I WAS A CHILD OF THE SIXTIES, born in 1948, one year after Terry the Tramp, the subject of this book. Like Terry I lived through the massive social changes that took place after World War II and throughout the sixties, and like Terry, I became immersed in the culture of motorcycle clubs. As I got into writing this book, it became apparent that the societal changes occurring when Terry and I were young were reflected within the changes that occurred in the motorcycling culture, and particularly in motorcycle clubs. Why did clubs change from straight-laced guys and couples in matching pressed uniforms into absolute wild men on bobbers, then choppers, wearing wild, unruly mountain-man attire?
I dug into our ugly history as far back as the 1930s, a time when you weren’t shit unless you were born into the correct family, went to the right school or church, had the appropriate shade of skin pigmentation, and lived in an upscale neighborhood on the right side of the tracks. The Depression hit like a financial sledgehammer in the early thirties and society flipped upside-down. We were still reeling from the worst financial chaos in our country’s history a decade later when we found ourselves being dragged into a world war. By the end of 1945, we had endured ten years of severe economic depression, followed by four years of violent global conflict.
When men returned from the war, they returned forever changed. Some were able to assimilate back into society, but for others, the societal norms and family ties that once shaped their every action no longer held the social leverage and power they had before the war. Many men found themselves unwilling to accept the rigid class structure society enforced in the pre-war years. Men from all social strata had fought side-by-side; in the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific, class structure had been replaced by military ranks. Pressure came from officers, regardless of what social class that man had been in prior to the war. When these men returned to the United States, they were no longer willing to accept the station of life into which they had happened to be born. When an American returned home after experiencing the horrors of war, no one was going to tell him what he could or could not do.
Many men found themselves unwilling to accept the rigid class structure that society had enforced in the pre-war years.
Motorcycling had been hugely popular in the early years of the internal-combustion engine. At that time automobiles were primarily expensive, one-off vehicles, hand-built by artisan coachbuilders. Motorcycles presented an inexpensive alternative to these pricey conveyances. That all changed when Henry Ford introduced the Model T, a mass-produced production-line vehicle that sold for less than many motorcycles. From the minute the Model T hit the market, motorcycle sales began to fall.
This slide in motorcycle sales picked up steam during the recession. At the peak of the motorcycling boom there were hundreds of motorcycle manufacturers in the United States; by the time the Great Depression had taken hold that number dwindled to three—Harley-Davidson, Indian, and Excelsior-Henderson. Within a couple years Excelsior-Henderson closed up shop, leaving just two.
But the war opened motorcycling to a broad audience as young men were drafted by the tens of thousands, and many thousands more volunteered to fight. Many of these young people learned how to ride motorcycles at training centers throughout the country. Young soldiers were taught to operate motorcycles for the Motor Transport Division, Signal Corps, Military Police, and numerous other branches. Army procurement officials hired former competitive riders, dealers, salesmen, and motorcycle mechanics to act as civilian instructors, introducing thousands of enlisted men and noncommissioned officers to motorcycling.
This influx of new riders proved a very good thing for the motorcycle industry. These new riders had cash to spend; after the war, Americans had discretionary income for the first time in two decades. Many Americans feared that the end of World War II and the subsequent drop in military spending might bring back the hard times of the Great Depression. Instead, pent-up consumer demand fueled exceptionally strong economic growth in the postwar period. The automobile industry successfully converted back to producing cars, and new industries such as aviation and electronics grew by leaps and bounds. A housing boom, stimulated in part by easily affordable mortgages for returning members of the military, added to the expansion. At the same time, the jump in postwar births—the baby boom that occurred after vets returned home and began breeding prolifically—increased the number of future consumers.
At the time the American Motorcyclist Association—the AMA—was ruled under the iron fist of one E.C. Smith, who served as the general secretary of the organization from 1928 until 1958. The AMA dictator wasn’t terribly impressed with the behavior of many of these new riders, many of whom tried to recreate the excitement and thrills of their wartime adventures aboard their motorcycles. In the face of an increasingly unruly group of young riders, Smith stressed rules and regulations. In a lengthy speech to the AMA membership, he harped on expansion of the domestic motorcycle market in view of the fact that motorcycling in the United States. was centered on sporting and recreation, because the automobile had eclipsed the motorcycle’s utility and transportation applications. Smith tried to sever ties to Canadian competitive riders because of their predilection for FICM rules, which allowed them to ride British bikes. He wanted to limit AMA activities north of the border to clubs that favored American machines for competition.
