1975 Kenny fell in love with motorcycles; it was his gateway to freedom. Motorcycles were a big part of his life, and in 2008 a near fatal motorcycle vs car accident changed his life forever. This book details the events of his life and struggles with rehabilitation.

One Second

By Kenny Elmore

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Kenny Elmore
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-1079-3

Chapter One

Ponderosa Drive

It all started around the summer of 1975, on Ponderosa Drive in South Daytona, Florida. My father had just retired from the United States Air Force. He was known as a mustang. He enlisted in the Air Force, but later went through officer candidate school and became an officer. He wore his uniform proudly and demanded respect from his family. I didn't know much about respect, but I know I was scared of my dad as a kid.

South Daytona was the perfect neighborhood to grow up in the '70s. I was eight years old going into the second grade. That seems a little old. My dad always said I failed kindergarten, but mom said I was too young, and I was kept out of school for a year prior to entering first grade. My sister Beth said I was too immature, and that's why I was held back a year. She assured me it was not due to remedial reasons.

I am the youngest of four kids. Beth is the oldest; she was going into high school. Dawn is next, and she was going into high school as well. My brother Charlie was going into seventh grade. Charlie's real name is Irven Wayne Elmore Jr., but he is and always will be Charlie to me and to the people that lived on Ponderosa Drive. Charlie was going into seventh grade.

Just down the street was the coolest family on the block, the Murphys. The youngest was Sean, and at the time he was my best friend. He was a couple of years younger than me. Pretty rough and tough, he always had a black eye. Next up was Jojo; she was about a year or so older than me. I always thought she was so pretty, and really cool. Then came Mike; he was older than me, but younger than Charlie. Topping it off was Terry and Chrissie; they were about the same age as both of my sisters. Terry was always nice to me, like my sister Beth. But Chrissie was wilder, like my sister Dawn.

Mike Sr. and Suzi were the parents of the Murphy house. A couple kids were hers, a couple his, and Sean was a product of both. Any chance we could get, Charlie and I were at the Murphys. The Murphys had motorcycles! Sean raced a 50cc Indian on a flat track, and Mike raced motocross. Just when you thought the Murphys couldn't get any cooler,

Mike Sr. had a chopper. It was a raked-out Harley Davidson with a coffin-shaped tank with a graveyard scene painted on it. Mike Sr. would tune Mike Jr.'s motorcycles, and Mike would have to run the bike up and down the street so Mike Sr. could hear how it sounded. That always got me and Charlie out of the house. To see Mike going so fast had us in awe. Charlie and I were bit by the motorcycle bug.

I'll never forget the day I came home and saw Charlie's first motorcycle. It was a faded red Kawasaki 100cc Enduro. It finally happened; a motorcycle made it to the Elmore house, and I was as excited as Charlie. Charlie always was my hero, and now this solidified it. Charlie bought that motorcycle with the money he had saved from his paper route and mowing the lawn. My dad did not believe in buying us cars, motorcycles, and expensive shoes. You want it, you buy it.

Later Charlie sold that bike and bought a brand-new, right-off-the-showroom-floor Yamaha RD 400, two stroke. This was the bike of the '70s, and Charlie tricked it out with pipes, bars, and a quarter fairing. The bike was always clean and shiny; too shiny, in fact. Charlie once rubbed Armor All onto the seat, and Mike was sent flying off the back when Charlie was giving him a ride, resulting in a broken wrist. The RD 400 was later stolen right out of the garage.

The only bike that was faster than the RD 400 was the Kawasaki 500 and 750 Mach III Triple. These were also two stroke and called triples, because they had three cylinders. I was never in the loop; I just would come home one day to find a new motorcycle in the garage. And this day was no different. There was a Kawasaki Triple in the garage, and once again I was excited for Charlie.

During this time I was working little jobs. I was cleaning the cigarette butts out of the ashtrays in the mall from six to eight pm, Monday through Friday. It paid $33.50 a week. I put every cent in the bank. I also had an afternoon paper route, but it was the cheap paper. The morning paper was where the money was. I would have to collect $4.50 a month from the people's house that didn't mail in the money. I was not a big fan of collecting. I liked people and wasn't shy, but people are not at their nicest when you are asking for money. I was happy when they would give me a five and tell me I could keep the change.

There was one house that had a real pretty girl who always answered the door. She was really nice and would give me a five. One day I went to her house to collect, but nobody answered the door. Before getting on my bicycle, I peed in their driveway. Not for any particular reason; I just had to pee. The next day when I was delivering the paper, I heard the girl yell out of the window, "Don't ever pee in my driveway again!" Needless to say, that month's collection was on me.

