CHAPTER 1 DEATH OF A HARLEY MAN

All good books start at the begining. While the begining of this chapter in my life started as a passion borne into the young ideals of a child, the actual story began with a job interview that took me to Chicago. It was a trial, not just an interview. It was the sort of event that I wrote about, long before I ever thought of turning my writing into a book. While I’m not going to post the part about the interview here, I thought I’d start my posts by giving you a history lesson of the beginnings of my passion.

The end of a long day had finally arrived. I was glad. I was tired. One of my employees had been working a little late and had just said good night before slipping out the back door, leaving me alone in the building. The distraction from what I had been working on was a welcome one. My desk was a mess, full of advertising material and files of work, financial statements and reports. I sat for a moment looking over it all and then swiveled my chair to face the back wall, where a model of a Boeing 737 sat on a bookshelf. It seemed out of place amongst the binders and books. But I loved to look at it.

I studied the plane and its lines, making it so aerodynamic. I looked at the miniature windows of the cockpit and could envision the white-shirted captain sitting in his seat flying it. I smiled and felt calm. I had just come off a plane the previous day, ending a three-day travel ordeal that was all still very fresh in my mind.

Needing a break, I rose from my chair and walked out of my office and onto the showroom floor. The smell of rubber mixed with gasoline and leather. The room was dark except for a few florescent safety lights that stayed on all the time. The sun had long set and through the front windows I could see a few cars go by, creating a show of white and red lights. I looked around at the motorcycles parked side by side on the slick floors. I glanced over the walls with mirrors and signs advertising Harley Credit services. To my right was the women’s MotorClothes section, to my left, the men’s. Racks of tee shirts and jeans sat full of merchandise, some of which I had personally ordered from various vendors. On the walls hung leather jackets, vests and pants. I walked back towards the office but turned left and walked to the lower half of the store.

I thought about how I had helped tear down the wall that once stood where this step was. I took a step down to the other half of the showroom and remembered the people who had tripped on that step, not realizing that it was there. That was the winter of early 1996 and we’d just opened the new store. People were not yet used to the high walls loaded with shiny merchandise, like motorcycle parts and specially painted fenders and tanks, and were distracted from watching where they were walking. It always gave me a chuckle and no one was ever really hurt. But we finally had to put in a ramp and block off the hazard with boxes of motorcycle oil and racks of clothing.

Along the front of this section was the lounge with windows that looked out onto the parking area and the street. The lounge was where customers could congregate and where the employees took breaks. It was home to the vending machines, a few tables, customer photos and a small kitchenette. When walking from the lounge towards the rear of the store, one passes the display area and then reaches the parts counter. Behind the parts counter wall is the large parts storage area with rows of shelving and a loft above for large parts storage. The walls around the display area were covered with motorcycle parts and high up, out of reach, were more fenders and gas tanks for sale. Neon lighted signs helped customers locate the parts department as they would walk into the front door. They illuminated the area in a strange red glow at night.

I now stood in this display area, with the lounge to my left and the parts counter to my right. I looked at the motorcycle accessories and the collectibles displayed neatly in cases and on the display racks. I stood there looking at everything in the darkness, taking it all in, thinking back on how I had made much of this happen.

This place had become my home and all that I had known for the past five years. I was the general manager of this Harley-Davidson dealership. I had moved here with my father in the late summer of 1995 to help him run this business. I had spent more hours in this store than I had spent at home. I had hired over 95% of the people who worked there. Over the years, I had fired many as well. Much of the inventory was either ordered by me or was signed off by me. It was my advertising and marketing skills that attracted people to shop here and it was my signature on the checks that paid our staff. The hours were long but the pay was good and I was enriched by the personal growth I had experienced over the years.

But I was starting to say goodbye to it all. Most nights I could be found there long after closing, working on marketing ideas or sales events, writing articles for our newsletter or working on reports for headquarters. Now I would often stand in the dimly lit store at night to look over it all, like an artist saying goodbye to his art before it was to be hung on someone’s living room wall.

Travel was in my blood and it was affecting me more and more. The business had switched hands in 1999. My father returned to Texas, but I stayed on to continue to run things. The new owner was mostly absentee, so my business trips almost dried up completely, and I could take it no longer. I had given notice and was searching for a new job. One that would take me all over the world. And it wasn’t until I had gotten home from that long, hard trip, just the night before, when I realized I had found that job. I chuckled to myself as I began to think about how it all started for me; this passion for flying.

