Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge When I was yer age....

Young whipersnappers don't know how good they have it....

When I first started riding, we didn't have fancy chainspray stuff. We took the chain off on Friday night, washed it good and put it to soak overnight in a gawdawful mix of tallow, chassis grease and gear oil. Saturday mornings were spent re-installing the freshly lubricated chain, tightening every nut and bolt on the bike, and replacing the ones we missed last time.
Flat tires were expected and considered only a minor inconvenience. Even if you had a centrestand, it usually was useless when the rear tire was flat because the bike was too low to get enough leverage to lift it. So, you made do with whatever you could find on the roadside. Old fence posts, rocks, whatever you could find was stuffed under one side of the frame, the bike rocked over as far as possible on it and a taller pile stuck under the other side untill the flat was off the ground. You then fixed the tire on the spot and re-inflated it with a handpump. Of course, a weekend trip ended early enough on Sunday to let the bike cool down and retighten ever nut and bolt you could find and replace the ones you missed Saturday morning.

You could buy a 350 or 500 cc single cylinder bike such as a Velocette, BSA or Francis Barnett for around $350 - $400 new. A 500 or 650 twin was about $500 - $600. If you were rich, you might go out and blow just over a grand on a new Duoglide with all the trimmmings. Of course, they weren't cheap because you seldom made as much as a dollar an hour.

Bike shops expected their customers to do most of their own work on their bikes and specialized in the more difficult stuff like complete engine rebuilds. Their parts departments were bigger than the service area and the guy at the parts counter knew as much as, maybe more than the mechanic. A lot of shops even had counter copies of the service manuals so you could look up how to use the parts you bought.

Everyone on a bike looked out for each other. If someone was broken down by the road, even kids on their Zundaps would stop and see if they could help. It was the other way around too. It was not unusual for a hardcore biker to stop and help out a kid on a Cushman, Mustang or Salsbury.

Everyone knew that political and correct did not belong in the same sentence. People were neither exessivly worried about offending someone nor searching for some excuse to be offended. It was accepted that certain groups had specific tendancies and members of these groups used the same related terminology as everyone else because it was the meaning that was important. Fore example, some ethnic groups are well known for enjoying the process of bargaining, and took it as a matter of pride when someone spoke of ****ing a vendor down on his price.

Electric starters were limited to Indians made for a couple of years sometime before 1920 and a few bikes with car engines such as the once popular Henderson/Plymouth 4 conversions. This, combined with the fact that most bikes had manual spark advance and touchy (literally on Brit bikes) carburettors was something of a safety factor. If you could get your bike started after a party, you were probably in good enough condition to ride it home.

Brakes on older bikes were usually pretty bad as compared to today. Downshifting through the gears and, finally, shutting off the ignition often resulted in a stop from 60 MPH that was maybe 30 feet longer than downshifting and using the brakes. That didn't matter so much to most bikers. We would go as fast as we could. Some bikes would run well into the triple digit speeds, and we would do it. But, we would allow a lot more room to stop.

There were no cell phones, no cd players, etc that distracted people so that they ran over us because they weren't looking. People used to run over us on purpose. I remember one time riding to Daytona along a divided highway that was separated by a gully maybe 1/8 mile across, filled with trees and large rocks with a stream running down the middle. Some good old boy in his pickum up truck going the other way saw me and automatically twisted the steering wheel to run me off the road. He managed to get back on the road, but I'm sure he wished he hadn't done that.

yup...(spits tobacco juice out of side of mouth), i 'member the time me and Clem wuz fishin' catfish in the crick down by the ol' hickory tree and he wuz tellin' me 'bout the time (spit again) he and his brother Clem and his sister Clemette used t' walk 3 miles to school barfoot in the snow...an' it wuz uphill, too... both ways! (one last spit for emphasis)

"YEP! And we LIKED it!"

"HEY YOU LITTLE CRUMB-SNATCHERS!!! GET OUT O' MY YARD!!!"

And you think you ad it ard(north of england accent)the kids today just wouldn't believe yu

Ooh boy, blah blah blah, the old boys are reminising again.

