Short story - real life - late sixties, early seventies

[Toddyboy]

It seems that many of you seem to enjoy a good story so here's another little ditty about my early days and some of the antics I got up to. It all happened. The people mentioned are all real:

Bikes were a way of life in my family. It rubbed off on me for sure. My Dad had always had one since before I could remember, the main reason being that what with having a wife and five kids to support he couldn’t really afford a car. All my older brothers had followed in this two wheel tradition. They didn’t have the same financial constraints as my Dad though and they rode BSA’s, Triumph’s and other exotic British machinery of the halcyon 60’s era. They used to take me as a pillion passenger when I was a small kid so I guess it got into my blood too. My brother Mick, he was a real biker rocker type dude; tassled leather jacket, white scarf and goggles and all that. He had a friend who lived next door who was of the same ilk. His name was Paul though everyone called him by his nickname, Pep. He was a wild character that guy, a total extrovert, and he always seemed to be up to something or other. Him and Mick would hang around quite a lot together and get up to all kinds of mischief, but it was always Paul who instigated it apparently.
“He’s a bad influence on you,” my Mum would say to my brother, but it seemed to go in one ear and out the other.
Paul and Mick got interested in motorbikes in their mid-teens and as soon as they were old enough they took to the roads on them. Paul hand built a state-of-the-art Thruxton Bonneville 650cc café racer bike from scratch. I used to go round and pester him all the time while he was building it. “’Ow fast does it go Pep? – Can I ‘ave a go?” and all that kind of kid stuff. He was tolerant of me though and always answered my questions, usually with “no.” When it was finished it was the bees-knees of bikes at that time. That thing was capable of 120mph and Paul used every ounce of its capabilities. Mick had built a “Bitza” which in essence was a DIY jobbie, consisting of bits and pieces of various makes of British bikes. It was seriously quick though.
I must have been about nine or ten at the time and I’ll never forget one day standing at the bus stop with my Mum and hearing this roar in the distance. Then two motorbikes, one behind the other came over the crest of the hill and tore past the bus stop at incredible speed. They must have been doing a hundred miles an hour. The noise and rush of wind was awesome.
“Bloody hooligans!” shouted some old boy standing next to us.
“They’ll kill ‘emselves and everyone else on the road,” piped in another.
“They should be locked up and the key thrown away!” said another old biddy.”
My Mum just looked down sheepishly at the ground and said nothing.
Not me though. “That was Mick and Pep, Mum!” I blurted out enthusiastically, pointing down the road.
Everyone at the bus stop turned to look at us.
“Be quiet!” she said, yanking on my arm. She didn’t want anyone to know that one of them was her son.
Horseshoe Lane had several junctions and off roads. It was also a 40mph speed zone but they didn’t care. They were as mad as hatters those two and unfortunately it wasn’t too long before the inevitable happened.
One fateful day I remember Paul coming to our door and my Mum answering it. He and Mick had only driven off an hour or so earlier to go for a blast, but now he was back alone and his face was as white as a sheet. Apparently, Mick had had been in an accident and was in hospital. They’d been speeding through West Watford, doing about 80mph when a car had done a U-turn right in front of Mick and he’d smashed into the side of it. He’d been catapulted over the top of the car and had ended up sliding down the road for about fifty yards. Fortunately, he wasn’t badly hurt but he had been taken to hospital in an ambulance.
My Mum told me later on that she’d driven past the accident scene in a taxi on the way to the hospital and had spied Mick’s bike lying on the side of the road. It was crumpled beyond recognition, she’d said. After witnessing that the rest of the journey to the hospital wasn’t a pleasant one for her. Mick was okay though and despite that near death experience he and Paul continued to race their bikes around the highways and byways of Watford and beyond for some time.
That’s not to say that my ol’ mum wasn’t a bit of a speed freak herself. She’d expressed interest in riding a scooter so my Dad bought her an old second hand Lambretta. I’ll never forget her first lesson on that noisy, smoky old piece of tin. It was on the green, just outside my house. My Mum had never sat astride a bike on her own in her life and my Dad was standing next to her trying to give her morale support.
Me and my brothers were standing nearby at a safe distance observing the spectacle with great interest.
My Mum was obviously very nervous as my Dad kicked the scooter over and she flinched as it burbled into life with a pall of blue smoke pumping out from behind it.
“Now just pull the clutch in,” said my Dad.
She followed his instructions though she obviously didn’t know what the clutch lever was for.
“Now twist the grip to select first gear,” he said.
We heard a graunch of gears being selected.
