Mrs. McPherson always wondered why the South lawn looked a bit sickly and maybe even torn up. It had gotten so bad that she was required to carefully arrange the porch furniture so that the ladies of the Neptune Society couldn't see the scabby turf when it was her turn to host weekly luncheons. She had never caught Elwood, her no-good son-in-law, giving rides to all the neighborhood children with that noisy, smelly motorcycle and sidecar of his, the very device she had declared "a menace to civilized citizenry" before she even learned to whom it belonged, and upon learning that fact of ownership, tallied it as one more black mark against the man who had married her only daughter. And because she had never witnessed the surreptitious joyrides she had no reason to connect the dying grass with the increasingly prominent stains requiring increasingly prominent scrubbing to remove from her beloved grandson Joey's playclothes. But Joey and Elwood knew the why of all those things, and Joey and Elwood were aware of the small rise at the edge of the garden. The rise that a walking man would scarcely notice, but a rolling man, a wheeled man at speed across the South lawn, a man with a bit of daredevil in him could use to his advantage to free himself from the bonds of gravity even if only for a mere second. But Mrs. Mcpherson never bothered to look up from her afternoon coffee and Ladies Home Journal, to question the source of the peals of laughter wafting in through the open South window.
My but that's a lot of gingerbread (and a lot of porch; or is "gallery" the right word?). Makes me curious: Was the place someone's home, or perhaps a luxe hotel on the banks of Lake Squee-Hee-Gah? A sanatorium for folks with afflicted lungs or an inordinate fondness for morphine? :Sigh.: ---rats
Related to Captain Doakes? Only as a faded photo in his father's bureau. Elwood Hanrahan was born into motorcycling. His father was a despatch rider in The Great War who, having survived the mud and blood of France and the Balkans, booked passage to the New World, the Land Of Opportunity where a title or a fortunate marriage isn't a necessity to future life. All it took was hard work and long hours for Hanrahan Motor Sales and Service to become a roaring success, but hours aren't long when you're doing something you love and Cece Hanrahan loved motorcycles, had done ever since His Majesty's Army had taught him to ride, and he spent his days thinking of nothing else. Until, that is, the day a new love came skidding into his life. To be accurate, it wasn't the beautiful Esther who did the skidding. She was only walking down the lane enjoying a lovely sunny day when Cece, equally enjoying the sunny day, came (perhaps too briskly) round the corner, skidding both tires sideways on the rough paving stones as he liked to do when he was feeling his oats, and nearly deposited the startled Miss Esther directly onto the pillion seat of the hotted up Flying Squirrel he was testing. The courtship wasn't long; young people are always in a hurry and the memory of war likely hastened them a bit more. In what seemed the blink of an eye there was the big house, the two twin girls, May and June, and their baby brother Elwood. The entire family was motorcycle crazy. Cece had little trouble infecting Esther once he found that lightweight Sachs 150. And the twins and Elwood? They were riding almost before they could walk, setting into motion the motorcycling story no one could have forseen.
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Mrs. McPherson always wondered why the South lawn looked a bit sickly and maybe even torn up. It had gotten so bad that she was required to carefully arrange the porch furniture so that the ladies of the Neptune Society couldn't see the scabby turf when it was her turn to host weekly luncheons. She had never caught Elwood, her no-good son-in-law, giving rides to all the neighborhood children with that noisy, smelly motorcycle and sidecar of his, the very device she had declared "a menace to civilized citizenry" before she even learned to whom it belonged, and upon learning that fact of ownership, tallied it as one more black mark against the man who had married her only daughter. And because she had never witnessed the surreptitious joyrides she had no reason to connect the dying grass with the increasingly prominent stains requiring increasingly prominent scrubbing to remove from her beloved grandson Joey's playclothes. But Joey and Elwood knew the why of all those things, and Joey and Elwood were aware of the small rise at the edge of the garden. The rise that a walking man would scarcely notice, but a rolling man, a wheeled man at speed across the South lawn, a man with a bit of daredevil in him could use to his advantage to free himself from the bonds of gravity even if only for a mere second. But Mrs. Mcpherson never bothered to look up from her afternoon coffee and Ladies Home Journal, to question the source of the peals of laughter wafting in through the open South window.
My but that's a lot of gingerbread (and a lot of porch; or is "gallery" the right word?). Makes me curious: Was the place someone's home, or perhaps a luxe hotel on the banks of Lake Squee-Hee-Gah? A sanatorium for folks with afflicted lungs or an inordinate fondness for morphine? :Sigh.: ---rats
I hope it was because of all the morphine and that beautiful lake.
Thanks!, great story, any chance he's a relation to Captain Doakes? https://progress-is-fine.blogspot.com/2020/12/sidecar-sunday_13.html
Related to Captain Doakes? Only as a faded photo in his father's bureau.
Elwood Hanrahan was born into motorcycling. His father was a despatch rider in The Great War who, having survived the mud and blood of France and the Balkans, booked passage to the New World, the Land Of Opportunity where a title or a fortunate marriage isn't a necessity to future life. All it took was hard work and long hours for Hanrahan Motor Sales and Service to become a roaring success, but hours aren't long when you're doing something you love and Cece Hanrahan loved motorcycles, had done ever since His Majesty's Army had taught him to ride, and he spent his days thinking of nothing else. Until, that is, the day a new love came skidding into his life. To be accurate, it wasn't the beautiful Esther who did the skidding. She was only walking down the lane enjoying a lovely sunny day when Cece, equally enjoying the sunny day, came (perhaps too briskly) round the corner, skidding both tires sideways on the rough paving stones as he liked to do when he was feeling his oats, and nearly deposited the startled Miss Esther directly onto the pillion seat of the hotted up Flying Squirrel he was testing. The courtship wasn't long; young people are always in a hurry and the memory of war likely hastened them a bit more. In what seemed the blink of an eye there was the big house, the two twin girls, May and June, and their baby brother Elwood. The entire family was motorcycle crazy. Cece had little trouble infecting Esther once he found that lightweight Sachs 150. And the twins and Elwood? They were riding almost before they could walk, setting into motion the motorcycling story no one could have forseen.
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