….if the viewer is open and brave enough, they are going to meet an America few folks will talk about; a grim, hostile underbelly filled with proud white trash, loud motorcycles, barflies, brawlers, booze and sex and rock ‘n’ roll. George the Painter takes all of this in, and then flings it at the viewer like blood, sweat and spinal fluid, in violent knife-edged spasms of color, light and shadow.
Pussy and Bourbon # 1 by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
The term ‘acquired taste’ was coined for characters like George the Painter, but I confess that it is a taste I have acquired. In my collection I have a number of his prints, purchased from the artist himself through the old The Horse / Back Street Choppers readers’ forum, where we were both frequent flyers in the early ’00s. I look forward to displaying some of them in the Adults Only section of MMMoMMA soon. 😏
Rebel by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. The ‘RAT LIFE’ tattoo is one of GTP’s own.Oh Hell Yea [sic] by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
When he chooses to, GTP can get downright representational, as with the Sporty above and the moonlit chopper below. I find that painting particularly evocative.
* EK87S *, a commission by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. Titles marked with asterisks are ones I made up, because the artist’s title was unknown.
Others evince a technical mastery of light, color and shadow that nudges the neighborhood of realism, without fully crossing the line.
Hogster by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.*Knucklehead *by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.*Knucklehead * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
….and when he’s not painting blowsy barflies, GTP is capable of more pedestrian images.
This looks suspiciously like the scenic and thrilling Tail of the Dragon, which leaves Maggie Valley, North Carolina, (home of Dale Walksler’s famous Wheels Through Time Museum) and meanders over the state line into Tennessee, with a challenging 318 curves in just 11 miles! 😮 Overconfident (or overserved) riders have come to unhappy ends in those hills, but it’s a destination ride for our tribe, and motorcyclists come from around the world to challenge the Tail and visit the motorcycle museum. Highly recommended, BTW.* Peterbilt Posse * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* The Boys * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* Pickup * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* Cometic * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* Chopper Couple * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* Kiss *by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
Richie Pan was a renowned artist, tattooist and bike builder from New Jersey who was killed in an auto-pedestrian crash on his way home from the annual North Carolina Smokeout. I mentioned him in my article about David Mann, but GTP knew Richie Pan, had been tattooed by him, and painted two portraits of his friend.
* Richie Pan in his shop * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. Richie is seated on his beloved panhead, Viola.* Richie Pan in the wind * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
As with David Mann, Edward Hopper and other favorite artists, George Frizzell will insert himself into his work at times, as with this oddly-named canvas: Intergalactic Attack Formation # 1….
Intergalactic Attack Formation # 1 by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. That is GTP hisself, trademark sneer in place, aboard the shovelhead he calls ‘Leaky Latowski’. He reports that the original canvas now lives in Australia.
….and this, where he demonstrates Leaky Latowski’s low-end torque.
When Pigs Fly by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
Finally, in this recent canvas, GTP notes that he ‘wanted to paint a loser with a busted ass bike and it ended up being a self portrait.’ He was raffling off the original canvas, and noted, ‘I’ve been off my Shovel for long enough and this raffle will send some cash in the right direction!’ I can relate! If they were still on offer, I’d buy a ticket or two myself! 😎
* Loser * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
However, like a lot of bikers, GTP seems to delight in the age-old game called ‘shocking the squares,’ and he plays it well!
Rothouse 187 by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
GTP’s work is sometimes hard to look at – rude and graphic and in-your-face, much like the artist himself – and not everyone can hang with it. However, if the viewer is open and brave enough, they are going to meet an America few folks will talk about; a grim, hostile underbelly filled with proud white trash, loud motorcycles, barflies, brawlers, booze and sex and rock ‘n’ roll. GTP takes all of this in, and then flings it at the viewer like blood, sweat and spinal fluid, in violent knife-edged spasms of color, light and shadow.
V by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
If you can hang, study what GTP has created on canvas, and you will discover an uncompromising artist with a hard-core, anarchic sense of self, which makes him a Charles Bukowski of the painted word.
Blow Job by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.Two of George’s more noticeable tattoos: WHITE TRASH ICONandRAT LIFE.
SHOVELHEAD LOVE
Like me, George loves his shovelheads, and they feature prominently in his art. I’m always glad to see my favorite Milwaukee motor represented, but….
* Shovelhead SS * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* Shovelhead with Swastika * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. With that dual-throated carburetor, the engine takes on the look of a demented, malevolent WALL-E, from the animated film, or a Star Warsrobot…. or maybe Cujo? 🤷🏻♀️* Shovelhead * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* Shovelhead * in charcoal by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* Shovelhead * in charcoal by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.Some wag suggested * Hogwarts’ Hagrid gets a Harley * as a title. Whatever. It’s another Shovelhead by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.* Shovel Jesus * by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell.
If you’re really brave, read a few of GTP’s columns in back issues of The Horse / Back Street Choppers — the now-defunct biker rag that gave Frizzell a resident platform for his art and off-the-wall screeds — and you’ll see that George comes by his ‘fuck the world’ brand of hardscrabble individualism honestly. He is brutally forthright about living his life his way. Dilettantes and poseurs need not apply.
The Horse / Backstreet Choppers
The Horse / Backstreet Choppers was a weak imitation of the OG Easyriders* magazine, which began in 1970, but The Horse did feature owner-built choppers in amongst all the pouty-lipped models, hipster-bearded and tattooed ‘old skool’ wannabes and eye-boggling graphics. The Horse / Backstreet Choppers was GTP’s home away from home for many years. They published his artwork and many of his rambling, overheated screeds. Those columns were later collected into a ‘bathroom reader‘ that is now out-of-print, and listed for stoopid money on eBay and Amazon.
Yet another shovelhead; this one with the inscrutable title Deluxe Space Robot by George ‘GTP’ Frizzell. That is his Leaky Latowski fuel tank on the floor.
In a documentary series, Richie Pan’s America, George said he wasn’t much of a writer, wasn’t much of a painter, wasn’t much of a bike builder, and yet he’s famous. 🤷🏻♀️
He also made a comment that speaks volumes about him, and about bikers in general. He said, ‘Being poor and destitute without a motorcycle is completely uncool, but you can be the same motherfucker and have a motorcycle between your legs — still have no place to live — and it’s cool….’
I don’t know about George, but in my career as a biker, I’ve been homeless, without a car, a job or bank account, but I’ve always had a bike, and yeah, that’s pretty feckin’ cool! 😎
Let’s let GTP go out the same way he came in, with a hearty ‘Fuck You’ to all and sundry! 😎
And his latest endeavor, Chopper Hostel, billed as ‘a great place to hide the bodies,’ at https://chopperhostel.com/
* Easyriders (mentioned above) went under in 2019, after almost a half-century in print. Its quality had waned considerably in its final decades, even as print publications in general lost readership, so few longtime readers mourn its passing. However, an upscale clothier has acquired and is attempting to revive the title as a less ‘trashy’ and ‘more inclusive’ publication. 🙄
Easyriders was a big influence on me as a teenage wannabe in the early ’70s, and was still thebiker rag of record when I began riding later in the decade. It featured art by leading lights like David Mann and Duffy Duggan, fiction by writers like Larry ‘Rabbit’ Cole, and humor by psychotics like former Mouseketeer J.J. Solari. I take great pride in the fact that my first manuscript sales — fiction and non-fiction — were to Easyriders, and I consider the late Lou Kimzey my first editor and mentor in the world of writing.
I’ve only seen one issue of the ‘new’ ER and am thus far not impressed. 🤷🏻♀️
Original since 1970?😮 I don’t think so! That’s like Indian claiming they are ‘the oldest American motorcycle manufacturer’. The revivalists — Indian and Easyriders alike — bought a name and nothing more. No lineage connects either venture to the originals.
WILDLY KINDA SORTA OFF-TOPIC POSTSCRIPT: and a sad story. Whilst researching this article, in a deep dive search for some of my favorite Easyriders writers, I unearthed the tragic tale of Jody Via. Jody was one of my faves from back in the day, capable of fashioning darkly compelling crime yarns from bolts of whole cloth….
….except that, per police, Via’s ‘yarns’ weren’t fiction at all. They say he was effectively recounting crimes he himself had committed during a murderous spree across Pennsylvania and Ohio in September, 1972, and selling them for publication!
First, we have Good Samaritan Harry Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman was a gas station owner who stopped to help what appeared to be a young couple stranded at roadside. Hoffman took them back to his service station, and even made a fresh pot of coffee so that they could get warmed up from the chill night air. For his troubles, he was bound, shot in the head and left for dead in the back room of his service station. Mr. Hoffman survived, and later identified his attacker in court.
Next, we have nineteen-year-old college student Jane Maguire, who fell for Via’s ‘stranded’ ruse and offered him a ride. Her body was discovered in a highway rest area. She had been raped, bound, shot in the head and left for dead, but did not survive.
Via, who had holed up in his wife’s home, was arrested, charged with and convicted of the crimes, and received a life sentence. While serving that sentence, Via began submitting poetry and short stories to Easyrider, which published several of his works. He later sold some pieces to Outlaw Biker magazine, as well.
However, in 2019, investigators working the September 1972 cold-case murder of twenty-nine-year-old salesman Morgan Peters, in Pennsylvania, were directed by two of Via’s ex-wives to look at Via’s published writings. There, in the stories Via sold the biker magazines, police found fairly detailed descriptions of each of his crimes, including the as-yet-unsolved slaying of Peters. Via, still in prison for the rape and murder of Jane Maguire, was charged with Peters’ slaying in 2019. He was seventy-five years old.
I have yet to learn what became of those charges or the defendant.
