Great afternoon to blow out the cobwebs and get the old Springer out. It's a 1999. In 2000
I rode it to Daytona Bike week. Soon after that I bought my first Electra Glide. This was my touring bike so the Springer was relagated to around town. The bike is all retroed out like a 1948 model. She's always there, ready to be one of the three in my garage to be chosen. The Springer is an old friend. Not fast but has never left me stranded. So stop at your favorite bar that has Lone Star Light which in todays case was the Last Chance Saloon in old downtown Plano. I had a long conversation with a guy and his wife who had moved to Dallas from England. Nice people.
This joint is about as close to Austin as you can get in Dallas.
On the road
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
BRMC
One of my favorite rock and roll bands is Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. In the 1953 movie "The Wild One,"
Marlon Brando's mc club were the BRMC's.
The band took the name and made it their own.
Lee marvin's club was called The Beetles in the movie by the way.
Marlon Brando's mc club were the BRMC's.
The band took the name and made it their own.
Liz and Bill in Maryville Tn.
Really cool Harley-Davidson dealership near the end of the Tail of the Dragon. 
Friday, August 27, 2010
Marshall Field. Pleasant Grove Texas
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Old Man and the Harley
Check out http://www.theoldmanandtheharley.com/. An amzing read on a sons retracing of his fathers 1939 coast to coast trek on his 1930 Harley-Davidson VL.
A must for any Harley rider whose bike means more to he or she than just basic transportion.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Well Made in America
Well Made in America - Asylum Mobilitarium
Harley-Davidson Motor Company is currently experiencing a slowdown in the motorcycle market. We all knew that it would happen eventually. Back in the summer of 2006, HD stock was at about seventy five dollars a share. As I type this, I notice that it’s almost at nine and a half! Now is a good time to buy, we hope that it will increase soon!
Harley has experienced several “crisis modes” in its history. According to the book, “Well Made in America,” they are the following;
1) By the start of World War I, HD was on a roll. Indian was its close competitor, with Excelsior-Henderson a close third. The other lesser brands bringing up the rear. The war hit at a time when the Company was heavily involved in racing and things were looking up. The government tasked the big motorcycle companies to build military machines for recon and messenger work. HD turned over its production from civilian to army within a few months. Police production was a priority as well. HD came out of the war in better shape than Indian because of wise decisions by the founders. These decisions would place Harley in a better spot for the next crisis to follow.
2) Ford came out with the Model T in the late teens. At one point the car was priced less than a HD motorcycle. In the early twenties, the public began seeing the benefit of having an enclosed vehicle. No longer could Harley market their product to the family man who wanted basic transportation for his brood. Sales plummeted during this time. The Company began to market bikes as leisure transport for the first time in its history. Still, the market was slim for bikes.
3) The Great Depression brought another blow to the Company just as things were improving. The founders wisely chose to shut down certain parts of the factory completely and lay off some workers. Indian on the other hand began building items such as refrigerators and washing machines in parts of the factory in Springfield that had previously built motorcycles. Harley’s police sales helped the company through this period. In the late thirties, Harley-Davidson and Indian were the only motorcycle manufactories in the states still standing.
4) As World War II began, the government asked the two manufacturers to come up with plans for a new military motorcycle. HD came up with the rare XA, based on a German DKW design, and the more common WLA. The Company built 88,000 of these models during the war. Besides the US, Russia accepted the bulk of the bikes under the Lend Lease Act. There are now collectors who pay Russian’s big bucks to find old WLA Harley’s sitting and forgotten in old barns and ship them back home to the U.S. Indian had never converted the Springfield plant away from building appliances so they were not in good shape to fill the orders from the Army and Navy like HD was. Subsequently, Indian never fully recovered from the war and folded in 1953.
5) After the war, the British began shipped bikes over to these shores. They were light, fast, and appealed to a younger rider. The hand clutch, which Harley only introduced in 1952, was also a hit. The cult movie “The Wild One,” came out in 1953. This movie was banned in England until 1969 by the way. Anyway, it was loosely based on the Hollister California incident in 1947. Parents were shocked at Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin taking over a fictional small town. What scared them the most was that the virginal female in the lead role so easily agreed to ride off on the back of Brando’s Triumph! What is ironic is that Marvin and his crew were on Harley’s, British Matchless bikes, as well as other brands. Brando and his gang were on Triumph’s and BSA’s. In all the hysteria, only Harley got the bad rap from the movie. Indeed, in the fifties, juvenile delinquents were often referred to as “Harley’s. The Company tried to fight this image for years. It was only in the eighties and nineties that HD started embracing the bad boy image. If only for a weekend, a guy that lives in a cubicle during the week could put on a black leather jacket and hopefully score with a biker chick that was going through her “Bad Boy” phase! Harley suffered in the fifties, but it was the sixties invasion by the Japanese that almost killed the Company.
6) At the beginning of the 1960’s Honda began an ad campaign that proclaimed; “You meet the nicest people on a Honda!” This was obviously directed to Middle America who had been bombarded over the years with negative stories about motorcyclists and how they would periodically rape and pillage cities and towns all over the country. Honda was successful with the “Honda Dream,” a step through bike that was as nice and friendly as a pink sweater! The Japanese dumped thousands of these and other models throughout the sixties in this country. Harley-Davidson had attempted in the fifties to market small bikes that appealed to a younger audience with mixed results. The Company acquired the Italian motorcycle manufacturer Aeromacchi in the early sixties. But it was the stigma of hooliganism directed toward riders of the orange and black that would forever taint the Company. The story of the demise of Harley in the decade of the 1960’s in part was because of the shift in the habits of the American motorcycle buying public. Another reason is that Harley was not able to keep up with the new technology in the bike industry because of lack of funds. And, it was the attitude of the grand-sons of the founders that the Company was invincible and that new tooling at the Juneau plant was not needed attributed to the Companies downturn and loss of market share as well. We can point to the fact that the Company went public for the first time in the mid 1960’s. The Company had always resisted doing this because of course of the Founders and their relatives wanting complete control.
