't leave him, but I was too scared to help him. I just stayed there looking at the two girls and Victor. One girl told me to get over there. I said no, that I knew she was going to hit me. She said she wouldn't, and I asked if she promised. She promised. I...