The Home Page · The Integral Worm · My Resume · My Show Car · My White Papers · Organizations I Belong To
Technical Writing · Exposition & Argumentation · Grammar and Usage of Standard English · The Structure of English · Analysis of Shakespeare · Analysis of Literary Language
Advanced Professional Papers · The History of the English Language · First Internship: Tutoring in a Writing Workshop · Second Internship: Advanced Instruction: Tutoring Writing
Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology) · Theories of Communication & Technology (A Second Course in Methodology) · Language in Society (A Third Course in Methodology)
UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" · UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" · Introduction to Journalism · Feature Writing · Science Writing Papers
|
 |
Non-fiction Creative Essay 1 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 2 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 3 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 4 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 5
Non-fiction Creative Essay 7 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 8 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 9 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 10 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 11
 |
Ake Jonnson and Torlif Hansen locked in mortal combat fighting for the groove. They sped towards the jump at the same time, Jonnson on his desert orange Maico and Hansen on his silver and red Husqvarna. The sound of the 250cc two-cycle engines seared over the roar of the crowd. The sweet smell of Castrol oil filled everyone's nostrils as they past. Mud churned off the rear wheels and into the crowd as the cyclists accelerated. They became airborne at the top of the hill flying fifteen feet into the air as their foot pegs locked. The fans squinted as they looked into the sun as they cheered as the riders past above their heads. Both riders' mouths slack jawed. Simultaneously, one thought crossed their minds; "We're going to crash!" They gracefully touched down to the earth of the motocross track and miraculously the two bikes separated in time for each rider to pick his groove, lock up his brakes and lean into the now fast approaching turn. The crowd went absolutely wild as the moto quickly turned into a dead heat. Yet another close call for the two world champion motocross riders.
Actually, two teenagers pretended to be motocross cyclists on bicycles during midsummer. The two pedaled fiercely as they attempted to build speed for the jump, nothing more that the curb of the sidewalk. But their bicycle pedals locked with each other as they approached the curb and both thought, "We're going to crash!" Surprisingly for both kids, they went over the curb as one and landed without injury as the next curb loomed ahead. Miraculously the two bicycles separated at the last moment and each turned to the left escaping the impending disaster of intertwined bicycles and limbs. Yet another close call. Neil and I spent our days; sleeping, eating and dreaming of being champion motocross racers on the European race circuit.
Einstein said that time and space is relative to the observer. People always have different stories of how they first met. Neil shared with me his memory of meeting for the first time. Neil said that we met in History class in the ninth grade. We sat near each other and I intently listened to the lesson, as I always loved history. Neil noticed that I had a magazine with me and whispered if he could see it while the teacher continued with the lecture. I passed it to him when the teacher's attention became focused on the opposite side of the room. I had the latest copy of Dirt Bike magazine that had pictures of Ake Jonnson on his Maico flying through the air in some race on American soil.
Neil browsed through the magazine and I didn't hear a single word from him during the rest of the class. The images of the motocross stars flying through the air on the jumps mesmerized him. He asked me if he could borrow it and returned it to me the next time we met in class. The next day in class we began talking about motocross and I couldn't resist bragging about my own exploits about racing, as I already owned my third mini bike at the time. I invited him to come out to the sandpits to ride with me some weekend. He accepted my offer. Two weeks later he became hooked. The rest was history: Neil's history and mine.
My account of our first meeting differs greatly from his. As a 15-year-old boy, I never shared it with him because it was weird. My recollection went further back than his did. It's an image permanently seared into my brain.
It was the first few weeks of September and I needed to adjust to a new school. I had graduated from Bowling Green School where I spent my time from kindergarten to sixth grade. Now I attended the big league school, William Tresper Clarke High School, built in 1956, one-year before my birth date and I was a teenager in seventh grade. The school was designed to accommodate graduating classes of a thousand students at a time and resembled a huge factory. Tresper Clarke consisted of two floors and ran in the shape of a Z with four wings coming off the Z shape. I had to attend gym, a class that I always dreaded and we had to meet in the basement in the wrestling room. The wrestling mats never received a cleaning and smelled from years of ground in sweat and body odor. Neil was a jock and had class before me.
