Motorcycles: a Magnificent Obsession: Part Ten
Final Chapter of this Series
The end of Part Nine:
The bikes ran fine. We never took them over thirty miles an hour, never got out of second gear, and ran them up and down from full stop, then first, then second, and back down again. We were just wearing them in slowly, more slowly than I would normally break in a bike, but you have to remember that we had nothing to go on to tell us how the factory wanted them to be broken in. So, after about an hour of this we headed back to Earl’s and we were both feeling pretty good about it all.
We put the bikes away, had another half round and I hopped on the Honda and headed home. It had been a hell of a two and half days and while I would pay for it with a considerable limp for a few weeks I felt it was all worth it. There would be no more working on the bikes until the next weekend. As much as I hated not doing more with the bikes right then I knew enough to know that I had to work to eat – and drink.
Part Ten
The next Saturday morning I headed over to Earl’s expecting to spend the day riding the bikes, increasing speeds, working through the gears, using the brakes and generally doing a solid, but conservative, break in since we didn’t know what the manufacturers’ recommended break in was.
So about 9 am we got on our shining new Ward’s Benellis and hung a right out of the sub-division and headed for Annapolis. We took a parallel county road to the main road (US 301) to Annapolis since we were at that point intending to keep the bikes at no more than 50 miles an hour until they had a hundred miles on them. The bikes had four speed transmissions and 50 was a nice speed to run in 4th gear.
At that speed the engine was not overworking much and the vibration was minimal for a single cylinder “thumper” which in those days were notorious for vibration. You could feel some vibration coming through the foot pegs and the handlebars, but it was not aggravating.
Just before Annapolis we hung another right and took a series of Bay side roads that followed the contours of the Chesapeake Bay heading south. We knew these roads by heart because we had often gotten lost on them before they imprinted on our fogged brains.
We enjoyed riding through the many small bay side villages that dotted every cove and inlet. Some were strictly working villages with mostly crab boats and some commercial fishing boats, others catered strictly to pleasure craft, both gas powered and sail boats.
Shadyside was mostly a working village but there were two small pleasure craft marinas that catered to the less affluent. Slip fees were cheap and weren’t going to get more expensive because most boats could only safely get out to the bay when the tide was in. When it was fully out you were guaranteed to literally get your boat stuck in the mud.
And that guaranteed another several hours of drinking beer and playing the portable radio until the boat could float again. The power boats had it better because they drew far less water than a sailboat did, unless the boat was a twin keel or had a retractable keel board.
In addition to motorcycles, Earl and I both were interested in sailing on the Chesapeake. Earl was a power boat (stinkpot) man and I was a sail boater. I had my eye on a 20’ Hurley pocket cabin sloop that had recently been docked at the marina in Shadyside, so we pulled in there so Earl could take a look at it. I knew a lot about that particular boat and had heard from another friend that there were two on the Chesapeake and one was now docked in Shadyside.
Earl actually kept an old 24’ wooden stinkpot at that same marina that he allegedly was going to have taken out of the water so he could spend some miserable days scraping and sandpapering and painting until it was in good shape again. He was always hinting that maybe I would like to help him and I was always changing the subject.
Earl used the old boat as a place to get away by himself, more like a cabin than a boat. I always thought it wouldn’t stand being lifted out of the water and assumed Earl had his doubts too because he never had it hauled for the winter instead setting a couple of bubblers to keep it from icing in completely.
He only paid about $500 for it and he claimed that the inboard engine was worth more than that. Maybe so, but I seriously doubted that since it would cost at least $300 to dry dock the boat and get the engine pulled out. I figured he paid about $600 too much for it. Plus he was paying a small $20 a month slip fee.
The whole thing seemed a waste of money, but it was his money so I didn’t push him on it. I used to irritate him no end when I was forever telling him that if all the worms in that hull ever decided to quit swimming at the same time the damned thing would sink. I thought that was hilariously funny, but for some reason he didn’t.
Earl had no interest in sail boats and would not have noticed the boat I was interested in had it been docked next to his decaying stink pot. So he reluctantly joined me and We looked at the little Hurley sloop and I was impressed. But it had a $6000 price tag that I couldn’t afford at the time, so I just forgot about it.