In 1942, Arthur Welch, the editor of Motorcyclist, was contracted to run a small ad for a foreign brand of motorcycle in the January 1943 edition. Motorcyclist was the only motorcycle magazine in the country, and was still controlled by the AMA at that time. Smith telephoned Arthur Welch from Columbus and reamed him a new one, stating that he was doing the American motorcycle industry a disservice by promoting information that might encourage the purchase of foreign machines. This heavy-handed approach did not sit well with Welch, and as the war was winding down in 1945, The Motorcyclist broke its bonds with the AMA and became an independent magazine. It proclaimed that it would be independent of industry control, and henceforth would be “Free, Fearless and Fair.”
Smith started publishing his AMA Report, urging clubs that had disbanded during the war to reactivate and recruit new members. He immediately kicked off a new Competition Committee, which he chaired, and in 1946 stood ready with his staff at the Columbus offices of the AMA to develop an annual event schedule. In October 1946, he called a meeting of the Competition Committee. The members consisted of Harley-Davidson dealership owners only. No active competition riders were invited to the meeting.
The agenda called for a vote to publish a new competition rule book, which included enhanced enforcement of novice, amateur, and expert class categorizations. There would be no more lax AMA officials or referees.
Smith and his gang of H-D dealers had the audacity to pass and publicly announce a new Class C-mandated, lower-compression ratio of 6.5:1. The AMA piously described this change as a safety measure, but actually it was aimed at eliminating British machines from any Class C competition. The Brit bikes’ overhead-valve 500 cc engines would not run well at compression ratios under 7.5:1. England almost single-handedly held the Nazis at bay for years, until the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, but the AMA, Harley-Davidson, and what remained of Indian by that time prevented them from racing or joining the AMA in America. Great bunch of guys.
When the AMA instituted anti-British racing rules, Welch tried to remain neutral and soft-pedal his differences with AMA policies, but hundreds of letters poured into his office disputing the new rule. The rules also drove a wedge between the AMA and Canadian competitors. Pouring fuel on the fire were Harley-Davidson clubs that restricted their competition activities to Milwaukee-made products only.
After the war the barriers against importing motorcycles began to fall, but there weren’t many motorcycles worth importing being built anywhere in the lean post-war years. New bikes began to hit our shores in 1946, but they were generally pre-war designs.
The continuation of restrictive wartime rationing of materials delayed the resurgence of motorcycle manufacturers after the war. During the war folks couldn’t stroll into any shop and buy sugar, butter, or meat. They couldn’t fill up their gas tanks and drive wherever they wanted. Shortly after the first of May 1942, the U.S. Office of Price Administration (OPA) froze prices on most everyday goods. Gasoline, tires, sugar, meat, silk, shoes, and nylon were restricted. More than 8,000 rationing boards across the country were created. They even rationed farm equipment.
A certain amount of rationing continued even after the war because many of the materials needed for industry in the United States were being used to rebuild the war-torn European countries. In the grand hierarchy of priorities, motorcycle manufacturers worldwide were fairly low on the totem pole when it came to doling out steel, chrome, and other resources.
Something had to give—the bikes being produced by Harley-Davidson and Indian (especially Indian) didn’t meet the needs of many riders as well as some of the foreign bikes, especially the hot-rod roadsters being built in England. The California-based British Motorcycle Dealers Association (BMDA) called for an emergency meeting in 1946 and voted unanimously to organize nationwide. Deciding that there was strength in numbers, they would present a united front against Smith, the AMA, and the Competition Committee.
In 1946, the same year that the British motorcycle dealers organized against the tyranny of Smith and the AMA, a new breed of outlaw motorcyclist began to make its presence known. These wild men and their stripped-down domestic V-twins started becoming a decidedly anti-social presence at AMA events. For the first time they were branded outlaws, and motorcycling started to generate a roughneck reputation.
Media reports blamed disillusioned ex-servicemen for the disreputable behavior. The rowdy behavior of this new breed of motorcyclist seemed especially startling when compared to the timid behavior of mainstream society at that time. Time magazine famously observed of those coming of age in the 1950s, “The most startling thing about the younger generation is its silence.”
That wasn’t the case for bikers. They started pushing the limits at AMA events such as the 1947 races in Daytona, Florida, where motorcyclists sped through the streets, rapping off loud pipes and generally raising hell. Groupies showed up in droves and erotic entertainment was unlimited.
Then on July 4, at the AMA’s annual races and Gypsy tour at Hollister, California, an event occurred that would forever change the face of motorcycling. In 1947 a rowdy group of bikers decided to crash the party in the remote agricultural community. Things got a little out of hand, a few bikers were arrested for public intoxication and public urination, and the straights attending the AMA festivities grumbled a bit. That would have been the end of it, had the misadventures of the motorcyclists not landed on the pages of Life magazine. Life published a sensationalized account, going so far as to stage photos of a local dude posing aboard one of the bobbers parked on the street. The published images seem tame today, but in the repressed atmosphere of the 1950s the Life piece was positively shocking.
