Episode 226: A Wild One

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This episode of Memory Palace is brought to you by LifeKid.

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This is the Memory Palace.

I'm Nate TeMayo.

It is the freedom, right?

That is the thing about motorcycles.

The speed, sure, the agility, of course, but it is the freedom.

The person on the bike, on the Harley, on the highway, the cars, the trucks stuck in traffic, but that biker weaving their way through, faster toward the open road.

The freedom of the open road.

The loner, the lone figure in the vastness of the desert landscape, or up the California coast, the wild Pacific crashing, redwoods, that's the thing.

Advertisers know it.

A man on a motorcycle, a woman on a motorcycle, could sell you a cigarette, a vacation, anything that feels like escape from whatever gridlock you have driven your life into.

Hollywood knows it, has given us Marlon Brando, the wild one, Peter Fonda, again and again, a wild angel born to be that way.

See him an easy rider on his chopper with Dennis Hopper, American flag helmet.

An image once so counterculture cool, but at this point so American you could probably just swap it in for the flag itself.

Freedom itself.

It is the freedom.

And that is the thing about Bessie Stringfield.

The story she would tell, and let me tell you that for most of her life, the story of her young life wasn't always true.

But there is freedom in that too.

Making up your own origin story.

Bob Dylan did it.

In a time before the internet when it wasn't easy to fact-check some strangers' claims, it was a time-honored American tradition.

So in that tradition, Bessie Stringfield told people she was born in Jamaica to Jamaican parents, but she was probably born to black American parents around 1911 in North Carolina.

No one's quite sure where the Jamaica part came from, but that was the story she told.

And in that telling and in the way she lived, Bessie wasn't about where she came from.

She was about where she was going.

And she was always going.

Ever since she got her first motorcycle as a teenager, whether she got it from a kindly Irish woman who took a liking to her or not, whether that kindly Irish woman existed or not, somehow she got a bike, and that was that.

Bessie Stringfield spent her life riding through the Jim Crow South, outrunning racists.

and cops and mobs, literal angry white mobs who couldn't catch her.

Women did not ride motorcycles.

Black women really didn't ride motorcycles.

It wasn't just unladylike.

It was supposed to be impossible.

To control, to command a Harley-Davidson.

They are a whole lot of machine.

One time a Miami cop wanted to arrest her when he saw her by her bike.

Couldn't be hers.

She told him she'd prove it.

Did tricks he'd never seen.

She had learned those tricks out on the road.

Stunts she'd perform in small towns at fairgrounds to pay for gas money.

A sandwich at some segregated shop.

She'd stay with black families she'd meet on the road, or sleep out behind a filling station.

There were obstacles, of course.

Any good road trip has its obstacles.

You get stuck out in the rain.

Sometimes you get a flat.

Sometimes you walk.

But sometimes you sleep out under the stars.

Sometimes you get to meet the best people you never would have met otherwise.

If you are Bessie Stringfield, sometimes those people get to meet you.

She rode all throughout the 1930s.

In the 40s, during the war, she got a job as a courier, taking packages from military base to military base, all over the country.

At one point, she had seen so much of it, she had decided to see it all.

She started to do this thing where she'd take a coin and toss it.

Wherever it landed on the map, that is where she'd go.

She became the first black woman to ride in all of the lower 48.

Later, there would be trips to Europe, South America.

Eventually, she settled down in South Florida, though settled down isn't quite right.

She'd ride just about every day, became known as the motorcycle queen of Miami, until her death at 82 in 1993, 10 years before she was elected into the Motorcycle Riders Hall of Fame.

Let me say the name Marlon Brando again.

Let me conjure Brando.

Let's see that leather jacket.

That riding cap with the black visor.

Cool as hell.

Let me invoke Peter Fonda, Steve McQueen making his great escape, the Fonds, why not?

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator, Tom Cruise in a bomber jacket and Ray-bands, outrunning an F-14.

Iconic.

Now let's see Bessie Stringfield, a black woman in a white jumpsuit, black boots, a black sash around her waist, a black riding cap with a white brim.

on a Harley-Davidson, metallic blue.

Leather saddlebags loaded with provisions because she's not going to be home for a long while.

See her on the open road, whichever road you like, through whichever landscape.

She is smiling.

She is flying.

She can outrun anyone who tried to stop her.

She'd like to see them try.

Iconic.

You could probably just swap that out for the American flag.

The freedom is the thing.

This episode of The Memory Palace was written and produced by me, Nate DeMayo, in February of 2025.

This show gets research assistance from Eliza McGraw.

And Eliza McGraw, my friend who has helped me out on the show for years, has a new book out, and it is wonderful.

And it is, I tell you, right on theme for this episode in a way.

It is called Astride, Horses, Women, and a Partnership That Shaped America.

It is a fascinating and wonderfully readable history of the United States told through the stories of trailblazing riders and trainers and performers and their horses.

It is a perfect gift for the horse lover or the history lover or the reader of women's history or heck, simply the reader.

So order Astride, Horses, Women, and a Partnership That Shaped America by Eliza McGraw, wherever you buy your books.

The show is a proud member of Radiotopia, a network of independently owned and operated listener-supported podcasts from PRX, a not-for-profit public media company that is out there fighting to support independent artists and media makers in a sea of corporate nonsense.

I am happy as always to be aboard.

As I like to do from time to time, I want to tell you about a new show that has recently come aboard the good ship Radiotopia.

It is called The Recipe from the rightfully beloved home cooks Kenji Lopez-Alt and Deb Perlman.

In each episode, they talk about the essential ingredients and techniques of a beloved everyday dish and then the little things that make that dish really sing.

How to do that in your own own kitchen.

From listening to how it works for them, you will figure out what works for you.

It's going to make you better at cooking the food that you like to eat.

It's called the recipe.

You can learn about it and all the other Radiotopia shows at radiotopia.fm.

If you want to follow me on Twitter or Facebook, I am at the Memory Palace there.

On Instagram and on Substack, I am the Memory Palace Podcast.

On Blue Sky, which I think I've been using a little bit more than anything else.

I'm Nate DeMayo,

as I am in my waking life.

If you ever want to write me a note, you can to nate at thememorypalace.us.

I've recently had some really wonderful

email exchanges with listeners.

I really do always appreciate hearing from folks.

And you, of course, can always buy my book while you're buying Eliza's book.

Hers,

again,

Eliza McGraw, author of Astride: Horses, Women, and a Partnership That Shaped America, is available where you can get books, as is the Memory Palace: True Stories of the Past, available now wherever you buy books and audiobooks.

Talk to you guys again.

Radiotopia

from P R X