There’s a raccoon dick hanging off my rearview mirror. A rearview mirror for a cargo van with no rear windows might I add, another subject altogether. But the “raccoon dick” remains. It’s there because I was listening to a podcast and there was a guy talking about how a bear has a bone in his penis and that the  Eskimo believe it to be good luck. I, like any inquisitive fool, went to the internet to see if I could buy one. Somewhere along the way I got wind that the good people of the south considered the raccoon peen good luck and for $14.95, Jeff Bezos would deliver one to my door. Far be it for me to not indulge. 7-9 days later, ta-dah! Good luck charm in hand. 

Unbelievably, even though I just spent 132 words telling you about it. This post isn’t about a good luck coon dick. It’s about silver spray paint. Weird transition. Right?

I love tracking the path of my tangents sometimes. How one thought leads to the next and you’re entirely in a new place in mere seconds. Yesterday I was driving around town and I glanced up at my rearview mirror and my “good luck” charm and thought. “That would look cooler if it was spray painted silver.”  This was followed immediately by two distinct thoughts. First, everything is cooler spray painted silver and second, me remembering vividly building a chopper bike with Kevin Riser, the kid who lived behind me on the Mississippi Coast. We of course painted it silver. 

My neighborhood growing up had at least 10 families with kids ranging from my age and up. I’d like to say Kevin was 2 years older than me but it could have easily been three. He was into KISS just like me and we built BMX ramps, had dirt clod wars, blew up things with fireworks and all the early 80’s things. He lived directly behind me where his dad, a welder(?) had a shop that housed a hot rod he was always working on. 

Anyhow, one Saturday morning Kevin’s dad took us to Southland Steel, and another shop of some kind and we took old bikes we owned and did modifications. Kevin had his dad weld a piece in between his top and down tubes that was prevalent in higher priced Haro and Mongoose bikes and I took and old Schwin banana seat bike and put a 10 speed fork on it, turning it into a chopper. I can’t for the life of me recall where we got the parts for these bikes as I owned a BMX bike at the time and it wasn’t that bike. I had a red sparkle banana seat I put on it and the big bars and of course as a finishing touch. We spray painted them silver. 

Because everything, even a raccoon dick, is cooler when  spray painted silver. 

I’m not sure what happened to all of those bikes. The last one I remember riding at my childhood home was my dad’s Raleigh Super Record around 1988-89. Like many things from my youth, I wish I still had that chopper.  

Alas, I’ll buy some paint and get the raccoon souvenir appropriately dressed. 

#hugsandhi5s