You Can't Take the Harley Out of the Boy

YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HARLEY OUT OF THE BOY

UP FRONT

Allan Girdler

When it comes to jogging my memory, nothing beats an uppercut to the jaw. Especially when delivered by my own knee.

Careless, is what I was. I came out of the deli carrying a sack with my lunch (meat loaf, milk, and tapioca pudding. All editors love tapioca pudding) and because I had the sack in my left hand I hauled in the clutch and kicked the XT500 without regard to the compression release or the piston’s place in its sequence.

My leg went maybe three-quarters of the way down, then BLUUMPFF and back the lever came, full speed. Pow. When my vision cleared I was sitting on the bike, looking at my lunch as it lay on the ground, wondering how meat loaf and tapioca would taste together and thinking “Oof. I haven’t taken a shot like that since I had my Harley 74.”

My first motorcycle.

Members of the younger generation may wonder how anybody could begin with such a machine.

Members of my generation had no choice. When I was 17 and earned $10 per week at the corner gas station and wanted a motorcycle, $50 was my high bid. For $50 I could buy a Harley, or an Indian. An old one. Very old. Three years older than me, as it turned out.

Why I wanted a motorcycle I still don’t know, but I did. Originally it was supposed to be a partnership. My pal also wanted a motorcycle, so we were gonna go shares. When we saw the ad in the paper. 1934 Harley-Davidson. $75, we got there as fast as my 1930 Ford would take us.

Neither of us knew anything about bikes, but we had heard that you had to really kick hard. My pal was biggest, so he kicked. Hard. The image of the Harley climbing the back wall of the garage is still etched in my memory. My pal decided he didn’t want a motorcycle after all, but I still did and the bike wasn’t hurt, so I worked the price down and bought it.

I thought it was wonderful, not because it had the latest technology, or speed or anything like that. It was a motorcycle and that was enough.

Not for years did I learn that the 74 was a model VL. Flathead as we said, side valve as the books said. Floorboards. Foot clutch. Hand shift, on the left, with a gate marked 1-2-3-N-R. Yes, reverse. I thought at the time the bike must have been for a sidecar, but have learned since that all the VLs had reverse and a good thing, too, as I couldn’t roll it up a hill unaided. I guess 800 lb. Henry says impossible, but that’s because he had reached full growth when he got his VL and I hadn’t. At least 800 lb. No rear suspension, not much front suspension, big skinny tires, tractor seat. The center stand pivoted from the rear fender and the rear fender had a hinge so its lower edge could be swung out to remove the rear wheel. Fender and stand were so massive that on one cold day—this was in New England—I could only get the engine going by having a car push me up a hill so I could coast down and bump start it.

If all this sounds outmoded and terrifying now, so was it then, except that I didn’t know or care. The sheer bulk and uncertain handling may have been a safety factor. Not even at 17 was I brave enough to go fast on the 74. Just getting into motion and keeping upright was enough of a challenge. So was stopping.

Or starting. Compression release? Far in the future. What the 74 had was a manual spark retard. Roll back the timing and you could kick the engine without fear.

If you didn’t roll back . . . also etched is the picture of my younger brother, arcing gracefully into the air above the bars, then landing on his head in front of the wheel. A useful lesson, I guess. He never again forgot to retard the spark. (He never again touched a motorcycle, in fact he studied hard in school, went to an Ivy League college and joined the diplomatic corps, which shows how strong an impression the 74 could make.)

I knew better than to tell my parents. Kept the beast in a neighbor’s barn, having not told them that I hadn’t told my parents.

This was a small town and the closest we could come to a motorcycle gang was me and two other kids. One had an Indian comparable to my Harley. We traded bikes once. His throttle worked opposite to mine. The third bike was a Harley K, owned by a kid who had a much better part-time job and only hung around with us because we were the only kids in town he could talk bikes with.

We were not an intimidating motorcycle gang. I think now we must have looked foolish, three skinny kids in WW2 surplus flying jackets, rattling down the road in a cloud of oil and rust particles. We went to the scrambles races and cheered for Harley, although the H-D riders had to take two tries at the tight corners and the Triumphs and BSAs always won. We hung around the Harley shop, a rock building with dirt floor, honest, and we got plenty of free advice and learned a more important lesson, namely that motorcycle people are all right.

My 74 was not your normal beginner bike. It wasn’t a good bike, I guess, in that the engine and suspension were outmoded when the bike was made, before I was born. When it fell off its stand, it took two of us to get it back up. When it backfired, the impact would loosen teeth or shorten legs, or both. It had its moments of temperament.

But. During the year I had the 74, nothing went wrong. Not one thing. I don’t even remember where the oil filler was, although surely I must have checked or added oil at least once. Never needed a plug, or a gasket, or so much as a tire patch.

Had to end. Because I wasn’t old enough to own it, I couldn’t register it. Having it in my parents’ name was out, obviously.

I rode the 74 until the registration expired, then I traded it to a kid who figured he had a way ’round the legal problem.

But I never forgot. In a sense I could not forget. How this works I don’t know, but although the current Sportsters or ’Glides are nothing at all like my old 74, still, when you Straddle a new Harley and fire the engine, everything is just as it was, which is to say, a motorcycle.

Without endorsing that business about not knowing motorcycles until you’ve been on a Harley, I do believe that you can’t understand Harleys until you’ve owned one.

And when you’ve owned one, you’ll be a Harley fan for life. IS