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Perhaps, on a gray winter morning in 1923,
just five years
after my father was born, some men assembled around a stove and a pot of
coffee to joke and warm their hands. After awhile they put down their
cups, picked up their tools and started their regular workday. With the
cold wind slipping in under the workshop door they began to bend, weld,
file, hammer, drill and pound rough steel and iron into a work of art. A
true piece of Americana that represented all that was best about the
United States in the post-war years. Perhaps a few of them fought in the
'war to end all wars', lucky to survive the mustard gas and
tuberculosis, lucky not to have been left for dead in a muddy ditch
halfway around the world. Now, back home, they could do what they love.
On that winter day they got together to produce a 1923 Indian
motorcycle, a product not born out of focus groups and demographic
studies but the result of the unique vision of a few men who had a
passion for the mechanical. Who knew something about internal combustion
engines and how to harness the power
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At some point the bike was rolled into the shipping bay,
loaded on a truck and delivered to the first customer. Maybe it was
shipped in a wooden crate and the lucky owner gathered a few of his
friends to join him in uncrating his first motorcycle. They tore the
sides down, took turns sitting on the leather saddle and imagined what
it would be like to cruise down the muddy path at 25 miles per hour.
After some fiddling, and maybe some pushing, they got it to fire up in
cloud of fabulous oil. Applause all around and hands over the ears for
those who weren't used to hearing a naked v-twin fire up. Seventy-seven
years later the same scene is repeated with the same bike on a sunny
April morning in southern California. Overgrown boys pushing the bike up
and down the street just to hear it fire up once more. The vision and
hard work of men who have probably passed on still lives in Kevin's
garage. It is there to remind us of what life used to be like, when a
job working at a motorcycle factory consisted of much more than punching
a clock and switching on an assembly line robot. When durability and
longevity were actually designed in to cope with the rough terrain. How
many of the newest bikes will be around in 80 years, to remind a future
generation of the handiwork of the late 1900s?
No, we didn't get it started for more
than a few seconds Saturday, but it wasn't the
red lady and her sidecar that gave up, it was us mere mortals who needed
to rest. Congratulations to Kevin and Sandra for rescuing a small piece
of history and letting us share in a rare moment.
- click on these thumbnails to
display larger images -
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Copyright 2001, C. G.
Wykoff |
Pictures by Jon S.
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