I was a small boy, maybe five years old. At that age I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in Borger, a small town supporting a Phillips Petroleum refinery in the Texas panhandle. My grandfather was a company man who would eventually retire from the position of Pipeline Superintendent. Borger was often a smelly place due to the oil refinery at the north edge of town. Coming from Houston, which was so much larger and aroma-free, I always called it “Little Stinky Borger.” My grandmother said the smell was that of money. When we would pass a Phillips gas station, she would tell us to bow our heads. “That’s our bread and butter!” she would say. So she would counter me by calling it “Bigger Better Borger.” It would be a running thing between us for many, many years. Still is today, all though she now lives in Houston.

My mother would take me to the airport for my trips to Borger and would be able to walk on the airplane with me. She would make sure that I had a seat by the window, buckle my seat belt and give me a kiss goodbye. There was always a nice lady behind her smiling. I would look at the wings on her uniform and smile back. The lady would make sure my mom got off the plane before the door would close. I don’t ever remember being upset or scared and I would spend the next ninety minutes looking out the window. I loved to see the other planes, feel the speed as we took off down the runway, and watch the ground drop below until the clouds took their place.

Itsy, (that’s what I call my grandmother), tells a story of going to the airport in Amarillo to pick me up so many years ago. “And here you would come walking off that plane with that ugly, dumb rabbit under one arm…”

She was talking about Buns, my childhood security blanket. Buns was a scraggly green rabbit with long legs and ears. I took him everywhere I went, much to Itsy’s dismay, “But you took to flying on those planes back and forth like it was nothing. You always loved to fly.” Indeed, to me, it was just a normal thing, like getting in the car to go to school.

Years later, my father was living in Chicago with his third wife, Kitty. I would go to visit in the summer and in the evenings we would sit outside on the back patio when my father got home from work. He and Kitty would talk about their day and I would play with toys. They would drink gin and tonic and I would drink cherry flavored sugar water. The heat of the day was lowered to a cool breeze, which we enjoyed sitting in. Overhead flew the planes going to O’Hare International. I would always look up and watch them. Seeing this, my father would look up and name the type of plane, a 727, a DC10, a 747. I remember specifically, seeing the many bright colors of Braniff airplanes. I think they were my favorite.

When I was about nine, Dad and Kitty left Chicago and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. They had a place high in the city, near the base of Sandia Mountain. In the back yard my father had built an elaborate vegetable garden with railroad ties to keep in the dirt. At the top, and in the corner of the yard, he built a fort for me to play in on my summer visits. It was two levels high, the top being open with a railing for safety. He also fashioned a flagpole with a pulley so I could raise and lower a flag. From up there, one could see the whole city spread out below, towards the valley. But what caught my eye from up there was the airport. With binoculars I could see the terminal itself and the planes moving around on the tarmac. I would watch them fly overhead until I could see them touch down and taxi to their gate. Then I would watch others as they sped down the runway and lumbered into the air. I tried to watch them until I could no longer make them out in the huge sky.

As would most kids with a fort, I made a Jolly Roger flag for the flagpole, with black cotton for the flag, and white felt for the skull and crossbones. But I also made a second flag. This one was more simple, yet meaningful, with the letters G.A.L.O.P. My father came home from work and I showed him my new flag. When he asked what the letters meant, I told him, “Gibson Aviation Look-Out Point.” I don’t know who was more impressed with my ingenuity. I have no idea of what ever happened to that flag, but I’ve never forgotten it.

So my love for airplanes and for flying had been with me since some of my very first memories. Now I had grown used to making about twelve business trips a year with the Harley business, and then having that number dwindle to only a few. I had amassed a collection of civil airplane models, books and metal signs. And the collection grew as my passion did. I even made quick friends with several customers who were pilots. They would come into the store and I would hit them with all sorts of questions about things I saw at airports, parts of airplanes, how things worked. But I had never once thought seriously of trying to get into aviation for a living.

I left the dark showroom and returned to my desk to get on my computer. The past three days had been so amazing. I wanted to write about it so I would never forget the experience, and so my friends and family, both here in Annapolis, and back in Texas, could read about what I had just gone through.

I began to write an essay on how I had gotten my new job with a major airline. I had no idea that what I was about to write would start something that would occupy my free time for over two years and would eventually turn into this book.