One day I was folding papers and placing them into the canvas bag mounted on my handle bars. Suddenly, I felt a headache like I have never felt before. I didn't know what was wrong; I just knew I wasn't in a good mood. As I was peddling down the road, I became very fatigued and hot. I saw Charlie coming down the road on his 500 Triple. He gave me a sideways thumb, which is what we did instead of a thumbs up. I flipped him off; to this day I don't know why I did that, it just felt like the right thing to do. I had a long way to go, and I was sick. Charlie turned around to ask why I flipped him off; I was in for an ass whopping if I didn't have the right answer. I said I was sorry, and that I didn't feel well. Charlie took me on my paper route on the back of his motorcycle. I may have been sick, but I felt like the coolest kid in the world.

In sixth grade I didn't have much contact with the Murphys. Charlie was off riding his motorcycle with his high school friends, and I had met some kids in the neighborhood my own age from South Daytona Elementary. Roger, Victor, Rick, and Jimmy were my best friends. Sean was still my buddy, but we kind of split up.

In order to get to the elementary school, you had to cross over a canal via a footbridge. It was called a footbridge, but you could ride a bike across it. Victor lived just down the street from the footbridge, so I would stop by his house in the morning and we would ride to school together. One day on the way home, there were a couple of girls sitting on the railing on the footbridge. They were teenagers and looked like they smoked; we didn't want to mess with them. When we got to the footbridge, they put their legs up, blocking us from crossing. Victor and I stopped, and they told us to give them our lunch money. I said school was out; we spent our lunch money at lunch time. One girl asked if I was getting smart with her, and threatened to throw the cable and locks we used to lock up our bikes in the canal. They let us go that time.

The next day the girls were back, and I split the long way around. I rode my bike about a mile or so, and ended up on the other side of the footbridge. They had Victor, and he was on the verge of crying. I couldn't leave him, but I was too scared to help him. I just stayed there looking at the two girls and Victor. One girl told me to get over there. I said no, that I knew she was going to hit me. She said she wouldn't, and I asked if she promised. She promised. I was safe; can't go back on a promise. As I got closer, the other girl approached me, and just as I got close to her, she said, "I didn't promise anything," and she hit me upside my head. I had been hit by a girl, and it hurt very badly. Now I wanted to cry, or maybe I did cry. I am sure I cried. Victor and I rode home humiliated. We had been bullied two days in a row by girls.

I don't remember if I told anybody at home. My dad would not have been too happy with me if I told him I was bullied by a girl, and Charlie would have teased me unmercifully. The third day Victor and I were heading home over the footbridge, it appeared like the coast was clear. Then, to our horror, the girls were there. We were trapped, and I felt the urge to pee my pants. I looked across the street, and parked on his Kaw500 Triple was Charlie; oh, these girls were in trouble. Then it occurred to me, was Charlie going to help me or was he going to force me to fight? I didn't want to fight; I knew how hard these girls could punch. But he was just sitting there watching. Then a woman walked on the bridge; she looked like a mom. She told the girls to leave us alone and to get off the bridge. Apparently Victor and I weren't the only pussies to get bullied by the mean girls. I'll never forget, as the girls were walking off, the mom said, "It's a shame there are girls like you." One of the girls said to the mom, "It's a shame there are people that look like you." I have to say, as much as I despised those girls, I had to give it to them for their comeback. Charlie gave me the sideways thumb and rode off. He never mentioned the incident, and once again, Charlie was my hero.

Chapter Two

Snazy Poo

I was fourteen, getting ready to turn fifteen. I had saved my money and wanted to buy a motorcycle of my own. Charlie and my mom were on the lookout for a motorcycle for me. Victor had already turned fifteen; I guess he failed kindergarten too. Victor had his permit, which in Florida would allow you to drive a street legal motorcycle that was 15 break horsepower or less. In laymen's layman's terms, that means the motorcycle had to be 125cc's or less.

Victor came over to the house to show off his new motorcycle. It was an orange and black Yamaha 125. It was pretty ugly, but it was a motorcycle, and that gave Victor a new level of coolness. I had to ride it, ride it on the street. I had ridden one of the Murphy's motorcycles before, in the woods. To be honest, I really had no clue what I was doing.