Little did I know that I had sat next to Neil's stuff while waiting for the gym instructor to appear. I read a book preparing for my next class while I waited. I looked up from my book for a moment and came face to face with a penis sprouting a full bush of black pubic hair. The kid had just come from the shower and didn't have a modest bone in his body. I thought to myself, is this a jock thing or is he proud to have a full bush of pubic hair when many boys our age just started getting hair?
Years later, I figured out Neil had no modesty. When he got loaded he would throw off all his clothes completely losing all his inhibitions. My first girlfriend once mentioned that she saw Neil's butt more often than she saw mine. As I said, meeting the Mister Vigna for the first time was a really weird experience and not something that I cared to share with anyone.
When I introduced Neil to motocross I owned a Mini-Motocross made by Bonanza. It had a 100cc Hodaka motorcycle engine with five speeds and a manual clutch, on a frame the size of a mini bike. The Mini-Motocross came in one color; desert orange with a silver frame. It looked just like a real motocross bike with its tall suspension, its high mounted desert orange fenders, knobby tires and a desert orange gas tank. I made a number plate for the front of the bike from a piece of circular plastic, which I also painted desert orange.
I chose the racing number 7x, which I had seen in one of the motocross magazines. But it wasn't an ordinary seven. I placed a cross through the seven in the European tradition so it couldn't be confused with a nine. The little x represented the rider's country of origin. At this point, I've forgotten which European country uses the little x. The bike had to have a European racing number and it had to look cool. That's all that mattered.
Everyone in the family loved to ride my mini bikes until I brought the Mini-Motocross home. Why? The mini bikes had lawnmower engines with a top speed of 30 mph. The Mini-Motocross did 60 mph in less than six seconds. We could get the bike up to top speed as fast as one could shift. The Hodaka engine had such a slick gearbox, you didn't need the clutch; one just pegged the throttle and shifted. My brother had a 67' Pontiac GTO with a three speed at the time and clocked me on it. The bike caught him off guard the first time we tried to clock it because he didn't know it could accelerate that fast. The second time he pegged the gas pedal of his car to the floor to keep up as I hit the throttle on the bike wide open. From that day on the Mini-Motocross became the dreaded scourge of the neighborhood. No one in the family had the guts to ride it. It was too fast.
The main attraction of the bike also created its main problem: its power. The Mini-Motocross would literally tear itself apart. I think we replaced nearly every part on that bike. Engine rings, foot pegs, chains, sprockets, even the wheels. The cast aluminum rear wheel would develop stress cracks from all the torque the engine developed and I replaced it twice. We beat the hell out of this machine and in the interim we also became motorcycle mechanics in trying to keep up with the breakdowns. Why the foot pegs always broke, I'll never know, but Neil would break all the time. The foot pegs we bought over the counter he would break in one weekend. Eventually I had to make my own foot pegs by flattening angle iron to make them Neil resistant.
When Neil and I got tired of competing with the full size motorcycles we would go up into the back woods to a wide, hard-packed dirt fire road. The trail had a few hills and some smooth jumps where we didn't have to concentrate much. We could fly wide open up and down the hills and through the jumps. Here we practiced the art of flying, literally. Flying through the air at 50 mph is exhilarating.
If our parents ever saw our favorite trail, our motocross daze quickly would have ended. We would climb a really long hill about sixty feet up. We would go charging up the hill full speed and then back off the throttle near the top. This point required careful negotiation with the approach of a jump near the top. Getting airborne here spelled danger. The top of the hill had a fence so if we went too fast we'd run into the fence. Plus if we didn't have enough forward momentum, gravity could have pulled us down back to earth. At the top, we could only make a quick left. The right consisted of a 60-foot sheer drop like a mesa in the southwest. This trail took a great deal of concentration and tested our riding skills to the max.
We spent four to five hours at a time riding on any given Sunday at the sandpits. We would take turns riding in twenty-minute periods, known as a moto in real competition. When I returned, I would share my exploits with Neil, then he took his turn and upon his return he would share his experiences with me.
