At seventeen I had a part time job after school at the local A&P supermarket collecting shopping carts and pushing them back to the storefront. Sounded like an easy job. However, the site was on a hill that sloped from the front to the rear of the store. Collecting the carts, which always seemed to be at the bottom of the hill was easier said than done. Well, at that time I was in pretty good physical shape and that job sure kept me that way. I made a few dollars working after school and weekends and after I paid my Mom two dollars a week for room and board, I still was able to save a little money for a used car. At seventeen, I was understandably anxious to get my own car and start driving.
However, one of my Mom’s hang ups was she didn’t want me to drive a car until I took the driver education class offered to students in my high school. I think her primary motive was the car insurance would be cheaper if I took the course before I got my license, but to her credit the course was actually worthwhile. The problem was that my birthday is in June and school was already finished for the year. Therefore, I had to wait until the following year to take the course and couldn’t get my license until after I turned eighteen. Like most teens, then and now, I wanted to drive as soon as I turned seventeen, not eighteen. That extra year seemed like an eternity.
Well, I hatched another one of my novel schemes to get around this minor problem. Since I had a few bucks tucked away I reasoned I could buy a motorcycle, a Harley Davidson, rent a place to keep it close but away from home and ride the bike until I could get a car. What? Motorcycle license? What license? I don’t need no “stinkin” license! Hey man, when you’re seventeen this seemed like a perfectly logical plan.
I found a used 1953 Harley owned by a retired police officer which was in my price range of $500. I bought the bike and arranged to rent a garage a few blocks from home to keep it there with two friends who also had motorcycles. The three of us each had a key and split the rent three ways. My bike was a fire engine red 1953 Harley hardtail, pan head, suicide shift. Hardtail meant that it had a solid frame rather than the newer (at that time) split frame which had shock absorbers on the rear axle. The hardtail had a large “buddy seat” for two people and the shock absorbers were heavy duty springs attached to the seat rather than the bike itself.
My Bike
1953 Harley Davidson FLH
There were two types of motorcycle shifts for changing gears; a foot shift with a hand operated clutch and a hand shift with a foot operated clutch. The latter was known as a “suicide” shift. This is because to change gears you had to take your left hand off of the handlebar to operate the shift lever, a questionable practice from a safety standpoint, especially at high speeds. Thus, the term “suicide” shift.
All went well ……at first. I would go out ostensibly to meet my buddies and hang out but instead would walk to the garage where I fired up the bike and took off for joy rides around town and sometimes out in the countryside. Often times, I would ride with my two buddies who shared the garage with me, the two Tom’s, Tom Farley on his Triumph Bonneville (very fast bike) and Tom Demscak on his 1957 Harley. The three amigos, as it were.
Tom D’s Bike
Tom F’s Bike
It was all good until one afternoon as I was going down the road just after leaving the garage, I passed by Mom in her car going in the opposite direction. She freaked out and became so flustered she almost went off of the road. Well, the jig was up.
When I got home later, she was waiting for me in the living room and as I walked in the door. She opened up with both barrels. “I know you have a motorcycle,” she screamed. So, I had to confess and tell the whole story. She asked where I kept the bike and I told her about the rented garage. She then told me, “I want you to bring it home. When your father gets home, he can go with you to the rented garage and get the motorcycle, bring it home and put in our garage.” She insisted, “If you’re going to keep it, you’re going to keep it at home.”
In hindsight, I believe there were three reasons why she objected so vehemently to the motorcycle. First, she was paranoid about my safety. Not only with the motorcycle but in many other respects as well. That’s what Moms are like and as they should be. The second reason was she didn’t want me to fall in with bad company. The 50’s and 60’s were when the movies with James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause” and the negative perception of motorcyclists portrayed by Marlon Brando in “The Wild One” were popular. It was the era when the outlaw biker image first emerged. And it was not an entirely incorrect perception. The third and most obvious reason was that she could harangue me every day to get rid of the thing, which she did relentlessly.
I kept the motorcycle at home for the next six years and every day it was there she tried to convince me to get rid of it. Finally, I offered it for sale about the time Japanese crotch rockets were being imported to the US and were rapidly gaining popularity. I thought I would never sell that old Harley, but I was wrong. I placed an ad in the local newspaper and immediately received numerous calls. On a Saturday morning, eleven people showed up to see the bike and there was a virtual auction in the driveway. I got $650 for it!
Over the years, I often considered getting another but never bought another motorcycle. However, when I was in my 50’s, I was window shopping in the mall and wandered into the Franklin Mint. And there it was, a limited-edition scale model, 1953 Harley Davidson hardtail, fire engine red, with a “suicide shift”. Hey, that was my bike! As I said Mom hated that motorcycle every day it sat in the garage until the day I sold it.
A few weeks later, I visited her in the Life Care Center where she was living and during our conversation, I told her about the Franklin Mint shopping excursion and the scale model Harley. She immediately exclaimed excitedly, “That was your motorcycle, you had to buy it. “Surely you had to buy it, didn’t you?” she said. I said, “Yup, damn right I bought it, I paid $500 for it, same as the actual motorcycle back in 1960.” Just out of curiosity I checked the NADA prices for a 1953 Harley today! Excellent condition $29,790, very good condition $17,460. Who knew? Whatever. I should have kept that one.
NOTE from JILL: It seems that my dad, Hal, had more to write as he was writing this section, but never got back to it. There are several sections of his writing that have topics just listed. I wish I remembered those stories that go with them. So, if anyone does know, please be sure to let me know. I have a few pictures of a few things that accompany the topics.
Other miscellaneous mischief –
Riding Down Trees
The pipe yards
The woods
The old farm
The Model Airplane Club
The Soap Box Racer
The model car project
Long Story Short: A Collection of Stories by Hal Gunardson 