I wasn’t sure whether I’d go or not. Mississippi had been uncharacteristically cool for late summer, but it looked like we might get rain on Saturday. And that was the day I had marked on my calendar to go riding on the Dixie Thunder Run.

Once a year, bikers ride from Tupelo to Biloxi to raise funds to help deployed soldiers’ families who are having financial trouble. This is NOT your usual Do-Gooder Poker Run for charity. Dixie Thunder was founded in 2006 by bikers of the 155 Brigade Combat Team. Unfortunately, none of them could make the first ride…they were all in IRAQ!

This was the fourth year of Dixie Thunder. Riders from all over the area would converge on the Chunky River Harley Davidson dealership in Meridian, Mississippi from three directions, starting at Tupelo (the “Northern Route”), Biloxi (the “Southern Route”), and from Pearl (the “Central Route”).

The Central Route was not really a Dixie Thunder routes at all. It had been pulled together by the Patriot Guard Riders of Mississippi, and would not have a police escort. Their plan was to meet at the McDonald’s in Pearl and vote on whether to take the freeway or the more scenic Highway 80. They would then regroup at the Meehan Junction/Lost Gap exit.

I was looking forward to driving to Chunky River Harley Davidson with the Pearl group. Then, Black Saturday happened. Those of you whose lives are so empty that they follow the Roo everywhere will remember August 29th as the day following an email campaign to the owners of Chunky River that made them aware of some etiquette problems in their store. This culminated in several retaliatory posts from a couple of their employees who had experienced a dismal workday after that morning’s pep talk.

In spite of a gracious peace offering by Peggy and Meurice LeFevre, my bridges to that dealership were burned, my wells poisoned. As far as the sales and service staff were concerned, I was persona non grata, a non-person, pariah. I could never show my face in that building ever again.

So I decided to go anyway. A Saturday without causing trouble is a Saturday wasted.

The NOAA radar picture was amusing. A torrential downpour had formed near Hattiesburg and was traveling toward Meridian along the same route (and at about the same speed) as the group from Biloxi. A second disturbance was near Meridian, but it looked weak and I reckoned that it would dissipate before I got there.

Thus it passed that on the appointed hour I bade farewell to my bride (Miz Roo) and warmed up Stray Dog for the journey South to Newton, Mississippi. There, I would patronize the local Walmart, drive on to the Meehan Junction/Lost Gap exit, and wait there for the group from Pearl.

A decade ago, a group of bikers gathering at Lost Gap only meant trouble. That exit was the location of the infamous Ma Shumate’s bar and grill. The last whorehouse in Meridian, Ma Shumate’s featured three travel trailers out back behind a ramshackle wood building that served as the dining room and general “meetin’ place”.

In 1997, the Lauderdale County sheriff threatened to run a bulldozer through the middle of the bar & grill portion of Ma Shumate’s. That hinted at worse things to come, so she closed down. Now there’s a commercial prison and a large truck stop at Lost Gap, and nothing in between.

I bring this up ‘cause I decided to go on ahead and meet the Pearl group at Lost Gap, and I wouldn’t want Miz Roo to think that I was up to no good. Most married men announce that they’re gonna meet up at Meehan Junction just to avoid trouble at home. I, personally, have no such semantic problem.

I had gauged my time well…it was a little before 11:00 AM when I left Newton on the twenty-minute drive to Meehan Junction. Right off the bat, I run into a storm of “love bugs”, those nasty little critters that fly in pairs about three feet off the ground. Within seconds, Stray Dog’s pristine windshield became a moonscape of yellow impact marks. For the next twenty miles, I stared at the drying bug guts glued solidly to the plexiglass.

Then the sky starts sprinklin’ on me. Two miles short of the exit, it was a light, refreshing mist. One mile later, the rain got more serious. One half mile to go and the stinging rain has washed all the dried bug guts off the windshield. I rolled into the Spaceway and cowered by the gas pumps with six other hapless refugees.

Seconds later, the sky opened into a full sub-tropical downpour. “You guys from Pearl?” I yelled. They weren’t. They were waiting for the Pearl group. From the looks of the weather, we were gonna be stuck there for a while. I set my helmet on Stray Dog’s mirror and announced, “I need a YooHoo!”

