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SCRAMBLES AT R
USTY NAILS FLA
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By Charles C. Clayton (May 19:18)
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A tempest turned the knobby Wheel,
Geared like an animal's claw to the spongy ground,
Turned around, and 'spewed earth and stones and grass and smoke and sound.
Such raucous sound!
And tore the motorcycle away, a blade plowing the yielding turf in geysered
furrows, up the hiII and down the turn.
The rider leaning, ted the tempest barking out the trumpeting megaphone • a cornucopia of cacophony.· it occurred to me.
POET'S CORNER
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THE BIG BEAR RUN
M
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SAND WASH
By David Bond
By David Bond
I rode in the Big Bear Nationals, my son,
I battled the mud and the grit
I passed and was passed for my trouble
And stopped only at the check-pit.
Keep that foot
Up
If you would ride
Me,
Twist it wide,
Break
On top,
Don't
Slow or stop,
Here's
What to do,
Just
Blast right through
' Me
Me and the eight hundred others, my lad,
Left mountains of dust at the start
To ram through the rock and slip in thesuow
And ride til1 you rode out your heart.
Yes, me and that old Matchless thumper
Ate Triumph dust and near choked
But we caught us a few i n those acres of mud
Where that beast told how it stroked.
Don't dream of five hours on Big Bear
They hold it no more, my 'son,
But old Dad was one of two hundred
Who fi nished the Bi g Bear Run.
And other men in leather skin (Where man left off and machine began was no
great matter.) llung up the turf like kicking heels of runners
Extended by two glittering wheels,
Sprang past me in a symphony of barks and a chorus of clatters.
I watched the riders spring with the convolutions of the land
Gripping all life's importance in blistered hands
And knew that they and I were one, the same.
Tbeir racketing, serious straining game
Focussed the parabola on a tiny point, one clear, cool Sunday afternoon,
And spoke the essenceot humankind in a sniff of caster fume, a tense mouth
sucking air, in elk·limbed youths extended.
By tameless wheels now on the earth, now in the air, all nature's forces
mustered :
In this 'scene '
And chose off .by man and his creation, his machine.
No bul1ti ng sand or bloddy battle ground could answer quite
The question in the shattered air.
Onl y man, and man's creati on
On nature's terms
Can write the answer on the choppy earth, and wipe it out,
And wri te it once again,
And leave me there, an audi ence of one to read the message in the
parabola's tin y focus and know it true. I alone.
Who have stared unmoved at the great reach of infinity and l aughed unconcerned at the microcosm' s puny fi st can find the key to mankind' s '
kingdom l yi ng unnoticed, unsought and undefiled
In a dimpl ed rut ot spongy ground.
O
DETOA 'STAR
'
T he B ell siar helm et is truly heaven sen t,
Without.it my son 's face would now have a dent!
The track was wet and head first he went,
His beautiful new Sta r was n't even bent!
A ve ry grateful mom,
HELE N ,PA RK E R
Rosemead. Calif.
On Display
at the
Cycle World Sh,ow
Exhibit -49 & 50
HODAKA
'100
five-speed
For a first...hand demonstration of
HODAKABILITY,visit your dealer
for a free test ride.
u -- rr"C 0
'
For the deo ler - - - nearest you ,write: . ""'"
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P.O. lOX J27
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