I can’t believe it, but I think I have actually lost count. It is almost May, the year 2014 isn’t even half over and already so many of my fellow riders have been lost to impaired and inattentive drivers that I cannot accurately tell you how many have died. There is an official count, and I guess I can check it later, but right now I can tell you that it is too many.
Yes I know riding a motorcycle is dangerous. Many things that we do for fun and pleasure have risks associated with them. In choosing to ride I accept those risks. But what I do not accept is how many motorists behave when they get behind the wheel.
Some motorists present risks that none of us should have to endure. I see it on the road nearly every time I ride.
First there are the distracted drivers. Drivers who are texting or carrying on animated conversations on their cell phones; people putting on makeup, eating, or steering with their knees; parents disciplining their children in the back seat. I have even seen people reading books and magazines while attempting to drive.
Next are the aggressive drivers, constantly changing lanes, tailgating, bullying and driving way too fast.
Finally there are the criminal drivers who think there is nothing wrong with downing a six pack and jumping behind the wheel or self-medicating with pills or pot and attempting to make their way home after a night out on the town.
The first thing you will hear after a distracted, aggressive or drunken driver runs over one of us is “I never saw him,” or “they came out of nowhere.”
You cannot see what you are not looking for and you especially cannot be looking for anything very well if you are not paying attention or worse yet under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
May is Motorcycle Awareness Month. This coming Sunday I will join a large group of fellow riders at the State Capitol Building in Baton Rouge to kick things off in Louisiana. This will be the tenth year we have done so and I am looking forward to being there. Part of the event however that I do not particularly look forward to is the presentation of a wreath memorializing those who have lost their lives while pursuing their passion for riding motorcycles. I know too many of the names on that wreath already and new names are being added way too quickly.
To the drivers out there who do not ride, please pay more attention when you get behind the wheel of your car, truck or SUV. One of my favorite slogans is “look twice and save a life” another is simply, “watch out for motorcycles.” Both are really good advice.

And to my fellow riders, let’s do our part too and ride safely and responsibly. Make yourself visible, wear protective gear and by all means never ride while impaired, distracted or angry. We spend a lot of time asking the motoring public to watch for us so let’s make sure that when they see us we are acting responsibly.

Oh by the way, if you are in the Baton Rouge area, please join us on the steps of the State Capitol Building at noon on Sunday, April 27th.

See you on the road.

T.W. Robinson

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I wrote this for Louisiana Life magazine a few years ago. Thought everyone might enjoy seeing it again.

“It’s gone!” That’s what town hall employee Jan Marshall told the fifty or so motorcyclists gathered around the abandoned building on the east side of LA 1 in Morganza, Louisiana that warm August morning in 2005. We had ridden to Morganza to see Melancon’s Café, the site of a pivotal scene in the iconic motorcycle classic “Easy Rider”.

Anyone who has seen the movie knows that is where Wyatt (Peter Fonda), Billy, (Dennis Hopper) and George (Jack Nicholson) flirted with a group of cute teenage girls under the scornful eye of a local deputy and a couple of townspeople. It was perhaps one of the most important scenes in the movie because it set the stage for the brutal deaths of all three characters later in the movie and helped to create a sympathetic view of two peace-loving, hippie bikers who were riding across America, for no particular reason.

I was 21 when I saw the movie Easy Rider and although I wasn’t a “hippie” and held a respectable job, I identified with the characters. I too rode a motorcycle, although it was a Honda not a Harley, and I too harbored a secret dream to one day take off across country and leave all my troubles behind. I never acted on that dream but today I ride a Harley and carry a video camera in the saddle bags which I use to produce a motorcycle travel television show. On that August morning in 2005 I had joined the group of bikers standing in the hot sun in Morganza partially to do a story on the café and partially to relive a part of my old motorcycle adventure dream.

Instead we learned that the building which housed the café had been torn down a few years before. It had been purchased by a local church and the land cleared for future church expansion or perhaps to once and for all rid the town of what some locals thought to be a stain on its reputation.

But even though the café is gone the impact of that scene on the town and the people who participated in it still lives on today.

Cynthia Grezaffi Dupree remembers the day Fonda, Hopper and Nicholson rolled into town. A young teenager from nearby Innis, she had been asked by her best friend’s mother, Mrs. Marion Hebert, if she wanted to be in the movie. “Miss Blackie” as everyone called Hebert was the owner of Melancon’s Café and mother of Cynthia’s best friend Elida Ann Hebert. Cynthia and Elida were among the six local girls who appeared in the café scene and flirted with Wyatt, Billy and George.

A few years after our failed attempt to visit the café we had tracked them down along with Arnold Hess, the Pointe Coupee Parish Deputy sheriff who appeared in the scene in his deputy uniform, something that almost cost him his job.

“Watch right here, here it comes,” Cynthia tells us as we all watch a DVD copy of the café scene together. “I’m the one in the green dress with the yellow flowers,” she says as we watch the camera truck past the restaurant booths where the girls are sitting. “God I hated that dress,” Cynthia adds parenthetically, “When I put it on that morning I thought I was going for an audition, I didn’t know I was actually going to be in the film that day.”

“Y’all check what just walked in,” a teenage Cynthia utters from the DVD screen while today’s Cynthia mouths the words while watching. “There was no script, they just told us to flirt. I have to tell you the truth, I didn’t really know how,” Cynthia says.

Elida agrees, but admits that Fonda perhaps did a little flirting of his own, taking her for rides on his motorcycle out on the levee a couple of times after the cameras stopped rolling. One of those rides, almost ended in disaster when Elida was burned on the leg by the Harley’s exhaust. “For some time after the movie he would call occasionally to check on me,” Elida says. I am not sure if he was really concerned about me or just worried that I might sue him,” she adds with a laugh.

Today both Cynthia and Elida Hebert Aronstein have very fond memories of those days back in 1968 and their brief encounter with Fonda, Hopper and Nicholson.

Arnold Hess however has mixed feelings about it. “They asked me to do the scene in my uniform to make it more realistic,” Hess recalls, adding, “They promised they wouldn’t identify where I worked.” But when the movie came out a year later Hess was shocked to see his Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff’s patch prominently displayed on the big screen. “The Sheriff called me in and basically wanted to know why I shouldn’t be fired,” Hess recalls. Hess says he wasn’t fired after he explained that once he realized he and other townspeople were being portrayed as intolerant rednecks he took no further part in the movie.

A cattle rancher today, Hess admits he is amazed at the attention and prominence his minute or two of screen time still brings to him. Hess also says he has mellowed somewhat over the years concerning the way he and other townspeople were portrayed in the movie. “A lot of people were pretty upset about it back then,” he says including the local school teacher who complained about Hess’ involvement to the sheriff.

But old feelings are fading and the town may be finally accepting their role in cultural history. Last year the Pointe Coupee Parish Historical Society along with local motorcyclists, LA Rider TV and the Motorcycle Awareness Campaign, a national motorcycle safety organization headquartered in Baton Rouge, staged an Easy Rider Forty Year anniversary celebration. Hundreds of riders participated in a ride to the site of Melancon’s Café contributing money to construct a monument recognizing the filming of the scene and the historical significance of the movie’s Louisiana connections.

The building housing Melancon’s Café may be long gone but now embedded in the sidewalk in front of the now vacant lot is a marble plaque commemorating the day that Easy Rider came to town. It is a small reminder of what for many turned out to be a pretty big event.

See you on the road!

Bob Courtney

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