Rainy days never stopped us; we only went faster. On rainy days, only a few people would go to the track leaving plenty of space to play by ourselves. The Mini-Motocross was a mudder; it handled superbly in mud like a racehorse that liked the squishing of the mud between their toes. We wore yellow goggles to enhance our vision on rainy days. World circuit races never get called off because of rain so riding in mud became a necessary skill. At the end of the day we looked like the champion motocrossers in Dirt Bike magazine covered from head to toe in mud. We loved riding in the rain.
On weekends the parents didn't have time to take us to the sandpits with the Mini-Motocross, we trekked out to the track on bicycles. We would start out at 11 a.m. practicing our motocross skills as we cycled the twelve-mile trip, traveling through four towns to arrive at the track around one in the afternoon. Sometimes I would bring my 35mm camera to practice my photojournalism skills, getting exceedingly close to the action of the racers. I would pick out certain places on the track that seemed to elicit the most expression from a rider's face as they negotiated the track. Most of the riders had peculiar and obscure names like Ismaloff, Ancient, Torlif and Crazy York.
Crazy York wasn't the best of riders but he did have the most colorful past. Some racers said York was a mental patient that received weekend passes for good behavior. Everyone scattered like cockroaches when you turn the lights on when Crazy York came out of his van. Racers would let him have the entire track to himself. Crazy York would ride so hard and fast he'd burn out in fifteen minutes, leaving the rest of the day for everyone else.
Neil and I couldn't believe how Crazy York would ride. He would charge into a tall uphill, full throttle, and jump eighteen to twenty feet into the air at the top of the hill. Crazy York practiced the art of flying, literally. His jumps pleased the spectators but the technique was futile. Once the rear wheel leaves the ground the bike and rider begin to loose forward momentum. If another rider charged into the jump along side him and let off the throttle at the top of the jump, the bike would not rise as high, returning the rear wheel to the ground more quickly and accelerate away while York remained in the air.
Fortunately, I had my camera this day and photographed the event as Neil and I knew this fish story no one would believe. Neil stood at the top of the jump somewhere approximately where Crazy York would reach his apex. Then we waited. Sure enough Crazy York came round but I used this as a practice run just to see how well I'd capture the moment. The next time around I captured the real shot.
Crazy York approached the jump once again and exceeded all expectations. So did Neil. I had two hams at once. Crazy York exceeded my expectations by going into the jump faster than before and literally flew twenty-five feet into the air. My other ham Neil stretched his arm straight up and pointed his index finger into the air. Neil's action allowed us to approximate how high Crazy York flew. Crazy York lived up to his name. Neil and I were fifteen when I captured the moment.
At age 24, early in October, the phone call came at 6:15 in the morning. I usually woke at 7:15 in order to get to the welding shop by 8:00. My mother knocked on my door. "It's Kevin on the phone." The look on her face braced me for a bad call. Phone calls at bizarre hours always spell trouble.
I said hello, and next Kevin unloaded the bomb. "He's dead... Neil is dead." Still groggy from sleep, the feeling quelled in my stomach. My mind and body went numb. "We went out on the motorcycles last night and he died on the entrance/exit ramp of the Meadowbrook Parkway and Sunrise Highway. You know the entrance."
Yes I knew the entrance. I knew it intimately; as intimately as one could know a road; a big entrance/exit ramp with a killer-changing radius and a huge curb near the end. Kevin through his sobs continued, "Neil went into the turn with too much speed. The bike jumped the curb and he went sailing across Meadowbrook Parkway. He landed face first into the cement highway divider. At the same time a girl in a VW bug hit him. He's dead," choking through his tears.
Why do humans always repeat the obvious? We repeat statements like "We're going to die," or "He's dead," or "We're going to crash!" Through iteration do we re-enforce in our mind the inevitable will occur and feel powerless to change the outcome or do we subconsciously ask God for divine intervention?
"Were you guys drinking?" I didn't know what else to say. "We only had a few," Kevin said through his tears. I can't remember anything else from the conversation. The archive librarian in my mind has thrown away the key and refuses to open the door where all the stored sensations of that day. The room remains dark and the librarian won't peer in. Shock treatment, sodium pentothal nor hypnotherapy will open the door. The welder sealed the door.
