This was the case in the town I pulled into at lunchtime – no restaurants, just a gas station. Luckily, they had a little oven that they used to heat up slices of pizza. Not great, but better than riding another 15 miles to the next town in hopes of something better only to find out they don’t even have gas station pizza!
I had planned a longer ride for the day, but the switch from flatlands to hills got the better of me. I was huffing and puffing through the last two miles into the town of Kewanee when I made the mistake of waving at an old guy on a riding mower as I passed. In response, he frantically signaled for me to pull over. He asked me about where I was going, and offered a “pop” or some ice water. I really just wanted to get to the hotel and stand under a cold shower for a few hours, but he insisted with such a desperate sort of hospitality that I gave in and accepted. I only had about fifteen minutes left to ride for the day and what harm could it do to chat with a lonely old guy for a bit? I should have known better – the lawn mowing noise machine was a dead giveaway!
He lured me into a seat on his porch and introduced himself as Harry, making sure to let me know he was 82 years old. I filled him in on a few more details of my trip. He listened politely before launching into his own series of stories. He started with the one about how he had his shoulder replaced two years ago. I was expecting a feel-good story about his recovery and comeback, but instead got one about how after the surgery he was so miserable that he was ready die and almost killed himself. Well, that took an unexpectedly dark turn.
He then went on to tell about going to rehab. Ah, here it comes, the inspiring redemption chapter of the story. Harry described his physical therapist as a woman who’d been married seven or eight years and was “built like a brick shithouse.” He then proceeded to fill me in on how much he wanted to screw “that sweet piece of ass.” Okay, not where I thought that was going. And, by the way, ewww. His wife sitting in the sun room watching TV didn’t deter him from filling me in on his lusty desires for his care worker.
We then jumped to how he had signed up for a year-long membership at the country club just three days before his shoulder gave out and he wasn’t able to play golf anymore. Ah, here it is: Harry’s triumphant return to the sport he loved and was forced to give up. When he learned how bad his shoulder was, he asked the club for a refund, but the owner refused, telling him “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” Harry then called him “everything in the book but a white man” (whatever the hell that means) and swore revenge. I could see this story wasn’t going to have an uplifting end either. Months after his rehab, Harry ran into this owner at a restaurant and called him outside for a fist fight. For some strange reason the guy refused to fight an octogenarian, and Harry still hates him with a white hot passion to this day. Time to change the subject.
I asked about his house and the odd set of small outbuildings. Apparently the place had been a motel with four or five bungalows back in the sixties. He ran me through his negotiations for the place which started at $140,000 and somehow ended up at $24,000. “Yeah,” he said, remembering back to that time, “They was a nigger family livin’ here when I bought the place.” It wasn’t the fact that he said the N-word that shocked me so much as his casual usage, as if it was the proper term to use when speaking about a black person. Yup, that was enough for me.
I told Harry it was about time for me to mosey on down the road. This guy, who appeared to be a harmless, genial grandpa type of fellow turned out to be a bitter, spiteful, racist, dirty old man. I heard the riding mower fire up again as I hastily pedaled away.
Distance Today: 41
Total Distance: 1379
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