Good Days, Early Days

Good Days, Early Days

Brian Dawson

In 1963 I got my driver’s license. It was a wonderful age— hot rods, 19-cent hamburgers and girls in pointy bras. We were free, mobile and blissfully unconcerned with The Bomb or anything related to school. We only cared about getting gas money and getting girls. Both were notoriously hard to come by.

Getting gas money was slightly easier—you’d just have to plead to Dad all week to get gas money for Saturday night. Dad would invariably be enraged Sunday morning when he found out that the very last drop of gas had been used to chug back into the driveway. Then you would have to beg all week again to make him forget.

Sex was appallingly scarce because none of the guys had even a remote resemblance to Fabian. The only stars we resembled were Don Knotts and/or Porky Pig. We used to cruise—five pimply greaseballs in a ’55 Dodge four-door with a flathead six—and offer pedestrian-type girls a ride home. No girl in her right mind would get in the car with us. The “bad” girls were all taken, so our sex life consisted of wondering if we would ever have a sex life.

School authorities figured, finally and despairingly, that they had done all they could with us, so they gave us our graduation certificates and booted us out. We all found jobs and worked long enough to qualify for unemployment insurance.

Then, one day, a wonderment befell us. Motor vehicles didn’t

have to have four wheels! They could have two, which was a lot more fun! We used to go down to the Honda shop and rent 55cc automatic step-throughs which, when out of sight of the shop, we would try to wheelie. ’Course so did everybody else, so the scooters were pretty well beaten to death. The maximum speed of these rat-bikes was 5 mph slower than the Buick coming up in the rear-view mirror. We didn’t care. Hell, we were so enthused about biking that we used to laugh when we fell off.

I can’t remember which one of us bought the first bike but it started a lust the rest of us couldn’t fight. Mike got a Yamaha 305 which he turned into a chopper (?), Phil bought a totally thrashed Yamaha 80 trail bike, Horace got a real crotch rocket, a Suzuki X-6 Hustler, and Charley bought a 650 Triumph beater. I hadn’t saved enough money out of my unemployment insurance to buy a bike, so I rode the Triumph pillion seat.

One Friday night Charley and I were on Granville Street, cruising the strip on the Triumph. There were thousands of people there—going into the theatres, coming out of the theatres and restaurants, or just cruising.

At a stoplight I had an itch on my backside, so I put my feet down and stood up over the seat to have a bit of a scratch. The light changed. Charley hammered it and took off in his best drag racing, attention-getting style, leaving me stanuing in the middle of Granville Street without a motorcycle and with my hand down the back of my pants. Much hooting and hollering from the spectators.

I finally saved up enough money to buy a bike. It had an Ariel 500 engine in a Triumph rigid frame with sprung hub. It looked, sounded and handled like a dishwasher, but I loved it. Learned to ride it by launching it into rush-hour traffic. That was interesting! My mother was perplexed by this state of affairs. She’d heard about the Hells Angels and knew they rode motorcycles. Now here was her first-born, the light-of-her-life, mounted on this reeking, leaking, ear-splitting monstrosity. Life was confusing for Mummy.

We used to tear down to the Mountaineer Cafe and order cherry Cokes and lemon meringue pie from the cheerfully incompetent waitress. We us ually got the bill before we got the food, which was dug up out of a sump somewhere. sugar bowl and we were blamed. This was an unproved accusation against us up-standing, right-thinking citizens. I think Phil did it.

Phil, as well as the rest of us, wanted to be able to pull off a really impressive wheelie, so we used to go down to a local deserted road with his Yammy 80 and practice. This usually involved throwing the poor little thing down the road while trying to avoid a serious case of pavement rash. Phil was getting tired of always straightening and repainting the bike so he resolved that he was going to wheelie and not throw the bike down the road.

He really popped a good one and the front wheel went straight up in the air. Unfortunately, he slid off the back of the seat, but this time he did not let go of the handlebars. This twisted the throttle even more as bike accelerated down the road.

Steely-eyed determination showed that Phil was not about to chuck the thing down again so he started to run behind the totally vertical bike in an effort to push the front end back down again. He only took about eight steps, but each step was 40 feet long.

In the final analysis, velocity is stronger than resolution and Phil got the paint and body filler out again.

