Tombstone’s Marshalls—A Fist Full of Days with Dad on Gold Wings
“There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving.”
The line from “Stairway to Heaven” weighed heavily on my heart as I waited to board the big bird to Tucson, AZ, for another visit with my dad. The miracle of it all is that he’s still able to swing a leg over a motorcycle—and he likes the fast ones.
My earliest memory of a motorcycle was of dad’s 1982 Honda CBF750F. I remember him telling me how fast it was and how he’d ridden it all the way to Florida and back.
The Cherry Hill Road Farm we lived on when I was a kid was where I first bonded with a machine of my own. The Honda four-wheeler provided my first taste of freedom through the 160 acres of mixed forest, riversides, and rolling green hills. The farm contained a trail system that flowed through the three landscapes and back to the barn as if it were the Nürburgring.
Our relationship wasn’t always rosy, but the good times outweighed the bad. My dad knew the Beast from the East motocross legend Damon Bradshaw’s family through horses, and we scored one of Damon’s practice bikes so I could get my bearings on it.
We traveled hundreds of miles together for motocross practice in East Bend, NC, on week nights and thousands of miles to races throughout the Southeast on the weekends. He was always with me at the gate, massaging my shoulders and saying a prayer for safety.
In his business, dad worked hard to help people with their insurance needs, like his dad did when he started in 1951. In the evenings, he switched from Clark Kent in Italian business attire to Superman in boots and jeans.
The thing that made him tick the most was growing things like trees, dogs, horses, and sons.
The Desert Wind
Dad had always wanted to go west, so he put his flag in the land of year-round sunshine in southern Arizona. He made new friends and lived life to the fullest on bicycles, dance floors, and pickleball courts.
On my previous visits, he had lived in a tour bus that looked like something Aerosmith would’ve used at the Western Way Resort near the entrance to the Saguaro National Park. I knew his wishes were to be with the king of all motorcycles and to be in love. He now had both.
When I arrived, a steady desert wind filled the morning and didn’t go away until some time the next day. Dad and his fiancée Reyme warned me not to spend too much time in the wind, but their advice somehow blew in through one ear and out the other.
Now, I know that Valley fever is very real. Fungal spores from the Arizona soil get stirred up by the wind, and they can cause an infection. Oblivious to it, I set up a chair on the front porch with my back to the wind and dozed off for a nap.
After dinner, dad brought me up to speed on his new appreciation of MotoGP. We chatted about the plan for the next day: to visit one of the original family Honda motorcycle dealerships and pick up two 50th Anniversary Gold Wings.