Unable to find a bottle of the South’s finest imitation chocolate milk, I settled for a Dr Pepper and a package of cinnamon spin wheels. The checkout girl stared at me long and hard. I plopped my purchase down on the counter and proclaimed, “Breakfast of champions!”

She just stared and chewed on a little piece of gum. There’s something uniquely Southern about short checkout girls chomping on tiny pieces of gum. They can do it for hours without getting tired, noticing that the flavor is gone, or realizing what they look like.

Lightning flashed with a near-simultaneous CRACKBooom. The world lit up in the blue-white light. I could taste metal. Checkout Girl jumped a little. “That,” I said, “was the sound a Harley makes when it falls over!”

Chomp. Chew.

More bikers arrived and waited with us. A group showed up from Pearl, but they weren’t the Pearl Group. Another group came in from Morton, and a few more from Forest.

An ambulance pulled in with its lights flashing and threaded its way through our bikes. The took a skinny, agitated woman away on a stretcher. The driver scowled at us. I wondered whether the lady’s predicament had been caused by the weather, or by twenty loud biker dudes sitting around on their loud Harleys.

The parking lot started flooding as the rains cascaded without an end in sight. Two more bikers rolled in from the North side of the freeway. They announced that it wasn’t raining at all in Meridian. Our little downpour was being caused by a local thunderstorm. “In fact,” they said, “the rain stops completely about two miles down the road.”

I’d heard enough. I pulled on my rain jacket and steeled myself for the challenge ahead. Bravely waving “goodbye,” I set out alone into the waterfall.

I drove slowly for the first mile, keeping my flashers on. One mile later, the rain let up a little bit. Two miles later, I was on the outskirts of Meridian and the rain didn’t stop. It got steadily worse. Three miles to go and I couldn’t see any more. High-speed drops of water were stinging my cheeks and lips, sneaking around the edges of my glasses and forcing me to blink painfully. Water was running up my nose. I gave up and pulled under an overpass to escape.

After a few minutes, the rain abated enough that I felt it was safe to continue. I made it about a mile before hitting that wall of water again. I pressed on, thinking that the rain couldn’t possibly last. Not like this! The sky can’t hold that much water!

Lightning struck across the road to my left…flashBOOM. Close! I decided to turn off early and drive the final mile to Chunky River on Frontage Road…a slower, more sedate avenue. The off ramp at 22nd Avenue was just a few hundred yards ahead but I couldn’t see it. I was blinded by the downpour. There was nowhere to pull off, nowhere to stop.

I followed the lights of the car in front of me. Their right turn signal was blinking, so I figured that they must be turning. As soon as it turned onto the off ramp, the car slammed into a river of floodwater and sprayed roostertails ten yards to each side. Two seconds later, Stray Dog hit the car’s wake and water poured into my boots.

We slowed to a dead crawl, but the Dog held on and her engine chugged steadily, pulling us up the steep turning hill to the intersection and a stale yellow light. I thought about running the light, but cars full of people maddened by the storm were staged on either side and waiting for their green light with itchy feet. Reluctantly, I stopped.

I felt a cold chill at the base of my spine. The rain had begun to form a puddle in Stray Dog’s seat. That gentle, warm, soft seat I liked so much had joined karmic forces with the elements to find a dry spot on the Rooster and fill it with obscenely cold rainwater. I daydreamed about dry clothes, and thought about stopping at the Walmart on the way to Chunky River Harley Davidson. Dry clothes! Dry socks! Dry…

CRACKBOOoolahh…I felt the heat of the flash and heard the sound at the same moment. This bolt hit no more than twenty yards away, splitting the air without an echo. Looking around me, I realized just how exposed the Dog and I were. We were at the top of a hill in a thunderstorm, soaking wet, and surrounded by light poles and electric poles and cell towers and power lines…all of them daring The Almighty to throw another one!

