The full text of ‘Cyclists’ Raid’ by Frank Rooney, as published in Harper’s in January, 1951. Read my remarks about Rooney’s story and the incident at Hollister, on which it is based, in my previous post.
As a bonus, I am including the articles mentioned in my previous post, that were published in The San Francisco Chronicle and The Hollister Free Lance on the Monday following the ‘riot’ over the 1947 July 4th weekend.
If you’re a biker, you know that Hollister is not just an über-hip clothing line for spoiled mall rats. No, Hollister — a small farming community in Southern California southeast of San Jose — is the birthplace of the American Biker, that enduring trope perpetuated by media and entertainment ever since that hot July 4th weekend of 1947, when a ‘riot’ broke out during a motorcycle rally.
The scene at Hollister was a familiar one: a small town, eager to bring in tourists who might spend money at local businesses, built a racetrack at Veteran’s Memorial Park, and began hosting motorcycle races and ‘Gypsy Tours’: popular family-friendly gatherings sponsored by the American Motorcycle Association, as it was then known. The events were well-attended and profitable, and in most cases the worst local authorities had to deal with was a few Drunk and Disorderly arrests and some hospitalizations due to injuries suffered in motorcycle crashes on and off the track.
However, the 1947 event, one of the first held since the guns of World War Two fell silent, drew a new breed of rider. These were not the nice Mom-and-Pop ‘straight’ clubs pictured above, that frequently appeared at these events in matching uniforms, riding pristine motorcycles kitted out with numerous factory-approved accessories.
No, these were rough, hard-bitten young men — most of them combat veterans who had seen the worst the world had to offer in the killing fields of Europe and the South Pacific — and they roared into town en masse aboard stripped-down, hopped-up motorcycles unlike anything those at Hollister had ever seen before.
These were rattletrap bombers with front brakes and fenders removed, and rear fenders ‘bobbed’ as short as possible. Chain guards, windshields, engine guards, saddlebags — anything that might increase weight and wind-drag, and slow the machines down — were all shitcanned in favor of better performance, until all that remained was the bare essence of a motorcycle: a massive engine, rigid frame and springer forks, two wheels, a petrol tank and a saddle.
These men also came sporting motorcycle club sweaters or jackets with new, more menacing names — Boozefighters, Thirteen Rebels, Galloping Goose (in military argot the ‘goose’ was the upraised middle finger we call ‘the bird’) and more — and they came not to sit docilely in the stands watching as racers on the track went round-y-round, but to ride and race and party themselves, and that is exactly what they did.
The Boozefighters MC, led by ‘Wino Willie’ Forkner, described itself as a drinking club with a motorcycle problem, and did their level best to live up to that claim. Other clubs, in turn, tried their best to keep pace.
The much-ballyhooed ‘riot’ was really nothing more than a lot of rowdy behavior along Hollister’s main drag, including impromptu drag races and riders doing doughnuts in the street, and raucous drinking in the bars. At one point, it’s reported that a rider did pilot his motorcycle into a bar. In the tumult, some furniture and glassware were damaged, and promptly paid for by the offender.
Still, local law enforcement felt overwhelmed, and called for reinforcements from neighboring counties and the California Highway Patrol. The cops geared up, corralled the partying bikers on the main drag, and commandeered a flatbed truck for use as a bandstand. They pressed a dance band into service, and the rest of the night proved playwright William Congreve’s contention* that ‘Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.’
However, at around the time the band began to play, photographer Barney Peterson arrived in town. Peterson was a freelancer dispatched by The San Francisco Chronicle. His brief was to bring back pictures of the reported mayhem, but all he found was a street filled with happy dancing bikers and civilians, a parking lot full of motorcycles, and a few riders sacked out for the night on the courthouse lawn. In other words, b-o-o-o-o-ring!
Desperate to preserve his commission, Peterson improvised. As eyewitnesses confirm, he found a motorcycle parked at the curb — a stripped-down Harley-Davidson knucklehead with no front fender, and a seaman’s bag tied across the rear fender behind the saddle. Perfect! He carefully arranged a bunch of empty beer bottles on the street around the motorcycle, even cadging some from a nearby café, to symbolize the debauchery he assumed had taken place prior to his arrival. Yeah, that will do! Finally, he recruited a local fellow, a drunk named Eddie Davenport, to climb aboard the artfully staged motorcycle and pose for some photographs. Bingo! The editor’s gonna love it!