❤️ A brief pictorial history of a love affair for the ages. ❤️
Forty-five years ago I was a kid with a dream of owning a Harley-Davidson. I put away the alcohol and drugs that I’d abused all through my teens, got not one but two jobs, saved some money for a down-payment and worked with my credit union to establish credit. Now it was time to find the bike of my dreams….
….and find her I did.
I began my search at the stealership on Burnet Road in Austin, just south of Koenig Lane, where the sales manager treated me like the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For whatever reason — my age, my long hair, my jeans-and-t-shirt wardrobe choices — he apparently assumed I wasn’t well-heeled enough to afford a Harley. When I announced that I was there to buy a bike he said ‘The used bikes are outside,’ waved a lazy hand in the direction of the door, turned on his heel and walked away. In previous visits to that shop I had watched that man do everything short of performing fellatio on the showroom floor to make a sale, so, yeah, I took being treated that way personally.
But it worked out well for me, because as I was leaving the stealership I spotted a Harley in a used car lot two doors up the street….
….and that Harley — the 1974 FX-1200 Superglide I named The Bitch — has been under my ass or in my garage ever since.
Forty-five years! 😮 Outside my blood relations, there is not a single relationship in my life older than the one between me and The Bitch.
So, Happy Anniversary, baby! Let’s do forty-five more! 😎
In his 1979 article* about the Bandidos Motorcycle Club, Texas Monthlywriter Dick Reavis created a humorous sidebar about the First Church of Harley-Davidson, located in Denton, Texas. The sect’s theology is a little off-center — the church’s founder, Malvern Daugherty, AKA ‘Reverend Box’, describes it as a ‘beer-and-reefer church’ — but some members claim to believe in Ralph, the little tin god of all things Harley-Davidson.
True believers feel that Ralph lives within each Harley-Davidson engine and, as Reavis writes, ‘that he is a jealous and exacting god. In order to worship him, Harley owners must kneel and carry out monkish acts of ritual devotion, like changing oil, tuning up, and keeping Ralph’s motor-temple clean. “The more religiously you carry out maintenance, the more Ralph smiles on you,” oracle Box proclaims. Inspired study of the Harley repair manual is considered necessary to gain Ralph’s grace.
‘First Churchers fear Ralph’s wrath, which a few of them have suffered firsthand. “You’ll be puttin’ down the road one day when all of a sudden your motor will thunder out ‘Rraaaallphh!’ That’s his punishment for infidels. You’ll find that your motor won’t run anymore, if it’s in one piece, and as for Ralph, he’ll be gone from it, back to his celestial home.” This vengeful visitation, Box says, is called “Ralphing it on the road.” ‘
While I’m not a member of the First Church of Harley-Davidson (if it still exists; that was written in 1979) I will allow that somespirit lives within Harley-Davidson engines — that’s what gives Harley-Davidson its legendary ‘soul’ — and that it is possible to piss them off….
….as I have apparently done.
You see, I sinned by taking The Bitch — my beloved 1974 shovelhead — for granted. When I parked her years ago, I didn’t do the things one must do to keep Ralph happy while his motorcycle home sits idle. I didn’t add fuel stabilizer to the petrol tanks or, better yet, drain the damned things. I didn’t put the battery on a trickle charger to keep it fresh, or fire the bike up and run it for fifteen minutes or so, which is apparently what is required to burn off any condensation that may have accumulated in the oiling system. I didn’t do nothin’ except hoist The Bitch up on a stand and slap a chain and padlock on her.
To be fair, I didn’t realize I was parking the bike for years. I’d had a get-off that destroyed the inner primary, and assumed I would make the repairs and get back in the saddle in short order. However, life had other plans.
In December, on my way to a Toy Run, FFS, I had a get-off in a highway underpass. The hows and whys are a story unto themselves, but the end result was a very expensive jigsaw puzzle!
For one thing, I got an opportunity to return to college, to complete the bachelor’s degree I had begun working toward the same year I bought The Bitch. There were forms to fill out, an application essay to write, interviews and appointments and registration…. and then there were classes, and homework, and, y’know, life stuff, like family gatherings and dates with my wife and dinners with friends, and I simply lost track of time. One day I looked up and realized it had been years.
That is when my quest to trike the shovelhead began in earnest, but still, The Bitch sat in the garage, more hat-rack than Harley, as I did all I did to try to procure a trike frame for her. After those efforts failed, and I bought the Freewheeler I am currently riding, any urgency to get The Bitch running quickly waned again. I had something new to distract me, and the learning curve of getting used to life on three wheels. The shovel would wait. 🤷🏻♀️ Yet another sin against Ralph.
As noted in my previous post, I got a wild hair to enter my shovelhead in the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show, so I began working on replacing fluids, battery, et cetera. I foolishly believed The Bitch, my faithful steed of forty-five years, would magically not suffer the degradations of time in idle limbo; that the gas would probably be just fine, the carburetor still fully functional, the inner tubes still airtight.
Yeah. That didn’t happen.
Believing the fuel tanks to be close to empty, I poured most of a gallon of fresh petrol in them before learning that the carburetor was not still fully functional, and that the damned petcock leaked whenever I turned it on.
This leaking petcock would need to be replaced. I had to loosen the fatbob mounting bolts fore and aft to get the petcock, with its 90° outlet, past the backside of the shovelhead’s rocker boxes.
I ordered a carburetor rebuild kit and replacement petcock from Amazon, available for next-day delivery, and called it a night. The next day, when the new parts arrived, I got stuck back into my penance…. umm, my mechanical efforts…. and began draining the fuel tanks as I rebuilt the carburetor.
Yeah, that didn’t happen, either.
The rebuild kit was nothing but made-in-China crap — the gaskets didn’t fit and the float valve needle was a full 1/8th of an inch longer than OEM! 😮 It’s as if, in creating this kit, the manufacturers looked at the pictures in a service manual and used their best approximation of the necessary sizes. Utterly useless, and on its way back to the Commie bastards who created it.
She’s missing something, but I can’t quite put my finger on just what….
So I turned my attention to the tanks, and realized there was far more petrol in there than I’d realized. The first can I used to catch fuel overflowed, so I deployed a second, and thought I’d pretty well gotten everything out. Time to replace the petcock then, right?
Except that, when I removed the petcock, another gallon of petrol splashed out!
I was panicked, getting doused with the stuff and unable to get the petcock back in place, but I did finally managed to get a gas can under the tank outlet and catch the last one-third of a gallon. However, the rest splashed all over the floor and began spreading rapidly, as petrol is wont to do.
In a mad scramble, accompanied by much cursing, wailing and gnashing of teeth, I used crumpled newspaper to sop up as much of the stuff as I could, but the smell remained. Dunno if you’ve ever had the pleasure, but years-old petrol reeks even worse than the fresh stuff you spill on the side of your car at the local convenience store. It reeks, and the stench lingers for a really long time!
Bless her heart, Jackie braved the hail of cusswords and self-recrimination I unleashed in the moment to come to my aid. She also did a quick Google search, and learned that kitty litter will supposedly absorb the odor. I will tell you that at this moment, over thirteen hours after I spread the kitty litter, it is no silver bullet. If any of the odor has been absorbed, or dissipated out the vent fan that’s been running for the past forty-eight hours, I can’t tell. That crap still reeks!
UPDATE: It took over seventy-two hours, the aforementioned application of kitty litter and a good scrubbing of the garage floor with a mixture of vinegar and baking soda to finally clear that stench from the garage! 🤢
I did manage to learn why the tank retained so much petrol after I thought it drained. Turned out that the petcock’s filter was clogged almost three inches up its length — the rust a fuel stabilizer might have prevented, don’tcha know — so that, even with the petcock on its ‘reserve’ setting, none of that last gallon of gas could escape….
….until I removed the petcock, of course! 🙄
Neil Young tried to warn me: RUST NEVER SLEEPS!Who knows what kind of rust and other crud is up there, inside that hole?
So here I am. The shovel can’t be put back together because I don’t have the carburetor rebuild kit required, and I’m probably going to have to remove and cleanse the tanks — just the job I was hoping I would not have to do!
The Bitch, my beloved 1974 shovelhead, has been sitting and gathering dust and cobwebs for several years more than I care to admit. Long story, but anyhoo….
Jackie and I are packing up the house in Austin — it’s already listed for sale — and prepping for our anticipated move to San Antonio, so I’ve felt fortunate to have the 2016 Freewheeler to ride, and assumed The Bitch would be trailered to SA in its existing condition.
But then I saw the announcements for this coming weekend’s Handbuilt Motorcycle Show, including a call for entries. I scanned the photo galleries of past events, and didn’t see anything that looked like The Bitch, so I thought, ‘Hmmm…. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the head, getting my weary old road warrior in a show with all these slick, sleek professionally built custom bikes?’ What can I say? 🤷🏻♀️ I’m evil that way. 😈
Only trick is that when you submit an entry, you promise that the motorcycle you show will be running when you deliver it to the showgrounds. Hence, with Jackie’s encouragement, I started scrambling to get The Bitch fired up.
That’s just the color you want to see on a set of plugs!
First step: drain as much sumped oil as possible from the crankcase. I pulled the sparkplugs, still a lovely shade of tan because I know how to tune the shovel properly, and dropped the feed from the oil-bag, and started kicking, and kicking, and kicking….
Oil being returned to the oil-bag as I kick drains into the oil pan on the floor.The flow from the crankcase, as I kick, is forced out the chain oiler through the crankcase breather.Imagine: we used to let that waste oil drain into the ground and think nothing of it. Now we have to collect it in containers, and make an appointment to take it to the Hazardous Waste Recycling Center, which is all the way down IH35, south of Ben White Boulevard! It’s a wonder more people aren’t just dumping the stuff on the ground, still. Not me, of course — I’m a good steward of the earth these days — but I’ll bet there are a lot of gearheads who can’t be arsed to drain and retain the way I do.