7) In the late 1960’s Harley-Davidson was suffering from lack of sales and an old factory full of even older tooling. The Company began looking for investors to pump capitol into the only remaining American Motorcycle Company. A company with the name of Bangor-Punta approached HD to buy a majority share of stock. BP had a bad reputation at the time of buying rust-belt companies, dividing them up, and selling off the rest. There were no other big players waiting in the wings and it looked like it was a done deal. Fortunately, AMF Corporation was looking to expand its leisure activities branch and made a better deal than BP to buy the Company. It is lucky for us this happened. AMF has gotten a bad rap over the years because of shoddy workmanship of the bikes. In fact, it was AMF that ultimately saved Harley-Davidson. With AMF’s deep pockets, new tooling was acquired to build new types of bikes that Willie G was helping to design. The problem began when AMF tried to build motorcycles like they built bowling balls and pool tables. AMF pumped out so many bikes that quality was lacking. There were so many defective machines that came off the assembly line that motorcycles were not running when testing of the bikes happened before shipment to dealers. These motorcycles piled up at the end of the line and had to be made to perform to expectations before they were crated and sent out. Quality suffered again in the hands of owners. These bike riders were so disgusted with the product that many times the AMF logo was scraped off the bikes gas tanks and other areas. To find an AMF era Harley with the logo intact would and is a great find.
8) At the end of the seventies, AMF was tiring of pumping money into a losing proposition and began looking for a buyer for the Company. Luckily, executives including Willie G, and Vaughn Beal bought out AMF with a leverage buyout. It was a tough go for the first few years and many sleepless nights I’m sure. The new Evolution engine that AMF helped design in the 1970’s ultimately saved the Company just as the Knucklehead engine is credited in saving the Company during the last years of the Depression.
The late eighties and the nineties were great ones for the Company. There was resurgence in motorcycle ownership during the mid nineties. The aforementioned “Bad Boy” image that HD had fought all these years to overcome was now a selling point for the Company as bored guys and gals who wanted something different in their lives began accepting that lifestyle. Sales of black motorcycle jackets skyrocketed!
This decade also was a good one for Harley-Davidson. It was only in mid 2008 that the Company experienced a decline in sales. Like the other crisis modes that Harley has found itself in the last 105 years, hopefully wise ownership of the Company will guide it through these bad times as well.
I was recently asked what I thought of the Enthusiast and Hog Tales magazines becoming one publication. First I said,”Is nothing sacred?” The Enthusiast was the longest published motorcycle magazine in the world. Granted, lately the magazine seemed a poor relation to Hog Tales, which obviously the Company was putting forth more effort. The new rag is beautiful to look at, that’s for sure. But I’m not pleased with the pathetic attempt to appease Enthusiast devotees with the logo “Enthusiast” relegated to small print as an apparent afterthought sentence of explanation below the word “Hog” in very large type.
The next time you and your friends are hanging out at a bar and the conversation is lagging, instead of mumbling something about the weather, liven things up with a bit of bike trivia. For example, you could begin by asking what was the name of the machine that Dennis Hopper rode in “Easy Rider?” Some will know that Peter Fonda’s mount was called Captain America. Dennis Hopper’s Harley was called the “Billy Bike.” And if you know the plate number of Hopper’s bike, Ca.644755, you will certainly climb another rung or two on the Chapter status ladder!
One last bit of trivia. Both Harley-Davidson bikes used in the film were ex-LAPD motorcycles bought at auction.
I’m a big Rolling Stones fan! In fact I have a rare t-shirt from 1997 that had the HD logo and the Stones tour information on the shirt. As far as I know, this was one of the few times that the Company ever supported a concert tour.
Harley’s have always figured prominently with the Stones. For instance, in the film “Gimme Shelter,” which told the story of the end of the imagined “Age of Aquarius” after the peace and love Woodstock concert? It was of the 1969 Stones tour that ended with the disastourous concert at Altamont California. The Stones had hired the California chapter of the Hell’s Angels for site security. The only pay for the bikers was all the beer they could drink! Recipe for disaster!
In one important scene, you see Angel’s riding through the crowds on Harley’s to the front of the stage. A black man was beaten with pool sticks after he supposedly whipped a pistol out and was waving it around. The film has been analyzed over the years and sure enough there is a gun in his hand. Everything went from bad to worse after that. An Angel whacked Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane after Balin tried to stop a fight. Anyway, it’s an interesting film from an interesting time.
Also in the film is the legendary voice from the concert crowd at Madison Square Garden (where I finally saw the Stones in 2006,) obviously pleading with the band to play her favorite Stone’s tune, saying, ”Paint it Black, paint it black you devils!” There have been attempts over the years to find the female behind the voice but to no avail.
Bill (Willie Hank) Croom
Panther Creek HOG Historian since 2000
Youths led astray since 1955
Harley-Davidson Motor Company is currently experiencing a slowdown in the motorcycle market. We all knew that it would happen eventually. Back in the summer of 2006, HD stock was at about seventy five dollars a share. As I type this, I notice that it’s almost at nine and a half! Now is a good time to buy, we hope that it will increase soon!
