My first Motorbike was a 1929 Harley-Davidson with sidecar.
My father with my younger brother took me to pick it up and we towed it home with a rope behind the car and me, at the age of 18 years, hanging on to the wide handlebars for grim life.
I didn't have a motorbike license at the time but quickly had it out on the back roads with my brother in the sidecar.
It wasn't the fastest of motorbikes but it could have pulled a house down with two 650cc pots in a V.
I remember well on the first outing when my brother pushed the handlebars to onside sending the machine out into the center of the road he could see the parked car, which the sidecar was heading straight at while I was concentrating in just working the gears and the clutch system of the old-timer classic Harley Davidson.
The year was 1953 and the cost of this old-timer motorbike was $20.
I held on to that bike for about 4 years and then decided that it was worthless and sold it for $25 in order to buy a real motorbike the latest ' Red Hunter'.
If only I had known that by the time I retired 50 years later the Harley Davidson would have been worth my total retirement package and more.
But that's life none of us could have thought in the 1950s the eventual collector value of machines and books and comics were to be some 50 years later.
Some years later while a college student I bought a second hand BSA 500 single pot and graduated to other bikes along the years.
I did many trips on different machines and even tried motor scooters but I still remember with great fondness my first motorbike the 1929 Harley Davidson with sidecar.
My father with my younger brother took me to pick it up and we towed it home with a rope behind the car and me, at the age of 18 years, hanging on to the wide handlebars for grim life.
I didn't have a motorbike license at the time but quickly had it out on the back roads with my brother in the sidecar.
It wasn't the fastest of motorbikes but it could have pulled a house down with two 650cc pots in a V.
I remember well on the first outing when my brother pushed the handlebars to onside sending the machine out into the center of the road he could see the parked car, which the sidecar was heading straight at while I was concentrating in just working the gears and the clutch system of the old-timer classic Harley Davidson.
The year was 1953 and the cost of this old-timer motorbike was $20.
I held on to that bike for about 4 years and then decided that it was worthless and sold it for $25 in order to buy a real motorbike the latest ' Red Hunter'.
If only I had known that by the time I retired 50 years later the Harley Davidson would have been worth my total retirement package and more.
But that's life none of us could have thought in the 1950s the eventual collector value of machines and books and comics were to be some 50 years later.
Some years later while a college student I bought a second hand BSA 500 single pot and graduated to other bikes along the years.
I did many trips on different machines and even tried motor scooters but I still remember with great fondness my first motorbike the 1929 Harley Davidson with sidecar.