One of the reasons we moved from New Jersey, where my wife was born and raised and had always lived, to South Carolina was to get away from the brutal and harsh Northern winters. The last 5 years we lived there we lived in Wantage, a small town in Sussex County which is right on the foothills of the Pocono Mountains, so when the weather called for 3 inches of snow in the flatlands (the Paramus area), we could count on getting 3 times that much up in the hills. And trust me, we did. One of the first things we did when we moved up there was trade in my wife's Pontiac Grand Am for a Dodge truck with four wheel drive, and that truck saved our bacon many a winter!
But after living in the cold country all her life, my wife was ready to move to warmer climates. She wanted to move to Florida but I didn't want to go quite that far south; actually, I wanted to be closer to my folks so I could visit them more often. So we settled on South Carolina, a place where we both thought we could ride at least ten months out of the year.
And so it was...for the first two winters we were here. We've been here for almost 5 years now, and for the past three winters it has been unseasonably cold here, and it has snowed - that's right, friends and neighbors, snowed - for the past two winters, having snowed twice this winter alone. So needless to say, the chances to ride for ten months out of the year have been few and far between for the past two years.
As things would have it, my wife had to sell her bike last spring so I've been a Lone Wolf for the past nine months or so. I ride every chance I get, and today I had the chance. The weather has been cold as shit for the past three months, so "Junior" - my 2008 H-D Nightster - has been sitting in the garage hooked up to a trickle charger for most of the winter. The weather forcast for this weekend was calling for it to be "unseasonably warm," with the highs for Saturday projected into the low 60s and the highs for today being in the high 60s.
When the temperature outside hit 65, that was it - I'm on the bike and gone!
It's nearly impossible to describe the feeling of riding to a non-rider, especially if you're trying to explain how it feels to get "knees in the breeze" after being stuck in a car for the past three months. For some it can almost be a religious experience; for me it wasn't quite that thrillling, but I gotta tell ya that I was riding around for the better part of an hour with a stupid smile plastered on my face. Just the feeling of the bike rumbling beneath me, the wind going past my face shield, and feeling the road beneath the tires as I zipped along the back roads is just...well, those of you who ride know; those of you who don't will just never understand.
That's what it is about bikers and their love for riding. It's a sense of freedom, a sense of blending in and becoming one with the scenery instead of just driving through it, the sense of motion and movement that you can only get when leaning your scoot into a fairly sharp turn on a back road, your eyes scanning ahead around the curve for what's up ahead, the feeling of being zoned in to the bike, the scenery, what's happening...it's a feeling of being alive that you just can't get by driving a car.
Like I said, if you ride then you understand; if you don't ride, then you need to start. Then you'll understand.
So now "Junior" is parked in the garage again, although I haven't hooked the battery charger back up quite yet. I'm waiting to see what the rest of the week's weather looks like; maybe I'll get a chance to go grin some more, who knows?
IHC
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
Sergeant First Class Martin "Marty" Maher, US Army
I had a chance to watch one of my all-time favorite movies yesterday, that movie being "The Long Gray Line" with Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara, and if you've never seen it I highly suggest you rent the DVD and watch it. It's directed by who I think was the greatest director of all time, that being John Ford, and the messages that the movie carries and portrays to the viewers are timeless and oh-so-important, especially in this day and age. The acting is superb, the scenery is wonderful since it was filmed on location at the US Military Academy at West Point, and it was all the more significant and meaningful to me because of my military background, and the fact that I've been to West Point and have walked the areas shown in the film.
Out of all of the things in this movie that impress me, I think the one thing that impresses me the most is the story of the main character, a man you've never heard of but who is a legend at West Point, and with good reason. That man was Sergeant First Class Martin "Marty" Maher (pronounced ma-her, with a very slight emphasis on the second syllable). While the movie does an excellent job of portraying what the USMA is all about - duty, honor, country, devotion, patriotism - it does an even better job of portraying the love and devotion that Sgt Maher had for the Army, West Point, and the United States.
Martin Maher was an Irish immigrant who came to this country in 1898 and got a job as a waiter at West Point. After working there in that capacity for two years, he enlisted in the Army and remained at West Point, serving in various capacities over the years but ending up assigned as a swimming instructor under the Master of the Sword, Colonel Keeler. Not every cadet who came to West Point knew how to swim, but they knew how when they left; Maher made sure of that.
Oh, by the way...Martin Maher couldn't swim a stroke.
He met another Irish immigrant who came to work at the Point, an Irish lass named Mary O'Donnell. He married her and a year or so later they had a son, but the child died a few hours after he was born. Mary could never have another child, so from that point on they both came to look upon the Corps of Cadets as their children, devoting themselves to the cadets and West Point, with Marty leading the way.