Men who had watched their brothers being blown to bits in the hedgerows of France and the islands of the Pacific were not shocked as easily as the general population. Rather than being appalled by the events at Hollister, many of these men wanted a piece of the action. Hollister may have frightened the straights, but it also sold a lot of motorcycles.
In 1947 a rowdy group of bikers decided to crash the party . . . Things got a little out of hand.
“There were no excuses, no laments, no protests,” Bill Hayes wrote in his book The Original Wild Ones. “The country needed young soldiers. They went. War changes everyone. And everything. When young vets like Willie Forkner, Robert Burns, and George Manker (Booze Fighters) returned home, it was difficult to forget the horrors of what they had seen. It was hard to shake off the ingrained military regimentation. It was impossible to shed some of the cold-sweat guilt that comes with surviving while so many others did not. And there was an unnerving restlessness in trying to adapt to the calmness and serenity of ‘normal’ living after drowning in chaos. It was easy, however, to adopt an ‘I don’t fit in’ kind of attitude. It was easy for returning vets to feel more comfortable with one another than with those from ‘the outside.’”
While motorcycling brothers were beginning to run wild in the streets, the AMA still sought to exert iron-fisted control over every aspect of the motorcycling world. Smith and company condemned the actions of the rowdy bikers and tried to ban anyone not connected with the AMA mafia from attending racing events. The organization also sought to control all media stories that, in any way shape or form, related to motorcycling. They outright threatened any publishers who even considered writing about non-American motorcycle brands. When R.W. “Pop” Cassell, born in England, tried to publish Buzz-zz Motor Cycle News, Smith told him that the AMA would not deviate from its long-standing policy of managing the news of the sport and industry. No derogatory editorializing or criticism of AMA or Competition Committee policies would be permitted, and all technical material was subject to prior review by the factory in question before being printed.
Shortly thereafter the AMA launched its own official publication, but it rapidly lost ground. Robert B. Petersen bought the foundering Motorcyclist magazine and added it to his stable that included Motor Trend, Hot Rod and Kustom Kar. Petersen’s publishing empire was too big for even E.C. Smith to control; Motorcyclist magazine would publish stories on whatever brand of motorcycle it wanted regardless of country of origin, and if E.C. Smith or Harley-Davidson didn’t like it, they could just kiss Robert B. Petersen’s pearly-white ass. Once a mainstream business like Petersen Publishing got into the motorcycle magazine business, the floodgates opened. Suddenly American consumers were learning about motorcycle brands they hadn’t even known existed just a few years earlier.
At the same time the AMA was losing control over the press, it was also losing control over the average American motorcyclist. Bikers returned from World War II as disillusioned with the AMA as they were confident in their mechanical abilities. Many of these young men formed clubs that the AMA would not approve of, to put it mildly. One year after the Hollister incident, the Hells Angels were born in San Bernardino. The HAs were just one of hundreds of such anti-authoritarian motorcycle clubs that formed, much to the chagrin of one E.C. Smith.
Still, most motorcyclists toed the AMA line. Apparently the bikers of 1947 were still intimidated by the Man. You can’t blame people too much; those were intimidating times. We rolled directly from World War II into a Cold War. The iron curtain spread across Europe and we were suddenly embroiled in an international conflict over ideology. It was a perfect situation for megalomaniacs and tyrants who wanted to lord it over their fellow man. Over and over, these control freaks preyed on people’s fear of that which was different—in this case Communism, but they also used the same tactics against bikers—and goaded the public into overreacting and causing their own worst nightmares. People wanted to be free no matter what, but the people instigating the mass hysteria of the era tricked them into forfeiting the very freedom they craved. The cops, bureaucrats, government agents, and control freaks spouted the rhetoric of freedom in every speech, but restricted freedom with their every action. Eventually their whole restrictive house of cards crashed around them, but in the process they destroyed many, many lives.
Bikers returned from World War II as disillusioned with the AMA as they were confident in their mechanical abilities.
This world of tyrannically enforced conformism was not an ideal place in which motorcycling could thrive. The motorcycle industry fell on hard times. Indian shut down production in 1953, and Harley-Davidson faced hard times, in part because neither manufacturer would build the middleweight motorcycles the market demanded, as evidenced by the success of middleweight bikes from Triumph, BSA, and Royal Enfield. Harley went so far as to order all its dealers not to sell Cushman motorcycles, which would have afforded them a solid line of entry-level motorcycles to offset the small bikes that would soon start to trickle in from Japan.
