A 1943 Walter P38 handgun in the parking lot of the Road Kill Cafe ~ roadside adventures!

Half of the fun of riding motorcycle is the random places we find and the interesting people we meet.  And let me just say - Stiffy and I ride together a lot - and two girls on two bikes attracts a bit of EVERYONE! 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, exactly, 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 right and nudged Stiffy to do the same. The seemingly kind 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.  And he swore up and down his wife and Stiffy were friends. And he had blood on his shirt. 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. 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 old 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. We had been standing in the middle of the gravel parking lot in front of Road Kill Café, and carried on a conversation with the man holding a gun with a swastika on it. The highlight of the stop, when we orignally got off the bikes, was being at THE Road Kill Cafe. And then it was the AC. And then the food. But, at the end of the day, we almost forgot about the Cafe - all we could talk about was the old guy brandishing a weapon round and round in the gravel parking lot in the MIDDLE of nowhere as though it was just another Sunday. I have no doubt the man was kind and had a great deal of stories I would have loved to hear, but having the gun waved around and pointed at us every other minute was a tad unnerving!! Nonetheless, a great story!!