I finally got enough oil out that I thought I might be good to go, so I reattached the feed line and poured two quarts of Valvoline Grade 50 into the oil-bag. It will officially hold three, but in my experience, that includes any oil stored in the external filter and connecting lines. The tank itself might hold two and a half. However, since the 50 is just to flush the system, two will do what needs doing.
The last battery I bought The Bitch measured 5.25×3.5×7″ and weighed 11 pounds! 😮
Next up was the battery. I’d been buying lovely gel batteries from the BMW shop on North Lamar, but the bastards had the nerve to go out of business. However, Cycle Gear over on US Highway 183 at Burnet Road came to the rescue. It took a couple of tries, but they came up with a Lithium Ion battery from Duraboost. First one I’ve ever purchased. It’s smaller and lighter, with no acid to fuss about, and has the added advantage of being mountable in any position, even upside down, without leaking or malfunctioning. Not a cheap date, but worth every penny, IMO. I imagine chopper builders the world over are ecstatic about these things!
This little jewel measures 5.3 x 2.6 x 3.6″, and weighs a measly 1.3 pounds! 😮😮😮 It also fits neatly into the battery box with inches to spare!
Added bennie: Cycle Gear gave me a discount for being a veteran! 👍🏻
Thinking I might be ready to give The Bitch a try, I took her off the hydraulic stand she’d been resting on for years — an adventure in itself — and leaned her over on her kickstand, where she immediately began puking oil all over the floor. I started to panic, thinking all my nice new 50-weight was going to end up soaking into old issues of The Austin Chronicle. Apparently I hadn’t cleared as much of the sumped oil as I’d thought, but it stopped in short order.
So now I have oil, lights and power. What next? Oh, yeah…. petrol! 👍🏻
Behind that very ‘old school’ panhead air cleaner cover is a fifty-year-old Zenith Bendix 38mm carburetor that has served me very well for forty-five years!
The Bitch still runs the OEM Zenith Bendix carburetor she came with from the factory — a juicy, easy-to-kickstart mixer that has served me well over the years. The Bendix has powered The Bitch and I well over half a million miles, from sea-level Galveston and Corpus Christi to the top of Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park — 11,798′ above sea level — and from the Texas border with Mexico to the Badlands of South Dakota. We’ve been up and down the Rockies on numerous trips, and all over the desert Southwest, with nary an adjustment or stutter. I spent years working the parts counter at Bud’s Motorcycle Shop on East First Street, and I was just agog at the pains some riders went through to rejet their carburetors in advance of road trips. Some even installed adjustable main-jets! Me, I was always, like, ‘Why?‘ 🤷🏻♀️ The Bitch just never needed it.
But as good a carb as the Bendix is, no carburetor will tolerate being ignored for years. They develop…. issues, you might say, and mine was not the exception I was hoping it would be. Nope. I poured some petrol in the tank, flipped the petcock lever, and….
Nothing. Nada. Zip. Not a drop of petrol was getting from tank to jet. Curses! 🤬
The carburetor prior to disassembly….
I dropped the bowl, catching the requisite handful of petrol as I did. One of my least favorite things, the smell of gasoline on my hands, because it lingers. C’est la vie, right? I wiped the bowl clean and blew compressed air through the passage from fuel pump to jet, clearing the passage of whatever obstruction it had, and thought I’d scored big-time! I reassembled the carb, turned the petcock back on, and watched heartbroken as petrol Niagara’d all over my engine from the vent at the back of the bowl. Curses again! 🤬
That petcock has less than fifty miles on it, and leaks like a sieve. Apparently, that’s a common problem with aftermarket petcocks. If the one I get tomorrow fails, I guess I’ll be shopping at the stealership again.
I took it all apart again, inspected and cleaned the float needle, and gave it another go. Same mess. Dammit! And, as if that weren’t enough, the petcock, which is virtually brand new, has sprung a leak as well. Imma have to get used to eating food that tastes like gasoline for the next several days. 🤢
I have a coffee can filled with petcocks, fuel filters and carburetor parts — even a spare Bendix carb — but in the rush to prep the house for sale, I naturally packed it and stowed it in the storage unit we rented. 🙄 I ran up to the storage unit and retrieved that tin and another filled with fuel line and clamps, but did not find the Bendix rebuild kit I thought I had in stock. Need I say ‘Curses!’ again? 🤬
The carburetor in amongst spare parts from my stash, but I decided against trying to piece it together with odd parts. I’ll have the rebuild kit tomorrow, and handle it then.
Since Bud’s is no longer in business, following Bud Reveile’s untimely death in 2015, the odds of finding a rebuild kit in town are slim to none, so I jumped on Amazon and, sure enough, they have ’em available for next-day delivery! They also have a petcock that will allegedly fit my 1997 Softail tanks. Fingers crossed they’re right. 🤞🏻
So, I’m at an stopping point for the moment. More anon….
….but during all the mad dashing to get the bike running, I received a message from the Handbuilt Motorcycle Show staff telling me my entry has been rejected! 😭 REJECTED!?!? How could they do that to my baby? 😢
Seriously, I knew my last-minute, unconventional entry was a longshot in a show packed full of sleek, pristine machines, but it was worth a shot, no? 🤷🏻♀️ And it gave me the kick in the ass I needed to get The Bitch fired up. No reason to quit now!
And I’m still going to the show, despite the slight! 😎 Maybe see some of y’all there!
As noted in my previous post, the very talented artist Lyndell Dean Wolff painted a portrait of your humble narrator, based on a photograph of me taken at Mount Rushmore back in the early ’80s. I’d ridden up from Texas with my partner — the late T.R. Evans (R.I.P.) — and just had to do all the famous stuff like Mount Rushmore, Spearfish Canyon, et cetera.
Well, Lyndell completed the painting just in time to unveil it at the 20th Annual David Mann Memorial Chopperfest at Ventura, California. Again, per my previous post, my wife and I are in the middle of packing up MMMoMMA’s exhibits (and all our shyte) for a move to San Antonio. After twenty-four and a half years in this house, and me a confirmed packrat/hoarder, there is a lot of shyte to pack!
However, how many times am I going to witness the first public display of a portrait of myself? 🤷🏻♀️
Hence, about halfway through the week of the Chopperfest, I got the wild idea of actually attending Chopperfest for the first time! 😮
We discussed it — I mean, the timing could scarcely have been worse — but my wife, bless her heart, agreed that if I rendered one room paintable I could light out for the shaky coast, and she’d still have something to do to move us along. I busted a hump and got ‘er done that Friday evening. Insert big sigh of relief here.
Still, I dithered about going — ‘It’s a lot of miles, we’re jammed up with moving….,‘ and so on — but sometime around nine o’clock that evening I threw a few things in a baby duffel, loaded a cooler full of snacks and drinks, filled my venerable ’70s-era stainless steel Thermos™ with coffee and set out on the road.
Late night balling through West Texas.In a lot of stretches, I had the road to myself. That never happens on IH35 anymore!I do love The Land of Enchantment!I took some time — here on a small stretch of old Route 66 — to indulge my passion for architecture.That gorgeous brickwork just amazes me. I hope someone will come along and restore that building, rather than just tearing it down and erecting some soulless pre-fab thing in its place!This view of snow-covered mountains just presaged what was to come.Between the bitter cold, fog and snow and that ice-slicked roadway, this was a bit of a hairy ride!But we survived, and lived to drive another day!Sunset over I-10 on the Saturday night….….and the colors just get prettier and prettier! Looks like colors from a Maxfield Parrish painting!At this point I was running on ‘blues power’ (as I used to call it back in my drinking and drugging days) and was virtually braindead. I could not even tell you what city this was, but this was my last photo of the night.
Jackie and I have a lovely system in place when I’m on the road: we will talk on the telephone at intervals (which helps me stay awake) and when it’s time for me to crash, she’ll go online and book me a room. This particular night, I called it quits somewhere around Palm Springs. After roughly twenty-six hours with nothing but catnaps, Audible books and coffee, I was ready to sleep…. and I did! 😴😴😴
I woke up to this on the Sunday morning. Hell of a day for a motorcycle show, yes?I managed to blast through the Los Angeles area at 80 and 90 MPH without getting clipped. Saw a couple of CHP cruisers and one motorcycle working, but the Sunday morning traffic was sparse, and aside from some left-lane loogies it was a relatively stress-free drive.
It wasn’t hard to find the Ventura County Fairgrounds, where the Chopperfest was being held; just follow the stream of motorcycles. I inched my black road warrior van to the front gate surrounded by the sights and sounds of a vast motorcycling community, found a parking spot and limped my way into the event.
This was a proper chopper show, with plenty of handbuilt scooters of all sorts and sizes, from this well-worn 1946 knuckle bobber….….and gorgeous, race-ready ’47 Indian Chief….….to this Bizarro World 1975 Honda 550, with all sorts of whimsical details….….like the shot-through petrol tank and Brothel badge…….the ‘Fuck Ya‘ hand shifter and copper tank covers…….and expressive rear fender! 🙄There was a replica of the ‘Billy Bike’ from the 1969 cult classic Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson. I’ve seen a lot of star-spangled ‘Captain America’ replicas — at least three so far that their owners swore were the sole surviving movie panhead!!! 🙄 — but never seen a Billy Bike outside of Franklin Mint’s 1:10 scale models. For the record, Franklin Mint’s Easy Rider 1:10 scale replica motorcycles are part of MMMoMMA’s original exhibit. Note that the chopped and flame-painted Billy Bike is parked right beside what appears to be a beautifully restored 1957 Sportster (below). I just love that there was a wide variety of machines here!This was an interesting item: a one-of-a-kind 1942 Crosley, designed and built by Russell Martin.Check out all the beautiful details, and see if you can guess just what it is you’re seeing ….before perusing the menu of ingredients (below) that went into this incredible build.Isn’t that amazing? 😮A brace of gorgeous Indians.Near as I can tell, that’s a 2024 WTF, but the builder insists it is a 1974 Maico. 🤷🏻♀️ Me, I have to take his word for it!A sleek shovelhead….….a more extravagant panhead….….and an even wilder creation known only as ‘bagger’!