Harley has experienced several “crisis modes” in its history. According to the book, “Well Made in America,” they are the following;
1) By the start of World War I, HD was on a roll. Indian was its close competitor, with Excelsior-Henderson a close third. The other lesser brands bringing up the rear. The war hit at a time when the Company was heavily involved in racing and things were looking up. The government tasked the big motorcycle companies to build military machines for recon and messenger work. HD turned over its production from civilian to army within a few months. Police production was a priority as well. HD came out of the war in better shape than Indian because of wise decisions by the founders. These decisions would place Harley in a better spot for the next crisis to follow.
2) Ford came out with the Model T in the late teens. At one point the car was priced less than a HD motorcycle. In the early twenties, the public began seeing the benefit of having an enclosed vehicle. No longer could Harley market their product to the family man who wanted basic transportation for his brood. Sales plummeted during this time. The Company began to market bikes as leisure transport for the first time in its history. Still, the market was slim for bikes.
3) The Great Depression brought another blow to the Company just as things were improving. The founders wisely chose to shut down certain parts of the factory completely and lay off some workers. Indian on the other hand began building items such as refrigerators and washing machines in parts of the factory in Springfield that had previously built motorcycles. Harley’s police sales helped the company through this period. In the late thirties, Harley-Davidson and Indian were the only motorcycle manufactories in the states still standing.
4) As World War II began, the government asked the two manufacturers to come up with plans for a new military motorcycle. HD came up with the rare XA, based on a German DKW design, and the more common WLA. The Company built 88,000 of these models during the war. Besides the US, Russia accepted the bulk of the bikes under the Lend Lease Act. There are now collectors who pay Russian’s big bucks to find old WLA Harley’s sitting and forgotten in old barns and ship them back home to the U.S. Indian had never converted the Springfield plant away from building appliances so they were not in good shape to fill the orders from the Army and Navy like HD was. Subsequently, Indian never fully recovered from the war and folded in 1953.
5) After the war, the British began shipped bikes over to these shores. They were light, fast, and appealed to a younger rider. The hand clutch, which Harley only introduced in 1952, was also a hit. The cult movie “The Wild One,” came out in 1953. This movie was banned in England until 1969 by the way. Anyway, it was loosely based on the Hollister California incident in 1947. Parents were shocked at Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin taking over a fictional small town. What scared them the most was that the virginal female in the lead role so easily agreed to ride off on the back of Brando’s Triumph! What is ironic is that Marvin and his crew were on Harley’s, British Matchless bikes, as well as other brands. Brando and his gang were on Triumph’s and BSA’s. In all the hysteria, only Harley got the bad rap from the movie. Indeed, in the fifties, juvenile delinquents were often referred to as “Harley’s. The Company tried to fight this image for years. It was only in the eighties and nineties that HD started embracing the bad boy image. If only for a weekend, a guy that lives in a cubicle during the week could put on a black leather jacket and hopefully score with a biker chick that was going through her “Bad Boy” phase! Harley suffered in the fifties, but it was the sixties invasion by the Japanese that almost killed the Company.
6) At the beginning of the 1960’s Honda began an ad campaign that proclaimed; “You meet the nicest people on a Honda!” This was obviously directed to Middle America who had been bombarded over the years with negative stories about motorcyclists and how they would periodically rape and pillage cities and towns all over the country. Honda was successful with the “Honda Dream,” a step through bike that was as nice and friendly as a pink sweater! The Japanese dumped thousands of these and other models throughout the sixties in this country. Harley-Davidson had attempted in the fifties to market small bikes that appealed to a younger audience with mixed results. The Company acquired the Italian motorcycle manufacturer Aeromacchi in the early sixties. But it was the stigma of hooliganism directed toward riders of the orange and black that would forever taint the Company. The story of the demise of Harley in the decade of the 1960’s in part was because of the shift in the habits of the American motorcycle buying public. Another reason is that Harley was not able to keep up with the new technology in the bike industry because of lack of funds. And, it was the attitude of the grand-sons of the founders that the Company was invincible and that new tooling at the Juneau plant was not needed attributed to the Companies downturn and loss of market share as well. We can point to the fact that the Company went public for the first time in the mid 1960’s. The Company had always resisted doing this because of course of the Founders and their relatives wanting complete control.
7) In the late 1960’s Harley-Davidson was suffering from lack of sales and an old factory full of even older tooling. The Company began looking for investors to pump capitol into the only remaining American Motorcycle Company. A company with the name of Bangor-Punta approached HD to buy a majority share of stock. BP had a bad reputation at the time of buying rust-belt companies, dividing them up, and selling off the rest. There were no other big players waiting in the wings and it looked like it was a done deal. Fortunately, AMF Corporation was looking to expand its leisure activities branch and made a better deal than BP to buy the Company. It is lucky for us this happened. AMF has gotten a bad rap over the years because of shoddy workmanship of the bikes. In fact, it was AMF that ultimately saved Harley-Davidson. With AMF’s deep pockets, new tooling was acquired to build new types of bikes that Willie G was helping to design. The problem began when AMF tried to build motorcycles like they built bowling balls and pool tables. AMF pumped out so many bikes that quality was lacking. There were so many defective machines that came off the assembly line that motorcycles were not running when testing of the bikes happened before shipment to dealers. These motorcycles piled up at the end of the line and had to be made to perform to expectations before they were crated and sent out. Quality suffered again in the hands of owners. These bike riders were so disgusted with the product that many times the AMF logo was scraped off the bikes gas tanks and other areas. To find an AMF era Harley with the logo intact would and is a great find.
8) At the end of the seventies, AMF was tiring of pumping money into a losing proposition and began looking for a buyer for the Company. Luckily, executives including Willie G, and Vaughn Beal bought out AMF with a leverage buyout. It was a tough go for the first few years and many sleepless nights I’m sure. The new Evolution engine that AMF helped design in the 1970’s ultimately saved the Company just as the Knucklehead engine is credited in saving the Company during the last years of the Depression.
