Here are the lyrics and audio for "Kidd's Mills Road," an original bluegrass motorcycle accident song by Lannie Dietle. The song recounts a real mid 1970s near-death experience that happened one cold Pennsylvania night, where a fast-moving motorcycle hit a slag pile and sent its riders flying into the hazards of a construction site. Enjoy the free lyrics, personal notes, and streaming audio below.
Kidd's Mills Road — a bluegrass motorcycle accident song
© Lannie Dietle 2026
I came home from work
one February night.
My roomy had himself
a new motor-sickle bike.
Being young and kind'a dumb,
I asked him for a ride.
We bundled up in coats,
'n on that bike away we flied.
With eighty-two horse power,
it ran a hundred and thirty-five.
It was his first street bike.
It's a wonder we survived.
We wasn't goin' quite that fast
on Kidd's Mills blacktop road.
A left-hand curve came up
and we drifted to the berm.
I learned to fly the hard way.
My longest ever flight
was with that Kawasaki
nine hundred motor bike.
We hit a four-foot slag pile,
and flew up toward the sky.
There was enough hang time
ta think I was surely gonna die.
We landed in a construction site
with tractors and piles of bricks.
Two-by-two stakes everywhere
to complete the deadly mix.
His forehead landed on
the speedometer and tach.
He still had a matching scar
when the good Lord called him back.
Me, I landed hard and then
I rolled and I flopped,
until finally I stopped rolling,
and I flopped to a stop.
I learned to fly the hard way.
My longest ever flight
was with that Kawasaki
nine hundred motor bike.
He was knocked clear silly,
so rescue was up to me,
but I found that standing up
was an impossibility.
With my arms I crawled
over to the gravel berm,
but the first car didn't see me
and whizzed on around the turn.
I knew the cold would get us
if we didn't get help real fast.
I crawled onto the road
waitn' for a car to pass.
Along came the sheriff,
and he radioed for help.
A nice warm ambulance;
how wonderful it felt.
I learned to fly the hard way.
My longest ever flight
was with that Kawasaki
nine hundred motor bike.
There's a moral to the story.
A lesson to be learned.
I'm singin' it right now,
To whom it may concern.
Never ride on the back
of a motor-sickle bike
unless ya wanna fly like a bird
to see what it's really like.
I learned to fly the hard way.
My longest ever flight
was with that Kawasaki
nine hundred motor bike.
Oh, my longest ever flight
involved a Kawasaki bike.
Yeah, I learned to fly the hard way
on a Kawasaki bike!
The newspaper clipping mentions Seventh Street. That is the name of the portion of Kidd's Mills Road that is located in Reynolds, Pennsylvania. The accident did not occur on the Seventh Street portion of the road. Instead, the accident occurred out in the country, on Kidd's Mills Road.
The newspaper clipping mentions that the motorcycle hit a stone pile/slag pile on the property of a construction company. I heard from law enforcement that the location of the accident was actually a construction site with a tractor, various piles of bricks, and a bunch of two-by-two stakes pounded in the ground. Based on personal observation just before impact, I can report that the so-called stone pile/slag pile looked like a spoil pile from a recently dug ditch.
Another bit of artistic license was accurately stating that the top speed of the motorcycle was "a hundred and thirty-five," and then stating, "We wasn't goin' quite that fast." We were going plenty fast at the time of the crash, but we weren't going nearly 135 miles per hour.
One other bit of artistic license is the word "tractors." I was only told about one tractor at the construction site we landed in, but "tractors" sounded better in the song!
L. Dietle
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