I wanted to enjoy some of the bikes on display before making my appearance at Lyndell’s stand, so I wandered about for a while, snapping photos of interesting details like these:
I believe that speaks for itself, don’t you?In its way, so does this one! 😁This carburetor cover went with the Native American-themed paint on this rider’s panhead.Instructions or warning? 🤷🏻♀️Beautifully designed and crafted midships footrest and brake pedal. I would need to have far shorter legs and smaller feet than I do to even use these, and that slick chrome doesn’t offer much purchase if trying desperately to avoid ramming the cager who just pulled out in front of you. On a wet day? No way! Pretty, though! 😁Apparently saddlebags and a sky-high sissy bar weren’t enough for this rider….….but then again, he does put on some miles!However, long bikes like these — the laid-back California-born chopper of the sort immortalized in David Mann’s brilliant artwork — remain the raison d’être for Chopperfest, and this slabside shovel is a prime example of the style.Some fools say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but a tasty shovel hooks me every time. This heavily chromed and polished 1978 is fun to look at, but for my own bikes I avoid parts that are too shiny. It’s a whole thing with me…. 😏I may be a shovel man, but this panhead sure caught my eye: simple, understated, with those stepped-up shotguns and a relatively unmolested wishbone frame. Be still, my heart! 🥰And speaking of unmolested, here we are right where we started, looking at a well-loved knucklehead with an OEM frame in what appears to be OEM condition!Days like these are why Southern California is considered a bikers’ paradise!
But what of the artist I drove all this way to see? There was a crowded food court serviced by an array of food trailers, and a long outdoor market of sorts that stretched from end to end of the fairgrounds, with all manner of goods on offer. I saw leathers, patches, jewelry, custom and vintage motorcycle parts, even rain gutters for your house!
There were also two huge exhibition halls. The first was filled with booths offering much of the same as those in the bazaar outside: parts, t-shirts, accessories, Jesus…. 😮 oh, yeah, the Lord was there and eager to make your acquaintance, if the motorcycle ministry boys surrounding the booth were to be believed.
Finally, in the last exhibition hall, I found the artists. I began with a quick walkabout, to see who-all was there. I spotted some future MMMoMMA acquisitions, and some real dreck.
First were the helmets. As noted in my previous post, Biltwell invites artists to paint and display painted helmets, which are then offered for sale.
I failed to make note of artists’ names. My apologies to them.This being the David Mann Memorial Chopperfest, it just makes sense to honor the man.Imma take a wild-assed guess that these were by Wayne Wreck! 😏Some gorgeous work!But then….….what to my wondering eyes should appear….….but Lyndell Dean Wolff’s contribution to the helmet show! I knew it was his even at a glance because I’d seen the prelim work on his Facebook page.
There were a great many artists’ work on display, and some great pieces.
David ‘Huggy Beahr’ Hanson, who passed away last year, was being honored at the 2024 Chopperfest. This is oil pastel on walnut by artist Cynthia Polk. Cynthia Polk’s tribute to David Mann.Anthony Hicks, who is also mentioned in a recent MMMoMMA Facebook post. I want to pay more attention to what this fellow’s doing!I failed to get this artist’s name, as well. The print is signed Bloody.TPN….? 🤷🏻♀️Finally, it was time to introduce myself to Lyndell Dean Wolff.
When I approached Lyndell Dean Wolff’s booth in the exhibition hall, I saw that my portrait was hanging on the portable chain link fence that backstopped the artists’ displays. We’d never met IRL, so with Lyndell looking on, I gestured at the portrait with my cane and said ‘That’s an ugly sumbitch right there.’
‘Sturgis Run, ’87’ by Lyndell Dean Wolff (2024) acrylic on foamboard
Lyndell said ‘That’s Bill James from Austin’ as he was getting to his feet. It seemed like he was prepared to defend his subject’s honor or his art, or both, and it took him a moment to comprehend that I was saying ‘I’m Bill James from Austin,’ but then all joy broke loose.
He and his sweetie, Sharon, were just amazed that I would travel that far just to meet him, but I told them, as I told you at the top of the post, ‘How many portraits of me are artists gonna paint in my lifetime? I couldn’t miss this!’
From left to right: artist Lyndell Dean Wolff, Early Rider Bruce Shroeder and your humble narrator, leaning on a cane his nephew Devon custom-crafted for him and looking utterly exhausted. You’d think I’d been bustin’ my ass all week, and then taken a hell-for-leather drive across half the continent! 😏 BTW, check out Lyndell’s artwork hanging behind us, and then check out his websites. Damn, he’s good, and I’d like to see him get the recognition he deserves!
This is Lyndell’s own page, with galleries, biography, et cetera.
We sat there and visited for a couple of hours — the great open-ended visiting I love best — talking about our lives, our motorcycle exploits, our work…. After a while we were joined by a fellow named Bruce, who rode with the Early Riders. Bruce could talk for England, as they say. He kept up a running monolog about people I’ve never met in places I’ve never been, and rarely paused for breath. I like a good yarn, but Bruce beat all I ever heard!
As we sat and visited, this fellow motored by. He claimed he was test-riding the prototype 2035 Harley-Davidson bagger, for when all us Boomers are too pooped to crawl up on our motorcycles anymore!
As the afternoon waned so did the crowds, and Lyndell and Sharon started to pack up. I gave them some Shovel Shop ‘Watch for Biker’ t-shirts I’d carried out there for them, we said our goodbyes, and I hit the highway east, retracing my steps back to Texas. It was a real pleasure to get to meet them both, and share that wonderful afternoon with them.
From left to right: your humble narrator with a portrait of a much younger him, artist Lyndell Dean Wolff and Sharon. Do I look sleepy? I think I look sleepy. 😵💫
Took it a little easier going home — a night in the same hotel in Palm Springs, and another in El Paso — but I did my best to make up that time on the road.
Leaving LA.It’s not just me, is it? Actually, just last week I saw a post about this ‘mountain’ on a Facebook page, so I know it’s not just me! 😎Gotta make up time somehow, right? I’d actually hit 110, but by the time I raised my camera I was already losing speed. However, in West Texas most of the traffic was running 95, so I wasn’t that far outta line!Welcome back to Austin. Just part of the reason we’re leaving after all these years, but this shyte definitely plays a part! 🤬
Some of you may have heard me mention that I am the founder, curator, chief cook and bottle-washer of a little thing I like to call MMMoMMA. New York City has MOMA, aka the Museum of Modern Art, and Central Texas has MMMoMMA, aka My Miniature Museum of Modern Motorcycle Art. 😎
The entryway to MMMoMMA featured works by (from top left) Norman Bean, Sara Ray, Jim Lightfoot, James Guçwa, Damian Fulton, John Guillemette and a piece titled Triumph of Love by an artist whose name escapes me in the moment (and my sincerest apologies to that artist for my brain fade). The collection is temporarily in storage as we seek larger quarters, or I’d just step out in the entryway and tell you their name. 🤷🏻♀️ At right, several photographs of your humble narrator, an original dealership postcard announcing the release of the 1953 model-year Harley-Davidsons, and a fine miniature of a slabside shovel by yet another artist whose name escapes me. I swear I’ll be better about this when we reopen the Museum, honest!A small sampling of the rotating exhibit at MMMoMMA, including David Uhl’s The Enthusiast, a long-time fave, and the piece at lower right by Ian at HotRodPencil on Etsy, personalized with the Shovel Shop name.
One of my favorite tasks at MMMoMMA is spotting those excellent artists who capture our lives and lifestyle (and motorcycles) in their chosen media, be it painting, photography, sculpture, film….
Veer Left by Lyndell Dean Wolff is the painting, more than any other, that I’m craving for my collection
….and an artist I spotted a while back is one Lyndell Dean Wolff, a California-based artist who has done some incredible work in that field.
Beautiful Buzzard from Berdoo by Lyndell Dean Wolff
What first caught my eye, naturally, was his series of paintings inspired by Bill Ray’s famous 1965 photographs* of the Hells Angels and other California MCs, like Beautiful Buzzard of Berdoo, seen above. Others in the series include Tickle It, Bakersfield Run and Berdoo Salute.
Tickle It by Lyndell Dean WolffBakersfield Run by Lyndell Dean Wolff (2024)Berdoo Saluteby Lyndell Dean Wolff (2024)
However, Lyndell isn’t confined to just reimagining Ray’s iconic photographs. He has another series of works — a near-to-photorealist collection titled Wabi-Sabi — that feature historic motorcycles in OEM and custom trim.
Wabi-Sabi, No. 12 by Lyndell Dean WolffWabi-Sabi, No. 11by Lyndell Dean WolffWabi-Sabi, No. 3 by Lyndell Dean WolffWabi-Sabi, No. 4 by Lyndell Dean WolffWabi-Sabi, No. 5 by Lyndell Dean WolffWabi-Sabi, No. 6 by Lyndell Dean Wolff
One of my personal favorites is Lyndell’s portrait of this motorcycle queen, a shovel rider from Japan whose photos appear regularly across the interwebs. I don’t know her name, but I admire any woman who rides her own, and especially a rigid kickstart-only shovelhead like hers.