Charley had a thing about carburetors. He didn’t understand them. He was paranoid about the carbs dumping gas all over everything and then exploding because once a float had stuck and had dumped gas all over. Didn’t explode but he was terrified anyway. He was constantly fiddling with the things and probably did more damage trying to fix them than if he had left them alone.

He used to park the Triumph on the sidewalk outside the pool hall when we were there. One day, we thought it would be a neat idea to jam his twist-grip so he would think that his carb slides had seized. I dutifully engaged him in a to-the-death game of eight-ball while the rest of the guys sabotaged his bike. What we didn’t know was that Charley had broken his throttle-return spring trying to “adjust” it and that while the bike was sitting there, the throttle was FULL OPEN.

Smirking, we finally left the pool hall and waited for Charley to start cursing at the damned English and their lack of manufacturing ability. He stomped on the kick-starter and the motor, to our great chagrin, immediately wound the tachometer to its peg. Charley panicked and, in an attempt to stall the bike, popped the clutch while holding on to the front brake. No good. The Triumph heaved itself up into a magnificent wheelie down the sidewalk. Until it slammed into the fire hydrant. Then the front end came down and smote the concrete a mighty blow which hurled Charley into a beautiful parabolic arc.

As he came down from his sub-orbital flight, Charley creamed Mrs. Webber as she pushed her grocery cart out of Queen’s Market and knocked her back into the flower stand. The cart, groceries, and Charley continued down the sidewalk and into the intersection at Queens Avenue. The cart center punched a Rambler and Charley rolled across the hood and off the other side.

It was the most glorious debacle we had ever seen. Charley, however, sort of lost his sense of humor and made us pay for the dent in the Rambler and the new cases for his Triumph.

It was not long before my internal body parts demanded that I get rid of the almost-rigid frame Ari-umph and buy something built for a human being. With the money I had saved out of my pokey, all I had to do was flog the old beast for a couple of bucks and I could buy an X-6 Hustler. I painted right over the grease and oil and even reupholstered the seat with genuine imitation Naugahyde.

I thought I would take it for one last ride for old time’s sake. I had only gone about three blocks when “Madwoman” Brunella driving the Rexall Drugs delivery car pulled a left turn in front of me. All I remember is: “Omigod-Volkswagen-ground-skyground-sky-oboy-I-can-fly!-SPLAT-no-I-can’t-damn-ouch.”

The insurance settlement was most satisfactory. I immediately bought a new Hustler and learned to ride it with my right hand in a cast.

In the good weather we used to ride up to Alice Lake to swim, splash, yell, and, in general, annoy both the picnickers and the frogs. Mike had a little inflatable rubber dinghy which he used to lash to the back of his Yamaha. It inflated using a small canister of compressed air and would hold two people if they were friendly and didn’t weigh too much. Usually two guys would go for a row and the rest of us would stand on the shore and throw rocks at them. Great fun.

After sufficiently annoying the people and wildlife we’d let the air out of the thing and head for home.

We desperately wanted to pull up beside Mike on the highway and inflate the dinghy at 60 miles per. Mike knew we were all a little daffy so he would always take the inflation canister off the dinghy and stuff it in his pocket. A real spoilsport.

Whilst heading back one day, I snuck up behind Mike’s bike and pulled loose the bungee cords holding the dinghy on his bike, then dropped back. I figured that if I couldn’t make the thing inflate at speed, I would at least watch the fun as he tried to keep it on the bike.

Horace, who was riding beside Mike, started to laugh as the dinghy began flapping in the breeze. Mike quickly realized what was happening and rashly twisted around to grab for the thing. Somehow this knocked the valve off the inflation canister, which then thought it was a missile and blew a hole in Mike’s jacket on its way out. The canister ricochetted off Horace’s muffler and into his rear wheel. It sounded like a machine gun and Big Ben going off all at once.

Horace, who thought he was being shot at, hammered the brakes. This was not good because I was right behind him. I think I wet myself as I headed for the ditch. And it was no little ditch, either. It was five feet deep and full of rocks. At the speed I was going the bike flew across the ditch, hit the far side and stopped dead. This bazooka’d me face first into the brambles. For months after that my face looked like I’d tried to shave with a food processor.

When the dust and debris settled, we figured that we all came out about even. Mike had to buy a new jacket, Horace needed a new wheel, and I needed a whole new front end. All’s well that ends well, approximately.