“Good! Now all you have to do is let the clutch out and give it a little throttle,” he added – and that’s just what she did! Yanking a fistful of throttle she pinged the clutch lever out and the scooter leaped up into the air. Panic stricken, my Mum reactively yanked the throttle grip fully back as she attempted to hang on for dear life. It all happened so fast that all we could do was watch in utter amazement as the scooter tore off across the green like it had been spanked with it's front wheel reaching for the sky and my poor ol' Mum hanging on for dear life screaming her lungs out. Still doing a wheelie it crashed straight into the red telephone box next to the road. The front wheel smashed through one of the glass panes and there it stayed, wedged into the side of the telephone box bolt upright.
My Mum just groaned and fell off the bike, crumpling to the ground like a sack of spuds. At least she had a crash helmet on. She was okay but the worst of it was there was some bloke in the telephone box at the time and he couldn’t get out!
My Dad was horrified, as was I, but my brothers, along with Paul were in hysterics.
We all ran over to help and my Dad and brothers picked my Mum up off the ground. Then they prized the guy out of the telephone box. My Dad tried to apologize to him but the guy was in too much shock to reply. He just wobbled off down the road mumbling something to himself.
I don’t think my Mum tried riding that old scooter again, at least not for quite a while anyway.
I was fascinated by all this. Motorbikes and scooters were exciting and dangerous and it wasn’t long before I wanted to have a go myself. Not long after that incident my two brothers immigrated to Australia. They sold their bikes before they left and the scooter was long gone but my Dad still had a bike. – I wonder? I thought.
Though I’d always marveled at my brother’s and pep's bikes; those big, hulking, noisy metal behemoths that did a ton down Horseshoe Lane, I knew I wouldn’t be able to ride something like that but my Dad’s bike was much more my size (I was only twelve years old at the time) It was a step thru Honda 50 which he commuted daily to work on. I was dead keen to see if I could actually ride a motorbike on my own but I knew there was little chance he’d let me have a go on it. So, one fateful evening when my parents had gone out somewhere I decided the time had come to take matters into my own hands. Making sure my parents had definitely gone I slipped into the shed and furtively wheeled the little Honda out. Making sure Mrs Perry next door didn’t see me I kept my head down and wheeled it across Horseshoe Lane and through a small opening which led into the woods. A quick tootle around on it wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I’d watched my Dad start it up so I knew how to do that. I knew how to slot it into gear too – and I was off! After a few minutes of nipping up and down the old path that ran between the trees I was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was getting dark, so I reluctantly wheeled it back and parked the bike back in the shed exactly where I’d found it and never told a soul. From that point on, every time my parents went out I’d go through the same routine. I knew that my Dad would have a fit if he found out what I was doing while he was gone so I was careful to make sure I left the bike exactly as I’d found it.
This went on for a few weeks. I looked forward to my parents going out, which they did once or twice a week, either to the greyhound dog races or to the whist-drive to play cards with their old cronies, for as soon as they’d been gone for five minutes I was in the shed and out over the woods, tearing around on the ol’ boy’s pride and joy.
It had to happen though: I got faster and faster and more daring as I sped through those woods until one evening a small dog jumped out into my path. The bloody stupid pooch just came out of nowhere. Swerving to miss it, I lost control of the bike and it slammed into a tree trunk. I went flying over the handlebars and ended up in a blackberry bush. Ouch!
The old girl who owned the dog came to my aid and helped prize me out of the brambles while at the same time berating me for being so foolish, ‘and what was I doing riding a motorcycle in the woods anyway?’ I was okay but unfortunately the bike wasn’t. The exhaust pipe had been ripped right out of the cylinder head.
Now I’d done it!
Upon closer inspection I realized there was no way I could fix it. The bolts securing the exhaust pipe to the engine had sheared off! Try as I might, I couldn’t repair it, so I parked the bike back in the shed as before and hoped my dad wouldn’t notice. That was wishful thinking.
The next morning when he started the bike up to go to work it barked like a hybrid moto–crosser. I’ll never forget cringing under the bedsheets as I heard that fateful call:
“Graham – get down here right now!”
After he’d wrung the truth out of me I was barred from ever going near his bike again. The shed was thereafter kept locked and I never got left on my own in the house again either.
It might have been a bit naughty but no one got hurt and anyway it was only an old Honda but it had motivated me and I was now on the lookout for a bike of my own. It would have to be a bit more powerful than dad’s old pop pop though and an off roader too cos I’d only just turned twelve. Trouble was, I was brassic. 30p pocket money a week wasn't going to cut it, and that had been downgraded to 15p for the next month anyway.
As it happened, I was in luck. A week or so later me and a couple of my mates were walking into town when we found an old abandoned motorbike in the subway near Watford Station. It was a 125cc BSA Bantam that looked a bit worse for wear. We couldn’t believe it. After a cursory check for any erstwhile owner we found none and wheeled it home.
