Residency is a two-part journal entry brought to you by one of our favorite creatives.
This Week, the Lexington, KY-based artist Ellie Herring continues the tales of her Honda CT-70.
Memoirs of a Honda CT-70 Pt. 2
Lesson #3: BFFs make sacrifices for each other, even their entire faces.
The setting: Many years later my family moved to Kentucky from Tennessee. We were in a very typical suburban neighborhood, but our house had a huge sinkhole in the backyard. It was so big that it literally looked like a huge, natural, grassy vert ramp. Tammy. Let me preface this with a few mini-stories about Tammy. Tammy had the worst luck ever. I mean uh huh honey, it was bad. I’d seen this girl roll down a set of bleachers in a gymnasium in front of hundreds of people, head over feet, slow motion tumbles. Another time she was driving down the road, minding her own, when a huge piece of a fire truck fell off in front of her. The piece of fire truck slid across the road. Her Geo Prism got stuck on top of the piece of metal, teeter-tottering, wheels off the ground. She called me to tell me she would be late picking me up for school because, her car was stuck on top of a piece of fire truck. There you have it, that’s enough.
Obviously, we were a bit older than Memoirs of a Honda CT-70 Pt. 1 (I was 15).
One afternoon Tammy and I were outside of my house when she saw a glimmer of sun reflecting off the edge of something underneath the deck of my house. What she saw was the sun reflecting off the headlight of the CT-70. She ran over and threw the tarp back to find my baby love, the CT-70. By this time the CT-70 had been handed down to both of my younger brothers, neighborhood kids, you name it. It looked more like a huge piece of scrap metal and duct tape, with a motor and seat. I just couldn’t let go. It would still start and could be ridden at your own risk. Tammy went for it, squeezing into a scuffed up helmet made for a 12-year-old. I specifically said, “Avoid the sinkhole in the backyard.” She didn’t. She flew down through the backyard and down into the sinkhole. I thought surely she’d stop before trying to make it up the other side, remember this is vert ramp-like. She didn’t. She went up the other side, popping up in the air and over the side of the sinkhole.
This caused her to pop a wheelie so high that the bike flew out from underneath her. Tammy didn’t let go. She was still accelerating while running behind the bike as if she was chasing it. All she had to do was let go. We started screaming from the yard, “Tammy just let go. Let goooooo.” She didn’t. She continued up through the field holding onto the bike, it was upright out in front of her, literally dragging Tammy through my neighborhood at this point. Tammy started to wear down, her lungs couldn’t handle it any longer. She let go and the bike fell to the ground. She fell to the ground. It was over. I asked Tammy why she didn’t just let go and she told me that she thought it might break the bike. I told her it would be worse to break her face. She was an awesome friend who I loved very much.
Read Ellie Herring’s first entry here.