The Ghost of Scootertrash Past

Mark Tiger Edmonds
Synopsis: 

Anyone who’s ridden over a million miles on a motorcycle is going to have stories—and lots of them. Still, Tiger Edmonds tells us that if he can have only one or two more shots at penning recollections of his cross-country trips, he might get it right. That’s like Bob Dylan saying that if he could only write a couple more dozen ballads he might master the form.

This book is filled with just what fans of Tiger’s first book, Longrider, loved: pithy observations about what America has become, startlingly beautiful descriptions of America’s roads and the people on them, and candid vignettes that find plenty of positive character traits in non-CEOs and other denizens of the economic downside—scootertrash, in Tiger’s terms. Just don’t expect political correctness.

ISBN: 193198204X Trade Paper $14.95   Sale: $8.00

210 pages
 About the Author: 

I was born into a Golden Age in America; I celebrated my 65th birthday a month or so ago. These were the best times this country has ever known for a lot of reasons. I grew up in an era when America had the finest education system the world has ever known.

So, I ride old German iron. When I’m not doing that, I am often afield with a dog and a gun or standing in an incoming tide with my good fishing pole or riding my horse. I prefer pale horses and all my good dogs have been black. I like my women laughing, my occasional drink of whiskey is taken neat, and I drink my coffee black. I can’t abide a soap opera or a psychodrama. I am better off outdoors, unless it’s cold, and then I’m better off farther south and outdoors.

 
 Excerpt From the Book:

                                                                        1 - REINTRODUCTION


The plains Indians of western North America used to say that today was a good day to die. They would announce this to the rising sun each morning. They would reassure themselves this way as they rode into battle. I have read that the Cossack cavalry had a comparable custom. And the Mongol hordes of Ghengis Khan apparently had a similar credo and practice.
Likewise, and while I don’t know this to be a fact, I suspect the Crusader cavalry, and quite probably the mounted Muslims they were trying to kill, must have considered and embraced this sort of philosophy. And I have been told that Attila the Hun and his nomad people had a like outlook on things.
It is neither accident nor coincidence that these peoples were all mounted horsemen, that they were all just passing through. My Grandfather, the equestrian, upon completing the only motorcycle ride I was ever able to take him on, grinned at me and commented, “Well, hell, Boy, it ain’t nothing’ but a short, fast, noisy horse, is it?”
Motorcycles really are like that, like horses. No, I don’t mean you set or ride them the same, but the basic activity is real similar. At least if you do it right it is. There is no place, no where else in my life that makes me feel as whole, as real, as right, as in the saddle in motion on the highway. Few things I would rather look at than the distance through the handlebars.

 

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