May 2011 Asylum Mobilitarium

May 2011 Asylum Mobilitarium

I saw on Facebook recently from the Harley-Davidson Museum that a new book has been released by author, Rin Tanaka.  I have a book that he wrote in 2005 titled, “My Freedamn! 3. The book was all about vintage jackets and t-shirts. It is kind of a coffee table book that chronicles motorcycle outer wear from basically the 1940’s to the 1970’s.

As most (some, well a few) PCH’ers know, Willie Hank is a big fan of vintage motorcycle duds. There used to be a place in Wichita Falls called “Ghost Clothes.”   I visited the establishment in 2004 on the way to Sturgis. You would find old Indian, Harley-Davidson, Schott, and Sears Roebuck leather jackets, chaps, t-shirts, as well as rare HD AMF motorcycle clothing.

Sears-Roebuck?  Really? According to the book, 1960’s Sears, and Montgomery-Ward motorcycle jackets, with the red velvet lining, go for big bucks. There is a cool couple and old friends of mine and many PCH’ers, Ron and Mary Barker, who own an authentic Sears-Roebuck jacket from the 60’s. Ron kind of grew out of it over the years so Mary wears it well now. I told her once that her jacket was worth a heck of a lot of money, and she still wears it proudly!

By the way, last time I checked, Ghost Clothes was unfortunately out of business. But you can still find authentic, vintage leather clothing on several websites. But be aware, motorcycling in Willie Hank’s opinion is about prayer and karma. In the karma realm, wearing another biker’s jacket with tears, scratches, pins, patches, bug splats and other grease and grime of the road, borders on bad karma.

If your brother, sister, father, mother or close friend hands down a favorite road worn piece of  clothing, that’s cool, that’s motorcycle history, but don’t buy a jacket off E-Bay and pass it off as your own.  

I said all that to say this. Rin Tanaka has come out with a new book on biker clothing. Harley-Davidson agreed in 2007-2008 to let Tanaka photograph many of the items in their vast archives of historic and vintage clothes from 1903 to the present.

It’s available from the Museum for $40.00. You have to call; they don’t have web based ordering system yet at the HD Museum.

I’m a fan of the “Car in the Barn,” series. Jay Leno has written the forwards in a couple of the books. There is “Cobra in the Barn,” “Corvette in the Barn,” and “Vincent in the Barn,” which is about finding old motorcycles in garages, back yards, and yes, barns!

In one of the stories, there are a couple of guys who flew to Russia because they had a lead on some old Harley-Davidson WLA bikes. They were picked up at the Moscow airport and driven 100 miles or so outside the city by a couple of guys they took for Russian Mafia. Scared out of their wits, they worried as they were driven to a secluded house.

Well, there was no barn so the guys thought, well this is it, and we’ll be robbed and dumped   in a nearby ditch. They approached the house that was very, very dark. No barn or garage, suspicious looking Russian guys, no cell phone service, no silly Facebook  (checking in) “Scary Russian farmhouse ,” our hero’s thought that their number was up.

As they were led downstairs at the farmhouse, sweating profusely, one of the Russians flipped on the light in what turned out to be the basement. To the Americans surprise, there were fifty or so WWII WLA’s that had been in the farmhouse basement for 65 years.  Long story very short because of this limited space, the good guys have gone back several times and brought back many boatloads of historic Harley-Davidsons to restore.

Harley built 88k military bikes in WWII. The second best customer besides the U.S. was the former Soviet Union.

Willie Hank, Historian