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.  :-{)}