The late eighties and the nineties were great ones for the Company. There was resurgence in motorcycle ownership during the mid nineties. The aforementioned “Bad Boy” image that HD had fought all these years to overcome was now a selling point for the Company as bored guys and gals who wanted something different in their lives began accepting that lifestyle. Sales of black motorcycle jackets skyrocketed!
This decade also was a good one for Harley-Davidson. It was only in mid 2008 that the Company experienced a decline in sales. Like the other crisis modes that Harley has found itself in the last 105 years, hopefully wise ownership of the Company will guide it through these bad times as well.
I was recently asked what I thought of the Enthusiast and Hog Tales magazines becoming one publication. First I said,”Is nothing sacred?” The Enthusiast was the longest published motorcycle magazine in the world. Granted, lately the magazine seemed a poor relation to Hog Tales, which obviously the Company was putting forth more effort. The new rag is beautiful to look at, that’s for sure. But I’m not pleased with the pathetic attempt to appease Enthusiast devotees with the logo “Enthusiast” relegated to small print as an apparent afterthought sentence of explanation below the word “Hog” in very large type.
The next time you and your friends are hanging out at a bar and the conversation is lagging, instead of mumbling something about the weather, liven things up with a bit of bike trivia. For example, you could begin by asking what was the name of the machine that Dennis Hopper rode in “Easy Rider?” Some will know that Peter Fonda’s mount was called Captain America. Dennis Hopper’s Harley was called the “Billy Bike.” And if you know the plate number of Hopper’s bike, Ca.644755, you will certainly climb another rung or two on the Chapter status ladder!
One last bit of trivia. Both Harley-Davidson bikes used in the film were ex-LAPD motorcycles bought at auction.
I’m a big Rolling Stones fan! In fact I have a rare t-shirt from 1997 that had the HD logo and the Stones tour information on the shirt. As far as I know, this was one of the few times that the Company ever supported a concert tour.
Harley’s have always figured prominently with the Stones. For instance, in the film “Gimme Shelter,” which told the story of the end of the imagined “Age of Aquarius” after the peace and love Woodstock concert? It was of the 1969 Stones tour that ended with the disastourous concert at Altamont California. The Stones had hired the California chapter of the Hell’s Angels for site security. The only pay for the bikers was all the beer they could drink! Recipe for disaster!
In one important scene, you see Angel’s riding through the crowds on Harley’s to the front of the stage. A black man was beaten with pool sticks after he supposedly whipped a pistol out and was waving it around. The film has been analyzed over the years and sure enough there is a gun in his hand. Everything went from bad to worse after that. An Angel whacked Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane after Balin tried to stop a fight. Anyway, it’s an interesting film from an interesting time.
Also in the film is the legendary voice from the concert crowd at Madison Square Garden (where I finally saw the Stones in 2006,) obviously pleading with the band to play her favorite Stone’s tune, saying, ”Paint it Black, paint it black you devils!” There have been attempts over the years to find the female behind the voice but to no avail.
Bill (Willie Hank) Croom
Panther Creek HOG Historian since 2000
Youths led astray since 1955
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Ace Cafe
The Ace Cafe has been the motorcycling mecca for much of Europe since the early sixties. That's when the Mods and the Rockers were often at odds on the streets of England.
I was there once, on the Northern Circular in London. By that time, it has settled down to a somewhat calm existence, not the nightly fights between the leather clad Rockers, and the stovepipe pants, blazer and skinny tie Vespa riding Mods. The Who's album "Quadropenia" was written by Pete Townsend and described the life of a Mod. The cover art showed a rider wearing a long car coat, and a Vespa like scooter festooned with lights, mirrors and the like that was for some reason popular at the time.
The book, "Ace Cafe,Then and Now," is an excellent history of the former truck stop. Doing the "Ton" where BSA, Norton, and Triump bikers would "drop a coin into the jukebox," run outside, jump on their bike, race down to a pre-designated point, and roar back before the song ended. There were many fatalities during this time, but it was and still is a badge of honor to "Do the Ton."
I was there once, on the Northern Circular in London. By that time, it has settled down to a somewhat calm existence, not the nightly fights between the leather clad Rockers, and the stovepipe pants, blazer and skinny tie Vespa riding Mods. The Who's album "Quadropenia" was written by Pete Townsend and described the life of a Mod. The cover art showed a rider wearing a long car coat, and a Vespa like scooter festooned with lights, mirrors and the like that was for some reason popular at the time.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Leaping Harley
This looks like it may be from the 1940's. The bike has the "Bobber" look that was popular after WWII. The owner would cut off the front of the fender, then turn it to the right, and attach the fender to the existing clamps.
No front fender completes the look.
Monday, August 16, 2010
September 2010 Asylum Mobilitarium
Next time you’re at a cocktail party, and the subject, and you know it will, comes up as to why as to why AMF sold Harley-Davidson in 1981, you the informed will impress the multitudes in attendance with this short history from the book “Well Made In America,” that I spoke of last time.
First off, AMF saved Harley-Davidson. Bangor- Punta was trying to buy Harley in 1969 when AMF stepped in with a better and more palatable offer to counter BP’s.
Bangor –Punta, as it had done many times in the past, would have chopped up Harley and sold the pieces to other manufacturers. No more Harley-Davidson as of 1969.
AMF wanted to expand its line of leisure products, so it bought the struggling motorcycle company. AMF poured in millions of dollars during the next ten years or so in new manufacturing equipment, moved the assembly line to York, Pennsylvania, and improved the salaried workers lot in pay and benefits.
