OR, WHO IS BUMPER SMITH? I love being the old wild Biker Writer that I am ... Readers asks me sometimes, "How do you find the Writers and Poets that you feature?' I have found the best way to find subjects for our features is to look for them. In the old days of yore, when I wrote for Wail Magazine, the Motorcyclist's Post or had my tv show, "Poets' Cafe," I would get on my bike and go out and look for them. But alas, this is the New Millenium and most of the writer hunting I do today is via cyber drifting. A good way to start cyber drifting is to go to Google and punch in what-ever it is, that I beleive that I'm looking for. Then keep tweeking the description till I find something interesting.

"BIKER POET WRITERS," is always a good place for me to start looking. It was while I was cyber drifting that I found two names that seemed to keep coming up ... cyber connected ... Dow Mossman and Bumper Smith. DOW MOSSMAN ... Why Dow Mossman comes up as a Biker, Writer ... Motorcyclist is still not very clear to me. Though I believe the emperical evidence does point towards, that he deserves this title .. the information on the computer really doesn't? But, anyways, thanks to Google, I had the names Dow Mossman and Bumper Smith in my mind. It was while I was out on one of my last rides, last season, that I stopped off at a little bookstore just outside of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. It was while poking around this little bookstore that I saw a copy of Dow Mossman's book "Stones of Summer," again? There was that name ... Dow Mossman.

BUMPER SMITH ... DOW MOSSMAN .... As said "Now, thanks to Google," the two names Dow Mossman and Bumper Smith had become cyber connected in my own personal cyber memory. So I decided to dig deeper into the computer and find out more about these two names. DOW MOSSMAN, I found, was from Iowa. He wrote and published his Book "Stones of Summer," around 1971 as a young Grad student. He received several great reviews on the book, stating he was an up and coming young writer and then, he disappeared into nowhere. But, that didn't seem very Bikerish? BUMPER SMITH, I found, is from Illinois, He wrote and self-published a short book, "Tequila Sheila," Which is a story about a biker, a beautiful lady, the French Quarter of New Orleans, motorcycles and kindredship and loss. Though short-runned and self-published he received a few really good little magazine reviews and radio recognition. Now after reading about Bumper Smith, I knew why Bumper Smith should be listed under the Biker Writer's catogory. He was also listed on a Chicago Bar web site in the forum section. I found several mentions of him, but no entries by him. So I put out the word, "Hey this is bikerpoet, I write and I'm looking for Bumper Smith to do a story on him and any help in finding him, would be muchly appreciated." A few answers came back, but nobody had heard from him for quite awhile. Story continued on next page.