In my mind, I see snapshots of other events after his death such as during the wake and the funeral as though stopping moments in time through the use of calculus. Neil came from a poor family. His mother could only afford to lay him out one day. The mortician couldn't reconstruct Neil's face to make him presentable so the casket remained closed. A picture of Neil on top of the casket became our only reminder. "Neil, my blood brother, you certainly made the grade didn't you."
Neil's new girlfriend, Karen came to the funeral and we all met her over tea and sympathy. They recently started dating. She seemed like a good Catholic woman, a complete change from the evil Wendy he dated for years. Wendy used Neil to draw her old boyfriend back and slept back and forth between the two men. After years of this abuse, Neil chose to do something about it. We never met Karen before nor did we even know about her.
We all felt sorry for her. She felt sorry for us. Of course we all had more history with Neil than Karen. But we knew of the dark past and how Wendy tormented his spirit. We saw Karen as a beacon on the hill. Karen represented a new beginning and the promise of hope, maybe his savior? But we all know no one person can save us from ourselves. You have to save yourself from yourself.
Three days before Neil's death we had a blowout party at Owen's house. The old gang hadn't met in the same place for years. Owen had just returned from medical school in Mexico. We drank mass quantities of beer and everyone brought pot; Owen a can of whip-its, the aerosol propellant from a whip cream can, in a dispenser. He prepared a special barbecue meal for us all. Neil had a tendency to invoke religion in his humor and this night he exceeded all expectations. As we ate, drank and had a good time, Neil broke some bread and in his sarcastic dry wit said, "Take this bread, this is my body." Then he filled a huge pitcher of beer. We passed it around the table and filled our glasses. Once again in a flippant manner, he said, "Take this beer, this is my blood." To this day no one remembers if Neil said this, nor does anyone care to discuss it.
Twenty-five years later the thought still lingers in my mind. Did Neil carry out a suicide plan or did he get to cocky on the motorcycle? Did Neil feel like imitating Dick Mann charging into one of the corners on the racetrack and over judge his speed entering the parkway entrance?
Dick Mann held the title of world champion road racer three years in a row from 1971 to 1973. Neil loved motocross, but road racing made his heart soar like an eagle. I had bitten the dust more than a few times; stepping off a motorcycle at a 110-mph on asphalt, even dressed in full leathers, sent a chill down my spine. When a road racer leans into a turn, they twist themselves so their butt no longer remains on the seat and points outward from the direction of the turn. At the same time, the foot on the inside of the turn remains on the motorcycle foot peg and the knee flexes outward. A matchbook can barely fit between the lowered knee and the asphalt at speeds of 90 to 100 mph. This scared the hell out of me, but it left Neil spellbound.
Kevin said that the ER doctors recorded Neil's death at 3:50 a.m. Two days later my mother started bitching. "Damn you Neil, you were always such a wise ass, and I liked that clock. I changed the battery and it still doesn't work. Didn't Kevin say that Neil died at 3:50?" I mused over the question and finally remembered Kevin did say Neil died at 3:50 and the clock had also stopped at 3:50. In all the excitement none of us noticed the clock had stopped.
We tried several batteries to no avail. My thoughts deepened... could this mean we have a soul? Does the afterlife exist? After death does the soul travel the earth freely in an attempt to resolve unfinished business before finally going to the other side? Can we interact differently with earthly objects differently than when we lived, particularly electricity and electronics? Energy is neither created nor destroyed. Do we become a different form of energy science cannot explain, or could the stopped clock represent a chance event, a coincidence?
Could be coincidence, but on the other hand, my house would be the first place Neil would pass through to say goodbye. Even with nagging doubt in my mind I had to accept that he passed through and left his mark. Neil would go out of his way to leave his mark on everything, everywhere, the same way WWII soldiers painted a cartoonish graffiti image all over Europe with the phrase underneath, "Killroy was here!" Vigna was here. The clock remained on the wall for years until it was finally thrown out. It remained one of the many unanswerable questions.