Next you'll be going on about how we need to get back to victorian values. I guess you want us to hold doors open for women, say excuse me after we fart and put our hand over our mouths when we belch. Not to mention sticking kids up chimneys and under weaving machines in the carpet mills.

I member when you could take bird tot pictures, ride buos there and back, buy a bag of chips for two and still have change from a tannar.

Honestly, you old geezers. Can i get you a blanket and pair slippers, let you sit in the corner chair and listern to the archers on radio 4.

Erh, Sorry. Guess im not showing much respect to my elders there am I. Sorry, just made Pooh Bah and its made me a bit dizzy.

Now, now, Mark! Greybeard isn't suggesting that "Oliver Twist" should be used as guidebook for the care and feeding of children here.

Right, GB?!

Umm...GB, RIGHT?!

GREYBEARD!!!

Oh...NEVER MIND!

Cheers,
Dwight
(I think he's out looking for an old '27 Harley JD at this moment)

When I was your age I rode a Hodaka Ace 90. I was very cool.
Dale

Come on,Monty Python sketch,4 northern business men talking,
"they wus 24 of of us,lived int paper bag,worked 25 hours,got up before we went to bed and licked cobble stones clean wit tounge and dad used to thrash us to sleep,if we wer lucky,and you think you ad it ard,tell the kids today and they wouldn't believe yer" and don't forget the Lancashire accent

Nice piece of work, Ed. I can remember back when my Dad and his pals would wax on about their good old days. Back then, I thought my ears would bleed from all their jawing and wondering how in the hell those days could be considered 'good'. I can see the picture from the other side now days. It seems no matter how much worse/in convenient/backward, or strange those good old days are, they're still filled with fond memories of those things that were so different and often better. Thanks for the brief walk down memory lane.

I was watching one of those late night talk shows and this subject came up, in relation to how todays kids, particularly those who are the offspring of celebrities, have it so easy compared to their parents. When it was mentioned, one of them said 'thank god for that!'. I think it's the opposite, and kind of feel sorry for them. It is the tough times that builds character, and makes you appreciate what we have today even more.. something that a lot of kids today don't realize. My son will gripe and groan because he can't find the TV remote and spend 10 times more effort looking for it that just walking over to the tube and changing it manually. My daughter gave me grief when I came to pick her up at her cousins house, and I walked up to the door to get her, instead of staying in the car out front and calling her cell phone!

Heck, when I was going to college, I worked as a migrant worker picking weeds in a soy bean field just to get enough money to eat. That, suplimented with selling blood for $10 a pint got me through some pretty tough times. If you didn't have enough left over for gas, you walked, rode a bike, begged a ride from a friend or hitch-hiked. Sure, I can look back at all of those experiences and say I had it hard, but doing so makes me really appreciate how good I have it now. And I think that is a very positive thing that a lot of kids today will never get a chance to experience unfortunately.

Cheers,
Brad

Post deleted by Grump

In the not too distant future, these will be the "Good Old Days".

I can hear them geezers in the future - "I remember when gas was only 3 bucks a gallon".

Bob

First you'll need to acheive the level of Baroness Gina before we will courtsey and open the door for you....

The Scene:
Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort.
'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!
hope that cheers you up some greybeard

I KNEW it would just be a matter of time before SOMEONE dragged out THE SCRIPT....you got to love that skit!!! One of my favorites...that and the Parrot sketch...!

although the "male strip-tease" they did with sheets of paper, while in full tux's was a classic also....Sh!t It was ALL GOOD!!

Anyone here old enough to have had a motor scooter license at age 14? Ahh, those were the days. My 5 hp Cushman stayed stock for several months, then my buddy (now life-long best friend) and I started hopping it up.....

We didn't need a permit or license to ride scooters in 1949 when I was 14, I think the Cushmans were a model 60 or something like that...kind of fuzzy to go that far back. But they were fun.

I hate to point this out, but by default, ANYONE who can quote from Monty Python sketches because they saw it when they were "young" is instantly in the realm of Old Fart. It first aired in 1969, which makes it 36 years old. Frightening as that may be, it really dates us - er, I mean you.

Now should anyone admit to seeing "Hancock's Half Hour"...

Siggy