With a population that feared them, a motorcycling hierarchy that hated them, and an industry that refused to build the kind of bikes they demanded, it’s no wonder returning vets went outlaw, modified their bikes, and said to hell with the society they risked their lives for. The AMA pulled one underhanded act after another in an effort to control the market and the competitive arena, and many riders had had their fill. AMA membership slipped and Gypsy tours and clubs languished, while the outlaw spirit grew and began to take over.
Bob McMillen, a member of the Yellowjackets in 1946, remembered the AMA antics. “We weren’t protesting,” Bob said. “We were just having a good time and didn’t like rules.” Guys who wanted to compete tried to follow the rules, but the rebel notion was spreading like locusts over a field of produce.
The AMA’s Smith and his Competition Committee tried their damnedest to maintain control of the sport. In 1950 they took it upon themselves to cheat Dick Klamfoth, the rider of the year, out of his official accolades, simply because he won a string of Midwest circuit races and the Daytona 200 on a Norton. Postcards and letters streamed into the AMA’s Columbus offices in support of Klamfoth, but Smith and his gang of H-D dealerships chose to ignore the votes and announce that there would be no rider of the year declaration for 1950.
Smith claimed that there were insufficient votes to warrant the award presentation. Behind the curtain, he said that the award was only designated for riders of domestic machines. Downright hostility brewed between domestic and imported machine owners.
In spite of all this, motorcycling increased in popularity. U.S. sales numbers for 1950 were three times that of 1940, with Triumph the sales leader.
By 1958, the AMA Gypsy Tour was phased out because of the growing outlaw element. That year E.C. Smith finally retired and took home all his secret files, correspondence, and meeting minutes, along with financial records of his involvement with Milwaukee. Shortly thereafter the new AMA boss, Lin Kuchler, faced problems with the Internal Revenue Service. Seems when the AMA incorporated in 1928 they filed as a non-profit. But that didn’t apply to the Class C concept kicked off in 1933. Income from the sanctioning body was never reported. Kuchler cut an annual payment deal with the IRS to prevent the AMA’s demise.
As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, motorcycling had earned a bad rap on two fronts. Outlaws were running amok, and the AMA itself had become something of a criminal organization, thanks to the shady bookkeeping of the E.C. Smith era. To make matters worse, the fratricidal warfare between Harley-Davidson and the foreign makes continued unabated.
By 1958, the AMA Gypsy Tour was phased out because of the growing outlaw element.
Following Smith’s departure the AMA began mending fences. Kuchler began a national public relations campaign and began to work with import manufacturers. In 1958, for the first time in history, riders on British machines claimed half of the national victories. This was the first time Milwaukee failed to win a majority. The AMA could no longer be considered a private club run for the benefit of Milwaukee.
As the 1940s gave way to the 1950s, the wild motorcycle club culture became more of a reaction against the constricting conformity society demanded during that era. The members of the outlaw clubs were uniquely positioned to take advantage of the hell that was about to break loose in the 1960s.
The 1960s was more of an idea than a time period. For starters, the decade didn’t really begin in 1960. Really, it began after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. About that time everything started to change. The war in Vietnam began to ramp up. The civil rights movement picked up steam. Even the music changed. Jimmy Gilmore and the Fireballs’ “Sugar Shack,” and Little Peggy March’s “I Will Follow Him,” gave way to Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Who. Sock hops and malt shops gave way to love-ins and hippy communes.
Not everyone joined the counterculture, and things didn’t change overnight, but for the first time it wasn’t just bikers who were fed up with the bullshit and sought out their own paths. Soon it seemed like every kid in every middle-class suburb in every major metropolitan area in the country was a rebel.
What they were rebelling against was anyone’s guess. It’s easy to understand the behavior of the returning vets in the crazed era that followed World War II, but most of the kids born during the baby boom couldn’t blame deprivation or post-traumatic combat stress. Nor could they claim to rebel against the strict dictates of the AMA; most of them didn’t even know about the mandated AMA structure and the nasty moves Harley-Davidson and Indian conjured up to keep Triumph and BSA off the shores of the USA. If you had asked a young person of the period why they were rebelling, chances are you wouldn’t even get as satisfying an answer as Marlon Brando gave in the film, “The Wild One:” “What have you got?”
This is the world that spawned motorcycle clubs like the Vagos. This was the wild world in which Terry the Tramp grew to be a man. These tempting times led him to the world of outlaw bikers. 