That old piece of scrap metal was to be my first sojourn into serious biking, a pursuit I have followed to this day. It was a piece of junk basically and it was no wonder it had been dumped. It had no lights, the clutch cable was broken, no mudguards and a set of tee shaped handlebars that were so high you had to reach up above your head when you sat on it just to grab the handlebar grips and throttle. Regardless of that we still thought it was a gift from God himself and set about getting it running.
Apparently the wiring to the magneto was burned out causing the spark to fail. How we worked that out when not one of us had any inkling of what made a bike work I don’t know, but between us we did eventually get it going and boy was it fun! Because there was no clutch cable we had to to kick start it then run alongside, or have someone push from behind till there was enough speed to crunch it into first gear. After that it was plain sailing – as long as you didn’t stop that is.
We had a hell of a lot of fun on that old crate and once we’d grown bored of the quiet road that circled Cobb Green we started looking for other places to ride it. The cow fields just over the road from my house seemed to be the perfect place. Over fifteen acres of grazing land was just waiting to be torn up by our new acquisition and it didn’t take long to cut a hole in the fence encircling the field so we could wheel it in there. From that day on we were experiencing freedom and fun the likes of which we’d never known before.
I have no idea why we never got chased off that field. It belonged to the local farmer and we used to ride round it pretty much every spare minute we had. Even though there were usually cows grazing in there no one ever materialized with a shotgun to shoo us off. We were like kids in a candy shop. Eventually though, we hacked the old Bantam into the dust and it seized up. I think that may have been because no one told us you had to mix oil in with the petrol. The bike was dead but that didn’t deter us. We found another one for sale through a friend who had a mate who had another mate and bought it for the princely sum of two pounds. “The Bantam is dead – long live the Bantam!” we joked as we wheeled it two miles back to my house. It was a non-runner but that didn’t stop us. We were seasoned mechanics now so we stripped down both bikes and somehow, someway built a new one from the bits. This time we tarted it up with a pair of proper motocross handlebars and mudguards. We even painted it gold using an aerosol paint can that one of my mates had “borrowed” from his Dad’s shed. It was a work of art! That bike was the most fantastic creation we’d ever had anything to do with and what’s more it even had a clutch cable on it now so we didn’t need to run along with it to get it going. Luxury!
We blew that up too, can’t remember how, but it went to the scrapyard nonetheless. From that we graduated to bigger and more powerful bikes, hacking them around the old cow field at greater and greater speeds. The biggest and bestest being a single cylinder AJS 500cc that we bought off another mate of another mate of a mate for five pounds! This was a fully kitted out road bike, albeit an old one but it had working lights, mudguards and to all intents and purposes was a real honest to goodness rockers bike. It was massive and really looked the business! When me Gooz went to see it we couldn’t believe the size of the bloody thing and when the guy selling it, his name was Renzo, showed us what was involved in just starting it up we almost had second thoughts.
Basically, the compression of the mammoth single piston inside the engine was so high that the bike had to be fitted with a decompression lever on the handlebars. To get it going you had to sit on the bike with the centre stand up, pull in the decompression lever till the piston was situated in just the right position, then release the decompressor and kick down on the kickstart lever with all your might. If you got it right the bike roared into life. If you got it wrong the lever would snap back and throw you over the handlebars – if it didn’t break your leg, that is.
Renzo showed us how to do it and he made it look easy, but it wasn’t. I nearly cracked my shin in half trying and Gooz almost went over the top of the bars when he had a go. After several painful attempts however we eventually got the hang of it and after handing over our precious five quid (and god only knows how we came about that) we were the new owners of what we considered to be the bike to end all bikes and ready to blast home.
That thing was a beast. Hurtling down the small side roads at over 70mph in the dark with Gooz hanging on the back was an experience I’ll never forget. When we finally parked it up outside my house we just sat there staring at it in awe as it glinted in the street light. We had both only just turned fourteen years old. We’d definitely hit the big time. What a machine!
We had even more fun on that old bike than the Bantams. It had real low down grunt and sounded like a proper motorbike not a sewing machine. We nicknamed it “The Thumper” When I look back on it now I can’t believe how any of us weren’t killed or badly injured during the mad antics we got up to on that field whilst riding it. We never wore crash helmets – ever, yet we would thrash round that rutted, bumpy field in the wet as well as the dry at ridiculous speeds.