Wabi-Sabi, No. 13 by Lyndell Dean Wolff….….and the young woman who inspired it!
Outside the Wabi-Sabi and Bill Ray collections, Lyndell creates some brilliant images of vintage motorcycles like these:
Knee-High by July by Lyndell Dean WolffHarley-Davidson WL by Lyndell Dean WolffDavid ‘Huggy Beahr’ Hansen, 1948-2023 by Lyndell Dean WolffExcelsior Super-X by Lyndell Dean Wolff
Another Cuppa by Lyndell Dean Wolff features New Zealand Indian rider Burt Munro, whose story was memorialized in the film The World’s Fastest IndianDavid Mann Tribute by Lyndell Dean Wolff
However, if you visit Lyndell’s gallery, or his website, you will see that he is not limited, any more than David Mann was, to ‘just’ motorcycle-themed art. Lyndell is truly a fine artist in every sense of those words, accomplished and acknowledged, endowed with wide-ranging vision, and possessed of a keen eye for dramatic vignettes and an exquisite hand for detail.
Embodied Cognition by Lyndell Dean WolffCognitive Phenomenology, No. 13 by Lyndell Dean Wolff
For instance, his series titled ‘Cognitive Phenomenology‘ (seen above and below) is a brilliant exploration of human form and cityscape, reflection, light and shadow. The works bring to mind one of my personal faves, Edward Hopper, and yet frequently surpass Hopper in depth and emotion. Those who know my love for Hopper are probably shocked to see me write that, but it’s true.
What can I say? 🤷🏻♀️ I calls ’em as I sees ’em! 😏
Cognitive Phenomenology 5 by Lyndell Dean WolffCognitive Phenomenology 11 by Lyndell Dean Wolff
He has other works, as well. Here is one I love, that appears to be an homage to American artist-cartoonist Robt. Williams. Part of the draw for me may be that Lyndell here reimagines traditional representations of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Jackie and I were married at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church here in Austin, and the lay ministry we were involved in at the church featured Our Lady in much of its iconography.
Spiritual Gentrification, No. 1 by Lyndell Dean Wolff
I’ve been saving my milk money for a while now, hoping to acquire one of Lyndell’s paintings for MMMoMMA, but in the meanwhile we’ve struck up a friendship, and just today he did me the incredible honor of releasing his newest work, entitled “’87 Sturgis Run” (16×20 inch, acrylic on panel). Some of you may recognize that handsome devil standing beside his trusty shovelhead, with the stone faces of Mount Rushmore peering over his shoulder.
’87 Sturgis Run by Lyndell Dean Wolff (2024)
That handsome devil is none other than your humble narrator….
….although it’s damned hard to be humble when a talented artist like Lyndell Dean Wolff makes your mug the subject of a painting! 😎
This painting is based on one of my favorite photographs. Every time I see it, I am reminded of the young man I was, and the adventures I had on my beloved shovelhead. I might not be smiling in the photo, but you can bet your bottom dollar I was one happy biker!
Me and my shovelhead at Mount Rushmore.
Lyndell has been invited to exhibit at the David Mann Memorial Chopperfest Motorcycle, Art and Kulture Show taking place next weekend, February 11th, on the beach at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. He has been a featured artist at this prestigious event for several years running, and his latest paintings, including “Bakersfield Run”, “Berdoo Salute” and “’87 Sturgis Run”, will be on display.
20th Annual David Mann Memorial Chopperfest
Lyndell has also been invited (again!) to contribute a custom painted helmet to the Biltwell Helmet Show, which is a regular part of Chopperfest. His helmet and paintings will be available for sale on-site.
The lineup for the 2024 Biltwell Helmet Show at Chopperfest
I am very proud of my friend, Lyndell Dean Wolff, and sincerely hope you will check out his work, either online or in person at Chopperfest. Better yet, take a piece home. I know I’m dying to! 👍🏼
JUSTFYI:
*Bill Ray, mentioned above, was on assignment from LIFE Magazine in 1965, in response to the spate of news reports about the Angels and other ‘outlaw’ clubs. His photographs were ultimately rejected for publication at the time. The editors wanted visual reinforcement of the stereotypical larger-than-life ‘biker thug’ that pearl-clutching news reports were describing. Bill Ray disappointed them when he handed in images of everyday women and men on motorcycles, enjoying their lives. His iconic photographs showed the bikers in too good a light. 😎
As noted in my last post, I became interested in adapting motorcycles for use by riders with disabilities after helping design and construct a shovelhead-powered trike for a quadriplegic rider disabled in a motorcycle crash. However, I never anticipated a need for such adaptations for myself, but….
….Fate or Life or The Universe (the bastard) had other ideas.
😱😮😳😢😡🤬
The structure I fell from, with new panels to replace the ones that gave way under my hook ladder.
In July of 2004 I fell 35’ from a billboard structure I was climbing. I ended up with an open compound fracture of my right tibia and fibula – two breaks in each bone, with the jagged ends sticking up through the skin — and a left foot pulverized ‘to dust’ per the surgeon who attempted to repair it. However, worst of all was the burst fracture of my L-4 vertebra. Between the three injury sites – a perverse Trifecta of Pain, if you will – nothing south of my waist works the way it’s supposed to….
….and I mean nothing! 😡
I might be smiling, but there was nothing fun about that hospital stay!
I was hospitalized for twelve days that first time and underwent four surgeries, with numerous hospital stays and surgeries to come. I was still wheelchair-bound when they sent me home, and lived in a hospital bed set up in our living room for the rest of the summer.
Me and my new wheels, back at the crib!My friend Bryan built the ramp for me, and a bunch of folks from the church where Jackie and I were married came by to sign it and scribble ‘get well’ wishes on it.When you’ve been active and physical most of your adult life, lying around watching television all day is not near as much fun as it sounds, but I made the best I could of it.
I was in the wheelchair well into September, having physical therapy and additional surgeries, before I could graduate to crutches, and then a walker. I still remember what a rush it was (literally and figuratively) to finally stand unaided and kiss Jackie from above, for the first time since the fall. I had to sit right back down again, but that kiss was the start of me getting back on my feet.
And get back on my feet I did. One hundred and twenty days after my fall, I limped out to my driveway, kickstarted my old rigid-framed shovelhead and took it for a ride around the neighborhood. Probably not my brightest move – I was still recovering from major surgeries including a spinal fusion at L-3-4-5 – but damn! did it feel good in the moment! Look at the photos taken that day, and the shit-eating grin on my face. After all I’d been through, it appeared I would still be able to ride my motorcycle.
The Bitch started first kick after three and a half months of down time. I was so proud of my baby that day!Oh, yeah! I was a happy man in that moment!SO-O-O-O-O happy!
As my recovery progressed, I took a few more rides on the shovel, but quickly learned that the geometry of my body had been permanently altered by the accident. I’d spent decades sitting down in the bike, on a frame-mounted butt bucket LaPera saddle, but now that position caused almost immediate low-back pain, and sent referred pain down both legs. Symptoms included spasms, sharp stabbing pain, throbbing pain, all manner of pain….
It was clear that I had to be seated with my hips above my knees, rather than below them; that flexion (being bent beyond 90° at the waist) was not my friend.
The Bitch with her frame-mounted butt-bucket saddle. On it I was seated down in the motorcycle, rather than on it. Great feeling, better road sense, lower center of gravity, et cetera, but not user-friendly for the new me.
Thus began a series of experiments. One of the benefits of working in a motorcycle shop like Bud’s was almost unlimited access to parts, so I could dabble on the cheap.
First was a Softail solo saddle. It was puffy enough that it almost raised me high enough off the frame. However, it wasn’t enough, and my attempt at a rider backrest – a tiny sissybar backrest pad and a couple of stainless-steel struts from an old FL windshield – failed to do the job.
Nice try, but no cigar.
Next was a halfway measure, to see if a traditional OEM pogo stick might get it. I borrowed a single bright red fatbob tank, a pogo stick and t-bar, and a funky old buddy seat I found in amongst the takeoffs and rejects in Bud’s shop. This proved that a pogo stick could work, but only if I ran the optional OEM heavy-duty spring set, Harley part no. 51771-29
This might have been ugly as sin, but it did let me know I was heading in the right direction.
Bud tracked down a customer who had a brand-new set of the heavy-duty springs he would part with. Bud also gifted me a set of late-model flat-side fatbobs, which was a nice hit. Unlike the original fatbobs found on knucks, pans and shovelheads, the flat-side bobs aren’t prone to cracking and leaking. Nothing like a lapful of petrol at 60 MPH to put a damper on an otherwise pleasant ride! 😮
Late model flatside fatbobs in a factory blue, with my old bobber fenders painted to match. Since they were Bud’s final gift to me, I am reluctant to mess with the paint scheme.
However, the way the flat-side bobs mount to the frame prevented us from using the traditional t-bar. Instead, Harley Bob, one of Bud’s ace mechanics and welders, had to relocate the front mounting point for the t-bar, and then heat and bend my t-bar to make it fit. I topped that off with a traditional OEM leather tractor seat saddle; the one Harley-Davidson had been using since 1923. I actually bought it from the local Harley dealership, no less!
The result was one-of-a-kind, but it worked to get my hips above my knees, thus eliminating one problem, but now I had another. I generally dislike seeing a windshield on an unfaired bike, but my weakened back muscles could not withstand the buffeting of winds at highway speeds, so I crafted another rider backrest. This time, I took the back off an old industrial office chair and connecting it to the underside of the tractor seat, as seen below. I cut some stiff-celled foam to fit, found an upholsterer to cover the thing in black leather to match the saddle, and pronounced it good.
