No birds around, no seals for a year. Only heard a few parrots. Eagles everywhere. Enjoyed a robin today while three crows mobbed a red tailed hawk. Soon noxious ospreys will swarm. Less birds; climate change?, urbanization?, electromagnetic pulses from the constant bang bang of updates, contacts and massive entertainmental discharges?

Cardinals remain heard but not seen.

Stories of the Border.

James, King James the L was a biker. Tough, but still not in the one percent of the one percent of organized Sons of Anarchy style sophisticated motorized gang crime.

He did have a great story though.

It was Bike Week in Laconia 1971. Jimmie was riding with his pack. They were headed to some pot grower’s place in Putney, Vermont, where some hippie had brought back seeds during the the early 1960’s from Afghanistan. Putney Ghani grew real well in the altitude, but needed special soil and organics to get the whole Khyber Pass effect.

The grower who purchased some seeds had a farm where his biker friends would hang. They would also protect and disseminate the crop.

So these 8 bikers from Stratford/Bridgeport, CT are tooling along on a back road and this Mercedes is broken down.  They’re in Putney, but on the west side of town and isolated. They think they’re gonna scare these people but the preppydriver guy gets out. He’s friendly and  Jimmie offers them a ride, They accept, which surprises Jimmie. A dude gets out of the back. He’s big, tough and a beer drinker.

Since they were going to Manchester, and it was like midnight and no taxis or buses or even tow trucks are running; they  wanna put them each on separate bikes. The old guy says he”ll drive his daughter and the preppy can ride bitch. He takes Jimmie’s ride and forces him on to the sissybar. But the old guy is a natural.

They spend the night with the pot grower in his largely unfinished but comfortable home. Getting served strawberry rhubarb pie. Jimmie asked the biker daughter/girlfriend of the broken Mercedes guy ; “Did we freak you out when we rolled up on  you with our Harley pan heads?

“No. talk to my father.”

Turns out he rode with the NSKK, the Nazi motorcycle corp. Wounded in the Caucasus’ he went back to Germany and survived the bombing of Bremenhaven. Tough dude.

But in America a World War 2 vet feels guilty if they rode a desk at Fort Dix.  Former German soldiers felt guilty if they didn’t. Hate must have been widespread back then and veryindulged in.

Once  gangs took over a Vermont border town and and used it to bring bootleg whiskey in. Today it’s meth.

The first gathering of free spirited motorcycle enthusiasts in Laconia was at Weir’s Beach in 1916.