A few weeks later I dropped in on Neil's mother to find out if I could do anything around the house for her. The conversation went smoothly at first, then Neil's mother erupted. Mrs. Vigna accused me of his death. She said I introduced him to motorcycles and I caused his death. I couldn't disputable the truth in part of her statement; I did introduce him to motorcycles. She continued speaking rather calmly, which I couldn't understand at first, then it dawned on me; the year before she borrowed Neil's car and became involved in an accident. Mrs. Vigna didn't wear the seatbelt that night and was thrown from the car. She suffered from amnesia. Even though she had gone through rehabilitation, her personality changed. The old Mrs. Vigna would have let me have it with both barrels cocked. The old Mrs. Vigna had a tough, feisty, outgoing personality. The new Mrs. Vigna had a subdued personality, similar to a person on Prozac.
Her next statement rang like a five bar fire alarm. She said, "Neil was always looking for a way out of this world and you provided him with it." Once again the probability of suicide reared its ugly head. Mrs. Vigna had the same nagging doubt I had.
I had an astute awareness of Neil's dissatisfaction with the cards life dealt him. He admired Jim Morrison and shared the same fascination for the other side. On the other hand, the dealer handed him winning cards for the first time in his life; things fell into place for him. The changes he made worked for him. Neil had finally gotten away from Wendy who made him miserable and had a new blooming relationship. Neil had his own place in NYC and secure employment with upward mobility. He lost a tremendous amount of weight, something that made him self-conscious. He bloomed into a very attractive, viral, young man and he had a bright future. Neil radiated with happiness although this still didn't dismiss the possibility of suicide.
I couldn't logically accept Mrs. Vigna's position that I provided him with an exit door. This may represent denial on my part, but on the other hand, riding a motorcycle with the intention of committing suicide seemed like an elaborate plan. I don't think he intentionally committed suicide. Riding a motorcycle gives one an exhilarating sense of freedom and oneness with one's environment. Riding makes one's mind focused in the moment. If Neil intended to commit suicide there existed less elaborate ways to succeed.
I had reason to suspect a suicide plan from Neil's dark foreboding humor at the party. I never informed Mrs. Vigna about this but I did inquire the rest of my friends if they had any recollection of his Last Supper speech. No one could confirm my affirmation. They didn't recall the speech, probably too stoned. I heard it and I consider myself a good listener. Still, the nagging doubt lingers in my mind, but when my scientific mind grabs hold of the incident, analytically I find a string of reasons that affirm he had an accident. The clues point to a combination of Neil's personality and an engineering flaw with the motorcycle itself.
First Kevin admitted they went to a bar and the collision occurred thereafter. Kevin didn't elaborate any further other than saying they only had a few drinks, which leads me to suspect they had three or more. Why? If they had one, then Kevin would have said one, but rarely does one have one drink unless with dinner. It wasn't two either. I cut off at two. With two I feel good and don't go through a personality change. When I drink three, I undergo a personality change so I cut off immediately at two. Plus three makes you feel better than two so that's how I come up with three drinks.
Even though these two men could hold their liquor, three drinks reduce inhibitions, impair the senses and one's judgement. Neil had a cocky personality, loved to show-off and play rough and tough without the influence of alcohol. He played football from seventh grade straight through to his senior year in high school and he also played ice hockey as a goalie up until his death. The three drinks may have lowered his inhibitions to allow him to imitate Dick Mann on the highway without a thought of the consequences.
Cyclists get caught up in a sense of freedom from the wind blowing across their face, the ground speeding past them and the scenery passing by like a picket fence. Their adrenaline gets flowing and they get a natural high from the thrill of speed. Being impaired only heightens the false sense of euphoria. Neil may have gotten caught up in the need for speed.
The bike's engineering flaw most likely caused Neil's death. He rode a Yamaha DT360 from 1971. European cycle makers had a good thing going with a lack of competitors in the dirt bike market and the Japanese decided they wanted a piece of the action. The Japanese broke into the market by building dual-purpose dirt bikes. They designed the bikes for riding on the street as well as the dirt. As with most companies entering into a new engineering endeavor, the Japanese had a great deal to learn before they could really develop a competitive product that could outdo the Europeans who invented the sport of motocross.