Fast forward to 1981. AMF had grown tired of trying to build motorcycles as fast as they built bowling balls. The company was pumping out defective AMF-Harley-Davidson’s at such a rate that it wasn’t uncommon to have fifty bikes sitting at the end of York’s assembly line in various stages of not working!
So in 1981 13 Harley-Davidson executives (including Willie G Davidson) put up money, a lot of it their own including pensions, to purchase it in a leveraged buyout (LBO).
These were the facts that kept these guys up at night according to “Well Made in America”:
You’re company in 1981 is losing sizable chunks of market share to much bigger Japanese competitors.
The economy is beginning to slide, and many blue collar workers- HD’s core customers in 1981-are facing layoffs.
Sky-high interest rates in 1981 are also making it hard for people to buy motorcycles.
The AMF manufacturing systems, by 1981 are already outdated and product quality are in-adequate to meet world class competition.
Harley’s product line is seriously out of date.
The product has been stereotyped for years with a rough, tough image.
Japanese competitors are unloading thousands of products on American shores that compete directly with HD’s.
Wow, it didn’t seem like such a good deal. To most investors, it looked like another case of an old-line U.S. manufacturer being hammered into oblivion by Japanese competitors whose basic strategy was to invade American markets with a high-quality products at substantially lower prices.
Despite all these negatives, consider what happened when the 13 Harley-Davidson managers still went ahead and bought the company from AMF in an $81.5 million LBO:
The market for heavyweight motorcycles declined by 20% within a year.
Harley lost more market share as the Japanese ramped up its invasion with Harley look-alikes (clones,) at discounted prices.
For the first time in almost fifty years, Harley lost money.
Harley had to lay off more than 40 percent of its workforce.
Saddled with a staggering LBO debt, Harley-Davidson Motor Company had to borrow even more money just to service its debt and keep going.
Harley’s major lender, Citicorp, seriously considered withdrawing its support and taking steps to liquidate the company for whatever the assets would bring.
But why did these astute businessman buy a company that was being blown away by competition from the Evil Empire? It was both emotional and rational according to “Well Made.”
Harley did have a few things going for it. Like now, the company had an extraordinarily loyal customer base, a well-established dealer network, a high-value product, and a strong, in-place management team.
These factors may or may not have been enough to explain the buyout. Other factors may be the Harley-Davidson “mystique.” Or as one Harley rider, an investment banker calls it “the value of intangibles.”
Harley-Davidson, from its start in 1903, has been unique, one of the few consumer products (like Corvette,) to evolve into an American institution. To Harley owners, the bikes have heart and a soul. Harley’s have raw power and a “voice,” a potato-potato thump that the company once tried to patent.
Harley riders run the gamut from blue collar types to doctors, lawyers, entertainers you name it. Actor Mickey Rourke has written, “It’s a personal thing that can’t be described. It’s part of you.”
It’s the number one corporate logo tattoo in the world. Once, in deepest darkest Africa, several outlines of corporate brands were shown to people whose transportation was still their feet. Of the hundred or so images that were shown to the village elders, Chevrolet’s bowtie, the Playboy rabbit head,and Harley’s bar and shield were in the top ten most recognized.
These are some of the reasons the executives chose to buy the company. But one of the original team got cold feet at the last minute and backed out, wanting to save his pension and other assets. I think he jumped off a building or something in the nineties.
Last but not least, Harley had a trump card. The Evolution (Evo) engine came out just in time (1983) to save the company as the Knucklehead engine did after the Depression in 1936. Oil-tight and reliable, it’s still installed in the Sportster line to this day.
Some of you know my old friend Brad Savage. He’s famous for many reasons one of which being that he rode a 1977 Harley-Davidson XLCR Café’ Racer back in the Disco era. You might remember this machine; it was black, black, and black. It had short handlebars kind of like a British bike. “Siamese” exhaust, and had cool written all over it.
But it didn’t sell.
The bike was only produced for two years and is highly collectable today, if you can find one. The designer, Willie G, could not understand the lack of interest in the bike by Harley folk. But, it was too non-Harley for the Orange and Black diehards. It was too Harley for the “bar hopper” or true “café racer” crowd. It was about twenty years too early, today it might work. HD riders today are more forgiving about design changes, and we already have the V-Rod, which is a visual, as well as mechanical change in direction for the company.
Anyway, my friend (Brad Savage) worked in bars on formally cool (in the seventies) upper Greenville Avenue. In those days there was a dance club on every corner. I‘m talking clubs built for that purpose, not like now where you might have a small corner or they clear out tables for a make-shift dance floor.
The Disco era was just hitting Dallas, which at the time was always five years behind the times. He worked at a place called “Packard’s which was in Old Town shopping center. He had once worked at Annie’s Santa Fe, Andrew’s and other haunts of this writer’s early adulthood.
It was during his Packard’s day’s bartending that he rode his Café Racer. He was a popular guy with the chicks (now grandmothers, hard to believe,) since he could hand out free drinks to a select few who lived in the Village nearby (not too far to go after the club closed,) and he had that strange Harley that was parked near the front door. It didn’t hurt that his name was, well, Brad either. If his name was Woodrow it wouldn’t have had the same effect, except everyone might call him “Wood.” Not too bad a nickname during the morally loose “Disco Era.”
Some of the women who packed Packard’s, which like the Pet Shop Boys tune says (in clubs,never actually look at each other,) would ask the bouncer who the black bike belongs to. The ladies would put two and two together at this point. The guy has a cool, unusual Harley, doesn’t look like a typical 1970’s Harley rider (forgive me,) and his name is Brad. Better to tell their girlfriends the next day at work after going home with a guy on a Tuesday night (it was the Disco era after all,) that his name was Brad, and not Millard.