We even devised a way to pull people along behind us in a milk crate. This was so dangerous it belies belief. Basically, we tied an old milk crate to the rear suspension mounting and sat someone in it. Then whoever was riding the bike would tear off around the cow field trailing the poor sod in the milk crate behind him. When the bike went round a corner at say 40mph, that crate would follow at probably 70mph due to the whiplash effect.
I tried it once. Never again! The spray of chewed up grass and insane speeds it reached frightened even a seasoned nutcase like me. We still found lots of willing idiots to try it out on however, for the cow field had become the cool place to go on a summers evening what with all the noise and excitement going on. Because of that we’d always manage to attract plenty of unassuming victims and frighten the living daylights out of ‘em.
One day though, we turned up for a weekend thrash and to our surprise and annoyance found a huge pile of what looked like mud deposited in the middle of the field. At least, we thought it was mud. But when we got nearer we soon realized what it actually was – it was chicken dung, and tons of it too. In fact, it was a pile so big that it sat almost thirty feet long and ten feet high!
“A foul smelling pyramid of poo,” as Crouch so aptly put it.
We figured it must have been put there by the farmer, though for what purpose we didn’t know; fertilizer perhaps? It stank so bad we couldn’t get anywhere near it so we avoided it like the plague. We’d hack round the perimeter of the field for the next few weeks holding our noses whenever we were downwind of it.
Now, the summer of ‘72 was a hot one and within a month or so the pile of dung had hardened to the point where you could walk on it all the way to the top. The smell had diminished too, obviously due to the fact that the moist smelly stuff was now caked inside a hard outer shell. For the following week, we still treated the “poo pyramid” with caution, reckoning that if the outer shell were to crack while someone was stomping around on the top of it they might disappear into it and never be seen again.
Then I had a bright idea. If we laid some planks up the side maybe we could ride the bike over it, like on a real motocross bike. That’d be fun! There were no big mounds on the cow field to speak of, it was pretty flat. Riding over a ten foot high hill sounded like a hoot. I wasn’t going to do it though. I still had suspicions that the outer shell wasn’t very strong and although two of us could walk on it right to the top without a crack appearing, riding the big AJS over it was another matter. That bike was heavy.
Gooz was definitely up for it though. The guy was a madman and never one to shirk a challenge. So, after bragging about how he was the only one with any guts in our little group he saddled up and off he went to get a long run up. We all watched as he blasted off to the far corner of the field then turned the bike round for the run up to the mound. Seconds later, we heard the familiar sound of the big single cylinder engine roar as he let slip the clutch and tore full blast towards the dung pile. By the time he was about twenty yards from it he was really moving.
“Oh oh! He’s going to hit that thing doing at least fifty,” I exclaimed.
I believe he did too, but it didn’t go exactly as planned. The heavy bike with an equally heavy Gooz on board slammed into the bottom of the plank immediately breaking it in half and cracking the outer crust of the dung pile open like an Easter egg.
Gooz didn’t stand a chance. Travelling at high speed, he and the bike literally disappeared into the weakened shell of dung and vanished from sight in a flash!
We all just stood there for a second or two, mesmerized by his sudden disappearance. There was no sound, nothing!
“Where’d he go,” Crouch exclaimed.
“Quick!” I screamed. “Get him outa there. He’ll suffocate!” and with that we scrambled to rescue our brave fat friend.
I was the first to reach it and fortunately I could just see the back wheel of the bike sticking out, but no Gooz! We only had seconds to save him from a fate worse than anything any of us could ever imagine – suffocating in a pile of stinking chicken dung. Even that fat, crude bastard didn’t deserve that. So, without any thought for myself I reached into the pile just about where I figured he must be and waggled my hand around in a desperate attempt to locate him.
Luckily, I was right on target and grabbed hold of his arm. Now with both hands, and almost passing out from the fumes, I eventually yanked him out and we laid him down on the grass. I was stricken with guilt. After all, this had been my idea. Poor ol’ Gooz, he looked like he was a gonner, but as I leaned over him he spat a mouthful of dung right in my face and sucked in a lungful of air. Yuk!
Gooz was saved, though he was definitely going to stink like hell for a while. The bike had yet to be recovered but we eventually managed to attach a rope to the back wheel and haul it out.
I don’t think my Mum could believe the state we were in when we turned up outside my house. Gooz and the bike were literally covered in the rankest smelling turd ever created. Chicken dung is foul (excuse the pun.) It’s worse than anything you could ever imagine and it sticks to you like glue. My Mum wouldn’t let us past the garden gate; instead she brought out a hose and attempted to wash us all down. It took ages and even then we stank for days afterwards.
Happy days.

