Long ago, in my young hippy
radical days, I rented a room in a house on Florentia Street on north Queen
Anne, a place I had found on an ad on the message board at a hippy radical
bookstore in the U District that said, “heads preferred”. Sure enough, it turned out to be a pretty
cool place, I stayed there most of the summer and fall.
So one day Mike, my landlord,
said, “Hey, I just bought a Harley, come help me pick it up!” I said, “Sure!” and off we went in a 1961 Ford
Galaxy station wagon. Mike had seen an
ad in the paper and agreed to give this guy $250 for the bike, sight
unseen. It turned out the house was in
Top Hat neighborhood, right by where I was raised. We pulled into a driveway off 1st
Ave S just up from 102nd and there, sitting in the driveway, was a
complete original military Harley 45 WLA two-wheeler. It even had the old oil bath air cleaner
still in place, and the military ammo box saddle bags and the windshield with
the canvas lower section. “Hang on”, the
guy says, as he pulls out a ladder. “I
think I got some stuff upstairs in the loft”.
He went up the ladder and handed down the rifle scabbard and some other
stuff. This would have been around 1972
or so. Easy Rider had been out a few
years, and Mike wanted to build a chopper.
We broke the windshield
cramming the bike into the back of the Galaxy on its side with all the seats
down. We tied it in with rope and drove
back to Queen Anne with the ass end hanging out the back so low it’s a good
thing we didn’t try the Counterbalance.
The oil bath air filter turned out to have oil in it, which leaked all
over the back of the station wagon.
Shit.
When we got it home, I had to
go to work, but the rest of the guys played with it, charged the battery, put
some gas and oil in the tanks, and it fired up and ran!
The next day was Saturday, so
Mike and I got busy on the project.
First thing we took off all the army stuff and tossed it in a pile in
the corner, along with the crash bars, windshield, and front fender, everything
that is now unobtanium. Mike had bought
a small oxy-acetylene torch kit and he was ready to go to town. That and a die grinder was all he needed.
First we tore the front end
off the bike, disassembled it, threw the rockers and everything in the discard
pile, and Mike cut the lower legs off where they were originally welded at the
factory, revealing the short pegs they were fitted over. He had gone to a wrecking yard and bought two
radius rods off a ’49 Ford. When you
straighten the two bent tabs on the end of the rods, they just happen to be
5/8” holes, just like the Harley front axle.
And when you cut them off at about 5 feet long, they just happen to fit
over those pegs on the lower triple clamp of the Harley 45, making a rigid
front end about 18” over stock.
Then he took the cutting
torch and grinder to the frame, cutting off all the sidecar brackets and
anything else he didn't need. The neck
was torch cut almost off from the bottom behind the bearing housing, and bent
up by way of a water pipe cheater to about a 40 degree rake or so, eyeball
straight. A piece of flatbar was cut to
fit the notch so created, and welded in using gas and coat hanger for welding
rod.
Then a quick spray can paint
job over all the welds and grinds, and it went back together nicely. No front fender, of course, and the brake wasn't hooked up, but he needed it for a spacer. Voila, instant chopper.
I remember standing there
looking at that monstrosity, and saying, “Mike, you’re not going to actually
ride that thing are you?” “Naw”, he
said, “I’m going to find some idiot and sell it to him”. And that’s what he did, the very next week,
for $600. I hope the poor fool never got
it running.
Many years later, I got to
thinking about that long narrow back yard behind the house on Florentia Street,
and the garage in back, and that pile of takeoff parts in the corner. I was working in Interbay those days and
thought, if I looked for it, I could find that alley again, and maybe, just
maybe, the garage would still be there and who knows, maybe the pile of parts
would still be laying where we threw them!
So one day, on the way home, I did just that. I found Florentia street and figured out what
house it was. Nothing had changed, and I
went around the block and turned into the alley.
The garage was gone. The back yard was gone. In fact, every back yard of every house on
Florentia street that faced that alley were all gone, replaced by a series of
two and three story condominimums, and the alley was a jam packed parking
lot! There are probably 500 people
living in that alley!
I think it’s time to move to
Spokane or something… I wonder what happened to those Harley parts… :-{)}
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