This is a story told by Houdini to friends. I am re-telling it here.

Way back in the day, Houdini and friend Robert were the only two long-haired bike riders in Meridian, Ms. Robert’s ’61 pan developed a lower end problem that no shop around close could handle. A clubber named Raghead suggested that a fix could be had at Baton Rouge Harley and that Houdini and Robert could crash at the clubhouse while the bike was being worked on.So they loaded the pan into Robert’s truck. Houdini left the next day on his’50 pan. The trip was going great until just outside of Slidell, La. The throttle cable pulled out of the round slide Mikuini. Houdini stripped the cable from the shroud, fed it through backwards and clamped vise grips on the bare end to work the gas. If you think it’s easy, try it sometime… with a suicide clutch… and an ass wiper shifter. The tricky part was riding through Baton Rouge looking for the clubhouse, but he did. There he met Cool Breeze and the Professor. While they were all hanging out waiting to get Robert’s lower end back, Houdini was thumbing through an “Easyriders” (the only mag that even came close back then) and found an ad for a shop just to the north in a town called Baker. So off he goes. When he stopped for gas, three refugees from the movie “Deliverance” at the lone station refused to pump the gas. Houdini waited until a kid crawled from the grease pit (remember full service stations?) and let Houdini get some gas. The kid said that Baker was “just up the road a piece”. On the road again… but not for long. The refugees had clued their buzzcut cop cousins and the buzzcuts in a brown 1968 LTD (not painted like a cop car) pulled Houdini over for a broken tail light and speeding in a school zone… on the highway! They took his wallet and told him to ride ahead of them and follow their hand signals until they got to the jail. The blind leading the blind. Anyway, when they got there they put Houdini straight into a cell… no booking… no paperwork. After an hour or so, the buzzcuts told Houdini that his fine was $63 (the contents of his wallet). He could pay or see the judge but that the judge “like-ed ta put boyzz like yo on da parrish farhm!” Shades of Cool Hand Luke. Houdini was told to ride straight out of town. On the way out he decided to find the shop that he had come up there to find. It turned out to be some guy’s house and he wasn’t even home. The lesson of the story… stay off of the parrish farm… and keep your real stash in your boot (Houdini had $600 in his).