[malc87]

Any chance we can keep these stories for the next club magazine

[Toddyboy]

No probs, keep 'em.

[Mitsui Spy]

Now that is funny. You can't make those priceless moments up. Ah, the exuberance of youth. Which of us hasn't some ill conceived motorcycle jump/plank/disaster story. My own involved a moped, a flimsy plank and a mother-in-law's display cabinet. I nearly laughed myself to death at my mate's expense.

Sorry to be a pedant but I don't think you can prize someone out of a phone box, prise them maybe. :wink:

[Toddyboy]

Well spotted Mitsui. Methinks you have a story or two in you too - so come on, chop chop, pen to paper!

[Mitsui Spy]

I've taken your advice on board and will dive back into my tale at some mid-point. I know what will happen though - I'll run out of steam again after a week or so. It's the same with all my projects. I've got car restorations sitting under covers that I started 20 years ago. Basically I'm shit. I'm in awe of anyone with the tenacity to finish a project (not to mention a book or three).

Have to say though, a 500 AJS ridden with enthusiasm into a crusted over giant pie of shite is unbeatable. I'll be sniggering about that for weeks.

[Toddyboy]

You're not shit Mitsui. That's the artist in you talking. You're an errant writer, and probably a very good one at that as well as many other things to boot if you sit down and think about it. Anyone who can write 11,000 words on a subject has talent. You just invalidate yourself. All great artists do that and always will. As for not finishing things, you're organization and planning skills could simply do with a bit of help. It's just the same as riding a bike really, you have to start it, ride it and stop it. Take one thing at a time, start work on it and finish it. Start with the easier things first. After you've done that a few times you'll have completed several incomplete cycles of action and put some order into the disorder. Easier to say than do but it works.

[Mitsui Spy]

You're not shit Mitsui. That's the artist in you talking. You're an errant writer, and probably a very good one at that as well as many other things to boot if you sit down and think about it. Anyone who can write 11,000 words on a subject has talent. You just invalidate yourself. All great artists do that and always will.

What a great thing to say. Thanks Toddy.

[Wessiedave]

Great story, with a childhood like that you have no choice but to graduate onto bigger, better bikes. my Mum did something similar when I was a toddler, and my Dad wheelied his SS50 just missing the neighbours house when I was 15, soon after that the Honda was mine. Thanks Dad.

[Oddnedod]

Top class

[El Presidente]

Now that is funny. You can't make those priceless moments up. Ah, the exuberance of youth. Which of us hasn't some ill conceived motorcycle jump/plank/disaster story.

.
One of my MANY would be showing off by riding my Vespa 125 (at 14 Years old) over a 4 inch plank over a stream (I'd like to say River . . . But it was a stream) Anyway, the plank was 3 foot above the stream and all went well until half way across and I stalled it . . . . . . and with the running boards on the Vespa there was nowhere to put your feet down . . . . . Ah if only they had mobile phones back then . . .

[JeffK]

EXCELLENT recounting ....I could almost smell the odor coming off you guys.......and kudo's for the clear recognition that most of us that have survived a life time of riding surely have our own stories of our hapless days. Frankly, it's a wonder that most of us are even still alive!

jeff k