This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And we return to our American stories.

Up next, a story from Taylor Brown that originally appeared in the Garden and Gun magazine

entitled Two for the Road, a son's eulogy for his father, or in this case, his biker father.

Here's Taylor Brown with his eulogy.

My first big time riding his prized wide glide, I drop it in this parking lot.

We were on these back roads in North Florida somewhere, just pine trees and straight roads, tar snakes.

And we had stopped for gas and he said, do you want ride it and so I said oh heck yeah you know I want to ride it so I was pretty excited I was on the on a you know a much smaller

lighter less powerful bike so riding his was a big treat it's a beautiful bike you know

chrome he had modified it to be much more

powerful. It was a really neat bike. So we ride, you know, for a while and we pull into this,

I think it was an old gas station that had a gravel lot. And, you know, I'm pretty excited and I

stick my foot out, you know, to prop the bike up as we stop and my heel just

starts slipping on the gravel. And it was one of those things, sometimes these things happen almost

in slow motion. And you know, this is a big 600 pound bike and it starts to just heal over and I have

not got the kick stand down in time. And I just feel it, you know, there's nothing I can do past a certain

point. I'm not strong enough to hold it up. So I drop it. Obviously, there's going to be some

scratches and dents and all that kind of stuff. And I look at him. My biggest worry is, you know,

the way how he's going to react. You know, I feel just ashamed. And he looks at

me and he says, it happens to the best of us. What a difficult thing to remember in the heat

of the moment and to say to your son when he's just dropped your prize motorcycle. I could tell that it wasn't necessarily even easy for him to say that.

...