Friend #3 - Rodney

Most people don’t realize it but there are two types of people in this world:  city folk and country folk.  Because most of those reading this will be city folk, let me explain the difference.

When someone is born into a country life, their life is simple.  Nothing important is ever rushed and often silence is the most beautiful voice.  They understand the importance of stopping to watch a sunset.  The people they trust are the ones they sat next to in grade school, kissed under the school bleachers and sang with in the church choir.  They trust those from the same root and they often wonder, “How can life get any better than this?”  It is an idealistic life.  They love and they die with a blessed innocence of violence.  And they see city folk as chaotic, unbalanced and misinformed on all the ways life should be.

This story is about a country boy named Rodney, who found himself displaced. 

Rodney spent his childhood on a farm in Iowa, buried deep in the heart of this country.  He has two older brothers and an older sister.  There was also once a younger brother who passed away when Rodney was six-years-old, a brother that has been gone nearly fifty years but still significant enough to mention.  When Rodney speaks of Iowa, the edges of mouth involuntarily tilt upward and the crinkles around his eyes relax.  For Rodney, Iowa is a deep, long breath. 

He moved to Phoenix when he was nineteen years old and for the longest time, just kept trying to get back there.  It’s not just the land.  It’s the memories, the people.  It’s a part of his soul.  He never married and says he regrets spending too much time on the wrong women.  He says it like he had a choice…but in my mind, that’s the purest definition of a country boy.

 The media likes to portray country folks as ignorant rednecks because that’s what they think people want to see.  That’s what gets ratings, but when country folk find a person they care about enough to want to spend the rest of their life with, there aren’t any additional questions to ask.  Commitment to God, country and family runs iron-clad and deep.  Because the women Rodney chose were likely city girls, they probably didn’t understand the nature of his commitment to them, the simplicity of just loving someone because you do. 

“I just wish I could just get a woman to listen to me but sometimes, it’s hard to get a word in edgewise,” he said.  I laughed because let’s face it, sometimes, as women, we are full of a bunch of clatter.  A country man’s thought process is slower, which has nothing to do intelligence.  Forming the right words is difficult.  Being is easy.

And there is one place that always brings Rodney joy.  He’s been a lifelong motorcycle rider since he crashed his older brother’s new Honda into a barn when everyone thought he was too young to ride.  For most of his life, he’s had a motorcycle obsession.  It’s where he feels most alive.  It’s the way the seat of his Harley kicks his legs and hips out for personal comfort, the unremitting rumble of the motor.  It’s the air’s movement that envelopes him like an acceptance on the road.  Riding, for Rodney, is like running on angel wings.  As an experienced rider, he knows every part of his bike, understands every movement and every contour of the road.  It’s bliss, a small piece of heaven on earth.

Of course, if Rodney told this story, it would be very different.  Like most men, he sees the world with less romantic imagery and more hard specifics.  In a sense, this is the tale of a man that has been translated through the eyes of a woman.  I chose to tell it this way because underneath Rodney’s grit is an unmistakable purity that is less about words and more about the person he truly is.