He must have done a pretty good job, because he was named an Honorary Graduate of not one, not two, but three graduating classes - the Class of 1912, 1926, and 1928. He also had a role in helping train the class that became known as "The Class The Stars Fell On," the Class of 1915. That class turned out several graduates who would later become household names, with one of them becoming President of the United States. Those two graduates were Omar Nelson Bradley and Dwight David Eisenhower, both of whom attained the rank of 5 star General of the Army, with Eisenhower later becoming President. Out of the class of 164 graduates, 59 of them (36%) attained general's rank.
And Marty Maher helped train all of them.
Marty retired from the Army in 1928 after serving nearly 30 years in uniform, and promptly got a civilian position at West Point, where he stayed for the next 20 years before retiring again, this time for good. All in all, Marty Maher stayed at West Point for more than fifty years!
And he's still there to this day. He lies buried in the West Point Cemetary overlooking The Plain, the large grassy field where the Cadet Parades and Reviews are held. Marty Maher died in 1961, six years after his life story was told in a book called "Bringing Up The Brass" and then made into a movie - "The Long Gray Line."
There's something about both the story and the movie that just touches my heart and soul in a way that I sometimes find hard to portray, and I fear I may have failed in writing this post about it. Sometimes it's hard to explain things like this to people that have never served, never loved something so much as to devote your entire life or the majority of your life to it, to love something so much that you would sacrifice all - including your life, if need be - for it. If you've never served, then you may not fully understand what I'm trying to say, and I don't think I could say anything else that would make it clear.
But if you've served, then you know exactly what I'm talking about, and I need say nothing more.
IHC
Out of all of the things in this movie that impress me, I think the one thing that impresses me the most is the story of the main character, a man you've never heard of but who is a legend at West Point, and with good reason. That man was Sergeant First Class Martin "Marty" Maher (pronounced ma-her, with a very slight emphasis on the second syllable). While the movie does an excellent job of portraying what the USMA is all about - duty, honor, country, devotion, patriotism - it does an even better job of portraying the love and devotion that Sgt Maher had for the Army, West Point, and the United States.
Martin Maher was an Irish immigrant who came to this country in 1898 and got a job as a waiter at West Point. After working there in that capacity for two years, he enlisted in the Army and remained at West Point, serving in various capacities over the years but ending up assigned as a swimming instructor under the Master of the Sword, Colonel Keeler. Not every cadet who came to West Point knew how to swim, but they knew how when they left; Maher made sure of that.
Oh, by the way...Martin Maher couldn't swim a stroke.
He met another Irish immigrant who came to work at the Point, an Irish lass named Mary O'Donnell. He married her and a year or so later they had a son, but the child died a few hours after he was born. Mary could never have another child, so from that point on they both came to look upon the Corps of Cadets as their children, devoting themselves to the cadets and West Point, with Marty leading the way.
He must have done a pretty good job, because he was named an Honorary Graduate of not one, not two, but three graduating classes - the Class of 1912, 1926, and 1928. He also had a role in helping train the class that became known as "The Class The Stars Fell On," the Class of 1915. That class turned out several graduates who would later become household names, with one of them becoming President of the United States. Those two graduates were Omar Nelson Bradley and Dwight David Eisenhower, both of whom attained the rank of 5 star General of the Army, with Eisenhower later becoming President. Out of the class of 164 graduates, 59 of them (36%) attained general's rank.
And Marty Maher helped train all of them.
Marty retired from the Army in 1928 after serving nearly 30 years in uniform, and promptly got a civilian position at West Point, where he stayed for the next 20 years before retiring again, this time for good. All in all, Marty Maher stayed at West Point for more than fifty years!
And he's still there to this day. He lies buried in the West Point Cemetary overlooking The Plain, the large grassy field where the Cadet Parades and Reviews are held. Marty Maher died in 1961, six years after his life story was told in a book called "Bringing Up The Brass" and then made into a movie - "The Long Gray Line."
There's something about both the story and the movie that just touches my heart and soul in a way that I sometimes find hard to portray, and I fear I may have failed in writing this post about it. Sometimes it's hard to explain things like this to people that have never served, never loved something so much as to devote your entire life or the majority of your life to it, to love something so much that you would sacrifice all - including your life, if need be - for it. If you've never served, then you may not fully understand what I'm trying to say, and I don't think I could say anything else that would make it clear.
But if you've served, then you know exactly what I'm talking about, and I need say nothing more.
IHC
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