While I had thought for quite a while that I would love to own a Hurley I thought nothing more about it for about four years. In 1972, however, Earl and I were down at Shadyside again and I saw the owner of the Hurley and asked him if he had taken it off the market and was just enjoying it himself. He told me that he had gotten no nibbles but that he had $6000 in it so he had just kept the price at that. But he had hardly sailed it in the interim, had done almost no maintenance to it, and it had gotten rather weather beaten just sitting around.
He volunteered that he would consider selling it in the next month so he wouldn’t have to pay to have it dry docked for the winter. I told him I might be interested, but at a lower price. He asked what price and I told him $2500. Well, all of a sudden we were bartering and I knew he could be had when he said $5000. I bid $3000 and he countered with $4000. We settled at $3500 and I had a sail boat. (There are a lot of stories about that boat that we may get to at another time.)
Incidentally, after I had the boat pulled and got her looking like she was just launched, some guy at the Annapolis Marina offered me $7000 for it the first time I pulled in there. It was, as I knew all along, a much sought after twin keel sloop that was hand finished and was considered a prime example of small sloop twin keel design. The prior owner did not know that, of course, and I wasn’t about to tell him. I sold the boat right before I left DC for NYC in 1978 for $8000. Not too bad for a $3500 investment and six years of sailing enjoyment.
We took Route 2 down to Prince Frederick and hung a right on Md. 231 and took its meandering way to where it dead ends into Md. 234, hung a right and another right onto US 301, a left on Pope’s Creek Road which dead ends at the Potomac tidal estuary and there, right at the end of the road, sat the Shangri-La of Maryland Blue Crab aficionados world wide: Robertson’s Crab House.
Crab lovers everywhere will fight to the death to try to convince others that their kind of crab is the best. Lovers of Maryland Blue Crabs take their crab superiority seriously. When the Virginia tourism office launched their still effective slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers,” with a large red heart as its logo, eager entrepreneurs in Maryland immediately responded with their own campaign, complete with t-shirts, sweatshirts and other paraphernalia proudly stating, beneath a big Maryland Blue Crab picture, “Maryland is for Crabs.” And although to the uninitiated it was just a cute reposte, to Marylanders it was true. Maryland Blue Crabs are to this day the best crabs in the world. And yes, I’m prejudiced, but I’m also right.
And the very best place to eat blue crab was at Robertson’s at Pope’s Creek. The outside of the restaurant itself was totally unimpressive, a large rambling, one story, faded red, wooden building with not a single distinguishing feature. Even the parking lot was just crushed shells which made negotiating the bikes to park them a careful proposition.
But once inside you were immediately struck by, well, nothing. The seating arrangements were a series of trestle tables and backed benches with knotty pine booths lining two walls. There was a small bar towards the rear near the kitchen, but almost nobody used it. People came here to eat blue crab, and besides the main accompaniment to blue crab was Rolling Rock served continuously at the table.
What made Robertson’s special was its secret crab boil mix. Nobody else throughout the dozens of crab shacks in Maryland and Virginia had exactly the right mix of herbs and spices that Robertson’s had. Robertson’s refused to take reservations and was so popular that two other crab shacks set up shop in the same block just to catch the evening and weekend overflow from Robertson’s.
Blue Crab prices today are outrageously expensive. A softshell sandwich can go for $8.00. Large jimmie (male) blues sell for $35 a dozen and up boiled, and there aren’t all that many large jimmies left. Medium (sooks), females, sell for only about $5 a dozen less.
Earl and I ordered two dozen large jimmies for $5 a dozen boiled, with two dipping bowls of warm clarified butter ($.25 each) and two Rolling Rocks at $.75 each. Draft Pabst was 25 cents a glass.
Blues aren’t hard to eat, but its sloppy eating. You needed a mallet and a pick and a bib; but mostly you needed to know how the open the shell without too much splatter and to break open the claws without splashing the lady five tables down.
When the hot crabs and beer came right up we clinked Rolling Rock bottles, took a swig and didn’t talk for the next 15 minutes. Then I looked up at Earl held up my empty bottle and he nodded a slight “Yes”. So it was two more Rolling Rocks and another 15 minutes. By then with all but about three crabs left we felt free to talk and mumble things like "perfect," “heavenly,” and “how good can it get?” and other inadaquate words signifying total contentment. We ordered a third round of Rolling Rock and finished the rest of the crabs.
The table looked like a war had been fought on it. Piles of crab shells, dead soldiers lined up in a neat row, and butter dribbled all over the newspaper that served as a table cloth. Some would find that disgusting. I saw it as the sign of a great meal well eaten.
