From 1920 through 1924, Ace motorcycles were built in a ... - WebRing

Joe Stephan – Ace Mechanic Copyright © 2000 by Joe Stephan 

From 1920 through 1924, Ace motorcycles were built in a modern factory located in a rapidly expanding, 

industrial area north and east of the heart of the City of Philadelphia, near the Delaware River. This wideopen 

area boasted long, straight roads and many railroad freight lines. The factory was built in 1916 and 

occupied by the Savage Arms Company who manufactured munitions for the war effort. Shortly after the 

armistice the factory was closed until, a short time later, it was again reopened. But this time, instead of 

making weapons, motorcycles would be produced. 

The motorcycle produced in this factory would be the culmination of many years of hard work, experience 

and design refinements by one of the most gifted motorcycle design engineers of the time; William G. 

Henderson. Shortly after selling his Henderson Motorcycle Company to Ignaz Schwinn of Excelsior (the 

new resulting company being the equally famous Excelsior-Henderson Motor Company), Will Henderson 

began planning to again go out on his own and continue his development of the ‘perfectly’ designed 

motorcycle. After all, the Ace was really the continuation and improvement of the Henderson four-cylinder 

motorcycle that Will Henderson had originally designed and marketed. With financing from some local 

businessmen, Henderson was now ready to again produce motorcycles of exceptional design, quality and 

performance. 

Into this dynamic and exciting venture walked my grandfather, Joseph Stephan. A Hungarian immigrant 

who came to settle in the Cincinnati, Ohio area in 1910 as a small boy and then later in Philadelphia, he 

saw his share of the early days of motorcycling including some of the giants who built them and rode them 

to glory. Being apprenticed to several machine shops as a lad, his career was guided by his paternal aunt’s 

husband, a German immigrant who was a master machinist and mechanic who raced motorcycles at area 

racetracks. Soon, Uncle Karl had young Joe working for the Niley brothers in their Indian dealership and 

board track racing effort as a mechanic. There they taught him the exacting method in which the tires had 

to be installed on the race bikes to prevent mishaps and failure at high speed. A pinched or twisted inner 

tube could prove disastrous on the high-banked racetrack in just about every case. 

During a pleasant, early summer day in 1991, Dr. John Patt and Doug Strange visited my grandfather at his 

home in Northeast Philadelphia. They brought with them Doc’s restored version of the Ace XP-4 and 

Charlie Cole’s 1923 Six Day Trials winning Ace Four (now owned by Doug Strange). Doug also brought 

along some photographs he had obtained from Gene Aucott of Philadelphia who had in turn been given the 

photographs by my grandfather when they first met in the late 1960’s. They sat for hours with my 

grandfather under the shade of trees in his large back yard and listened to him retell tales about days and 

people long forgotten while recording him on tape. They had many questions about the production of Ace 

motorcycles and specifically wanted to know all they could about the circumstances surrounding the 

development of the XP-4 by Henderson’s successor, Art Lemon. 

What follows is my grandfather’s account, in his own words, of his experiences at the Ace Motor 

Corporation factory during the golden age of motorcycle development. In it, he talks about conversations 

with Will Henderson (always referred to as, Mr. Henderson), Art Lemon, Red Wolverton, and Cannonball 

Baker (again, referred to as, Mr. Baker). With memory dim from time, he mistakenly interchanges Art 

Lemon for Will Henderson and vice versa. I’ve done my best to comment on corrections given the timeline 

in the story. Much more research remains to be done. Perhaps more resources will come forward and 

contribute their knowledge as a result of this work. 

Having developed a specific interest in my grandfather’s motorcycling past only after his death in 1995, I 

missed the opportunity to question him directly about the people and events he witnessed. I always 

enjoyed listening to him talk about these men and their motorcycles but I was not able to put them into 

perspective, not realizing that their legacy and machines live on today. I was raised with names like Jim 

Davis, Freddie Ludlow, Ralph Hepburn, Wells Bennett, Joe Wolter, Red Parkhurst and Otto Walker 

mentioned repeatedly during visits with my grandfather. Unfortunately, most of his collection of 

photographs was all but gone by the time I arrived on the scene, his associations long in the past. He 

worked as a motorcycle mechanic for a few more years after the Ace factory closed in Philadelphia but 

took an automotive mechanic position for a large, commercial bakery at about the time he got married in 

1926. He remained at that job until he retired, 41 years later. He kept his 1922 Ace for another ten years 

but no one can remember what prompted him to finally sell it. Boy, that’s one bike I’d like to get my hands 

on! Sadly, I’m only now beginning to discover the wealth of information that he possessed and that is now 

gone forever. If I could speak to him now for just one hour, the things I could learn. But that’s not 

05/22/00 Preliminary Draft Page 1 of 43


possible. What I do have now is a priceless recording thanks to Doug Strange to whom I’ll always be 

grateful. It is my pleasure to share it now with other antique motorcycle enthusiasts. 

Preface 

The recorded interview begins with my grandfather pointing out various people in photographs that Dr. 

John Patt and Doug Strange brought with them. He is trying to recall the name of a particular individual 

who was a friend and mentor in the motorcycle repair business. It seems unlikely that he would forget the 

man’s name, but at 88 years of age, I’m sure a lot of things slip through your memory. 