A series of images were made, including the most infamous: the ‘Cyclist’s Holiday’ photograph (above) which the magazine LIFE published in their July 21st issue, along with an overheated blurb about the ‘4000 cyclists’ who allegedly ran amok in the peaceful city of Hollister. Barney Peterson’s posed and staged photo of farm boy Eddie Davenport — he of the slack-jawed, glassy-eyed gaze and two-fisted drinking style pictured above — struck terror into the hearts of pearl-clutching newspaper and magazine editors, chiefs of police and other dignitaries across the nation. Other Peterson creations showed Davenport holding a club jacket belonging to a member of the Tulare Raiders Motorcycle Club named Dave. No word on whether that was Dave’s Harley, or whether Dave approved of his jacket being sported by a non-member.
However, as he’d hoped, Peterson’s editor did love his photo, but they weren’t alone. The photograph hit the wire services, and was immediately picked up by LIFE.
The response to LIFE‘s publication of Peterson’s staged (and libelous) photograph was immediate. Three weeks later, the magazine’s August 11th issue included Letters to the Editors from motorcyclist Charles A. Addams, film star and cyclist Keenan Wynn, and Paul Brokaw, who edited the magazine Motorcyclist at the time.
All three correspondents complained of the negative coverage.
Mr. Addams wrote that the 4000 riders reportedly in attendance were not members of a single club, as the magazine alleged; that 50% were members of the American Motorcycle Association and the other 50% ‘mere motorcyclists out for a three-day holiday’; and that roughly ‘500 made the event the debacle that it was.’ I checked, and it appears certain Mr. Addams was not the infamous New Yorker cartoonist who created The Addams Family. How cool would that have been? 😏
Keenan Wynn, who later took film star and fledgling desert racer Lee Marvin under his wing, and showed Steve McQueen what dirt bikes were for, wrote ‘I have taken it upon myself to… straighten out what will obviously be an extremely bad impression of motorcyclists.’ He went on to decry the reckless behavior of the wild ones at Hollister, and noted that riding under the influence ‘as our friend in the picture seems to be doing, is one of the fundamental “don’ts” of riding…’ Wynn also felt obliged to cite some examples of ‘safe and sane Hollywood riders,’ like Clark Gable, Randolph Scott, Ward Bond and Andy Devine.
Motorcyclist Editor Paul Brokaw expressed his shock at the photograph, and was perhaps the first in print to call Barney Peterson out for his chicanery, noting that the picture ‘was very obviously arranged and posed by an enterprising and unscrupulous photographer.’ Brokaw also called out the ‘mercenary-minded barkeepers’ who continued to serve obviously intoxicated customers, and the ‘small percentage’ of riotous motorcyclists, ‘aided by a much larger group of nonmotorcycling hellraisers,’ who actually caused all the fuss.
Brokaw went on to damn LIFE for ‘sear(ing) a pitiful brand on the character of tens of thousands of innocent, clean-cut, respectable, law-abiding young men and women who are the true representatives of an admirable sport.’
LIFE responded to the criticism by including, in the same issue, a lengthy ‘presentation of law-abiding, respectable motorcyclists,’ which included photos of Mom-and-Pop clubs and motorcycling fashion trends.
The ‘riot’ at Hollister probably would have faded into the mists of time and memory, had it not been for Barney Peterson’s photograph, but the next stage in the evolution of the biker image was even more nefarious. A hack named Frank Rooney took the bare bones of what happened at Hollister and fashioned them into a lengthy, perverse short story titled ‘Cyclists’ Raid‘.
I am convinced the title’s echoing of LIFE‘s ‘Cyclist’s Holiday’ is not a coincidence.
In his lurid saga, Rooney portrays the bikers as a paramilitary pack of marauders who chose the small nameless town from a list of possible destinations, and even did reconnaissance in advance of their arrival, going so far as to learn the names of hotel keepers and filling station managers. They ride into town in formation aboard matching motorcycles, and their leader, ‘Gar Simpson’, declares them to be ‘Troop B of the Angeleno Motorcycle Club.’ In casual conversation, Simpson reveals the club’s plan to expand across California (‘We’re forming Troop G now.’) and other states: ‘Nevada — Arizona — Colorado — Wyoming.’