I took off on Victor's Yamaha feeling like the Fonz. Everything was going fine riding down the street; I was feeling pretty comfortable. Heading around the block, I was feeling more and more confident that I was a motorcycle rider. Out of the four corners, the first three went flawless. Feeling pretty good, I wanted to see how fast I could get this screaming 125 up to. I was impressed; the bike seemed pretty fast to me. It was faster than the only other bike I had ever ridden. Time to make the last corner. I let off the gas, down shift, and feeling like I may still be going too fast to make the turn, I proceed to down shift again. This time I had down shifted twice while I still had the clutch pulled in. Not sure what to do, I let out the clutch and shifted back up. What to do, what to do? Time was running out, and I did nothing. I kind of froze there wondering what was going to happen next. I didn't come close to making that turn. I went straight into Greg's yard, missed the telephone pole, but hit the guide wire that supported the telephone pole. The wire hit right around where the headlight is located. This stopped the bike instantly, but not me. I shot up, hitting my thighs on the handlebars, and flipped over onto the ground.

As I lay there making sure I was alive, I thought about crying. To be honest, I can't remember if I cried or not. I am sure I did, since I cried when that girl hit me upside my head. Next thing I know, Victor and Charlie came running up asking if I was okay. I said I was, and that's when I noticed Victor's handlebars were touching his front tire; I had hit hard. Charlie came unglued. He started yelling at me, asking what the hell I was thinking. He said if I had been a foot to the left, the guide wire would have cut my head off. I am sure I started crying at this point.

It was hard to walk; my legs hurt like I had been hit with a baseball bat. The next day I had two bruises, one on each thigh. I didn't want to tell my mom or dad what had happened because I was just a couple of weeks away from getting my own bike. Each day the bruises got darker and darker. About three days later, dad noticed the bruises on my thighs and asked me what had happened. It was hard to look my dad in the eye and lie, but I wanted that bike bad. I looked him straight in his eyes, and told him I had run around the house and fallen over the garbage can. Hurt real bad, Dad, but I was tough. He looked at me like I was the biggest dumbass on the block, but he bought my story ... I think.

I don't remember exactly how my first motorcycle was located, but I do know it was Charlie and my mom who were actively looking. My mom had told me it was an old man who owned it, and when she asked him to describe it over the phone, his reply was that the motorcycle was snazzypoo. Then he made some flirtatious comment that bugs me to this day. I gave my mom the 400 dollars the old man requested, and once again I came home from school and there was a new motorcycle in the garage. It was a Yamaha DT125, yellow and black. It really was snazzy; I refuse to use the poo part, but it was a good looking bike. The bike was better looking than Victor's bike, but a ton slower. This was the slowest bike in the world, and I loved it. I was free!

I hadn't seen Charlie's 500 Triple in a while, but didn't think too much about it, and once again I came home to find a new bike in the garage. It was a Yamaha XT250 Enduro. Charlie had sold the Triple and bought the 250 so we could ride together. I had never felt so close to and so accepted by my brother. We rode to a popular spot on the corner of Nova Road and Big Tree Road. There were trails and jumps. Charlie was into photography at the time, and took some great pictures of us attempting and completing the jumps. I still have them in an old photo album of me jumping and Charlie doing wheelies.

Even though riding with my brother when I was fifteen was a highlight in my life I will never forget, it pales in comparison to the feeling of riding to junior high school with Victor. We would pass the school bus on our 125's thinking we were it. And believe me, it was all my bike had to pass that bus. Fifty-five miles per hour was all that bike could put out. I think Victor's bike did sixty or sixty-five. But my bike was better looking.

We were free. Victor and I rode everywhere. We explored parts of Daytona we didn't know existed. One day we were riding on a kind of back street. I had never been there and was looking around as I rode like I was a tourist on a tour bus. I noticed a radio station building, and was thinking how cool it was to see a radio station. There was a biker-looking guy standing by the building looking at me as I rode by. I was very curious why this biker was interested in me. As I kept looking behind me, I noticed him point to me as he was talking to his friend. What on earth had him so interested in me? As I turned to face forward, there was Victor at a complete stop. He was looking at an old Jaguar car in a junkyard. I had no time to stop, and just before impact with Victor and his motorcycle, I couldn't help thinking how funny this was going to be to those biker guys looking at me.

This was my second motorcycle accident, and man it hurt. Poor Victor; since I was hurt, I blamed the accident on him. He truly felt bad; so bad, in fact, that he rode my motorcycle to his dad's bicycle shop so we could fix it. The clutch lever had snapped off, so it was tricky to ride. I lost some skin from my ankle, but for the most part, I was physically fine. I was embarrassed that the accident was the main topic for those bikers that day. And, once again, I didn't dare tell my parents of this ordeal.

Chapter Three

Upgrade

I can't remember how the negotiations went, but Charlie was ready to move on from the Enduro scene and get back into street bikes. He bought a Honda CB900, and sold his Yamaha XT250 to me. I then sold my 125 for a hundred dollars. I could not believe how fast this 250 was.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from One Secondby Kenny Elmore Copyright © 2010 by Kenny Elmore. Excerpted by permission.
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