I prayed for a green light. Traffic had long ago disappeared from the intersection, but my light was still red! What was this, a five-minute light? Time inched by. Finally, the other lights turned from green to yellow, and then three seconds later to red, and a split second later my light switched from red to green and I started to ease off the clutch…

CRAAAACKABambambam! Too close! I looked up and the traffic lights were dark…all of them. Then, before I could coax Stray Dog across the white line, the system rebooted and the 22nd Avenue lights flickered on…and my light was RED again! We had to wait for another cycle! The rain came down harder.

I resigned myself to my fate. I was going to be sopping wet. All day long. And I was going to be at this stop light. All day long. The best I could hope for would be to finish my trip alive. I made up my mind to be careful.

Eventually the light changed and Stray Dog pulled me across the intersection. One hundred feet later, we eased left onto Frontage Road. This turn banks in the wrong direction and dives immediately downhill. When it’s dry, it’s an unsafe turn. I didn’t need the rain. I certainly didn’t need the deep puddles that had formed all along my lane.

The first puddle was shallow, but it was fifty feet long and had me worrying about traction. I pressed on, slowing down and taking it easy. Then a small white car passed me, burying me in their waves. The water was cold and tasted rancid. It leaked into my boots.

A hundred yards further and we hit another flooded patch. Stray Dog worked her way through it. Then another. And another!

CRACKBOOM! This was too much. I had only gone about a half mile since the intersection, but I needed to get out of this! I turned into a Chevy dealership, hoping for dry land. Their entire parking lot was under water. I pulled up to their showroom door and shut off the engine. The sound of the rain was overwhelming.

With two inches of water in my boots, I squished onto the pristine tile of their showroom floor. I quickly stepped back and waited on their “foot-wipin’” rug and dripped. I pulled off my helmet, and accidentally poured about a cup of rainwater in front of a new Corvette. It looked like a little bit like a radiator leak.

“Can I help you?” the salesman asked.

“Asylum,” I answered. “I want asylum!”

At that moment, I felt more rain hitting me. I looked up and saw, directly above me, a stream of water just beginning to pour out of a hole in the ceiling. It was pouring onto my left shoulder. Some of it went down my collar. I stepped aside and let it hit the rug.

“And I’d like a trash can, please.”

I borrowed a phone book and called the Spaceway truck stop back at Lost Gap. I sent a warning about the true weather conditions. I told the bikers waiting there to stay put for at least another half hour or so.

Pouring the contents of my boots into the trash can, I could tell that the rain was falling a bit softer. Traffic on Frontage Road looked light, as well. Time to cheat death. I pulled the helmet back on my head. The water that had been trapped in its foam liner squirted out in all directions.

“You gonna go out in that?” the salesman asked in disbelief.

“Could be worse,” I replied. “Could be rainin’.”

By the time I got Stray Dog started, my glasses had already fogged up. I wiped ‘em down with a wet handkerchief and maneuvered to the edge of the parking lot. Now, of course, there was line of cars driving slowly up Frontage, so once again I sat waiting in the rain.

I saw lightning flash and counted slowly to twelve before hearing the dull boom…over two miles away, a good sign. I pulled in behind the last car and listened as the Dog softly sang “Potato-Potato” down Frontage Road. Staying in the center of the lane helped me avoid the pools of standing water that were scattered all along the road…except for the last one.

One half mile from the Chevrolet dealership sits Chunky River Harley Davidson and one of the most dangerous turns in the city of Meridian. Frontage Road suddenly changes from two lanes to three. The left lane holds high-speed traffic merging off of I-20, most of them fighting to get over to the right-hand turn lane. The right lane is turn-only, and its cars are trying to get into the center lane so that they can go straight. The center lane gives you the choice of going straight or turning right onto Bonita Lakes Drive, but it is poorly marked. That’s the lane you need for the turnoff into Harley Davidson.

Anybody who thinks they know what’s going on around them at this point is ill informed.

The rains made it worse. The roads were slick and the runoff system that normally feeds rainwater into the Sowashee Creek was overloaded by water cascading down from the mall on the hill above. Today, this formed a deep, turbulent pool at the turnoff to Chunky River Harley Davidson.