The riders quickly take over the accommodations in town, including the hotel operated by the story’s main character, Joel Bleeker, a widowed former Army officer and combat veteran with a comely seventeen-year-old daughter. The club members proceed to drink, to sing raucous songs, to ride their motorcycles up and down the street (and eventually the sidewalks), but never ever remove the green-lensed riding goggles they all wear, even at night, even inside the dining hall of Bleeker’s inn.
This is crucial to Rooney’s telling, because the goggles allow individual riders to remain:
‘standardized figurines, seeking in each other a willful loss of identity, dividing themselves equally among one another until there was only a single mythical figure, unspeakably sterile….‘
….so much so that when the ‘raid’ comes to its inevitably violent climax — a freak motorcycle crash which kill’s Bleeker’s beautiful daughter — Bleeker and his outraged townsfolk have no one to blame but themselves. The nameless, faceless riders are able to mount up and ride out of town, exempt from consequence by reason of their numbers and unremarkable sameness.
Rooney’s story appeared in Harper’s, a popular magazine that arrived by post in many American homes, issue after issue. It could not help but reinforce the ‘lesson’ of LIFE‘s ‘Cyclist’s Holiday’ pic: ‘Martha, those goddamned bikers are bad news!‘
A complete scan of the story ‘Cyclists’ Raid’, as published, can be read here.
Rooney’s story, dripping with pathos and armchair psychology, caught the eye of filmmaker Stanley Kramer, who used the Hollister stories as inspiration for his 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle, The Wild One, co-starring Lee Marvin, Mary Murphy and, in an uncredited role, character actor Alvy Moore, best known for his portrayal of county agricultural agent Hank Kimball on the 1960s television show Green Acres.
Kramer interviewed people who actually attended the July 4th gathering at Hollister, and came away with a clear idea of the story he wished to tell.
A script was commissioned. However, it placed at least some of the blame for the events on the townspeople themselves, who invited the bikers in, tolerated the more benign hijinks they engaged in, and profited from sales of alcohol, food and other commodities. Censors rejected the script as ‘pro-Communist’, in that it made money-grubbing merchants the bad guys. We all know that anyone making money is, by definition, a hero, right? 🙄
Kramer caved, and as a result, we ended up with a bowdlerized version of the story Kramer wanted to tell. The true anti-heroes of Hollister — those brave young men just back from a grueling war, eager to recapture the camaraderie of military life, celebrate their survival and blow off years’ worth of steam — were replaced by Marlon Brando, as stiff as his brand-new Levi’s and monogrammed Perfecto leather jacket, portraying ‘Johnny Strabler’ as a mewling teenager riven with Daddy issues, riding a shiny new British bike, mumbling already-dated ‘hep cat’ slang and mooning over Mary Murphy’s more mature waitress.
Meanwhile, Lee Marvin, an actual combat veteran with a Purple Heart to his credit, and a real-life rider himself, acted the ‘villain’ of the piece. In ‘Chino’, Marvin channeled the essence of ‘Wino Willie’ Forkner. He rode into town astride a road-weary Harley-Davidson Big Twin, clad in military surplus and thrift store garments the way many of the men at Hollister had been, waving a cigar and loudly greeting old friends.
Johnny Strabler was a dilettante, a poseur. Chino was a fuckin’ honest-to-god biker. Johnny’s leather jacket may rightly be considered iconic — it is a fashion staple to this day, even amongst people who wouldn’t go within ten feet of a motorcycle — but so is Lee Marvin’s portrayal of Chino. Talk to bikers you know. How many of ’em wanted to be Johnny Strabler when they grew up? and how many wanted to be Chino? I can tell you my answer!
There’s another chapter to this story, discovered after I completed my post about Hollister. If you’re interested, there’s a link at the bottom about an episode of the television series Highway Patrol that aired in April of 1956. Check it out!
I geek out about this stuff because I love our history as motorcyclists — all the influences that went into creating our lifestyle and all the ways that lifestyle is portrayed, interpreted and further influenced by attention from media and popular culture. The chain of events that lead from World War Two to Hollister, from Hollister to Harper’s, and from Harper’s to Hollywood, are just part of the fascinating origin story we all share.
As I write this, we are less than two weeks from the premiere of yet another biker movie; an A-list Hollywood production starring well-known actors like Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, Jody Comer, Norman Reedus and Michael Shannon.+ The Bikeriders, loosely based on photo-journalist Danny Lyon’s seminal 1968 book of the same title, promises to be yet another milestone in our unfolding story. I already have my tickets, and can’t wait to see what comes up on the big screen!