There’s my homemade backrest before I sicced the upholsterer on it.…….and here it is completed. It didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped….....but it wasn’t terrible-looking, was it?Better than this, at least…. ….right? Right? 🤷🏻♀️
And it was a good idea, if I say so myself. The backrest worked like a champ once I was up and rolling with my weight on the saddle, and I could have ridden all day with it like that.
Unfortunately, the moment I stopped for any reason and shifted my weight to one foot or the other, those heavy-duty pogo stick springs forced the backrest into my already pained back. It felt like a torture device the Spanish Inquisition might have appreciated.
The sucky part is that it worked great while I was moving!
I finally admitted defeat, set the backrest aside and bolted on an FL windshield. It worked, even if it did ruin the lines of my gorgeous, oh-so-simple shovelhead.
The Bitch with the pogo stick and vintage FLH windshield….
I later exchanged it for one that came off a Dyna Wide Glide, I think. A slightly sleeker look, and that’s the way it looks today: pogo stick, tractor seat and Dyna windshield.
….and here, with the later-model Dyna windshield.
My BMW needed no such alterations. It already put me in a riding position suitable to my limitations, and I’d already installed a windshield for touring purposes.
2000 BMW R1100R with a windshield and OEM bags, on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
However, I still wanted a Harley I could pack my wife on, so one Saturday I toddled off down to Bud’s to explore the possibility of a new frame for my shovelhead. It would have hurt my heart to lose the rigid frame and, thankfully, I didn’t need to.
Instead, I came home with a 1987 FXRS.
The 1987 FXRS I named The Banshee (because she knew how to wail) was ugly as sin when I got her, but had a powerplant rebuilt from a burn by Harley Bob, the same ace who figured out how to make The Bitch’s pogo stick saddle work. It also handled like a dream, had all the get-up-and-go an ol’ boy like me could need, and was the first Harley my wife could passenger on!
The first thing I did was install an FXRP Police saddle, which accomplished on the FXRS the same thing the pogo stick did on the shovelhead: got my hips above my knees. The FXRS already had a windshield, so I was spared that expense.
The FXRP (Police) saddle mounted on my 1987 FXRS Low Rider the day I brought it home….….and the first ride on the new saddle.
Instead, I just started stripping the FXRS of all the chrome and gold-accented doodads the previous owner had insisted on, and altering the bike to better fit my body. Finally, I decided on a paint scheme I wanted, and spent months getting that accomplished.
The Banshee on October 24th, 2008, the day I finished a two-year makeover, which included the FXRP saddle seen here, the removal of a metric fuck-tonne of chrome shyte, and the installation of as many black parts as I could lay hands on. In fact, a black belt-guard and that all-black pillion pad were the final pieces of my puzzle.
And there I was, a happy biker with three motorcycles suited for my disabilities: my original OG shovelhead for hopping around town or solo road trips, the BMW for canyon carving, and the FXRS (now named The Banshee) for squiring my wife around in style.
I wish I could say we lived happily ever after, but….
….Fate or Life or The Universe (the bastard) had other ideas.
😱😮😳😢😡🤬
One of the many cruel tricks Fate or Life or The Universe (the bastard) played on me (and there have been many) is that the nerve damage at my spine causes all sorts of misfires in the lower half of my body. I feel things I shouldn’t feel — sudden sharp pains, weird sensations like wetness on my leg, muscle spasms — anddon’t feel things I should, like knowing when my bladder is full. 🤢 Ain’t that a gas?
And just so you know, I’m not sharing this because I want to. I just know there are other riders out there who have experienced (or, heavens forfend, will experience) some of what I’m going through. I wish someone had talked turkey to me post-accident, so I’m talking to y’all.
And you can ask questions, if you have any, about the bikes, the adaptations, or the medical shyte I’ve experienced in the nineteen years since my fall. All that experience should be good for something besides making me miserable…. ….right? Right?🤷🏻♀️
Anyhoo….
Think of that channel through the center of each vertebra as a conduit, and the nerves as wires. My surgeon said that when he got to my L-4 vertebra it was 80% occluded. With ‘spring-back’ — which means just what it sounds like — he reckons the L-4 channel (through which the cauda equina passes) was 100% occluded at the moment of impact. That explains why I felt the sharp pain in my back when I hit the ground, and also explains the problems I had post-surgery.
If the vertebra acts as a conduit, then a burst fracture is like a kink in that conduit, which crushes the wires inside. At 100% occlusion, the insulation on those wires will be damaged, and as a result, electrical signals will go places they weren’t supposed to go. Misfires. Some are frustrating, some are humiliating, some are aggravating as hell, and most are just fucking painful.
However, one of the first misfires I noticed began while I was still in the wheelchair after my initial surgeries. Because I’d damaged both lower extremities so severely, I couldn’t weight-bear on my own, but the medicos wanted me up and moving about.
The solution? Working out in the physical therapy pool at the hospital. The water would bear most of my weight, but I’d still be able to ‘walk’ and move around.
As an aside, I was working out one day with a man about my age who had his hip replaced, and we got to talking about our injuries. When I mentioned that I had fallen 35’ from a billboard, his eyes got big as saucers, and he said, ‘My father fell off a six-foot stepladder in his garage and died!’
Have I mentioned that Fate or Life or The Universe (whatever) is a bastard? 😡
Anyhoo, I was still working out in the pool when I learned that one of the many ‘gifts’ I’d been given in my accident was a trick knee, that would give way without warning and drop me where I stood. In the pool, of course, this meant a sudden dunking and a faceful of highly chlorinated water. Once I was out of the wheelchair, the results could be considerably worse. I’d be strolling along, minding my own business, and suddenly I’m sprawled on the floor, or sidewalk, with skinned knees and palms. What fun!
At first, it was mostly annoying and occasionally embarrassing, but over time the misfires to my knee became more and more frequent, to the point that I worried about my leg giving way as I sat at a red light on my bike, and me ending up with the bike on top of me, dependent on strangers to help me get back up again.
I do not like feeling that dependent on anyone. It’s a whole thing with me.
I finally realized that I needed to do something to protect myself, and I thought ‘Hey, what about a trike? After all, we’d built that one for Paul ‘way back when, and with Bud to help me I knew I could take my shovel and build a sharp-looking trike around it.
See my previous post for details about this trike.
I started banking money with Bud, saving up for one of the rigid trike frames Paughco was manufacturing, but then Bud died and my money disappeared. I was so heartsick over his death that I couldn’t even pursue it. In fact, it took me a number of years to step back into what was left of Bud’s shop again, and by then it was in a different location and of a completely different world. I recognized some of the fixtures – the classic old showcases Bud had scored when the original Harley shop on Guadalupe closed – and noticed the tribute to Bandido Craig, who I’d worked with when Bud was still alive, but everything else, including the people, was utterly alien to me.
However, that was later. Once I’d recovered enough from Bud’s passing to begin thinking of triking the shovel again, I began selling a massive assortment of stuff I had accumulated over the years. Most of it was through eBay, and for a while I was shipping motorcycle parts, manuals and moto-themed gewgaws all over the world. I also sold books and pop culture collectibles, antiques, whatever….
….until I’d finally saved enough to order the Paughco frame I’d been dreaming of.
The frame of my dreams, minus the chrome plating. Homie don’ like chromie!
I rang Paughco, all confident and ready to talk turkey, only to be informed that Paughco no longer makes the frame I wanted. This was after the pandemic, when the supply chain was in disarray, and Ian, the fellow I spoke with, told me they couldn’t get the tubing they needed, but it didn’t matter because they couldn’t hire enough qualified welders, either! 😮
And that raises a quick question: Where is this ‘collapsed economy’ I hear so many people raving about? Because I see a fuck-ton of ‘Help Wanted’ signs and adverts all around. Paughco is obviously not the only concern experiencing staffing shortages, and low unemployment is one of the hallmarks of a healthy economy, right?
Just sayin’….
Anyhoo, with Paughco unable to provide the frame I wanted, I began searching all over for other options. I was burning up the Googleplex looking for ‘trike frame’, ‘rigid trike frame’, ‘Harley trike frame’, et cetera. I found plenty of bolt-on swingarm trike kits to fit swingarm and Softail frames, and stretched and raked low-saddle rigid frames intended for radical ‘chopper’ builds, but no one was making the traditional rigid frame I wanted – the one like the photo from the Paughco catalog.
I finally found one outfit in The Netherlands that made the frame I wanted, a place called VG Classic Frames. He even used repop factory-styled castings for the headstock, et cetera, and had what looked like a seat post for the pogo stick, which would have made it ideal for my needs. Sadly, despite numerous attempts, I could not get the shop owner to give me a price (or even a ballpark estimate) of what shipping to the U.S. might cost.
Oh, what could have been! 😢
By now I was getting desperate to get back in the wind, so I gave up and I gave in, and I went shopping for a Harley-Davidson Freewheeler. Of the late-model trikes on offer from the MoCo, the Freewheeler was closest to my idea of a motorcycle. It was a little stripped down, a little meaner looking than the Tri-Glide, and quite a bit lighter. It still weighs twice what my shovel does 😮 but that fiberglass taco box is heavy!
The 2016 Harley-Davidson Freewheeler with the 103″ Twin Cam engine; last year for the line, I’m told. I know squat about late-model Harleys, so every day on this thing is a new experience! And just think, I went from a 74″ shovel to an 80″ Evo, and now a 103″ Twinkie.
I found the bike I wanted at a stealership in Houston. It was a 2016 FLRT Freewheeler in Black Quartz, with 4” unbaffled Cobra cones and a factory rider backrest and luggage rack. I could have done without the backrest – thankfully, it’s removable with the push of a couple of tabs – and the luggage rack is actually kinda handy, but those straight pipes were fucking awful!
