I crossed the Arkansas–Mississippi line on a long, hot stretch of two-lane and stopped at a four-pump gas station in the middle of nowhere—a place where the snack aisle leans hard toward pork rinds and Little Debbies.
Three men, well past seventy-five, had hauled their aluminum lawn chairs outside the storeto watch the traffic go by. A couple of younger guys—grandsons?—stood behind them in a kind of social solidarity. I pulled in under the canopy, gave them a wave, and fueled up, checked my chain lube, and grabbed a couple of dollars for a snack.
As I came out, the youngest codger—flannel shirt, John Deere cap—called out, “Where yaheaded?”
“Ultimately home to North Carolina. But tonight, Alabama.”
The men erupted in knee slaps and laughter as the youngest elbowed the oldest. “See! I told you she was headed for Alabama!”
I looked at the oldest man and lowered my voice like we were in on something. “What’d you lose on that bet?”
His face made it clear—he was not a betting man. So I added, “Ah. An honor bet.” He smiled with his whole face, and gave me a nod.
I rolled out of the station smiling, thinking about those lawn chairs and that honor bet. It was the kind of exchange that sits right—easy, good-natured, the kind of moment that stays with you longer than you’d expect. Road magic.
Not every stop goes down that easily.
Later that afternoon, I pulled into a busy Exxon in Walnut, Mississippi—93 miles west of Florence, Alabama. A few Harley riders were fueling up, clearly on a group ride. I nodded, and they nodded back, as per the two-wheeled custom.
The man leaning against the ice machine had plenty to say about my choice of marque. He was all warmth from the start—camouflage shirt, MAGA hat, a wire-wrapped cross on a thong around his neck. Missing a few teeth, sure, but his smile was genuine. He lit up at the sight of a woman on a motorcycle—especially one riding something unexpected. He struck me as the sort who’d rather see me on a big V-twin, but could appreciate the anomaly.
“Well now,” he said, admiring the bike. “That’s a real nice Beemer. Didn’t expect to see a lady out here on one of those.”
After a few friendly words I started toward the store. He added, almost like a benediction: “Well, I sure hope you got a gun somewhere on you. You need to carry.”
I didn’t stop walking. Gave his shoulder a light punch—friendly enough, but firm. “No, no. We’re not talking about guns today.”
He blinked, caught off guard. “What? You need a gun!”
I kept it light, kept moving, waved from the glass door as I stepped inside.
“It’s crazy out there,” he called after me. “You need a gun.”
My refusal to talk about guns probably gave him whiplash. People assume that because I’m a woman on a motorcycle—even one in riding gear that makes me look more like an astronaut than a cowboy—I must still fit the biker-chick stereotype: tough, rebellious, dangerous, full of masculine energy that naturally includes firearms. Even on a wimpy European model instead of a big American twin, the assumption sticks.
When I retell this story, people ask, “Weren’t you afraid?” No, I wasn’t. He was a man of conviction—certain that safety is a personal responsibility. And that certainty felt familiar to me. I was raised by a mother who was always attuned to the current of danger. Her parents made sure of it. They’d each learned to read danger in their own way—the hard way.
Her mother, Mamaw, didn’t finish high school—hardly anyone in the coal camp did—but she had a head for numbers and a nose for when someone was getting cheated. Neighbors brought her their pay stubs and bank statements to see if the math lined up. It often didn’t.
While Mamaw’s mind was her weapon, Papaw leaned on physical readiness. He trained himself to write with his left hand, just in case he needed his right to protect one of us. The penmanship drills were sweet, a little dramatic, and everyone understood the good intentions behind them.
It’s no surprise Mom took that instinct of protecting one’s own and ran with it. When I was in high school, Mom trained to become a police officer. She enrolled at the community college, bought a gun before it was fashionable, and turned out to be a crack shot from the start. To hear her tell it, she even out-shot a deputy sheriff on the range. Dad tried talking her out of a career in law enforcement, but Papaw was the big gun. She gave his opinion the final say, and when he warned her about bad guys coming after cops’ families she stepped back. I think that decision left a crack she never fully sealed. It’s probably why she went civilian vigilante.
Eventually—in her late forties or early fifties—she turned her passion to karate and earned a black belt. Before long, she was teaching self-defense classes to women. When my boys were little and stayed at Grammyland, she made sure they took lessons too.
Somewhere along the way, her self-defense training made her an evangelist for the square-handled ice pick—not the round kind, mind you; too slippery if you meet your mark.
She explained, “You want one with edges, so it doesn’t spin loose if it gets… messy.” There’s one of them in every room of her house. Just in case.
Her readiness always felt theatrical—like she was preparing for a scene that hadn’t started yet. It was Mom’s way of claiming control in a world that rarely handed it over freely—especially to women. She wasn’t waiting to be rescued. She was ready to do the rescuing, and one time she even did so at a big box store.
From out in the parking lot, Mom saw a shoplifter shove past the teenage security guards. Then in her sixties, she dropped her bags, hustled Mamaw into the car, and sprinted back to the entry apron behind the bollards—where the rent-a-cop was flailing. She pinned the thief to the tarmac with a knee to his shoulders—and used what I’ve always called the Vulcan Death Grip near his neck.
She had a real name for the move, but I never remembered it. “Death Grip” fits her style. That might be why she never corrects me when I tell the story. Nothing lights her up like the chance to go full vigilante.
The older I get, the more I recognize the logic in her intensity. It was her version of safety. Her version of love. What she did was about staying ready—safe, in control. She moved through the world ready for it to turn on her.
I admireher decisiveness—how instinct took over, how fast she moved. But we trained our instincts in different directions. What I do is about staying open. Present. Connected. I move through it hoping it will change me.
But what about that ponytail holder I picked up back in Amarillo, the one with tiny plastic guns sitting in little tooled-leather holsters? I wasn’t drawn to it as a weapon; I was drawn to the contradiction of being a young girl with guns in her hair. Even then, safety and danger were braided together in ways I didn’t fully understand.
Now, this might surprise you, but I actually agree with the gun guy on one point: it is a shitshow out there. But that word means different things depending on who’s saying it—and what they fear. These days, we’re all using the same vocabulary to describe completely different realities. That’s the real danger: thinking we’re talking about the same thing.
I stay wary too—just not about what he’s worried about.
Maybe that’s why today I ride alert—aware of the energy in a room, along a roadside, in a man. I don’t say what I’m carrying. Let them wonder.
People call us both badass—my mother for her martial arts, me for riding solo cross-country. But what we do—and why we do it—comes from different places. She stays ready. I stay open. And if anything edges too close—including weaponry—I give it the shoo-fly-wave with a breezy grin.