I set up for the turn and then almost stopped. The car in front of me, one lane over to the right, made the turn onto Bonita Lakes Drive and sank up to its door panels in the standing water. Its engine quit almost immediately, and that lane was now blocked.

Cars behind me, I was already in the turn when I saw it. Too late to turn around, my front wheel hit the water at fifteen miles per hour. The tire pushed through, drenching my legs. The water got deeper. Ahead of me, I could see the surface water swirling! Something was buried there, hidden from view but waiting for a victim.

I pressed Stray Dog for more power, just a little more power. The water rose above her exhaust pipes, above the floorboards, touching the bags. I waited for her to stop, knowing that I’d never be able to hold her up in this current. My imagination saw her on her side, pulled down and dragged away by the flowing waters.

Stray Dog said, “No.”

She wasn’t about to give in, not yet. Potato-potato. We swerved a few inches to the right and dodged the maelstrom. Potato-potato. Steadily through the water, tires still gripping what they could of the road underneath us. Potato-potato.

And then we were through!

On the left, I saw a line of bikers taking shelter under the Chunky River Harley Davidson covered picnic area stared at the newcomer. They could not believe that this gifted motorcyclist had just navigated the car-eating whirlpool on his little Heritage. (OK, substitute “dumbass” for “gifted motorcyclist”).

On my right, the small white car sat dead in the water, waiting for low tide and hoping that the cars coming up from behind could avoid it in time.

I pulled in and parked in the main drive next to an Electraglide. There were only about fifty bikes there. The sound stage had collapsed during the storm and the band was busy with the repairs. Two tent-style kiosks had blown over, as well. One of them was destroyed.



Not many bikes were there



Wandering around the dealership, I soon found myself standing beside the blonde ringleader, listening as she barked orders. “…then get another tent. Call Harley…three bikes down…you’ll just have to make do until then.” Then, Mrs. Peggy LeFevre turned and looked at me. We had never met before.

“Jon?” she guessed immediately, extending her hand. I nodded and we shook. Then I borrowed a line from General George S. Patton.

“I just thought I’d come over here in person,” I told her, “so you could see for yourself whether or not I was as big a son of a bitch as your crew thinks I am.”

She laughed and took my picture. I thanked her for the thoughtful “peace offerings” she had sent me and Miz Roo. I pointed out that the one she had sent me was a tad on the extravagant side, but that I had become attached to it and she wasn’t getting it back.



Peggy LeFevre, a driving force



Wilma Allen (PGR Uber-Coordinator) suddenly appeared on my left. “Hi, Jon!” she said, holding my elbow. We had only met twice before, so I was impressed that she remembered me at all. Wilma and Peggy together were pulling a successful bike rally out of a weather-induced disaster. They were busy people, and I needed a rain suit.

Riding with water in your boots is a dangerous distraction. Riding in this kind of a downpour, like I did, was just plain stupid. But I still needed to get home that afternoon and that probably meant driving through more rain, so I mentioned to Peggy that I was going to pick up a rain suit while I was there.

Mrs. LeFevre handed me off to a young sales girl. “Take care of this gentleman,” she demanded. “He wants a rain suit. I’ll be right back…” and off she went.

I was dragged off to the clothing section where, after a frantic search of the stock room, the sales girl found a suit I liked in my size. I tried it on. It fit. I checked the price. I could probably get it cheaper on eBay, but it wasn’t currently raining on eBay so the savings would be imaginary. “Yeah,” I said, “this’ll do.”

I took the jacket off and handed it back to her. “Do you want me to help you take your pants off?” she asked. A gentleman customer standing behind her made a face.

“It has been,” I remarked somberly, “a very long time since a girl asked me that.” I then pointed out that I was married, and that my wife was a violent, intemperate woman given to fits of screaming and graced by the State of Mississippi with a carry permit.

The sales girl tossed her head full of thick, blonde hair and gave a light, airy giggle as she sashayed tantalizingly off to the cash register. That’s how I remember it, anyway.

Peggy LeFevre returned moments later, dragging her husband by the arm. She introduced us and explained that she couldn’t stay…there was a parking problem in the restaurant next door.

