Roadkill on the Highway of Life
by Mike Mender (first published in the Adirondack Journal)

Hey, can you hear that?

Me neither.

After a week of listening to the nearly constant thunder of motorcycles rumbling down River Street last week, quiet has again returned to my neighborhood. Americade has left town just in time to make room for Elvis.

For the most part, this region is a gracious host for Americade, the massive motorcycle rally that draws thousands of riders and their bikes to the region. Not only are we gracious hosts, we often carry our neighborliness to ambitious extremes, not that there's anything wrong with that.

For example, down the street at the [Warrensburg, NY] Free Methodist Church, Pastor Dick [Leonard] gave his sermon Sunday using a motorcycle for a prop — wheeled it right into the sanctuary, right up to the front. There was Pastor Dick, all 6 feet, several inches tall and 70-plus years of him, his white hair in stark contrast to the black motorcycle helmet he donned for emphasis — preaching and expounding — using the parts of a motorcycle as symbols that equated to tools for living the Christian life.

Sticking a Harley in front of the pulpit is a pretty slick attention-getting device, and all eyes were glued to the chrome and black machine for the duration of his message. Yet even as he spoke, Pastor Dick was from time to time drowned out by the roar of motorcycles thundering up River Street on their way to the open, winding blacktop of Thurman.

Now that I can hear myself think again, I've been thinking about what Pastor Dick said, trying to figure out my place in the cosmos. If life can be boiled down to the parts of a motorcycle, what part am I?

I've never really thought about my life in terms of motorcycle parts. I guess like most males, I'd like to be the engine - fast and powerful and able to make things move.

My kids probably look at me more like the saddle - padded and built specifically for their comfort and convenience.

But rather than guess, I decided that if I wanted to know my true motorcycle identity, I ought to go to the one who deals with me the most.

So I asked my beloved.

"If I was a part of a motorcycle," I said, "which part would I be?"

She just laughed.

"I don't really think of you in terms of a motorcycle part," she said.

Then she laughed some more. It was that kind of laugh that tells me she thinks what she's about to say is very funny.

"No," she explained. "You're more like the gas in the motorcycle tank - smelly in confined spaces and volatile under pressure."

She has a way of making me sorry I asked, my beloved does.

But she shed some light on my true identity, and that of most other people for that matter.

In life as in motorcycles, sometimes you're the windshield. Sometimes you're the bug.

Howling at the Moon appears weekly in Denton Publications newspapers. When Mike Mender isn't breaking out the Windex, he may be reached via e-mail at mike_mender@yahoo.com.