Growing up, I was lucky enough to have an old biker who lived directly across the road from me, who put up with me pestering him about how to fix this and fix that. Old Jack was an amazing bloke, grey beard and nearly white pony tail, pale blue eyes that would cut you in half with a single glance. Now Old Jack was a law unto himself, rough and a man who lived life his way without any apology to anybody. He did not suffer fools and could be mean as a bulldog chewing nettles when crossed. My father was killed when I was just four years old and fortunately for me Old Jack decided to fill the role after I got into a little trouble, I guess he felt sorry for me and for my mother when I kept getting brought home in a squad car time after time before I reached the age of ten.
Jack had left
In Jacks garage, he had his runner, an old Triumph Bonnie from 1968, a little rough to look at but mechanically sound and a selection of bikes that were kept under a tarp that even I was never allowed to look under. I did try to once and he sent me away for a week and told me not to come back until I was able to conduct myself with self discipline and to be able to follow instruction. For that whole week I would watch him come and go on his trusted Triumph and seethe with anger for him sending me away, but I got over myself and went back to listen, to learn and without realizing it but to be given something that I would end up carrying with me for the rest of my life – a code of ethic for life and the necessary tools to make my way in this crazy world.
Back in the spring of 1985, I was just a young lad with just a little over two years riding bikes, I had own two bikes that were bought for patience and had to be worked on before they could even dream to be roadworthy, the first had been a Honda fifty and the second a Kawasaki KE125, the fifty was reliable enough but had no street cred, the traillie was respectable enough but would not go in the rain and would over heat in the summer and was similar to a 3TA Triumph chop I had later in life that I really tried my upmost to get on with but I ended shooting at with a shotgun in a drunken haze of temper one night, but the less said about that the better. So there I was sitting in my mother’s garage working on that poor traillie unaware that something was about to transpire that would alter my life forever. Old Jack was sixty-five at this stage and getting on, time had taken it toll and he had had to stop riding two years before hand due to severe arthritis and had just started to use a walking stick.
As I sat on the ground looking into the semi dismantled carburetor of my Kwak, I saw Old Jack across the road waving me over and I struggled of the garage floor and limped over with a leg that was half asleep, I must have looked liked some sort of freaky zombie making my way to him because his face lit up with that wide old toothless grin that always meant he had some quick quip or remark ready to throw out.
“Oh look , it is Douglas Barder!” he teased “**** off !” I replied, grinning like a demented fool trying to stay upright.
“I need you to do me a favour”
“Sure” I nodded, “Anything you want, what’s up?”
He pointed to his shed door and asked me to open it. After pulling back the large sliding door I looked in at the old Triumph sitting there, the spotless workshop and the tarp covered bikes I was never allowed to look at, but burned me with intense curiosity every time I saw them.
“I need you to get these running again” as he stroked hid beard with his scrunched up arthritic hand, smiling at me because he knew he had just made my day, decade and millennium with just one statement , I was on the way to the promised land, I was about to see what was under the tarp. But being a teenager and trying to be cool, I simply and dumbly replied “No sweat”.
“I shall brew up then” he turned around and headed toward the house. I felt like I had just discovered the Holy Grail, I was at my own personal
In front of me was indeed a golden nugget, well three to be precise, a 3HW Triumph, a Full blown Triton and the jewel in the crown, a 1969 shovelhead Harley, with mini apes and fishtails, sitting there in it’s lovely crimson red. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. I wheeled them around the garage, so I could have space to walk around and take in the detail of each bike, but no matter what I did I kept returning to the Harley. It was like a magnet, it just sucked me in and called my name, It seemed to be whispering to me to start her. “Tea” Old Jack brought me back to reality.
“Where, when, how?” I wanted to know every thing all at once.
“All in good time” was all he would say.
After much chat with tea that was so black and strong it could nearly have been a soup, I talked him into letting me do the shovelhead first. He was freely giving advice and telling me about the bike as I walked around it, trying to take it all in but not retaining any of it. I was in awe of the tear S&S carb and air filter, the big polished primary drive with swirly engraving on it, the shape of the tank and the curve of the seat, there was nothing I could find to fault the bike, it was just sex on two wheels, every fiber in my young body was bursting with lust and excitement.
And so I set about to get this thing of beauty going. First off I changed all the oils, plugs and air filter under Old Jacks watchful eye and sage advice, following each instruction as if my life depended on it. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him watch approvingly as I spun spanner with the skill he had spent years instilling in me. After seeing to the brakes and oiling this and lubing that the time was fast approaching to start the hunk of
It sat there on it’s jiffy stand, waiting, beckoning me, wanting to be brought back to life.
I had never kick started a Harley before and listened carefully and old Jack imparted his wisdom.
I went around to the bike and got on it, Old Jack watched with much amusement, what was so funny I thought to myself. I stood there bike between my legs, hand on the bars and took a deep breath. Now was it two twists of the throttle and choke and kick or was it choke, two twists and kick, shit why had I not listened properly. Old Jack could see the indecision written all over my face and helpfully roared “get on with it boy!”.