We pushed back a bit from the table, dug around for our cigs and lit up. It was one of those times of total satisfaction that are rare enough in our lives. So I don’t know if it was Shagri-La or Nirvana, or maybe heaven on earth. There really aren’t adequate words to describe times like that.
We made our way out to the bikes, kicked them over, carefully worked our way out of the loose shell parking lot, hit asphalt and made our way to US 301, hung a left and were on the road that would drop us back four blocks from Earl’s place. The day would end in a perfect ride, having followed a circle on the map with a piece of paradise half way through the ride.
It was actually a perfect day and we were angling away from the sun, which on a bike makes an afternoon even better. The road was good. What could go wrong? Today I would say that the three Rolling Rock were not exactly the best idea. But in those days neither Earl nor I could hardly feel even a buzz from three beers especially while eating and absorbing a lot of butter which slowed the passage of the alcohol into the blood stream. So that wasn’t it.
It was that I was getting the distinct impression that the clutch was slipping on my bike. It wasn’t bad as long as we were going along on 301 out in the country. But 301 had a lot of villages on it and a number of stop lights. As we went along each stop and the subsequent shifting through the gears to take off again it became evident that the clutch cable needed adjusting. At the third stop I told Earl what the problem was but that I didn't want to stop and thought I could make it to his place OK.
However, it just kept getting worse and so a few miles from his house we pulled into the parking lot of a closed super market. The new replacement super market was across the highway and was at least three times as big. Business must be good. The area around Bowie was growing quickly as the Levitt development provided the anchor for a lot of adjacent development.
I got off the bike, put it on the center stand and got out the tiny tool kit that was stored under the seat. It had a few cheap open end metric wrenches and a pathetic excuse for a pair of pliers but that was all I really needed. When I had it adjusted to where it felt pretty good I fired her up and ran her through the gears in the parking lot. It seemed almost right and I told Earl that I was just going to take her up a hair more and check it again.
I did that and ran it around the lot again. It seemed about right, so I tell Earl and he says, “Well, you really haven’t tested it, have you? I mean you are nursing it around the parking lot like an old woman.”
I gave him a dirty look and he says, “Look. Just take the damned bike, pull the clutch, put her in first, rev her all the way up and let go and see if she slips.”
“What if it wheelies?”
“You’re kidding, right? It’s a 250. You’ll be lucky if it moves forward.”
Well, I thought, my old Maico 250 certainly couldn’t wheelie, but then again it was a two stroke and needed revs to make either torque or power. And it was a heavier bike. Still, Earl was right. It was only a 250 and a cheap one at that. And it didn’t seem to have all that much torque, but I had never come close to opening the throtle all the way.
“OK, I’ll do it.”
So I did. Put her in 1st. Pulled the clutch in. Cranked her wide open. And dropped the clutch. And Holy Sh**! The front end went straight into the air and the bike took off. I’m holding on to keep from dropping her but I have slid so far back on the bench seat that the only real purchase I have on the bike is at the handlebars. I can’t let go and I can’t stop cranking the throttle because I can’t roll it forward and hang on too. So there I am, holding on for dear life and quickly running out of real estate.
Straight ahead is a deep drainage ditch at the side of the highway, grass covered sides, maybe 6' deep and 25' wide. So I am heading for the ditch and there is no way I can turn the bike or let loose without damaging it, and maybe me. So down the side of the ditch I go and the bike pitches forward onto its front wheel as it hits the soggy side of the ditch and starts spinning the rear wheel losing traction. That is the good news.
The bad news is that the ditch is a virtual swamp from yesterday’s rain and I’m heading for the bottom.
The good news is that there is no water in the bottom.
The bad news is that the there is about a foot of mud in the bottom.
The good news is that the soggy ditch and mildly sloping sides quickly slow the bike down.
The bad news is that the angle at the bottom is too steep to allow the front wheel to start back up the other side.
The good news is that the bike sticks in this bog and actually doesn’t fall over.
The bad news is that I go flying over the handlebars and plant my helmet in the other bank and am covered with mud and grass from head to toe.
The good news is that the only thing broken is my pride.
All of this could not have taken 30 seconds. Earl comes running up, asks if I am OK. I say yes. And Earl is laughing so hard he is crying. He comes down the bank and sits in the wet grass laughing hysterically. Hell, it wasn’t that funny.