The 2016 Harley-Davidson FLRT Freewheeler I have christened The Box-Turtle. First there’s alliteration — Bitch, Banshee, Bagger and Box-Turtle — and then there’s that great honkin’ taco box on the back, like a turtle shell.I even found a metallic sticker of Heinrick Kley’s musical turtles, which I’d discovered several years before they appeared on the cover of The Grateful Dead’s Terrapin Station album.
In fact, while I lived in Seattle in late ’75, after getting out of the service, I got the banjo-playing turtle tattooed on my left bicep. Unfortunately, the ‘artist’ — a celebrated tattooist who called herself ‘Madame Lazonga’ — did such a crappy job that I had the thing covered at the first opportunity.
Still, I never got over my affection for the critters!I even found an embroidered patch to add to my winter riding vest, and a suitable quote from a Grateful Dead song. It really has been a long, strange trip, hasn’t it?
It took the better part of a day of dicking around, but I got the price down to what I was willing to pay, and the deal was made. The next Saturday I pulled my motorcycle trailer down to Houston and carted her home.
The FLRT Freewheeler loaded on my too-short trailer….….and thank goodness I had the heavy-duty tie-down straps Bud gave me, so I could rig that tailgate/ramp securely enough to make it home. I’ll be having braces made for it ASAP.
And yes, that is a flat tire, unnoticed in all the excitement until I was a block away, no longer under the nice shade tree. 😡🤬 Triple-A earned their premium that day!Once home, I didn’t ride the beast for a week. See those four-inch cones? I like my neighbors, and I have no interest in inflicting that on them, so I waited to ride until I could replace the damned things.
This project, BTW, prompted my return to Bud’s Motorcycle Shop, Version 2.0, for the first time since his death, and my realization that change, that constant motherfucker, had done its damage in my old home-away-from-home. Took two trips out there — one before I brought the trike home and another after, to exchange the first set of take-off mufflers for a set that fit — but I got it done!Then it was time to begin the learning curve.
For those not familiar, riding a trike (or a sidecar rig like the one I piloted in the ’80s) is completely different than riding a solo machine. For starters, countersteering will get a rider killed, because the trike reacts in a completely opposite manner to a solo when countersteered. Push out on the right handgrip while approaching a left-hand curve, and instead of gently leaning into and tracking through your curve, you will find yourself going hard to port before you can even grasp what’s happening!
The sidecar we dubbed ‘Moon Unit’, attached to my 1954 wishbone frame with a combination of OEM Harley-Davidson parts and some bastard mounts designed and constructed with the invaluable assistance of Bill Mading at BG&T Welding in Austin. Bill was a former motocross racer who understood (far better than I) the stresses and strains a motorcycle frame undergoes. It was Bill who restored my ’54 frame when I first got it, replacing the stress tube and fat bob mounts some chopper builder had removed, and inspecting the joints for cracks. When I decided to get a sidecar for the shovel, so my stepdaughter could join her mother and I on rides, I knew I could trust him to help keep my little girl safe.
The test-ride I took in Houston was terrifying, so when I got the beast home, I knew I had to unlearnalmost five decades of training and experience in order to ride her safely. Just resisting the instinct to countersteer when going into curves took all my concentration, at first.
Then, since I’m not countersteering and leaning into curves the way I’m accustomed to do, the trike constantly felt as if it might tip over in turns, victim to centrifugal force. I had to gradually build up my confidence in curves, carefully going faster and faster as I gained a feeling for how the machine would handle and what it could handle.
It was effectively like reliving my earliest days on a motorcycle. My first rides were just toodles around the neighborhood, but I slowly progressed to longer and longer excursions.
My first ‘big’ trip out of the neighborhood was to drop some eBay packages off at the post office. Whoo-hoo, huh? 🤷🏻♀️
Still, it was me on a motorcycle and back in the wind, so no complaints here….
….and I’ve managed longer trips since then, including a day-long walkabout through Williamson, Cameron and Bell Counties, down the backroads I so enjoyed exploring on my shovelhead. I’m slowly rebuilding my ‘mileage muscles’, which have atrophied after years of disuse, and look forward to longer and longer rides on my Box-Turtle.
So, I am back in the wind, with my knees in the breeze, but wouldn’t you know? After months spent scouring the internet for the rigid shovel frame I originally sought, and asking everyone I could find for leads, et cetera, and finally committing to the 2016 Freewheeler, it was (and I swear I am not making this up) just two weeks later that a friend helped me reconnect with an old riding partner – a fellow I haven’t seen in over twenty years – who just happens to own a custom frame shop in Dallas. 😳
Steve back in 1992, on a ride from Central Texas to Western Colorado. I just love that grin on his face!
Have I mentioned that Fate or Life or The Universe (the bastard) has a perverted sense of humor and really shitty timing? 😡
Anyhoo, I did get to visit my old friend on a road trip that I’ll tell you about in an upcoming post, but in the meanwhile, my gimped-up ass is finally back in the wind where it belongs, and my old friend is scheming on a possible frame for my shovelhead!
Chal-lenge accepted! 😁
I might look grumpy, but inside I’m smiling like a fool! I am in the wind! It’s not my beloved Bitch, but the wind tastes the same! ….and I still have The Bitch, so I still have hope. So long as I’m upright and breathing free air, there’s always the possibility that The Bitch and I will be together in the wind again, someday soon. 😎
What would you do if life – an accident or illness or hereditary condition – stopped you from doing the thing you most enjoy?
Paul aboard his custom shovelhead trike, as it appeared in Easyriders in January, 1985.
I initially got interested in adapting motorcycles for use by riders with physical disabilities in the early ’80s, when I helped design and construct a shovelhead-powered trike for a military veteran who’d been paralyzed in a motorcycle wreck. Paul (seen in photo above) was classified as quadriplegic, which, FYI, does notnecessarily mean a person is paralyzed from the neck down, as I’d always assumed. Rather, it simply means the normal functions of all four limbs are affected by the injury or condition. In Paul’s case, that meant he had no use of his legs, and while his right arm was almost fully functional, his left had only limited strength and range of motion. He could make a partial fist – enough to operate a hand clutch and help steer a motorcycle – but couldn’t operate a jockey shift or brake lever.
Now, bear in mind that in the 1980s none of the well-known motorcycle manufacturers were producing three-wheeled motorcycles. Harley-Davidson still offered sidecars, but the Motor Company’s venerable Servi-Car (popular with police and fire departments, delivery services and automotive repair shops) ended its forty-one-year run in 1973, and no one was rushing to fill that slot.
As an aside: circa 1982, Honda reportedly produced a prototype three-wheeler based on their CX500 – an estimated 250 units overall – for U.S. Police Departments. I have a distinct (and very pleasant memory) of seeing a female Austin Police Department officer in full moto-cop regalia, including knee boots and leather jacket, blasting through downtown traffic on one such prototype with her long blonde hair streaming behind her. 😍 Unfortunately, the bikes didn’t make the cut and never went into full production, and I never saw my jackbooted goddess again. 🥺😢😭
Anyhoo, as I was saying….
No one was cranking out three-wheeled motorcycles back then, and aside from some knucklehead-powered prototypes constructed at the onset of World War II, the Motor Company had never produced a Big Twin trike. That meant virtually everything we needed to make Paul’s bike function as required had to be designed and created in-house.
The chassis consisted of an OEM early shovelhead swingarm frame grafted to a rigid Servi-Car rear section. It had originally been built for a local biker who was shot in the leg by an off-duty APD officer during a traffic confrontation on Guadalupe Street, near the entrance to the Austin State Hospital. The cop claimed he was in fear for his life, naturally, and walked away without consequence. Meanwhile, the unarmed and now disabled biker was left to fend for himself, and put together the three-wheeler.
After a while, Rod assumed he was healed up enough to get back on two wheels, so my boss at the motorcycle shop got the trike frame. Unfortunately, Rod wasn’t as healed as he thought he was, because shortly after getting back on his panhead he tipped his bike over while trying to park it in a grassy area pocked with hillocks and treacherous low spots. When he tried to catch himself his right (injured) leg gave way, putting him right back on the disabled list.
However, by then we were already well into the construction of Paul’s trike.
The Easyriders spread from January, 1985, seen below, shows the details of Paul’s unique trike: crossover shifter mechanism, linked front and rear brakes, custom floorboards, et cetera. What the magazine doesn’t show is that, while we got the trike running and dialed in, and fine-tuned the hand-controls and other adaptations, Paul was bartering with the shop’s owner, trading custom paint and bodywork to cover the costs of the build. Paul was a gifted body man, and I was veryproud to run the tins he’d shaped and painted for me during that time.
Early 1981: My 1974 shovelhead, recently transplanted into this OEM 1954 wishbone frame, sports tanks and fenders shaped (where needed) and painted by Paul. This was the first frame-off rebuild I’d ever done, and I remain very proud of the finished project! A lot of people who looked askance at my choice of colors when the painted tins were hanging on the wall in my shop area admitted I’d chosen well, and created a striking custom build.
Once we got the trike dialed in, while it was still all bare metal and grey primer, we turned it over to Paul, who soon returned to his home in Massachusetts. There, he took the bike apart and detailed the thing, putting his expertise and artistry as a body man to work, and doing much of the physical labor himself. Paul built an extended platform behind the pogo-stick saddle to hold his wheelchair, and the custom-built ultralight wheelchair itself. He also cleaned up the rough metal we’d used to fashion some of his controls, added a lot of gold and chrome plating, and painted the machine a rich ebony black with striped accents on the frame. Aside from the unique aspects of its construction, the machine was a beautiful custom motorcycle, deserving of its place in the pages of the world’s most widely-read biker magazine.
