LoneStarBiker \u2014 Texas Independence Trail
Page 52<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Barbara McCollom<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Were you in town today when the line of motorcycles went by \u2014 the riders in leather and feathers and chains? Did you stand on the curb watching them pass, then form an opinion and tell it to someone? What did you say?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was there, too. A friend and I attended the funeral and cried along with these bikers for a man whose name I did not know; whose biker friends loved him. He was my neighbor. He was kind to me, the one who did not know his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At five o'clock on winter afternoons we'd hear him coming to the corner where our streets met. He'd gun his engine and roar by on his way to his best friend's, "the Gypsy's" house. He always waved, and so did I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When my husband and I moved into this house, a well-intentioned "warn-er" pointed out "the Gypsy's" house to me. I stayed away from it for a year. But when a group of neighbors cleaned up a nearby playground, "the Gypsy" and his family worked with me. We talked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you know what he does when he's not doing whatever it is that we "think" gypsies do? He fixes up old bicycles and gives them to the kids in town who don't have one of their own. Maybe you've seen his newspaper ad for donated broken bicycles, "Butch, The Bicycle Man".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were about forty "Gypsys" at the funeral. G Y P S Y, that's the name they wear across the back of their motorcycle club vests. Some of the vests had special buttons or bells or feathers on them \u2014 symbols worn in memory of other dear friends. What impressed me most about these mourners was the contrast between their rough exteriors and the gentleness of their tears. These men were not ashamed to cry together. They loved this man, now gone but obviously never to be forgotten. They said he never repeated a bad thing about another person. Could someone say that about me? Or about you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His father spoke. A minister. He honored his son who \u2014 although always much different from him \u2014 sat down at age twenty-one and put it right between them. When the son died abruptly in a motorcycle crash that was not left undone. Have you put things right with your family, with your friends?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did you notice when the motorcycles lined through town, the big black one held upright on a trailer with leather boots placed backwards on the pedals? Driving the car that pulled the trailer was "The Bicycle Man's" wife, my neighbor, whose assignment was hard because her tears obscured her view. So her sweet little daughter sat next to her, patting her arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They drove without her husband's body so that his bike could follow last in the line of bikers \u2014 in tribute, black streamers saluting us as we stood on the curb of the funeral home, thinking, "I am proud to have know him and to be here".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I walked in my dress-up shoes to my suburban-lady's van, its rack still carrying my mountain bike from this morning's early ride. And I thought, how grand it is for this man to be remembered exactly as he was! I wanted my bicycle to be a Harley and my friends to roar with me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The things I shall remember about the funeral are: the lovely sign language expressing words and music to the dead man's wife, who can not hear; and the minister's words reminding us that no person, only God Himself, is righteous enough to judge another man's soul. He said also what I had been thinking as we all sat there together, so different from one another that, "man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What are the differences to Him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At times such as these we are surely the same. All subject to death, all sinners in need of the Savior, taught to "love your neighbor as yourself". And, at times, all of us need a pat on the arm and words of encouragement. When shall we begin?<\/p>\n\n\n\n LoneStarBiker \u2014 Texas Independence TrailPage 52 Barbara McCollom Were you in town today when the line of motorcycles went by \u2014 the riders in leather and feathers and chains? Did you stand on the curb watching them pass, then form an opinion and tell it to someone? What did you say? I was there, too. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":900704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[88,414],"class_list":["post-62051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-lsb-texas-independence-trail-2005","tag-pe031"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62051"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900560,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62051\/revisions\/900560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/900704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclesontheroadagain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}