At sixteen, Terry working in R-Town near San Luis Obispo, a makeshift town built specifically for television commercial production. The star for this series of commercials was Dale Robertson.
TERRY ORENDORFF DISCOVERED HIS FIRST MOTORCYCLE, an abandoned early 1950s Panhead Harley-Davidson, in Mrs. Smith’s backyard down the dirt alley behind Arden Street in the San Gabriel Valley. The valley was the home of the first freeway in the nation, called the cycleway, in 1897, which became the Pasadena Freeway connecting Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles. He was just twelve years old and fascinated by the old Big Twin, a 74-cubic-inch monster.
With a wooden cart that he used to collect metal scrap, he hauled the big Harley home piece by piece. Harold Tuttle encouraged him to buy a two-dollar Harley-Davidson manual and he began to collect tools like they were gold coins. Terry stashed the Harley parts in the washer shed off the side of their dorm garage.
“My stepdad bitched about it when he got drunk on the weekends,” Terry said.
An older, balding gentleman two doors away noticed Terry’s struggling efforts with the motorcycle and loaned him tools.
“Bring them back every night,” Mr. Smith told the teen, “if you plan to use them tomorrow.” Mr. Smith owned MG sportscars and constantly tinkered with them. He worked for Coca-Cola and brought home cases of the soft drinks for Terry’s brothers and sisters. Terry dug into each motorcycle part with a wire brush and a can of gasoline.
Terry found a sense of accomplishment as he read the manual and tinkered with the big machine. He also discovered the nature of a biker’s support group in the men who helped him learn to use tools, understand the inner workings of the beast, and oversee his growing knowledge about the big overhead-valve motorcycle.
But there was another side of Terry’s life, the bully side. It was 1960 and the streets of Los Angeles ran rampant with violence. Kids picked on each other for being too tall, too short, too fat, too poor, too slow, too dumb, or too smart; it didn’t matter. There were cliques of bully brothers, Hispanic gangs, punks, hoods, and thugs. A kid fought, got his ass kicked, or ducked confrontations constantly.
Terry’s dad beat him at night, while the retired Marine who was his teacher at Charles E. Gidley Junior High School in El Monte barked disciplinary orders and smacked kids with his heavy gold Marine ring during school hours. Terry walked a mile to school every morning, only to be rat-packed by the Corbin brothers. Every day followed the same drill. If he caught the younger Corbin by himself, Terry kicked ass. If the two brothers caught up with Terry on his way home, he got his ass kicked. The Corbins also had a hang-around named Pat.
“He wasn’t much of a fighter,” Terry said, “but he had a big mouth, and it ran constantly.”
One day Pat caught Terry alone in a classroom and mouthed off about Terry’s mom. The fight was on, and Terry grabbed a pointed paperweight and stabbed Pat in the neck. Terry was immediately kicked out of school. He was shipped to a bad-boy, prison-like school called Columbia, one block from the El Monte cop shop. Within a week he was attacked in the Los Angeles River bed and beaten by three Columbia students on his way to school. Terry spotted them later in the day at recess and vowed to take revenge. A couple of hot Los Angeles days later, on the smoldering asphalt grounds, he checked out a baseball bat and got even.
One day, Pat caught Terry alone in a classroom and mouthed off about Terry’s mom. The fight was on, and Terry grabbed a pointed paperweight and stabbed Pat in the neck.
The next day, he mouthed off to Miss Isnick, who smacked him in the head with a book.
“Generally, if we were in trouble,” Terry said, “we were ordered to stand alone in the empty halls, but not this time.”
Miss Isnick hauled Terry to the principal’s office. The short, grizzled, overweight principal told Terry to sit in his somber office. He retrieved a polished oak paddle from his closet and set it abruptly on his desk with a deafening smack.
“You know what this means, son,” the balding principal said. “You just think about that, and I’ll be right back.”
The principal stepped away from his office momentarily, leaving the hardwood paddle on his vast oak desk. When he returned, Terry controlled the weapon and took a swing at the principal. He was sent back to Gidley Junior High.