It didn’t take much prodding to get Meurice LeFevre to talk about motorcycles. Or music. Or success in general. He is a proud man who has an unbelievable background. It boils down to “LeFevre Family (gospel music greats)…music producer for singers like Little Richard and Ike/Tina Turner…motocross racer…Harley dealer”, but there is no way to adequately describe him here. I liked Meurice.

He pointed out a small racing bike on display behind the men’s jackets…one of his first Harley dirt bikes. I commented that it was a good thing Miz Roo couldn’t make it, ‘cause she’d be tryin’ to kick start it. “It’ll probably fire up,” he said. (We might find out, soon.)

We were interrupted by a sudden hubbub. The Northern and Southern bikers still hadn’t made it to Meridian. Both teams were stuck behind weather. Meurice walked me over to the checkout area and informed the ladies working there that I was a H.O.G. member for the day. That gave me a 15% discount on my purchases.

I would have objected, but I knew that I’d have to explain the cost of the rain suit to Miz Roo later in the evening, and the discount sure would help.

I walked around the festivities looking for t-shirts, food, and trouble. T-shirts were available, but not in my size. I could smell food, but I couldn’t find it. And trouble? I was ready to offer anyone in the sales or service departments a free poke at my face or a beer…their choice. I never saw anyone from those two departments, however. So my face is still as beautiful as ever and I got to keep the beer.

At 1:30 we got the word that the Tupelo group was coming in…FOUR HUNDRED RIDERS. Peggy LeFevre quickly rounded up a squad of official greeters to stand there and wave as the bikes pulled in. She tagged me right off. “Roo! Stand over there…greet the riders as they come in…” and WHOOSH she was gone, trying to organize parking for all of the bikes.

The rider count, I thought, must have been overstated. If I were in charge of parking, I would be in a dead panic right now. Surely they meant ONE hundred bikes.

You don’t hear four hundred big bikes coming your way…you FEEL it, sort of like the gentle vibrations that signal the beginning of an earthquake. And then suddenly it’s upon you and all you can do is to get out of the way.

Mississippi State Highway Patrol entered first. They had escorted the Tupelo group the entire way, so it was only fitting that they lead the “grand entrance.” No matter how long you’ve been riding, every time you see these guys whip their bikes through tight turns your self-esteem drops a notch.



Troopers arrive!



By the time all 40 (or so) troopers had made it in, I was ready for training wheels on Stray Dog. Also, the standing water at the bottom of Bonita Lakes Drive had disappeared, the rain stopped, and the roads were dry.

I stood on the side of the road with about fifty other attendees, welcoming bikers for the next ten minutes. That’s how long it took the procession to drive in. If you love looking at bikes, this was Nirvana! I called Miz Roo on my cell phone so she could hear the engines herself. I was a kid in a candy shop!



The Group from Tupelo



Big bikes. Bigger bikes. Husbands riding with their wives and girl friends. Women driving 883’s and Softails. Gold Wings. Trikes. Choppers. Sporties. V-Stars. Booming and rumbling and holding up mall traffic. THIS was a parade!



Good parking, good times, and distant storms



Soon the bikes were parked and the fumes had blown away, and the registration lines grew longer and longer. I mingled a little, but lost any desire to stick around when I came across a pearl white Heritage festooned in chrome and stainless. I was going to compliment the owner on a stunning paint job, but he was busy describing the engine…139 cubic inches! Before the small group gathered in awe, he hauled out a dog-eared, fading dyno printout showing the horsepower and torque. Some of the ink had started to run down the water-damaged page.

I was disgusted! He should have LAMINATED that printout!

By this time I had bought my t-shirt, kicked some money into the Dixie Thunder kitty, and spun a few tall tales with old friends (exaggerations, mind you…not outright lies). Hunger was digging a hole in my side, and when I looked around to see where the burgers were, all I saw were wall-to-wall people. More riders poured in as I watched lunch recede into the distance. I hate waiting in line.



It was just groups of strangers who knew each other



So I packed away the rain gear and fired up Stray Dog for the ride home. I could see dark skies threatening my route, but I had a new rain suit and a reliable machine under me. Stray Dog wanted to get back to her garage. I owed her some chrome polish.