Long ago, in my young hippy radical days, I rented a room in a house on Florentia Street on north Queen Anne, a place I had found on an ad on the message board at a hippy radical bookstore in the U District that said, “heads preferred”. Sure enough, it turned out to be a pretty cool place, I stayed there most of the summer and fall. So one day Mike, my landlord, said, “Hey, I just bought a Harley, come help me pick it up!” I said, “Sure!” and off we went in a 1961 Ford Galaxy station wagon. Mike had seen an ad in the paper and agreed to give this guy $250 for the bike, sight unseen. It turned out the house was in Top Hat neighborhood, right by where I was raised. We pulled into a driveway off 1st Ave S just up from 102nd and there, sitting in the driveway, was a complete original military Harley 45 WLA two-wheeler. It even had the old oil bath air cleaner still in place, and the military ammo box saddle bags and the windshield with the canvas lower section. “Hang on”, the guy says, as he pulls out a ladder. “I think I got some stuff upstairs in the loft”. He went up the ladder and handed down the rifle scabbard and some other stuff. This would have been around 1972 or so. Easy Rider had been out a few years, and Mike wanted to build a chopper. We broke the windshield cramming the bike into the back of the Galaxy with all the seats down. We tied it in with rope and drove back to Queen Anne with the ass end hanging out the back so low it’s a good thing we didn’t try the Counterbalance. The oil bath air filter turned out to have oil in it, which leaked all over the back of the station wagon. Shit. When we got it home, I had to go to work, but the rest of the guys played with it, charged the battery, put some gas and oil in the tanks, and it fired up and ran! The next day was Saturday, so Mike and I got busy on the project. First thing we took off all the army stuff and tossed it in a pile in the corner, along with the crash bars, windshield, and front fender, everything that is now unobtanium. Mike had bought a small oxy-acetylene torch kit and he was ready to go to town. That and a die grinder was all he needed. First we tore the front end off the bike, disassembled it, threw the rockers and everything in the discard pile, and Mike cut the lower legs off where they were originally welded at the factory, revealing the short pegs they were fitted over. He had gone to a wrecking yard and bought two radius rods off a ’49 Ford. When you straighten the two bent tabs on the end of the rods, they just happen to be 5/8” holes, just like the Harley front axle. And when you cut them off at about 5 feet long, they just happen to fit over those pegs on the lower triple clamp of the Harley 45, making a rigid front end about 18” over stock. Then he took the cutting torch and grinder to the frame, cutting off all the sidecar brackets and anything else he didn’t need. The neck was torch cut almost off from the bottom behind the bearing housing, and bent up by way of a water pipe cheater to about a 40 degree rake or so, eyeball straight. A piece of flatbar was cut to fit the notch so created, and welded in using gas and coat hanger for welding rod. Then a quick spray can paint job over all the welds and grinds, and it went back together nicely. No front fender, of course, and the brake wasn’t hooked up, but he needed it for a spacer. Voila, instant chopper. I remember standing there looking at that monstrosity, and I said, “Mike, you’re not going to actually ride that thing are you?” “Naw”, he said, “I’m going to find some idiot and sell it to him”. And that’s what he did, the very next week, for $600. I hope the poor fool never got it running. Many years later, I got to thinking about that long narrow back yard behind the house on Florentia Street, and the garage in back, and that pile of takeoff parts in the corner. I was working in Interbay those days and thought, if I looked for it, I could find that alley again, and maybe, just maybe, the garage would still be there and who knows, maybe the pile of parts would still be laying where we threw them! So one day, on the way home, I did just that. I found Florentia street and figured out what house it was. Nothing had changed, and I went around the block and turned into the alley. The garage was gone. The back yard was gone. In fact, every back yard of every house on Florentia street that faced that alley were all gone, replaced by a series of two and three story condominimums, and the alley was a jam packed parking lot! There are probably 500 people living in that alley! I think it’s time to move to Spokane or something… I wonder what happened to those Harley parts… :-{)}
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 04:16:09 +0000
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