Bottom line the Japanese bikes didn't handle well on the dirt or the street. The motocross magazines reported that the tires created handling problems on the Japanese dual-purpose bikes. They came equipped with knobby tires, but they performed poorly on the street and in the dirt. The bike would tend to drift out of the turns on asphalt. The European motocross bikes on the other hand handled superbly on dry asphalt.
Neil and I rode motorcycles since age sixteen. We considered ourselves experienced riders. The problem wasn't horsepower either. The 360cc Yamaha had 28hp and we previously owned or rode 250cc CZ's, Maico's and Husqvarna's that had the same horsepower but produced more torque than the severely limited Yamaha. Neil let me take the bike for a spin more than a few times and my riding skills returned immediately. The Yamaha wasn't as responsive as the European dirt bikes but I could get the front wheel off the ground and maintain a controlled wheelie for a few blocks.
To put Neil's bile through its paces, I would ride the twisting, turning one-lane roads through the back woods of Old Westbury, Long Island. Here I could have some fun with the bike due to the reduced traffic. Deep in the heart of Old Westbury some excellent "S" turns exist. I went through the left-hand sweep without a problem at about 45-mph, but as I went through the right-hand sweep no matter how much I leaned, the bike would drift into the oncoming lane. I had to back off the throttle to remain in my lane. I knew it had nothing to do with speed because I had gone through these "S" turns at even higher speeds with automobiles. The tires on the Yamaha refused to hold the road.
For a few weeks Neil would stop by the gas station where I worked with his bike. Every time I saw him I nagged him about the tires. I nagged him so much Neil must have felt like a hen pecked husband. He asked me to check out the chain and sprockets, which I did, and I told him they needed replacement due to wear. Once again I pecked away. "Don't even think about a new chain and sprockets. You've got to replace those tires first. That's more important! They cost the same and you do remember all those reports in the magazines about the bad tires don't you?" I then told him of my experience with the Yamaha while going through the "S" turns in Old Westbury.
Weeks later I saw him again and Neil said he change the chain and sprockets to the tune of $240. I shook my head. "The tires! The tires! That's more important. Change those tires. Get yourself some street tires." I never had another chance to hen peck him on the subject.
After Neil's death, Kevin, my ex-wife and myself drew a pact swearing we'd never ride a motorcycle again. Months later, Kevin sold his bike and neither of us rode again. My ex-wife on the other hand, ten years later and went out with an experienced, mature rider one night. She had not ridden since Neil's accident. They fell due to an oil patch on the asphalt but fortunately no one got hurt. She accepted the fall as an omen. She never rode again.
Neil's death became the milestone. From that point on, I buried friend after friend due to either a motorcycle mishap or an automobile accident due to excessive speed. Speed kills. There were only two exceptions; Russ and Gerry. Russ graduated from the Automotive Engineering program at S.U.N.Y. Farmingdale, the same program I graduated from and owned a speed shop down in Farmingdale. Russ died as a spectator enjoying the sport he loved. While at the drag races some shrapnel pierced his body when a race car careened into the wall. Gerry on the other hand lived but not without problems.
Gerry completely shattered his leg on the first bike he ever owned. He received an experimental reconstruction procedure. We went through a six-year ordeal with the possibility that at any point it may have become necessary to amputate his leg due to infection. Gerry had a habit of stepping in shit and come out smelling like a rose. Today on a good day he walks fine without an elevator shoe. On a bad day Gerry takes pain medication and walks with a cane.
Twenty-five years later, I still cannot resolve the reason for his death nor can I resolve the question as to why the clock stopped. I have presented the facts as best I know them and leave it for you to ultimately decide where the truth lies.
I've never been back to the church where the urn containing his ashes lie. One might say I'm in a state of denial. This may be true but I'd much rather think that he moved to some remote place such as Tibet or the Australian outback. Even now it's too difficult to face the fact that Neil died as a young man. And so, "Rest in peace my best of friends. Rest in peace, forever young. You succeeded where we failed. You died four months before turning age twenty-five. Take this brother, may it serve you well. Good-bye, good-bye...
Good-bye."
The Home Page · The Integral Worm · My Resume · My Show Car · My White Papers · Organizations I Belong To
Contact Me · FAQ · Useful Links