On a steel horse (Part 4): John Paul and me

I often romanticized the idea of driving off into the distant horizon with no real direction or route in mind. Just coasting into adventure, you know the ones of childhood past, full of excitement and new beginnings, sleeping in tents under the wild stars, showering in freezing streams or run down truck stops; not just existing in the moment but living it. Needless to say we got the bikes but have yet to drive off into the ether though there have been plenty nights spent curled up next to the dying heat of a long driven motor, but never too far from “ home.”

Clinton’s Harley on a ride in St John Parish, Louisiana. Spillway Photographs by Clinton Kuss.

Jon Paul on his motorcycle. 

The typical ride for us is to grab food across the muddy Mississippi, down the old stretch of Highway 90 that cuts through Lulling, Louisiana and to the Dots–a typical side of the road diner filled with cigarette smoke and lined with poker machines. It reminds me of a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. There is something about the greasy eggs and stale coffee that is comforting. I grew up on this. The only differences were that mom was replaced with Jon Paul and that blue-boxed Chevy Astro van was now two, drastically different in style motorcycles. Once the stale coffee has settled and the burnt hash browns consumed, we grab our lids (helmets), saddle up, and ride off. The horses of yesterday are the motorcycles of today. Maybe it is the freedom, but cowboys and bikers don’ t seem too distant of relatives. I guess two wheels move the soul.

Jon Paul: Riding taught me things I didn’t know, gave me things I didn’t have, and brought me places I had never been. It made me live more and love life a lot more. It just opened my eyes and made me wise to situations and it really brings out another person in me. Something I never thought or knew was there.

Jon Paul doing a wheelie.

Editor’s Note: This story is one of a series reprinted from the book A Guide to South Louisiana: Stories of Uncommon Culture. Each author was a student in Rachel Breunlin’s “Storytelling and Culture” course for the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Orleans in the Spring of 2017. The Neighborhood Story Project sponsored the project as part of its mission to publish collaborative ethnography in high quality books in which the authors receive royalties for their creative labor.