When Linda and I were first married, in addition to pastoring a small EUB congregation, I pumped gas at the Minute Man just north of Wellsville, NY. One of the other employees was a short, pudgy guy we nicknamed "Waddles." If you have any imagination at all, that nickname would enable you to pick him out of a lineup. Waddles was perhaps eighteen or nineteen, and loved old Harley motorcycles. He even had managed to find a '48 Panhead police bike which he proceeded to chop, old-school with raked forks made from old Model A radius rods.
My folks were both pretty conservative about most things in life. Our vehicles were practical four-door sedans, basic model only. Motorcycles were "too dangerous" for us, and were strictly off-limits. So when Waddles showed me his bike one day, I was hooked. It was massive, bulky, and just plain cool. The next town over was a little run-down hamlet named Bolivar. There wasn't much there; a couple bars, a gas station or two, a store, a bunch of houses, and a Harley Davidson dealership. This place was like a page out of the past, a small store-front business with access to the shop through an alley that led to garage doors out back. There wasn't really a showroom, just an old wooden-floored Gasoline Alley garage that happened to deal in Harleys. The guy had parts everywhere, in boxes on creaking shelves, stuff hanging from rafters, with the smell of oil and gasoline that seemed to emanate from the floor and walls themselves.
As it turned out, he happened to have a 1953 Panhead engine he had recently rebuilt and was holding because the guy who had him do it had run out of money. I managed to track the owner down, and $350 later, I owned what amounted to a brand new Harley Panhead. Another $150 bought me the rest of the bike, literally in baskets. Most of the rest of it, anyway. I began assembling it in the little shed of a garage behind the parsonage until winter set in and it was too cold to work in an unheated space. Fortunately, we had a back room off the kitchen that we weren't really using, so I brought everything into the house to finish up. I don't think Linda or I will ever forget the evening I kick-started it for the first time. Blue smoke billowed into the kitchen, the dishes in the china cabinet danced and rattled as this glorious machine growled in that back room.
Did I mention that I married a very patient and long-suffering woman more than 45 years ago? It's true. She never once complained, although I'm sure she was more than happy the day I removed the handlebars so I could roll it out the front door and back into the garage. I used to drive it on the backroads until it quit, which it did quite regularly, me not having worked all the bugs out. The rides were great while they lasted, but pushing an 800 pound machine uphill (it seemed to always die in a valley) reduced me to a sweating, weak-kneed wimp in short order. I sold that bike to pay for seminary, but it turned out I needn't have. Many's the time I wish I still had it, if for no other reason than a '53 Panhead is worth about $20,000 today. This little cartoon sent to me by a friend reminded me of this old story; I am grateful for good memories, for Waddles who got me started on a love affair on two wheels that time has not abated, and for all the friends these old motorcycles have brought me over the years.
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