The Life And Times of My Father's 74
The Life And Times Of My Father's 74
H.M. MEILLEUR
HAS YOUR MOTORCYCLE ever been held captive by a totem pole? My father's was. But then, my father's Harley-Davidson led a rather unusual life.
In the Vancouver showroom the dealer straightened himself into a human exclamation mark.
"You did say, ‘our fastest model,' didn't you?"
My father nodded.
“And you did say, ‘to travel government trails’?”
“Yes, but that’s just the official term for 4-ft.-wide dirt roads. I want it for going over wooden walks built above the muskeg, too, and for the patchs on the Indian reservation.”
“How do the cars manage?”
“There aren’t any. My motorcycle will be the only vehicle within a radius of 30 miles.”
“Just where is this place?”
“It’s on the coast, 600 miles north of here—Port Simpson.”
“You must be very isolated.” “Certainly not. We have a boat from Vancouver once a week and telephone communication with Prince Rupert except when storms knock the line out. Say, this is a beautiful machine.”
“Top of the line.”
“I’ll take it.”
Even in the 1920’s the dealer was not accustomed to doing business in this manner. He dropped his fountain pen right into the battleship linoleum. Dad handed him cash to close the transaction and then, since he had run practically every type of gas engine that had ever powered a boat, he asked very casually, “How do you start the thing?” The dealer explained, Dad kicked mightily, and roared off into Vancouver’s traffic.
My father was a dignified, middleaged speed demon. He operated the fastest motor boats that were available on the coast in those days, always at top speeds. He never slowed for a landing until he was within a breath of a crash. Mounted on the Harley-Davidson, he turned the throttle with enthusiasm. He shot out of the business section, through two residential districts and found himself in Shaughnessy Heights. In those days, Shaughnessy was Vancouver’s suburb of wealth and prestige. Opulent homes hid behind screens of shrubbery, and streets formed a labyrinth of boulevards and crescents. Dad felt that he should pause and get his bearings but nothing in his marine experience had taught him how to stop a motorcycle. As matrons with dogs on leashes scattered before him and chauffeurs and gardeners dropped their tools to stare, he tried one movable device after another within reach of his hands and feet. Though the machine reacted with surprising sounds and puffs of smoke he never did hit on the hand brake or the ignition switch. He drove around crescents until his Harley ran out of gas and Shaugnessy Heights was in a state of shock.
When my father and the HarleyDavidson reached Port Simpson, the whole population turned out to witness the motorcycle’s trial run. Dad had learned how to stop his mount but had still not learned how to travel at halfspeed. He started the machine with a flourish of noise and exhaust, waved to the throng, and before his hand had time to return to the handlebar, hit an upright on a wooden bridge. He and the motorcycle described a magnificent aerial arc and landed 20 ft. below the bridge. The crowd bore Dad, unconscious, to his bedroom. They pushed the Harley-Davidson, unscathed, into its new garage. Mother locked the garage door and collected all the keys in her apron pocket.
During Dad’s convalescence Mother often jingled the keys in her pocket. She also talked frequently and seriously about responsibility, maturity, and safety. Dad must have listened to either the keys or the conversation because, when he was once again able to kick the motorcycle’s starter, he turned the throttle as gently as he handled our day-old kittens. He toured every road and walkway in Port Simpson at a demure speed. Then he was ready to break in his vehicle to its job.
My father operated an extremely general store and the Harley transported its extremely general stock twice, once from the freight shed on the wharf to the store, and later from the store to the customer. He had a box sidecar cut down to fit Port Simpson’s lanes and byways. On any dull, ordinary day, that sidecar might carry coal, eggs, putty, ribbon, radios, raisins. On more exciting days, Dad removed the sidecar and bolted a wooden cradle in its place. Then the Harley was ready to transport 50-gal. gasoline drums and lumber and coffins. The coffins were usually empty. But during the summer our village’s population moved away, almost en masse, to the salmon canneries. Then, if a lonely fisherman died in the little hospital that stood on the top of a hill, a mile from the cemetery, there were not enough strong men to carry the casket to the graveside, as was the Port Simpson funeral custom. On these occasions Dad’s motorcycle, washed and polished, bore the deceased to the churchyard with all the slow solemnity of a Cadillac hearse.
