I stood in the doorway of my workshop and stared at the empty space on the concrete floor where my father’s nineteen fifty two Vincent Black Shadow
motorcycle had rested for forty three years. My wife of thirty six years stood behind me, proudly announcing she had sold the machine to an Asheville dealer for fifty five thousand dollars while I was at my cardiology appointment. She had already planned an Alaskan cruise and a
kitchen remodel with the cash. In the kitchen, her sister Beverly and brother in law Trevor were drinking champagne to celebrate the clearing out of what they considered an eyesore, with Trevor suggesting I turn my workshop into a rental property. None of them knew the motorcycle was a rare factory modified racing bike worth up to four hundred seventy thousand dollars, carrying a standing offer of four hundred thousand dollars from the American Vincent Owners Club. My father had bought it in nineteen fifty three and gave it to me on my twenty first birthday with a steamer trunk full of meticulous documentation. I had spent fifty seven years honoring his legacy, maintaining the machine exactly as he requested, and keeping the title exclusively in my name since nineteen sixty eight.