Every night he found solace tinkering with the Panhead, scouring his two-buck manual, and learning about tools from Mr. Smith. At one point his sister showed up with a can of paint and two brushes. Together they painted the entire motorcycle pink. Terry quickly learned, through street communication, finger-pointing, and laughter, that pink wasn’t a proper chopper color. Jerry and Eddie from the local Richfield station hooked him up with a rattle can of black spray paint and Terry transformed his first Harley from a ratty chick motorcycle to a badass bob job.
Harold Tuttle, his little sister’s dad, helped him get it running. He showed him how to adjust the solid lifters, the carburetor, the points, and the spark plug gaps.
“The first time it fired, it roared and spit black smoke,” Terry said. “I’ll never forget that moment.”
The air was filled with the smell of fire, fuel, and oil, but it also smelled of power, mobility, and freedom. A chill ran up Terry’s spine as he rolled the big twin into the grassy dirt alley and practiced with the mousetrap-engaged clutch and foot shifter.
“I ran into a wooden fence at the end of the block,” Terry said. The mechanical brakes were lousy. The old brake shoes no longer fit the scored contour of the mechanical brake drums. He learned how to adjust the brakes and attempted another run through the alley. As he dialed in the big Harley and built riding confidence he was able to roam farther from his digs, every night after school he pulled the big motorcycle out of the shed and blasted around town, through the back streets and alleys.
He was pulled over frequently by local cops.
It was tough to get around a small town, especially when all the cops knew you, knew you were under-age, and that you had no license.
“It was tough to rumble around a small town, especially when all the cops knew you, knew you were under-age, and that you had no license. Besides, the motorcycle wasn’t registered and had no plate or tags.” Finally, the vintage Harley was impounded.
A Gidley teacher threw Terry out of her class for being a poor reader. Standing in the lonely hall, he refused to sit still. He pulled the fire alarm and was kicked out of school again. But he was invited back to graduate so he could move onto the rigors of high school education.
Then life took a fortuitous turn. After graduation, Terry’s folks hauled the entire Orendorff, and Tuttle clan a couple blocks away from the low-life Arden Street area to Maxton Lane, on the edge of the highbrow side of town. There he met a girl who would impact his life forever.
The alley behind Maxton was unpaved dirt, like Arden, but occasionally horses trotted through the weeds. One summer day while listening to Roy Orbison crooning, “Only the Lonely” on a transistor radio in the backyard, he heard a girl call for help. She had tried to ride her horse through the alley and was accosted by a couple of punks with nothing better to do than harass the homely girl riding a high-strung mare.
Terry witnessed two teenagers throwing stones at the frightened Morgan. The mare snorted, reared, and dumped her rider in the gravel- and brush-strewn alley. Terry jumped the fence and chased the kids off. He helped the tall youngster to her feet and dusted her off. Her eyes were deep-set and her skinny form revealed an ugly, tomboy appearance. He helped her calm the stout animal, and they both climbed aboard for the short ride to her folks’ home just a couple blocks away. Her name was Pam and like Terry, she loved animals. Melody, the skittish horse, bolted for the barn once it sensed its proximity to home base. Behind the stucco and western brick home, Melody skidded to a halt, dumping both kids in the dirt.
Terry stood, helped Pam to her feet once more, dusted himself off, and gazed around the half-acre lot surrounding the two-story western home. The yard contained a myriad of brick construction, antique cars, and fifty Indian motorcycles in various states of repair. Terry felt like he’d died and gone to heaven.
Pam’s dad, Harry Woolman, worked for various movie and television studios as an actor, stuntman, and special effects coordinator. When he wasn’t building sets, his trade was brickwork, which was evident around his home in the ornate planters, the driveway, and fireplace.
The yard contained a myriad of brick construction, antique cars, and fifty Indian motorcycles in various states of repair. Terry felt like he’d died and gone to heaven.
“I saw the most incredible things,” Terry said. “There was a movie space ship in this guy’s back yard. It was used in a movie called Rock Ship.” A giant fuzzy tarantula collected dust in the corner of the yard, along with several Rock People mannequins. Terry didn’t know which way to turn.