Yes, Brad had an apartment in The Village, which to this day is amazingly still a pretty good place to live. Just don’t get lost on the north side of Northwest Highway after dark. The XLCR was his only mode of transport, and he rode it daily. He was and is a trust fund kid from an old northeastern family, but he was disowned in the seventies by his family for going into the Army, serving in Vietnam, getting a few medals and shrapnel along the way, and marrying a Playboy bunny from the L.A. club, and living in the hills above the Sunset Strip hanging out with the early, early Doobie Brothers.
All this instead of going to college.
Everything is patched up nowadays but back then he was strapped for cash. Luckily, he knew all about booze and making drinks from his starter ex-wife the bunny, and he could sling drinks like Tom Cruise in that movie I forgot what the name is. Brad parked his machine in the living room of his ground floor apartment. This was about 1978 when I was sweating in an ill fitting bullet-proof vest in East Dallas.
I remember that most of the time, girls would gladly pick him up for a date. This was amazing to me in those days, now not so weird. Sometimes he would pick them up on his black bike, sometimes forgetting to say that he was picking them up on two wheels. To some ladies, he was their ultimate bad-boy hero , others would ask “How do you turn on the AC?” They would promptly be off the list!
These were the waning days of Hot Pants. Think of early Southwest Airlines. My friend waxes poetically about blasting up Greenville Avenue with the girl in the orange hot pants screaming to go faster! Yes, the bike was fast, and with the new-for-Harley dual front disk brakes, it could stop on a dime.
Brad was not really into the big bad Harley crowd of the time. Few big bike riders were named Brad in those days. They would normally look down their noses at the strange black bike. But, just sometimes, these guys would look at Brad’s newest soon to be ex-girlfriend, and tell themselves; maybe this dude HAS something there. It also helped because some people thought Brad looked like the guy from the TV show, “BJ and the Bear.”
And, he would promise them free drinks at Packard’s.
Unfortunately Brad sold the XLCR later on. He quit Packard’s, became a sales rep, moved to an early Fox and Jacobs house in an early Plano, had his second marriage come and go, got married for a third time to a much younger model, and got divorced again. So there you go.
A few years ago at a Starbucks on Greenville (no not that Starbuck’s, the one across the street!) he told me he had a line on another Café Racer. It was going for big bucks, but his trust fund had kicked in finally.
There is a book called “Ed Roth, His Life and Times, Cars, and Art.” It was written by Pat Ganahl in 2003. If you’ve ever seen the “Rat Fink” character you will know who I’m talking about. If you don’t, you’re too young! I met the man (Ed) at a car show once. He moved to Utah when he discovered that California dreaming wasn’t what it once was. I volunteered that I went looking for the house the Beach Boys grew up in at Hawthorne, California. I found out the house was gone and paved over by the 405! My personal vision of the imaginary California Dreaming legend was somewhat dimmed. He tried to act like he was impressed, and I came away thinking he was a really nice guy. Ed “Big Daddy” Roth died on April 4, 2001.
Willie Hank
Panther Creek Historian
Youths gone astray 1955
First off, AMF saved Harley-Davidson. Bangor- Punta was trying to buy Harley in 1969 when AMF stepped in with a better and more palatable offer to counter BP’s.
Bangor –Punta, as it had done many times in the past, would have chopped up Harley and sold the pieces to other manufacturers. No more Harley-Davidson as of 1969.
AMF wanted to expand its line of leisure products, so it bought the struggling motorcycle company. AMF poured in millions of dollars during the next ten years or so in new manufacturing equipment, moved the assembly line to York, Pennsylvania, and improved the salaried workers lot in pay and benefits.
Fast forward to 1981. AMF had grown tired of trying to build motorcycles as fast as they built bowling balls. The company was pumping out defective AMF-Harley-Davidson’s at such a rate that it wasn’t uncommon to have fifty bikes sitting at the end of York’s assembly line in various stages of not working!
So in 1981 13 Harley-Davidson executives (including Willie G Davidson) put up money, a lot of it their own including pensions, to purchase it in a leveraged buyout (LBO).
These were the facts that kept these guys up at night according to “Well Made in America”:
You’re company in 1981 is losing sizable chunks of market share to much bigger Japanese competitors.
The economy is beginning to slide, and many blue collar workers- HD’s core customers in 1981-are facing layoffs.
Sky-high interest rates in 1981 are also making it hard for people to buy motorcycles.
The AMF manufacturing systems, by 1981 are already outdated and product quality are in-adequate to meet world class competition.
Harley’s product line is seriously out of date.
The product has been stereotyped for years with a rough, tough image.
Japanese competitors are unloading thousands of products on American shores that compete directly with HD’s.
Wow, it didn’t seem like such a good deal. To most investors, it looked like another case of an old-line U.S. manufacturer being hammered into oblivion by Japanese competitors whose basic strategy was to invade American markets with a high-quality products at substantially lower prices.
Despite all these negatives, consider what happened when the 13 Harley-Davidson managers still went ahead and bought the company from AMF in an $81.5 million LBO:
The market for heavyweight motorcycles declined by 20% within a year.
Harley lost more market share as the Japanese ramped up its invasion with Harley look-alikes (clones,) at discounted prices.
For the first time in almost fifty years, Harley lost money.
Harley had to lay off more than 40 percent of its workforce.
Saddled with a staggering LBO debt, Harley-Davidson Motor Company had to borrow even more money just to service its debt and keep going.
Harley’s major lender, Citicorp, seriously considered withdrawing its support and taking steps to liquidate the company for whatever the assets would bring.
