Roadkill Cafe Part 2 - A seemingly close call with a 1943 Walter P38 handgun

  

Half of the fun of riding motorcycle is the random places I find and the interesting people I meet. Part 2 of our stop at Road Kill Cafe in PA - not only was the place interesting, the older gentleman we met as we were leaving cemented the place in our memory for life!  

As we started walking out of the Roadkill Cafe in Pennsylvania, an older gentleman, maybe 80-85 years old, tall, thin, dressed in black pants and a blue button down shirt with pends hanging out of the pocket, stopped Stiffy and excitedly put his hand on her shoulder and told us of how bummed his wife was going to be that she missed seeing us (Stiffy).  Stiffy kindly said that he must be mistaking her for someone else as we were not from the area, but the older gentleman was adamant that Stiffy was indeed friends with his wife, who could not come there today because she was ill. Again Stiffy said he must be mistaken and we continued to walk outside. The older gentleman followed and stopped Stiffy in the middle of the gravel parking lot to again say how sorry he was that his wife missed Stiffy’s presence that day. Finally figuring out that Stiffy was not going to convince this man that she did not know him, nor his wife, a full blown conversation about the wife’s sickness ensued. Suddenly, the older man said to wait there, he had something to show us in his trunk. Not quite sure what to do, we waited. He seemed harmless and we were in broad daylight, sweating in the sunshine in a gravel parking lot with a Roadkill Café sign to our back. What could go wrong? Just then, the older man walks back to us and brandishes a GUN. An old gun. 

 

He didn’t point it at us, but he swung it around enough to make us a little nervous on what was going to happen next. He began to uncase the gun, while having it still pointed directly at us, and that’s when I noticed the gold emblem on the side of the gun case.  Not just a plan gold emblem, but a swastika. 

As he uncased the 1943 Walter P38 pistol from its leather case with the swastika emblem, his right index finger meandered over the trigger.

 I shuffled slightly the right and nudged Stiffy to do the same. The seemingly harmless older gentleman may not have any intention of harming us, but he was continuously pointing a gun with a swastika on the case directly at us and now had his pointer finger over the trigger. I could only assume the gun was loaded, and no offense, but given the older gentleman's state of mind during the conversation in which he was adamant that Stiffy knew his wife, well, I had some concerns on how this situation was going to play out. While I kind of wanted to handle the gun when he offered, I instead declined, I admit, mostly out of fear and shock of what was happening. When asked how he got the gun, he did not offer much information, he just snickered and said that the gun was carried by German Army during WWII. While I don’t know a lot about guns, this thing was indeed a relic with more history behind it than one could imagine. I asked if I could take a picture and he was more than happy to allow me to do so. After some brief conversation, he re-holstered the gun, told Stiffy he would tell his wife that she said hello, and then parted ways. At the next gas stop, stiffy and I got off our bikes with a look of disbelief between us. WTH had just happened? DID that really happen??!! And as we scrolled through the pictures, trying to show our minds proof of the event, we noticed that there was blood on the older man’s shirt. Had we seen that while we were standing there, in the middle of the gravel parking lot in front of Road Kill Café, we probably wouldn’t have carried on a conversation with the man. But now, after the fact, I wish I would’ve asked him more questions and learned about the reality of the history this man has seen. The people I meet while riding motorcycle are diverse and almost always interesting folks!!