* Congreve, William The Mourning Bride, 1697. The original lines read ‘Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.’
+ Just this afternoon, I received my copy of The Vandals: The Photography of the Motion Picture ‘The Bikeriders’. Woo-hoo!
NSFW content ahead. Brace yourselves.
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….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.
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. 😏
♫ I’m trailer trash / drunk off my ass / and my savings went to liquor so I’m all out of cash…. ♫ © 2021 Caroline’s Daughter. 😆
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.
Others evince a technical mastery of light, color and shadow that nudges the neighborhood of realism, without fully crossing the line.
….and when he’s not painting blowsy barflies, GTP is capable of more pedestrian images.
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.
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….
….and this, where he demonstrates Leaky Latowski’s low-end torque.
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! 😎
However, like a lot of bikers, GTP seems to delight in the age-old game called ‘shocking the squares,’ and he plays it well!
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.
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.
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….
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 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.
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! 😎
George the Painter can be found offending the world in these locations (to name just a few): https://www.instagram.com/georgethepainter, https://www.instagram.com/fineartforw_hitetrash, https://georgethepainter.bigcartel.com/products, https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/george-frizzell/art/george+frizzell, https://www.facebook.com/GeorgeFrizzellJr,
And his latest endeavor, Chopper Hostel, billed as ‘a great place to hide the bodies,’ at https://chopperhostel.com/
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 Monthly writer 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 some spirit 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.
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.
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.
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! 🙄
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!
Ralph is really stickin’ it to me, dammit! 🤬🤬🤬
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.
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….
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.
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!
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! 👍🏻
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! 🤬
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! 🤬
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? 🤬
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!
I did in fact attend the show, with my old friend Bil (one ‘L’ only) from ‘way back in my glory days. It was fun enough, wandering around checking out the flash machines. A lot of shiny chit to gawk at, most of it Euro or Pacific Rim in origin.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 😏
….but I soon realized that, of the two choices I had for that weekend’s entertainment, the Texas Fandango out in Gillespie County would have been much more my speed. Hosted by the Cherokee Chapter of the Antique Motorcycle Club of America (of which I am an erstwhile member), the Texas Fandango features vintage machines – many of them American – along with a vintage swap meet, bike show, chopper show, Xtreem Flattrack Racing, drag racing, Custom Van show and free camping. It also has the advantage of being held in the scenic Texas Hill Country, with great riding roads all around, as opposed to the Handbuilt Show, which is held in very un-scenic and hard-to-get-to downtown Austin.
The Texas Fandango is coming up soon, April 4th through 6th, 2025, and I’m really, really wanting to make the scene if I can. My friend, artist Norman Bean, is slated to be there, with his incredible artwork on display, and it is to be hoped that other old faces might pop up, as well.
It would be nice to spend time with my tribe again. 😎
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. 😎
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….
….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.
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.
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.
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.
Outside the Wabi-Sabi and Bill Ray collections, Lyndell creates some brilliant images of vintage motorcycles like these:
Lyndell also honors legends of the motorcycling world, including Burt Munro of The World’s Fastest Indian fame, and the godfather of motorcycle art, David Mann himself.
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.
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! 😏
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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! 👍🏼
I actually made it to last year’s Chopperfest – the 20th Annual – and tell the tale here. Now it’s time for the 21st. My friend Lyndell Dean Wolff will be there again. This year. he was asked to paint a poster (below) for the event. If you look hard, you might see a familiar figure limping along in the crowd! Thanks, Lyndell!
Read about my trip to the 20th Annual David Mann Memorial Chopperfest, and my meeting with Lyndell Dean Wolff and Sharon, at I took a little drive one night…
*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. 😎
However, for modern readers and historians, Ray’s 2019 book, ‘Hells Angels of San Berdoo ’65: Inside the Mother Charter‘, presents a mind-blowing visual record of the outlaw scene of the day. If you’re into our history as bikers, it’s as important a piece as Danny Lyon’s ‘The Bikeriders‘ or Hunter S. Thompson’s seminal work of gonzo journalism, ‘Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs‘.
In fact, Thompson mentions Bill Ray in his book, jealous of the fact that Ray was more accepted by the club than Thompson himself. 😆
Ray’s book is available online, and well worth the price, IMO.
The Shovel Shop 