But why did these astute businessman buy a company that was being blown away by competition from the Evil Empire? It was both emotional and rational according to “Well Made.”
Harley did have a few things going for it. Like now, the company had an extraordinarily loyal customer base, a well-established dealer network, a high-value product, and a strong, in-place management team.
These factors may or may not have been enough to explain the buyout. Other factors may be the Harley-Davidson “mystique.” Or as one Harley rider, an investment banker calls it “the value of intangibles.”
Harley-Davidson, from its start in 1903, has been unique, one of the few consumer products (like Corvette,) to evolve into an American institution. To Harley owners, the bikes have heart and a soul. Harley’s have raw power and a “voice,” a potato-potato thump that the company once tried to patent.
Harley riders run the gamut from blue collar types to doctors, lawyers, entertainers you name it. Actor Mickey Rourke has written, “It’s a personal thing that can’t be described. It’s part of you.”
It’s the number one corporate logo tattoo in the world. Once, in deepest darkest Africa, several outlines of corporate brands were shown to people whose transportation was still their feet. Of the hundred or so images that were shown to the village elders, Chevrolet’s bowtie, the Playboy rabbit head,and Harley’s bar and shield were in the top ten most recognized.
These are some of the reasons the executives chose to buy the company. But one of the original team got cold feet at the last minute and backed out, wanting to save his pension and other assets. I think he jumped off a building or something in the nineties.
Last but not least, Harley had a trump card. The Evolution (Evo) engine came out just in time (1983) to save the company as the Knucklehead engine did after the Depression in 1936. Oil-tight and reliable, it’s still installed in the Sportster line to this day.
Some of you know my old friend Brad Savage. He’s famous for many reasons one of which being that he rode a 1977 Harley-Davidson XLCR Café’ Racer back in the Disco era. You might remember this machine; it was black, black, and black. It had short handlebars kind of like a British bike. “Siamese” exhaust, and had cool written all over it.
But it didn’t sell.
The bike was only produced for two years and is highly collectable today, if you can find one. The designer, Willie G, could not understand the lack of interest in the bike by Harley folk. But, it was too non-Harley for the Orange and Black diehards. It was too Harley for the “bar hopper” or true “café racer” crowd. It was about twenty years too early, today it might work. HD riders today are more forgiving about design changes, and we already have the V-Rod, which is a visual, as well as mechanical change in direction for the company.
Anyway, my friend (Brad Savage) worked in bars on formally cool (in the seventies) upper Greenville Avenue. In those days there was a dance club on every corner. I‘m talking clubs built for that purpose, not like now where you might have a small corner or they clear out tables for a make-shift dance floor.
The Disco era was just hitting Dallas, which at the time was always five years behind the times. He worked at a place called “Packard’s which was in Old Town shopping center. He had once worked at Annie’s Santa Fe, Andrew’s and other haunts of this writer’s early adulthood.
It was during his Packard’s day’s bartending that he rode his Café Racer. He was a popular guy with the chicks (now grandmothers, hard to believe,) since he could hand out free drinks to a select few who lived in the Village nearby (not too far to go after the club closed,) and he had that strange Harley that was parked near the front door. It didn’t hurt that his name was, well, Brad either. If his name was Woodrow it wouldn’t have had the same effect, except everyone might call him “Wood.” Not too bad a nickname during the morally loose “Disco Era.”
Some of the women who packed Packard’s, which like the Pet Shop Boys tune says (in clubs,never actually look at each other,) would ask the bouncer who the black bike belongs to. The ladies would put two and two together at this point. The guy has a cool, unusual Harley, doesn’t look like a typical 1970’s Harley rider (forgive me,) and his name is Brad. Better to tell their girlfriends the next day at work after going home with a guy on a Tuesday night (it was the Disco era after all,) that his name was Brad, and not Millard.
Yes, Brad had an apartment in The Village, which to this day is amazingly still a pretty good place to live. Just don’t get lost on the north side of Northwest Highway after dark. The XLCR was his only mode of transport, and he rode it daily. He was and is a trust fund kid from an old northeastern family, but he was disowned in the seventies by his family for going into the Army, serving in Vietnam, getting a few medals and shrapnel along the way, and marrying a Playboy bunny from the L.A. club, and living in the hills above the Sunset Strip hanging out with the early, early Doobie Brothers.
All this instead of going to college.
Everything is patched up nowadays but back then he was strapped for cash. Luckily, he knew all about booze and making drinks from his starter ex-wife the bunny, and he could sling drinks like Tom Cruise in that movie I forgot what the name is. Brad parked his machine in the living room of his ground floor apartment. This was about 1978 when I was sweating in an ill fitting bullet-proof vest in East Dallas.
I remember that most of the time, girls would gladly pick him up for a date. This was amazing to me in those days, now not so weird. Sometimes he would pick them up on his black bike, sometimes forgetting to say that he was picking them up on two wheels. To some ladies, he was their ultimate bad-boy hero , others would ask “How do you turn on the AC?” They would promptly be off the list!
These were the waning days of Hot Pants. Think of early Southwest Airlines. My friend waxes poetically about blasting up Greenville Avenue with the girl in the orange hot pants screaming to go faster! Yes, the bike was fast, and with the new-for-Harley dual front disk brakes, it could stop on a dime.
Brad was not really into the big bad Harley crowd of the time. Few big bike riders were named Brad in those days. They would normally look down their noses at the strange black bike. But, just sometimes, these guys would look at Brad’s newest soon to be ex-girlfriend, and tell themselves; maybe this dude HAS something there. It also helped because some people thought Brad looked like the guy from the TV show, “BJ and the Bear.”
And, he would promise them free drinks at Packard’s.
