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D.C.Bikers by Kate Casey
My father knows Washington D.C. well, so he was the one who was leading our family and our family's friends, the Pearces, on the "ultimate" family vacation through the nation's capital. It was a very sunny day and we were all in high sprits. We were climbing up a hill and The Mall was just on the other side. My dad was expounding historical facts about the Lincoln, Washington, and Vietnam memorials to anyone who would listen. In other words, we were all ignoring my father as he reveled in the results of planning the perfect family trip. The two mothers, my sister and Megan Pearce had fallen behind the group, so we stopped and turned around to wait for them. The two young girls had their hair in pigtails with bows and were holding hands skipping down the sidewalk. Our mother's Keds slowly pounded the white pavement, as they gossiped and were oblivious to the group waiting for them. My father stood next to me in his khaki shorts and yelled at my brother for bugging him about when we were eating next. Of course, we had just had a huge lunch an hour before. Karen and I took our brightly colored hair scrunchies out, flipped our heads over, and readjusted our pony tails. There seemed to be a lot of noise, but I figured I was just imagining it. We finally got to the top and looked out over The Mall. To our surprise, it had turned into one big sea of motorcycle gangs. My father had planned our vacation the same weekend of the national bikers convention in Washington D.C. Literally thousands of noisy bikers had descended upon my favorite part of the city. Instead of focusing on the peace of the reflection pool or the immensity of the Lincoln Memorial, my friend Karen and I were staring at this new world in front of us. The tattoos were the most amazing part of this whole "show." We were mesmerized for an instant by one man whose arms were so tattooed that you could not see his skin, and we could not help but stare at one woman's skeleton tattoo that covered her whole back. Everywhere you looked there were bikes with men and women hanging off of them. In the heat the women wore tight tank tops, jeans, and black boots. They "whooped" and held onto their men as the motorcycles "vroomed." I gagged on the fumes of the bikes and my sister covered her ears. They seemed to gather in large, somewhat intimidating, groups around coolers and of course, more bikes. One group we passed was drinking bottled beer and was especially loud. Mrs. Pearce grabbed her youngest daughter's hand as we passed them. For the first time ever, my all-American preppy family looked very out of place on the national Mall. Of course the first thing we did was turn and look at my father and laugh. Poor Dad, his family vacation was being interrupted by thousands of beer drinking motorcycle gangs. My mother teased him and Mrs. Pearce smiled a nervous smile. Surrounded by this new world, Karen, my brother, and I could not help but smirk as we thought about the stereotypes of bikers. My brother told tales of certain biker gangs whose members greeted each other with a french kiss. Karen and I were sarcastically plotting to entice two of the hairiest bikers back to our rooms that night. Pretty soon the adults were joining in our humor and commenting on the chains, beer guts, and denim in comparison to traditional historic setting they were in. My dad's first planned stop was the Vietnam War Memorial, so we headed in that direction. The memorial's cool black marble, etched with dead soldier's names usually provides a powerful image that draws you towards it. The Wall is a quiet setting ideal for individual prayer, memory, and thought. This weekend was quite different though. Just to get close to The Wall we had to push our way through a crowd. The memorial's sidewalks were jampacked with the usual patrons but mostly with the same big men who we had all been laughing at. My mother was trying to hold on to my brother and sister. My father and Mr. Pearce were gone -- just as the mothers have a tendency to fall behind, our fathers have a tendency to disappear at the most inopportune times. Above children's cries and the loud din of conversations, I could hear my mother's voice instructing me to follow her and to not get lost in the crowd. I finally pushed my way past an unusually large biker woman, when suddenly I bumped into a male biker. From the thousands of bikers I saw that day, this is the only one I can still picture in my head. It was not because this biker's tattoo was the most colorful or because he wore the most leather. This time I did not take notice of the biker's beer gut, beard, or red bandanna. Instead, the first thing I noticed were the sounds of his sobs. He was a short stocky man who was hunched over so you mostly saw his ash blonde, frizzy hair coming out of the red bandanna. He briefly lifted his head and there were tears streaming down his tanned, wrinkled face. His friend towered over him and had his massive arm swung over the shoulders of the shorter man. Neither man said anything. They just wanted to get away from The Wall. The big man was trying to lead his crying friend out of the crowd, but they kept bumping into him. For a few seconds I stopped in the middle of the crowd and looked at this man. Around him, little girls screaned and mothers looked for their kids. People pushed and shoved to work their way through the crowd. But this man was oblivious to all of this, and I was too for a second. My mother's call snapped me back to reality. I took one last glimpse at the two biker men and then continued to push my way through the crowd. I finally broke through and found my family. My father and Mr. Pearce were pointing and studying the tourist map. My brother had found a friend and was heaving a football. My sister and Megan were reminding all parents that they had promised we could go to the hotel in time to go swimming. We started to walk towards the Lincoln Memorial. My dad looked at me, "It's a shame that this visit was the Pearce's first to The Wall," he said. "They missed out on the real emotions and meaning of it." I turned around and tried to find the biker one more time. Moments before, I had put all of the bikers into one group and laughed at their differences -- their black leather, chains and tough image that accompanied these stereotypes. Now I was looking at my family -- the people whom I had deemed "normal." But, they were the ones ignoring the typical feelings the memorial wall is supposed to evoke. Suddenly the barrier I had put between the biker gang world and my "normal" world came tumbling down. I realized that my images of bikers were just that -- images not realities. I felt ignorant and stupid when I realized that our biker stories had ignored the fact that these were people with emotions also. The Pearces might have missed the meaning of The Wall, but that day was the first time I ever got any meaning from The Wall. I was not alive when the Vietnam soldiers came home from war. I have only heard the horrible stories of soldiers being called "baby killers." My parents and the media have told me that veterans were made to feel outcast and un-American, but it was not those people that I thought of that day, it was the bikers instead. Why is it that my mind had categorized the bikers as out of place in the nation's capital? Weren't they as American as my "preppy" family and those names etched on The Wall? I looked at The Wall and all of those names etched in stone so that society could no longer ignor them. Then I looked at the sea of bikers and realized that I could no longer ignor them either.
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Last Update: Thursday, 19 April, 2007 14:12 |
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