When he can catch his breath he says that I actually looked like I was doing the wheelie on purpose and looked good, so he had no idea I was out of control. This is vaguely possible because I did wheelies quite a bit with my dirt bikes and even with street bikes that I had tested after getting out of sight of the dealer. So he knew that I could do wheelies and that he couldn’t so he just thought I was showing off.
In any case at some point I finally started laughing too and thinking how lucky I was. We eventually got the bike out of the suction of the bog and back on the asphalt. It was a mess and all I had to clean some of the mud off was my hands. So that’s what I did. The bike forgave me immediately and started back up.
My beautiful Italian lady friend and her new beau looked simply pathetic as we rode together back to Earl’s praying nobody could figure out what the hell I had been doing. When we got to Earl’s he kept me and the bike out on the driveway and he hosed both of us off before he would allow either to come into the garage.
When I had most of the mud off I pushed the bike into the garage and sat down in the dirtiest Director’s chair and took my boots, leather jacket and helmet off. Earl went into the kitchen and came back with the first Dewar’s and soda for me and the first Wild Turkey on the rocks for him.
We had a couple more.
I had pretty much dried off and as the sun was setting I got on the Honda and rode home. I had no idea how I would explain what I looked like when I got home. I thought about it a bit and realized that nothing would be as strange, and therefore likely believed, as the truth. So that’s what I told.
The rest of the story about the Ward’s Riverside Benellis is anticlimactic. We rode them around the DC/ Annapolis area, took them up to Baltimore Harbor once and even took them across the Bay Bridge over to St. Michaels once.
We learned quickly that speeds over 50 they were very buzzy. At 60 they were tolerable for an hour or so. At 70 everything vibrated, including the fillings in your teeth. These were great bikes for urban and suburban riding. They got over 70 mpg. The engines were pretty much indestructible and the bikes were very reliable. We rode them about half the time for the rest of that Fall and into a typically moderate early DC winter. I commuted on mine and it was a good commuter.
But the truth was we bought them on a lark and they ultimately were not the right bikes for the kind of touring we liked to do. They served their purpose which was to give us something different to do, another odd ball off brand of bike to try (who ever thought that a cheap Montgomery Ward’s Riverside brand motorcycle would be any good?), and they created some unexpected memories.
In the Spring Earl sold his to a guy who lived outside of Annapolis and wanted it as a summer commuter. I think he got about what he paid for it. Earl was not one to haggle like I did. I figured he could have gotten another couple hundred for it if he tried.
My little brother Gary had gotten back from Viet Nam and was going back to school so I gave him mine. He rode it throughout his college time and passed it down to another of my brothers, Mark, who rode it all through a couple of his college years.
One hot summer day about three years after he got it Mark decided to take it out in the country on an interstate and see what she would do. What she did was freeze up and bend a valve, and likely destroyed the bottom end. He got the bike home and I took a look at it. The drain plug had loosened; it likely had not been tightened enough and the vicious vibration of trying to go full out did the rest. There was almost no oil in it. So it had gotten too hot and seized.
Anyway it was dead. Mark sold it to some fool who thought he could fix it and gave the money to Mom. So my Italian beauty died an unnecessary death. But when ridden the way it was supposed to be ridden, and properly maintained, it had been a very good bike.
Note: I am ending this series here. There are more motorcycle stories yet to tell and I will write them soon enough. But I have a couple of other things I want to explore in the near future.
I appreciate all of you who have followed this series and the encouragement that you have given me. I hope that I was able to recount a small part of an important period in my life that I am only now allowing into my own consciousness.
For too many years I was reluctant to look at those years, in spite of the success I had in my work life and the fun I had with motorcycling. And, of course, I took a closer look at the unique and very wonderful relationship that I had with Earl. All of those things I was afraid to look at for fear that I might get the idea that it would be OK to start drinking again. That was a foolish fear and it was unwarranted. But so many of our fears are.
So while I wrote this series hopefully for your enjoyment, it also became an important kind of therapeutic remembering and writing for me. I never intended it to be that. In fact, I never even intended to write anything about this period of my life when I joined OS. But doing so has been a blessing.
So, at the end, which I think is appropriate because I have lost Earl, but now once again I have the memories, I dedicate this series to
Earl Darrah, friend, confidant, best man, buddy and brother in spirit.
Earl: here's to the good times and the bad. For a while there we shared mystical moments. I owe that to you. Rest in peace.
Monte
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