Right two throttle, choke and kick I decided. I twisted the throttle all the way back twice, pulled up the choke, stood up on the kicker and jumped down on it with all my ten stone and the as much force as I could muster. I came down left foot on the floor , the right foot pushing the kicker to it final limit but the motor did not fire instead it the kicker came back up hurtling my knee right into my face a the top warp factor of the starship Enterprise , breaking my nose and splattering blood everywhere. As the black spots receded and my vision returned and the searing pain started to ease all I could hear was Old Jack’s wheezy laugh as he stuck a Major cigarette in his wrinkle mouth. I felt like such a fool, I wanted the ground to swallow me up, envelop me and leave no trace. Having made an idiot of myself in front of my one hero just broke me, I did not know whether to cry or be pissed off that he was laughing at me. He lit his stubby cigarette and then told me to that I had just learnt a valuable lesson and never ever try to start a real bike the way I just did, that was “ok for those modern pieces of crap that they build for nambie pambie faggots you hang out with who will move outa bikes when they can afford a jammer!” He did not hold some of my friends in very high esteem and as it turned out he was very correct, out of twenty of us that started on bikes together, only two of us stuck with it.
So without any fuss I step to the right hand side of the bike and did as I was told blood cascading from my nose, I didn’t care I was mad now, this bitch was going to start or get ******* kicked into the garage floor. I twisted the throttle, pulled up the choke and with my left foot, leapt on the kicker, she coughed, blew two belches of blue smoke out the fishtail exhaust pipes. I let the kicker back up, gave two twists of the throttle and jumped down on the kicker and again she coughed, blew out two plumes of bluish smoke but refused to fire. Old Jack watched on in amusement, grinning at the fact that I was getting mad but was still trying and not trying to wimp out.
Once again I gave her two blips of the throttle, jumped on the kicker, blood from my nose spraying up into my eyes and all over the shed as I descended on the firing arc. As my right foot hit the floor of the workshop, there was a loud bang closely followed by another and the old Harley burst into life, the noise of her nearly scared the crap out of me, she was actually rumbling to life, the shed filled with that beautiful sound of a v-twin motor running that still excites me the same way every time I start any Harley. The roar from the pipes was deafening, it shook right through me filling me with a very strange feeling of pride, awe and power, that left me feeling like my chest was going to explode and my head was going to be launched off my shoulders like a rocket from NASA to the moon. I have never felt that kind of high in my life before as I stood there with a now blood encrusted face and clothes, a bizarre looking being by all accounts.
Old Jack just look at me with an even wider grin. He got off the stool and gestured for me to follow him and kill the motor. We went to the kitchen and he cleaned the blood off my face and explained why he had let me make a mess of myself,
“I could have told you how to do it beforehand but you would have made that mistake somewhere down the line and done in front of people you did not want to do it in front of!”
He pulled on his cigarette and went on,
“Now you will never ever start a Harley wrong again, you understand?”
When he had finished he uttered the best thing he had ever said to me “Go out there and start her up and take her for test ride, don’t brake too heavily as she wide slide out from underneath you, OK?”
The excitement returned instantly, holy shit, he is going to let me ride her. I went out to the shed like a dog on heat or as Old Jack would say “Faster than hot shit off a shovel”.
I primed her, kicked her and carefully took her out on to the road. I felt alive, I felt free, I rode up around the village, back past the park, past the Garda(police) station, rattling their windows with aggressive throttle control, back up the new road and back into the driveway, all in all about five miles.
I sat in the garage telling Old Jack about my first spin, like I had just ridden in from Outer Mongolia or
A strange look came over his face and a kind of sadness into his eyes, and I realized he was both happy for me and what I had just done but he was never going to be able to do that again. All of a sudden I jumped up, grabbed hold of him and hugged him.
“Come on, we are going out” He looked at me quizzically. I fire up the old shovel, got on and handed him an open face helmet. His eyes suddenly became alive, he was trembling with anticipation, He struggled with his boney old hands to put the lid on and when I over to help he just shouted back some profanity that I could not hear over the bike and then with super human effort, the old man got on to the bike behind me and off we went.
After thirty miles we were back in the driveway, I set down the side stand and hopped off and got his walking stick and helped him off the bike. We sat for hours in the workshop, him with his bottle of porter and his whiskey, me with my tea, listening to stories that some he had never told before because they were only for men and some that I had listened to all before since I was a boy.
I always think of Old Jack and the way he stepped into take on the father figure roll and prevent me from becoming a lesser human being. To this day I carry with me the code of being both a man and a biker that he taught me.
Every time I start a Harley and go for a ride, he is with me.
Every time I find myself in a difficult situation or having to make a important decision I ask what would you do Old Jack, and in my head I hear him still, some twenty six years later.
I often wonder what he would make of the modern Harley, indeed I can here sometimes as I push the starter button on my Night Train. He would probably look at me under his grey bushy eyebrows, grin widely and call me a lazy shite!
I can honestly say that when Old Jack passed away a few years later, it was the first time I ever felt pain that penetrated all the way to my very being and blackened my soul a little, for the world was a darker place without him. Old bikers have a lot they can pass on to us and they live on with us every time you fire up a motorcycle, so the next time an old biker sit beside you at the bar or at the table at a bike do, give them a bit of time, you never know, you might learn something.
What happened to the shovel I hear you ask, well that my friends is a story for another day.
good story ,well said .
............nice one Dyna boy, enjoyed it, a chara.............nice one Dyna boy, enjoyed it, a chara.
I can't wait!