By the time we completed Paul’s trike, I had become fascinated with the process of modifying motorcycles for use by handicapped riders, and enamored of the spirit and ingenuity that went into each adaptation. I began clipping articles from newspapers and magazines – anything referencing handicapped riders or drivers – and adverts and announcements about new parts that looked as if they might prove useful in adaptations. I photographed adapted bikes wherever I found them, and spoke to the riders if possible.
Over time, I accumulated a hefty file of information in those pre-internet days, and acted as a clearinghouse for that info. Primarily through Letters to the Editors columns of motorcycle magazines I made that information available free of charge to any and all takers.
Early 1988: Jane Strand on the shovelhead trike she and her husband, Rick Strand, designed and constructed. Jane was paralyzed when a teenaged red-light-runner struck the couple as they rode Rick’s flathead through downtown Austin. I featured their bike in the article I wrote for Road Rider. Rick and Jane went on to found a custom motorcycle shop in South Dakota, specializing in adaptations for handicapped riders. However, just now, when I went looking for the shop’s contact info, I learned that Rick passed away several years ago. Sorry to say, I don’t know what happened to Jane.
I’d written for newspapers and magazines for several years, so it was a natural progression to take what I’d learned and create a feature-length magazine article. I shopped the idea around, and Road Rider (later reconfigured as Motorcycle Consumer News) gave me the commission. I did the research, conducted my interviews, took the photographs, and my piece appeared in Road Rider‘s November 1988 issue. I didn’t even know it had come out until someone at a motorcycle rights organization meeting asked for my autograph! 🙄
October, 1988: My friend Tina and I, as I sign my first (and last, so far) autograph on my just-released article about adapting motorcycles for use by handicapped riders. We were at Frank’s Lakeview Inn on Lake Belton, Texas, to attend a Texas Motorcycle Roadriders Association meeting.
Times have changed drastically since that article appeared. By the late ‘90s aftermarket manufacturers had begun releasing bolt-on trike kits, and now offer assemblies for almost every motorcycle marque on the road. In 2009, Harley-Davidson began marketing its own line of Big Twin trikes with a wide range of options. Aftermarket trike frames are also available, as are helpful add-ons like electronic shifter mechanisms, and reverse drive units for those who can’t back their bikes out of parking spaces. Meanwhile, the Can-Am Spyder and Polaris Slingshot offer something other than the traditional trike configuration, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Just in time, too, as the perennially playful Baby Boom ages into the need for three-wheelers! 😆
Okay, so, on to the article:
Here is the Easyriders article about Paul and his trike:
And another piece, from Easyriders’ March 1979 issue:
So, what’s this got to do with me? More anon. ‘Til then, sláinte! 😎
RUBs, posers, or the more elegant ‘poseurs’…. All just different words for the odd duck known as the Leather-Clad Harley-Davidson Wannabe (LCHDW). Their natural habitat is the ‘Chrome Adviser’ counter at their local Harley-Davidson stealership, or the hipster coffee house located five blocks from their palatial McMansion. However, some more adventurous LCHDWs may migrate on occasion to large ‘look-at-me’ rallies at Daytona, Sturgis, Laconia and Austin, where they trailer their low-mileage late-model Harley-Davidsons and ersatz Indians behind massive motor homes, and then pretend they’ve ridden the entire way.
I found these lines (quoted below) written on Quora, which is a great time-suck, BTW, if you enjoy arguing with total strangers:
“Real bikers wanted Harleys. And that included all those suburban accountants, lawyers, etc. who felt the call of the biker….
….there’s a ‘soul’ to a Harley that a Japanese bike will never have. And a Harley rider knows it.
Besides, when was the last time you saw a biker with ‘Honda’ tattooed on his arm?”1
To which I say:
There are motorcycle owners and then there are bikers.
Your average suburbanite, who waited until he was an empty-nester with massive disposable income to finally get a motorcycle, is not a ‘biker’. He may dress like one (see photo above) but he will never actually be one. Why? Because he waited until he was an empty-nester with massive disposable income to finally buy his motorcycle.
A biker won’t wait. A biker will do whatever it takes to get that motorcycle. Work two jobs?You bet!Give up partying to save money for the bike? No prob! Scour the want ads and eyeball every bike in every parking lot, hoping to score a deal? But of course! Sell blood or body parts? De nada!
And then, once he (or she)2 has the bike he’s been dreaming of, the biker will dedicate the majority of his life to keeping and maintaining that machine, ofttimes to the exclusion of all else. It’s not a mid-life crisis, a recreational toy, a status symbol, or even a vehicle, but so much more. For the biker, the bike becomes his raison d’etre.
For instance, the biker will pay more in rent just to have a safe place to stash his bike and tools…. and he will have tools, because the biker will be loath to trust his motorcycle to anyone else’s ministrations. Factory-certified or shade-tree experienced, the majority of mechanics will not give the biker’s baby the tender loving care she deserves.
And like any parent of a baby, the biker will do without a lot of luxuries in order to provide for his bike. Who needs a fancy suit or a big screen TV when you have a scooter waiting for you? Who needs to dine out in high-dollar restaurants when a fast-food taco and a hot cup of coffee from the 7-11 will suffice? And this is even truer when times get hard. The biker will sell his cage and go hungry, even homeless, and never even consider selling his motorcycle. The thought never even enters his mind.
But wait! There’s more!
The biker will, if needs must, work jobs that lack benefits or opportunities for advancement, so long as they provide plenty of time off to ride…. and if the necessary time off is not forthcoming he’ll just quit. There will always be more work for a man (or woman) with the skills most bikers possess. There won’t always be another rally, or party, or sunny day with that particular band of brothers and sisters ready to ride.
The biker will naturally spend the majority of his spare time hanging with other riders, bench racing, helping his friends maintain their bikes, going on runs and to rallies and on long meandering rides just for the sheer joy of being surrounded by his tribe….
….because that’s where the happiness lives. 😎
And although the majority of the bikers I’ve known in the fifty-odd years I’ve been on the scene are in fact Harley riders, you’ll note that I never specified a brand-name. I have met some Harley owners I wouldn’t consider ‘motorcyclists’, let alone bikers. By the same token, I’ve met some metric riders of all stripes — Hondas, BMWs, Triumphs, Moto Guzzis, et cetera — that I wouldn’t hesitate to call ‘biker’ or partner up with on my next cross-country ride.
Biker does not come on a t-shirt or brand-name jacket. It’s not in a tattoo’s ink or even between a rider’s legs. Biker is in the heart.
That said, here I am in 1981, at my parents’ home on Bainbridge Island with brothers, Bob and Lee, wearing my very own Harley t-shirt, received from the late Dan James at Austin Motorcycle Company….
….and here I am sporting my very own Harley-Davidson tattoo, done by Bandido Fat Roger.
Back when M*A*S*H was still on the air and my father was still alive, there was one show where Hawkeye spent the entire episode trying to get a telephone call through to his father in Crabapple Cove, Maine. If I remember correctly, the old man was about to undergo major surgery, and Hawkeye (a surgeon who knew just how badly surgeries could go wrong) was terrified that his father might not survive. He finally gets through to Crabapple Cove and talks to his father a bit, but when it’s time to hang up, Hawkeye will not let his father go until he can say ‘Dad, I love you.’
My relationship with my father had been contentious most of my life, and I couldn’t tell you the last time a word of endearment had passed between us, but in sobriety I was trying my best to make amends, and Hawkeye’s words inspired me. We didn’t talk often (the show went off the air in 1983, when long-distance telephone calls still cost a lot of money) but whenever we did, I would not get off the ’phone until I said the words ‘Dad, I love you.’
At first, he was embarrassed, and he’d mumble ‘Uh… God loves you,’ but I persisted.
After a while, he could say ‘We love you,’ but I didn’t quit.
Finally came the day he was able to say it back to me: ‘I love you.’
I’m crying as I write this. Yeah, I’m a big softy who cries at movies and Kodak commercials — so, sue me! 😆 — but I’m crying just thinking about how much our relationship was changed by those three little words. He became my Dad again — a title I hadn’t accorded him in over a decade — and we grew closer and closer.
My father died in February of 1997 — the cigarettes he’d smoked his entire adult life finally caught up with him, and robbed us of precious years — but we had nineteen years more than we would have had, if not for AA’s Ninth Step and a sitcom set in a war zone.
My last words to him were ‘Dad, I love you.’ I’ll let you guess what his last words to me were. 😎
So yes, say it now, say it often, say it to those who matter most in your life, and never quit saying it.
I love you.
My father served as a navigator in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Here he is on a military-issue Cushman scooter at an airfield in Lincoln, Nebraska.Eight years later he had married my mother, and they began doing their bit to increase the postwar Baby Boom. The infant in arms is my older brother, Lee.Forty years later, 1 May 1993, I got to take my father and younger brother to an antique motorcycle show in Hanford, California, the day of my younger sister’s wedding. He’s standing beside an Indian like the one he rode after the war. He told us he won the money for the Indian playing poker. and I don’t doubt that. Author Nelson Algren, in his 1956 novel, A Walk on the Wild Side, wrote ‘Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are greater than your own.’ Dunno about the rest 🤷♀️ but my father’s nickname was ‘Doc’, and he had one of the greatest poker faces you could ever imagine!😎Here’s my father seated on a Cushman scooter like the one he rode in the service. He stopped riding before us kids came along, but he never got over his love for motorcycles. It was something we shared during those happy years together.There’s my Dad on his Cushman, and me on my shovelhead fifty years later, at Shiprock, New Mexico. I didn’t see it at the time, but a few years after the Shiprock photo was taken I realized how alike we sat our mounts. He’s been gone for twenty-six years, and I miss him.
The Shovel Shop 
