My First Chopper

This is an absolutely true story of youthful folly.

             

In the fall of 1979 I was 12 years old, I had my first kissing girlfriend, a shiny red Epiphone bass guitar, a Honda dirt bike and two great friends, who were brothers, Richie and Monte.

My dad, in those days, was a church deacon and member of a men’s bible study that would meet at a different member’s house on Thursday evenings. Every three to four weeks it would be held at Richie and Monte's house. On these nights my dad would take me along with him.

The brothers and I had a special relationship. They'd teach me what they knew about cars and I’d tell them lies about my knowledge of girls. We had a lot of fun building models, sneaking cigarettes, working on their junkyard cars and riding bikes. On one of these nights, after scrubbing a set of chrome side pipes in their driveway, we decided it would be a great idea to put a set of suspension shackles on the front of an old bike I borrowed from my little sister. So we put our heads together and engineered a make-shift chopper right there in the garage.

I saw stars that night.

The stars were out in full when I took off down their dirt driveway. I peddled my new chopper up to speed and tried to pull wheelies but the front end was too heavy now. I didn’t care though. I got to the end of that pitch black driveway with late October sweat on my brow and a broad 12 year old’s grin on my face. I could see Richie’s profile in the garage light, jumping up and down yelling

“Hurry up! I wanna try!”

Monte was rocking side to side giggling.

The rake (angle of the forks) on that bike was so huge now that I had to go out to the street to turn the bike around. After getting my new chopper turned around I started heading back in triumph. I wanted to pull a wheelie so bad that I kept trying. I remember watching my friends in the distant light cheering me on and then…...nothing.

They were gone. The light was gone. The garage was gone. I was gone, it seemed. Then I felt pain and confusion. I saw stars again and heard interrupted bursts of laughter because my heart was pounding blood into my ears. I was in the dirt face down and at least five feet in front of my former chopper. My first thought was 'Did I just fall into a hole?' and then 'How do I get out of this looking cool?' Hey, I was 12.

As you have probably figured out, the shackles folded in as I was diligently trying to pull wheelies. The forks planted into the ground, catapulting me over the handlebars and on to an ever growing list of stupid things I did as a kid. I’d like to say that the brothers and I learned something from this, and we did, just not the part where we wouldn’t do stupid things together again. Hence “The two six-packs of beer on the church bus massacree”.

But that’s another story.