Trash Stash and the Motor Bike

As I said before, my father accumulated a lot of miscellaneous stuff in the basement. Tools, woodworking and metal working machinery, an industrial air compressor, bits and pieces of wood and metal, old car parts and what not were all part of the trash stash.

When I was about fourteen, my Dad and I participated in a model airplane club where we built model planes and flew them in competition with other enthusiasts. Two of the other members were a German machinist, Heinz and his son Wolf (Wolfgang).

One day they showed up at a model airplane field meet and Wolfgang was riding a motor bike built from a bicycle. It was propelled by a small lawnmower engine and I thought this was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. I had an old Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engine and an old bicycle at home, and I decided that I would build a similar motor bike. I rummaged through the stash of parts and bits and pieces that were laying around and scrounged together about everything I needed to put the thing together.

My Dad and I with the Motor Bike

The engine sat on frame built out of scrap metal located behind the bicycle seat above the back wheel. The frame was hinged behind the engine and had two bearings mounted on it with a shaft that turned a large roller. The roller rode on the back wheel of the bike. God knows where the roller originally came from but there it was in the spare parts box. It was held against the back wheel with large springs on each side that attached at the top of the hinged frame and at the bottom to the axle of the back wheel of the bike. The shaft that held the roller protruded beyond the bearing to one side of the bike and a pulley was fastened to the shaft. A Vee – belt connected the pulley on the shaft to the pulley on the lawnmower engine.

The Vee-Belt between the shaft and the engine was slack so when the engine was running the belt would slip and no power was transmitted to the roller. A lever was mounted on the motor bracket which had an idler pulley mounted on one end and a handle on the other. When the handle was pulled forward the lever would engage the idler pulley with the belt taking up the slack, engaging the engine with the roller and transferring power from the engine to the roller which in turn would transmit the rotational force to the wheel of the bike and propel it forward. This was all accomplished with spare parts and scrap metal scavenged from the stash. No welding was involved. It was all put together with nuts and bolts, spare parts and scrap. And it worked.

When the project was completed, I took the bike outside and fired up the engine. My Dad was with me to see how it worked on its maiden voyage. I engaged the idler pulley and off I went down the street. I was so excited that I continued on down the street onto a dirt road and the off into an adjacent field to “open her up” and see what she could do.

I was enthralled it was working as well as it did and at full throttle (probably about 10 miles per hour or so) I wasn’t paying enough attention and went through a patch of tall weeds at full speed. There was a fallen tree hidden in those weeds and I hit it full on and I went over the handle bars. I wasn’t hurt, except for my pride, but no one was there to witness the “accident”. 

The bike was okay, so I climbed back on and continued back to the house. When I got back my Pop was mad as hell.  “Where did you go? Why didn’t you stay close by and check it out before taking off for parts unknown?  What were you thinking anyway?”

Well, I had no good answers to any of those questions. I didn’t mention what actually happened, but just told him that I rode out to the field and back. He wasn’t satisfied with that explanation and just stormed into the house. After about an hour everything calmed down and all was okay again. I never did tell him or anyone else about the hidden log in the weeds.

Years later, when I became a parent I realized in retrospect what drove his concern when I took off out of sight for some time and he was waiting there thinking, “Where the hell did he go, why isn’t he back, did something go wrong, was this a big mistake, what?”

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.” Attributed to Mark Twain.

At the next model airplane field meet we took the bike to the airplane competition and met up with Heinz and his son and naturally we showed off the bike. Mine wasn’t as pretty as his, but compliments were exchanged all around and although my Dad always had a funny way of showing it I knew he was as proud as punch.

Of course, we raced the bikes. The dads marked off a run on the adjacent dead-end street and we lined up at the starting line. The run was a couple of hundred yards. Both of us revved up and took off full throttle down the street. It was close, and his bike was a lot prettier than mine, but I beat him by a nose. I had more horsepower. He only had 3hp and I had 5hp.That was my first drag race. It was great fun. Many years later when I saw Orange County Choppers on TV, I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I take it a few notches higher and start building choppers like Paul and Paul Jr.?” C’est la vie.

Looking back and reminiscing over my childhood amusements, there was a definitely a pattern here. My main childhood activity was building stuff. And I never stopped. It was an obsession and still is. It’s just out of control.

So long, good luck, and have a nice day!