Old Man Dewey

Old Man Dewey

Al “Sugar Bear” McKay was a mechanic at the Seattle Fire Garage when I was in the Machine Shop there, and I got to know him in the normal course of work.  He was the motorcycle specialist for Seattle Police Department, assigned to keep the fleet of Harley Davidsons running through the hazards of police work, and he pretty much knew those old Shovelheads inside and out.  He taught me how to assemble transmissions, which he could do blindfolded, and lots of other things over the years.  But he also turned out to be good for a story every now and then, one of which I will relate to you now.

Al started out working for Dewey’s Cycle as the equivalent of a lot boy, running parts on his Cushman scooter (and popping wheelies in the front and out the back when the old man was not looking), general cleanup and whatever else needed doing at the time.  This was probably in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, Al is no longer around to get it any closer than that.

Now, old man Dewey shared a personality trait with many of his competitors and compadres in the motorcycle business in Seattle at the time, like Pat Patereau at Pat’s Top Hat Cycle, in that he tended to be a bit cranky at times, especially when asked for the hundredth time if that Triumph part was ever going to be off Back Order or some such foolishness.  He didn’t necessarily get along with everyone, and didn’t seem to mind much.  It’s an understandable attitude that would be reasonable in a man who spent his entire life in the motorcycle business, with a focus on European brands, only to see everything upended by the relentless onslaught of faster, more dependable and cheaper Japanese bikes, to the point where the idea that a guy could sell the business and retire someday just fell right off the table.  Guys tended to work till they couldn’t work no more, because that was all they had anyway, which explains why we look up to them today.  We just learned when to tiptoe at the time.

I had my old ’60 Thunderbird at Dewey’s once, for example, for a top end job, and the project was hung up because intake valves were suddenly unobtanium in the early ‘70s as Triumph went through one of their many crises at the factory level and couldn’t keep up with parts demand.  One day, as I was walking around the corner from Dewey’s shop on Capitol Hill after checking in for the third time about my bike, and hearing the same story, I got interrupted by one of the mechanics, who popped out of the side door and said, “Hey!”  I stopped to listen.  “That’s your bike waiting on valves, right”, he asked?  “Yeah, they’re still on back order.”  I replied.  “Well, here’s the deal”, he said.  “You can get those valves any time you want from Carmen Tom at Tom’s Cycle down on Empire Way.  The Old Man hates Carmen for some reason, and won’t let us deal with him for anything.  All you gotta do is go down there and buy the valves and bring them back, and I’ll have your bike back on the road tomorrow.  Just don’t say a word about who told you, or my ass is grass!”  “Thanks, Man, I’ll go do that right now!” I replied, and off I went, and that’s how it worked out in that case.

But the story that still makes me shake my head is the one Sugar Bear told me one time.  It seems Dewey’s had also been an Indian dealer back in the day before that company bit the bullet in 1953, and as of sometime in the ‘60s, was still sitting on a pretty good pile of NOS Indian parts in the back room.  As the story goes, a guy came in and made what Dewey considered an insultingly low offer for all the leftover Indian parts, after which the old man ran the guy out of the shop and requested that he never darken his door further.  On the way back to his office he grabbed Al and took him back to the Indian parts section and said, “I want you to take everything that says Indian on it off these shelves and take them out back and throw them in the dumpster!”

So that’s what Al did, supposedly.  I remember when I heard the story many years later, I speculated that a person in the know could have possibly wandered by that dumpster later in the day, after the old man went home, and rescued those bits of unobtanium, but Al didn’t know if that happened or not.

Like so many other urban legends, we’ll probably never know, unless somebody comes up with the rest of the story.  :-{)}

To Ride, or To Trailer... that is the question

Well, funny you should mention that, but it does bring on a story, so I’m glad you did.

It was back in ’03, it was, and a group of us were on the road headed for Milwaukee.  The Harley Davidson Motor Company had somehow stayed in business for a hundred years, and they were promising a big ol’ party for anyone who showed up.  Now this is a company whose customers have a tendency to get the corporate logo tattooed on various parts of their bodies, so that gives you a hint at the depth of their affection for the brand, and at the wildness of the parties that develop when enough of them get together in one place.

I was riding with Rachel and her gang.  She was the escort rider on her cop bike, which gained us some respect from the locals, when she didn’t run off and leave us, which she occasionally did.

I had looked at the map and realized that good old Highway 2 ran right across the top of five states between Seattle and Green Bay, which was just a hop and a skip north of Milwaukee, so that was our route, over the mountains and across the rivers and the wide open spaces with the great big skies.  I wouldn’t recommend that route today, the parts through North Dakota are pretty fracked up. We traveled light, and stayed on the cheap, mostly at KOAs or one of the many little clapped-out resorts that grew up along the highway in the ‘50s that would put up a biker for $10 a night, but the communal shower had floors that sagged under my weight.  It was at one of those where we saw the essence of the old biker question:  “Should I ride, or should I trailer?”

This little resort in upstate Minnesota had been carved out of an old quarry on the riverbank, so you drove down a steep entry to get to the campsites, one of which was enough to fit 4 motorcycles and their tents.  Up top, by the highway, was a strip mall that contained the restaurant and the gas station that completed the roadside oasis.

So we’re down at our site, sitting around the table, when we witness the arrival of a motorhome the size of a Greyhound Bus, which pulled into one of the full-service sites towing the largest Wells Cargo enclosed trailer you can buy.  Two guys get out, wearing biker leather vests and bandannas on their heads.  They’re, ahem, experienced, been around, shall we say, not young bucks anymore, but who among us is, either?  They fold down the ramp that closes off the back of the trailer and proceed to back out two brand new looking Harley Baggers, one a Softail Heritage and the other an Ultra Classic, which they fired up and rode on up the hill to the restaurant for dinner, just like we did.  After dinner, they rode back down to camp and went in the motor home to watch tv or something, while we sat outside and watched the stars come out.

Next morning, while we were packing to leave, they climbed back on their bikes and rode back up to the restaurant for breakfast, just like we did, too.  As we gassed up and hit the road East, they went back to tie their bikes up in the dark inside that trailer before they followed us out of the quarry.  I later saw that same motorhome and trailer parked on a back road outside the Milwaukee Town Center.  There were so many of them there it looked like a convention of Good Sams had hit town with all the bikers.

The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter if you ride or drive, as long as you get there in one piece and have a good time.  And it’s perfectly understandable that everyone gets to a point where the pleasure of the long ride is not enough to make up for not being able to do it with the same attitude you used to have, the knowledge that your skills were at their peak, and you were prepared and ready to handle anything the road put in front of you.  And, of course, if time is a factor it’s better to dash in, drink deep, and dash out again than to have stayed home.

But the ones who drove deserve a certain amount of pity from the ones who rode, and they know it.  Here’s a little experiment you can do on your way back from Sturgis this year that illustrates my point:  As you ride by a pickup with one or two perfectly capable motorcycles tied up in the back, glance over at the driver and give him a nod.  Nine times out of ten, I have observed, he will not meet your glance, but will look away.  He knows he’s depriving himself of the authentic experience of being on the road on a motorcycle by being belted into that cage, for whatever reason, time, health, whatever.  He knows that when you’re out there leaning into that nasty side wind outside of Caspar, Wyoming, or powering into a set of dark clouds forming outside of Bozeman, that’s when you’re fully alive.  Just you and your bike taking on Mother Nature, and winning.  It’s something not everyone can do, and it’s what sets us apart from them.  Ride on.      :-{)}