Each Monday the Harley had one shining hour. The Caíala, our passenger/mail/freight boat would utter four steam screams and slide in between the islands to the wharf. Then Dad leapt onto the 74 and the 74 leapt onto the wharf approach and they raced over that third of a mile of cross planks that chattered and banged behind them. Dad caught the ship’s lines and by the time she was made fast, Port Simpson’s population was streaming down the wharf approach. Passengers came ashore first, followed closely by a slingload of mail. The sacks were tossed into the motorcycle’s sidecar and Dad roared them up to the store where Mother waited in the glassed-in post office, stamping hammer in hand. The trick was to get the mail sorted and distributed to the people before they had to wind back up the roads and trails to their homes. That mail brought us the world in letters, newspapers, magazines and catalogues. Mother never commented on the Harley’s speed on boat days.
There was another occasion when Mother failed to notice how fast the motorcycle traveled. It was the first day of each month. On that day, the aged, the handicapped and the hapless of the reservation came to the store to order the month’s supplies granted them by the Department of Indian Affairs. Timothy, bent and blind, arrived first. “New moon?” he would inquire. Dad would reassure him and set chairs by the counter. There would be conversation in Chinook and a slow and thoughtful selection of groceries. Then Dad would load Timothy and his order into the motorcycle and return him to his home, where his granite tombstone, completely inscribed except for the date of death, stood expectantly at the front door.
Not all Dad’s new moon customers accepted rides. Some shook their heads and cackled. Some covered their ears and fled. But Matilda Moody was far more interested in her ride home than she was in the tea and pilot biscuits and canned milk she had bought. Matilda, her relatives assured us, was 87. Arthritis had twisted her hands so that she could hardly hold her cane. But once her order was ready Dad hoisted her into the sidecar, she pulled ner shawl tightly about her, and they were off for the ride of the month. Down one road and up the next they hurtled until they had covered every street in the town, with Matilda’s black silk kerchief straightened out stiff behind her head, a smile of ecstasy pushing her wrinkles right up to her temples. However deep my father’s love for the Harley may have been, Matilda Moody’s was deeper.
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If the 74 had its days of glory, it also had its day of disgrace. In our Indian village, by the ’20s, the rule of the chiefs had given way to the rule of an elected council. One day an eager new council took office only to learn that the treasury was empty. The members knew that taxation was the answer to this problem but they also knew that very few of the villagers could pay taxes. Obviously, they would have to assess someone outside of the reserve. A road tax was the very thing. As the band’s needs were many and taxable vehicles only one, the impost on the Harley turned out to be staggering. Dad gave notice that he would not be paying it. The next time the motorcycle made a delivery on the reservation, special constables seized it and chained it, with many chains and a padlock, to the leaning bear totem pole in front of the head chief’s house. The old bear had long since worn a hat of moss and blueberry bushes that sprouted from cracks in its ceder head. For years we had been expecting it to topple. But for two days it leered down through the rain at the motorcycle’s humiliation, while Dad smiled stiffly and the 600 Indians of the Port Simpson band made pilgrimages to view the prisoner. The situation had all the elements that the Tsimpsheans inherently enjoyed— humor, symbolism and degradation of the enemy, and, though the tax was found to be illegal, no one could deny that for 48 hours mythology had triumphed over mechanism.
In the ’30s my parents decided to retire to the gentler climate of southern British Columbia. Dad sold the store and, since he didn’t see how Port Simpson could continue to function without the Harley-Davidson, he sold it with the business.
On the day of their departure Mother and Dad stood on the steamer’s deck as she churned into reverse and bore them away from the waving crowd on the wharf. Mother’s tears bounced on the rail—they were leaving their home of more than a quarter century. Beside her Dad was beaming. He said, “That new fellow is going to be able to handle the Harley all right. Look at them go!”