“Wanna earn some pocket money?” Harry asked Terry. “I’ll pay you five bucks an hour to load bricks.”
Harry was born and raised in Elkton, Maryland, an unassuming marrying town where fifteen private chapels made Elkton the elopement capital of the East Coast. As a kid in the 1930s, Harry was the town guide, meeting young couples on the edge of town on his Indian motorcycle and escorting them to the chapel of their choice. During his tours he performed stunts on his flathead to the delight of customers from all over the East. One day he impressed a Hollywood producer with his wheel stands and balancing while riding and standing on his seat. He was invited to begin a career as a stuntman on the West Coast.
Harry worked on some of the last silent films. He developed a reputation as a stuntman and special effects innovator, doubling for such notables as Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, William Bendix, and John Carradine. He also appeared in occasional roles, such as a motorcycle police officer in an Abbott and Costello comedy. During the course of his film career, Harry survived more than 3,000 head-on collisions and was featured numerous times on the television program, You Asked for It, doing everything from jumping a house with a car to being blown up in a paper coffin by twenty sticks of dynamite. He jumped his own house with a 1956 Ford while one of his daughters tried to take a nap in the back seat.
Having gained practice in handling cars while running moonshine in rural Cecil County, Maryland, Woolman headlined as a thrill rider on the racetrack circuit with Ed “Lucky” Teter and his Champion Hell Drivers. A complex and changing cultural and political landscape defined the 1960s. Harry was ensconced in the Hollywood studio industry during this crazed era.
Harry’s wife, Alma, a demure five-foot six-inch woman with sparkling eyes and a constant smile coupled with an upbeat personality, could have doubled for actress Lupy Valdez. Her parents were Greek immigrants who lived on the streets of Whittier, California, through the prohibition era of the 1920s. With an entrepreneurial spirit serving as a guiding light, Louis and Pauline Papas fulfilled their own vision of the American Dream. They owned a pool hall and a barber shop on Whittier Boulevard. A false wall in the barber shop led to a gambling den. They also owned a dance school and a dry cleaners. They invested in seaside apartment houses in Hermosa Beach. Louie still enjoyed walks in the park and a game of nine-ball well into his nineties.
From the moment Terry met Pam and her folks, Harry and Alma, he found a surrogate family, a positive, prankster father figure, a vocation within the Hollywood studios, several trades, and an introduction to the Hollywood biker world.
Terry watched Pam grow from the gangly, homely girl who had been, thrown from her horse into a very different creature. Age and puberty transformed the girl, who was two years younger than Terry, from a twelve-year-old, skinny, angular tomboy into a knockout fourteen-year-old Hollywood actress.
“At thirteen, she started to change,” Terry said, “By the time she turned fourteen, she was no longer an ugly duckling.”
Pam was a passionate girl, a child of the sixties, unleashed by the urge to roam free. Though the family wasn’t wealthy, Pam never went without. The day she received her driver’s license, her folks hauled her and Terry to the nearest Los Angeles Ford dealership and bought Pam a brand-new, shiny, fire engine-red 1965 Mustang, with an all-black Naugahyde interior and bucket seats.
Seven months later, her dad destroyed the new Mustang while filming a commercial for Kool cigarettes. Terry helped Harry set up a series of special-effect jump ramps at a regional speedway. Harry tested Pam’s Mustang around the track, while Donna, Pam’s sister, drove another Mustang as the pace car.
“Harry instructed the tech to remove the air-conditioning from under the hood of Pam’s car, but didn’t confirm the operation. Harry later drove the flashy red Mustang around the track several times and attempted a jump off the ramp. The Mustang took a nosedive and was totaled.
“That was one of the rare times when I saw Harry blow up,” Terry said. “He fumed and forced the techs to remove the air-conditioning from the backup Mustang.”
Harry made five passes and five successful jumps in the backup car without a hitch. They towed Pam’s Mustang back to town and rebuilt it completely, but it was never the same, so her dad bought her a new VW.
