While I await the return of the tinware from the painter and also await the weekend to restart the Commando after re routing the plumbing to the oil tank I thought it time to make up a talisman as I have on my other bikes .
A bit of history first to explain . My mother was the youngest of 5 children and the only one born in the USA . Her family emigrated here from Tonsberg , Norway around 1919 or thereabouts . The family held a belief that after passing the deceased would signal to the living by leaving a dime for them.
As a very young child I recall my mother looking for dimes after her mother died in our home , succumbing to cancer - the same cancer that would eventually claim both my mother and her older sister.
After my mother's passing my older sister took up the torch with the family superstition regarding dimes and indeed we all began to find them at uncanny times of both happiness and sadness.
I am not a superstitious person but who knows ? It's fun to play along and a nice way to remember a wonderful and beautiful woman.
The dimes found at these times are never spent but put in special places and I keep them on all my bikes . I mounted one on a handlebar tidy clip for my ES 2 and turned up a bezel out of a scrap of bronze for the Commando , to be mounted in the vacant hole left from the steering lock . The dime was silver soldered to the bezel and all fastened through the hole with a threaded rod and castelated bronze ring nut.
My Mother -
... and the dimes -
Thanks for looking and listening - stay safe everyone - RT