Unfortunately Brad sold the XLCR later on. He quit Packard’s, became a sales rep, moved to an early Fox and Jacobs house in an early Plano, had his second marriage come and go, got married for a third time to a much younger model, and got divorced again. So there you go.
A few years ago at a Starbucks on Greenville (no not that Starbuck’s, the one across the street!) he told me he had a line on another Café Racer. It was going for big bucks, but his trust fund had kicked in finally.
There is a book called “Ed Roth, His Life and Times, Cars, and Art.” It was written by Pat Ganahl in 2003. If you’ve ever seen the “Rat Fink” character you will know who I’m talking about. If you don’t, you’re too young! I met the man (Ed) at a car show once. He moved to Utah when he discovered that California dreaming wasn’t what it once was. I volunteered that I went looking for the house the Beach Boys grew up in at Hawthorne, California. I found out the house was gone and paved over by the 405! My personal vision of the imaginary California Dreaming legend was somewhat dimmed. He tried to act like he was impressed, and I came away thinking he was a really nice guy. Ed “Big Daddy” Roth died on April 4, 2001.
Willie Hank
Panther Creek Historian
Youths gone astray 1955
Saturday, August 14, 2010
V-J Day
65 years ago today WWII ended. The Japanese had planned to defend their homeland to the last man,woman,and child. Evidence of how violent the struggle would be was seen at the battles of Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, the last two battles in the Pacific.
Fanatical and totally dedicated to the Samurai code, it was a disgrace to surrender, hence the Marines had to kill the vast majority of the defenders, few were taken prisoner.
Experts believe that over one million American and Japanese soldiers and countless Japanese civilians would be killed in the invasion. Olympic would have been the initial invasion, Coronet would be the second.
My Dad was in the Philippine's in the Fall of 1945, he surely would have been part of these two D-Days since the islands were to be a stepping off point towards Japan.
The war was conservatively estimated to have lasted until 1948.
There are 118,218 WWII veteran's alive in Texas today. U.S. Department of Veteran's affairs says that they are dying at a rate of 800 a day. It is estimated that in 2020, there will be only 17,000 WWII veterans alive in Texas.
Fanatical and totally dedicated to the Samurai code, it was a disgrace to surrender, hence the Marines had to kill the vast majority of the defenders, few were taken prisoner.
Experts believe that over one million American and Japanese soldiers and countless Japanese civilians would be killed in the invasion. Olympic would have been the initial invasion, Coronet would be the second.
My Dad was in the Philippine's in the Fall of 1945, he surely would have been part of these two D-Days since the islands were to be a stepping off point towards Japan.
The war was conservatively estimated to have lasted until 1948.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Twilight Time
Twilight Time skating rink was a BIG hangout on Elam Rd. Bands would play there for "sock hops." One was Southwest F.O.B. named after a trucking company I believe. Most were Samuell HS students.
Dan Seals ( England Dan) and John Ford Coley played in the band. Later they were England Dan and John Ford Coley natch, and scored some AM radio hits.
Sadly England Dan died not long ago at age 61.
What happens to our old haunts. Does everyones homestead and surrounding areas alway go south? That means North Dallas, Plano, Rockwall, all the areas we call home now will may go the way of The Grove. We will be living in Oklahoma someday.
Big View
One of the good things about being a Scorpio is that you focus on the particular things that you are passionate about. Other things as I like to say you "flatline" and ignore.
This is the good and the bad about being one of the dark signs of the zodiac.
In concentrating on these things in life so passionately, I find that many times I'm totally blown away about items that are right in front of my face. I'm surprised and disgusted that I didn't see it coming.
When I was on the police department, I had to focus on what was going on around me, locally at least, it's a survival technique.
But it's the Big View as I like to call it that I miss out at times.
I need to focus more on what is going on in the larger world around me.
Nuff said.
This is the good and the bad about being one of the dark signs of the zodiac.
In concentrating on these things in life so passionately, I find that many times I'm totally blown away about items that are right in front of my face. I'm surprised and disgusted that I didn't see it coming.
When I was on the police department, I had to focus on what was going on around me, locally at least, it's a survival technique.
But it's the Big View as I like to call it that I miss out at times.
I need to focus more on what is going on in the larger world around me.
Nuff said.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Harley and Indian Wars
A little known fact in the Harley-Davidson and Indian wars before WWII. Representatives from both companies would meet in NYC yearly to "fix" the prices of their motorcycles. Riders never knew this as it would take away from the "rivalry," that supposedly existed. This is a last year 1953 Indian.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Founders
The four founders of Harley-Davidson were of Scottish decent. They were a conservative group, many dealers called them just cheap. Notoriously cheap.
But it served them well over the years, when the Depression hit, the company had cash reserves that Indian for instance, didn't possess.
One story has it that in the 1920's there were HD racers all over the country racing for the orange and black when telegrams went out saying the racing program had been canceled for the time being.
The "Wrecking Crew" sent messages to Milwaukee asking how they, and their machines, should get back home.
The management sent back a terse message to the homeless riders.
"Anyway you can."
Basically it was saying that Harley expected the guys to pool their own money to get back to Wisconsin.
Some of the riders defected to Indian, and never came back.
But it served them well over the years, when the Depression hit, the company had cash reserves that Indian for instance, didn't possess.
One story has it that in the 1920's there were HD racers all over the country racing for the orange and black when telegrams went out saying the racing program had been canceled for the time being.
The "Wrecking Crew" sent messages to Milwaukee asking how they, and their machines, should get back home.
The management sent back a terse message to the homeless riders.
"Anyway you can."
Basically it was saying that Harley expected the guys to pool their own money to get back to Wisconsin.
Some of the riders defected to Indian, and never came back.
Women riders
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