It was a few months later that Mike invited us to his place to play some poker and drink a couple of beers. I told him I would come but that I had to leave before dark because my bike didn’t have a headlight. (I don’t remember why not). Well, of course, we didn’t get out of there until about midnight and it was blacker than the Mines of Hades. Horace said, “Let’s go anyway. No cops are going to be around.” A lot he knew.

So we got on our bikes (he had a headlight), and took off. Hadn’t gone but half a mile before we saw the cop coming at us. He saw us too. Horace and I took one look at each other and boogied. We got a good lead on the cop before he got his car turned around. Luckily, we were on a twisty road so he had a hard time keeping us in sight and my salvation was the fact that our place was around a blind corner so he wouldn’t be able to see me turn off the road and head for the house.

I didn’t want to flash a brake light in the driveway, so I was still doing about 25 mph when I went through the basement door. It was, for some queer reason, open. This saved my face but you should have seen the tire marks I left in the basement floor when I slammed on the brakes. Horace did the same thing at his place, with one exception. His basement door wasn’t open. Well, not before he went through it, anyway. Put a fair crimp in his forks, not to mention his forehead.

Now, I gotta explain about Horace. He was a superb rider and usually rode “bear-bait” when we wanted to go for a real fast run. He would ride about a mile ahead of us and distract any cops (bears) that happened to be on our route. Every time a cop chased him (and invariably lost him), he would repaint the bike. It changed color about once a month. He also had a whole bunch of license plates—source unknown and secret.

But he also had what his mother called “nervous energy.” What she really meant was that the boy’s generator was wound a little too tight. You didn’t sneak up behind him and yell “Boo” unless you wanted to help peel him off the ceiling.

Horace was taking the bus down to the Suzuki shop to pick up his bike after they had straightened the front forks. He was sitting right at the front on one of those benches that face across the bus. He didn’t want to look at the fat lady or the old geezer across the aisle, so he was looking out the front window.

By pure happenstance, Mike was out on his Yamaha “chopper,” and saw Horace sitting on the bus as it went by. He wanted to say “Hi” so he caught up and rode up on the right side of the moving bus. Between the bus and the sidewalk.

Now, I gotta explain about Mike. That Mike was able to ride à motorcycle at all was some kind of miracle. He had the physical coordination of a potato. Example: one Halloween we were standing around chucking firecrackers at passing cars. Mike was lighting the firecrackers with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth and throwing them, when a fuse lit unexpectedly with a blinding flash. He panicked, hurled the cigarette away, and clamped the firecracker firmly in his mouth. It blew off half of his scrubby moustache.

Anyway, Mike pulled up to the bus window where Horace was sitting, then riz up on the pegs and knocked on the window.

In all his life, Horace had never heard of any body knocking on the window of a bus doing 30 mph, so he did what came naturally. For him, anyway.

He launched himself out of that seat like he’d just got a barbed wire enema. He flew across the aisle and landed on the fat lady, who let out a scream like all the Devils of Hell. The helmet in his left hand brained the old guy, who slumped unconscious to the floor. The bus driver took one look at what was going on and came totally unglued. He dynamited the brakes and headed for the curb.

Remember Mike? He’s still riding along the right side of the bus, foolishly waiting for Horace to say “Hi” back. The bus driver’s reaction bunts him through the front window of Harmon’s Five and Dime, where he comes to rest in Notions. The bus came to a tire-shredding, shuddering halt with about 10 people in a pile at the front. The old guy is still unconscious, the fat lady is still screaming and, miraculously, Horace is on top of the heap. Completely panic-stricken, all he wants is OUT. He grabs his helmet, squeezes out an open window and charges down the road just as fast as he can. Other people in the pile are picking themselves up and counting limbs, and one guy thinks the bus driver did this on purpose, so he throws the first punch.

The ensuing riot distracts everybody, so Mike has a chance to extricate himself from the sewing display, pick up the bike and push it out of there before anyone asks him why he didn’t use the door like normal people.

We never did find out if the police figured out what happened, but we all solemnly agreed it had been the most magnificent display of unwarranted catastrophe we had ever witnessed. We decided to lay low for a while—say about 10 years.

Charley got a Masters Degree and a wife, Horace got married and divorced, Phil moved to the Yukon, Mike started and bankrupted a construction company then got into electronics, and I ended up as an accountant. None of us rode.

A few years ago I bought a clapped-out Honda 750K. Just for some calm, cool touring, you understand. But it wasn’t fast enough. So I bought a new CB900F.

Here we go again ...