Club Cobra - Cars of the 50 & 60's

Those were the days.

I hope you like my true story about the early '70's in Mandan, North Dakota, where I grew up.

It was a "Toad" night for me.

One warm October morning, on a Saturday, my friend Eddy and I started out and went south of town, 20 miles, to Graner Bottoms on the Mandan side of the Missouri River. Back then you could ride dirt as far and long as you wanted to explore. It had just become all Corps of Engineer public land for back-up head-waters of the Oahe reservoir. I had a beater '66 Honda 305 Scrambler and Ed had a new '70-'71 Kawasaki 350 Bighorn.

We rode along the river, through the dense woods for miles and miles and played on some sandbars in shallow water. We rode hard all day. Being dumb and in our early 20's, we never thought to take drinking water, and at the end of the hot day, about 5:30 PM, we were absolutely dying of thirst.

Well, when we came out back on the highway, it wasn't that far down to Huff Bar where we knew we could get something to drink. Of course beer tasted best, so we drank beer like no tommorrow and played their fairly new bowling machine that was there for all those years till it burnt down a couple of years ago. It's funny how long you stay thirsty when you are so parched to start ...and it's funny how good you can bowl while quenching that kind of thirst.

Finally, we thought we should get going, and, when we went outside, it was dark already. Not only that but it was friggen cold too, being October.

My 305 never had a factory headlight when I owned it. Whoever had it, must have raced it in flat-track and took it off. To be street legal, I had to have a headlight. So I had an old 12v headlight bucket from a '57 Ford and held it on to the fork downtubes with some plumbing pipe-strapping strips. For a on-off switch, I just used the two hot wires that came out of the bike and twisted them with wire-nuts to the two wires that stuck out of the Ford light pigtail along with a little tail-light.

There was no battery in the bike, anymore, since I crashed so often I kept destroying them. Finally battery-broke, I hooked a large electrolytic capacitor to the generator to hold enough charge to run the old style points-and-coil ignition and it worked great, was durable and cheap. Except when I hooked up the lights; then it sucked so much juice out of the capacitor that the bike wouldn't even kickstart anymore. Once the lights were hooked up, I had to put the state-of-the-art 4 speed tranny in 3rd , hold the clutch in and run like Hell. Then pop the clutch and she would spin fast enough to start and keep running ...as long as I didn't let it idle down.

After I wired it, I was already cold, being October and wearing only a thin damp and sweaty T-shirt. So I went back in to Huff Bar and bought two half-pints of Peppermint Schnapps for the road.

Ed and I drank one half-pint on the way to town. It was almost a full moon, we felt warm now and we had the highway to ourselves. We gently weaved back and forth in the moonlight on purpose, passing a half-pint back and forth till it was gone. It was a lovely ride after a perfect day.

But the day wasn't done. As we got to town, the air was a lot warmer, maybe all the hot pavement or maybe the Schnapps. It was Saturday night in Mandan, everybody was cruising Main, and Ed suggested we turn left after the RR underpass and cruise main too. A superb idea. Mandan wasn't a lot different than Modesto and the magic ambiance of American Graffiti.

We did fine until we got up to about 4th Avenue West where we stopped for a traffic light. We were side-by-side in the right-hand lane going west. About that time a cop pulled up beside us in the center lane. Normally this wouldn't have been a problem, but, one of the other things my twin cylinder bike didn't have was mufflers. During the day, I always idled on by any fuzz that might stop me; and they would have stopped me back then. "A little drinking and driving" wasn't usually a problem ...but absolutely no noisy mufflers were allowed, not like todays Harley's and Fart Cans.

But remember, I said that I couldn't idle the bike down and have the headlight on at the same time.
Ed says, "What are you going to do?"
I said,"I'll idle 'er down, maybe she won't die." It died right away.
I told Ed, "Don't worry; I'll let the cop go first and then run and pop it." The light changed; I let the cop go first. So far, so good.
I run, I got it started but the cop was really suspicious and he slowed way the hell down, too. So I slowed way, way down and the bike started to backfire, I mean kind of loud. So then I thought I'll just have to fast-idle by him, I can't let it pop like this ....maybe he won't notice.
He noticed. He fell in behind me and started to follow me. That's when I first noticed that sleazy Ed had turned off right away, at the light, and left me. It was a good idea, if he'd just said something.

Back in those days, most gas stations in Mandan closed after 6:00 PM, and there was one right on the corner of 6th Avenue coming up. I was thinking of turning north on 6th and maybe the cop wouldn't follow me. But, as I got really close, he turned on his bubble and I had to pull over or possibly get shot at. Right ahead there was a bunch of kids parked in the gas station lot, just leaning against their cars and hanging out, and they all started to jeer, "Hey, what'd you do, man?"

God, I was just screwed. I'd been doing a bit more than "a little drinking and driving". I was sure to be handcuffed and arrested.
But it wasn't bad at all. The cop only wanted to see if I had a motorcycle drivers license. He said a lot of kids rode without them and he was right; back then kids did do that. So when I showed him, he said, "OK, just checking, have a good evening", and let me go just like that.

Well, I was just elated and felt pretty damn cocky. So after he left, I ran beside my bike again and popped it, then stopped in the gas station lot right ahead and let the bike die so I could hear any admiring "narrow escape" remarks. Turns out I didn't really know any of these kids well, yet I very cooly said, "Aw, the cop was just checkin' my special motorcycle license. Now I'm leaving to find my chicken**** buddy that skyed out on me." No big deal; I'm just so smooth, I'm thinking.

I really felt like Cool Hand Luke by now. An escaped fugitive. So when I left, I thought I would demonstrate how cool I really was on this cool former race bike. Just in case some of these kids thought it was kind of junky instead of cool. I ran like Tom Mix in the lot, popped it, jumped in the saddle and made a big sweep out on to 6th Avenue, wide left curve all the way out on Main ...with plenty of gas. I mentally planned how I would powerslide this baby, hung way out, and go back east on Main to find Ed. Yeah, the rear end was way out, the pipes were screaming and I confidently had the forks over to full lock. This bike would wind to 9 grand with fire shooting out the exhausts. Cool.

Now, there were some contributing factors that momentarily escaped me. You remember, I said I bought two Peppermint Schnapps. One of them was still in my back hip pocket plumb full, never opened. I completely forgot it was sticking out and the cop hadn't even said anything about it. Another thing was, I had two wheel/tire combos for this bike. One of them was a 19 inch wheel with a street tire on it that really gripped pavement well. But that tire wasn't on it. The one that was on it, was an 18 inch wheel with a knobby that really gripped dirt well; but NOT pavement. A little handling snafu here.

I'm not sure what hit first. It could have been the bike frame and all those sparks and metal-screeching it made for a hundred feet or so. Or it could have been my back hip pocket as the Schnapps shattered and cut my ass with a hundred shards of glass. Like I say I don't really know, it was a blur there for a few seconds. I do vaguely remember the crowd jeering again.

I never even looked back. I was so full of adrenaline, I ran over to my bike and picked it up on the run before it, or I, ever stopped skidding. I skipped on one foot at high speed as I found 3rd gear with the other and popped it. Vrooomm. It was like Tom Mix got shot off his horse, but still got away wounded.

I rode like a cut cat until I found Ed. The only good thing is, my ass was unlikely to get infected with the alcohol and all, and it smelled really good like peppermint.

Those were the days.

And that's the end of my story. A cool October night in 1971.

Wes

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