Comments made by Joe later in the interview seem to indicate that the man he is referring to is Bill Eitel 

who worked at the Ace factory. This is supported by mention of a Mrs. Eitel finishing second in an obstacle 

course race during the second annual midsummer picnic run of the Keystone Motorcycle Association, held 

at Hulmeville, Pennsylvania on July 22, 1923. This association consisted of many Ace executives and 

employees. (Mrs. Slater won the egg and spoon carry contest.) A Miss Dixon—possibly the sister of Joe 

Dixon, an Ace factory test rider—actually won the obstacle course race in which Mrs. Eitel finished 

second. Frank Kiss, an Indian dealer from Pottstown, Pennsylvania edged out my grandfather in the slow 

race. However, not to be out done, my grandfather did win the solo pie-eating contest. A feat, I believe, 

that requires you to pilot your motorcycle while eating a whole pie. 

Mr. Eitel went on to have his own motorcycle repair business through the late 1920’s where he advertised, 

‘We Use Genuine Henderson, Excelsior, Merkel, Miami, Harley Davidson, and Indian Parts.’ I have a 

business letter head from Bill Eitel’s shop on which a very satisfied customer wrote out a very original 

story about how he traveled to Bill Eitel’s Cycle Garage while mentioning each street along his route in 

stylized prose. For those who know the layout of the city’s streets, it is quite entertaining. There is very 

little else known about Mr. Eitel today. Searches for surviving family members have been fruitless and his 

accomplishments and association with motorcycles does not survive him today. 

Another interesting item I possess regarding Bill Eitel is a letter written to him in September of 1936 from 

E. M. DeLong, discussing the development of a new motor. Mr. DeLong was associated with the D. & C. 

Motor Mfg Company of Cleveland, Ohio at the time, according to the envelope. Mr. DeLong was an 

assistant to Art Lemon while at Ace and worked on the development of the XP-4 and even rode in the 

sidecar for that particular record run. He went on to develop the Cleveland four-cylinder motorcycle after 

leaving Ace. 

Tape One: Side A 

“…to assemble the motorcycles at the factory.” Joe is pointing out various people in a 

panoramic group photograph taken at a local motorcycle picnic and rally at which many Ace 

employees were present. The photo was taken at the second annual midsummer picnic run of 

the Keystone Motorcycle Association, held at Hulmeville, Pennsylvania on July 22, 1923. 

“What was his name? Do you remember? Were you hooked up yet?” Doc was trying to get 

Joe to remember the name of the man who helped get him the job running in engines at the 

Ace factory. 

“It’s hard to explain to you.” Joe sputtered, trying desperately to recall. 

“He was the final-assembly man?” Doc asked, trying to clarify at least the man’s position at 

the factory. 

“Yes. He was the final-assembly man. And then, let’s see. That’s me right there. Then this is 

the same fellow who started me in on the Excelsiors. Now, he was a motorcycle mechanic. 

This guy was a motorcycle driver, a Harley driver. The names, they’re so hard for me to keep 

track of.” Joe was pointing out each person in the large, panoramic photograph. Each of the 

participants was arranged side-by-side with each other. Each sported different combinations 

of the riding apparel that was common for the time. Most were mounted on their machines, 

some solo and others with side hacks. 

“That’s you right there, in the middle?” Doug was pointing to Joe in the photograph. 



“Yes. That’s me and that’s my friend.” Joe pointed to each in turn, leaning forward in his 

chair as he did so. 

“He’s the one in the middle with the sidecar?” Doc was referring to the Excelsior mechanic 

who mentored Joe. 

“So how did you come to be acquainted with Gene Aucott?” Joe asked, looking up from the 

photos. He had originally met Gene Aucott in 1967 in the parking lot of the Sears Automotive 

store in Northeast Philadelphia. Gene’s Egli Vincent was parked there while Gene was inside. 

Joe saw the bike and went over to take a closer look. When Gene walked out, they struck up a 

conversation. 

Imagine Gene’s reaction when he learned of Joe’s involvement with Ace motorcycles. 

Subsequently, Gene told Lou Lichva, the president of the AMCA, about this old Ace 

mechanic that he had met. Lou wasted no time in inviting Joe to be a guest at a local meet at 

Ft. Mott, New Jersey. Joe went along with Bill Eitel, the Excelsior mechanic, and Joe’s oldest 

grandson, Dan Morris, who was about twelve years old at the time. 

“I bought my second motorcycle from Gene Aucott. I bought a Douglas, an English 

motorcycle. And I’ve known Gene since 1950 or so.” Doc was actually driving by Gene’s 

house at the time on his way to Temple University where he was studying veterinary 

medicine, and saw number of classic motorcycles at a meet that Gene had organized. Doc 

stopped and one thing led to another. The rest is, as they say, history! 

Returning to the photograph, Doc pointed out some Ace motorcycles. “There is an Ace. 

These are all Aces on the very end.” 

Ace Service Department 

“Oh, now this is Bill Slater here, the guy who used to be the repair shop manager. Believe it 

or not, he was one heck of a good guy.” Joe worked for Bill Slater during the bulk of his time 

at Ace, including the seminal days during the development of the XP-4 project engine. 

“He was a good mechanic too, I guess?” Doc was trying to draw some more information out 

of Joe, to help jog his memory. But more importantly, Doc had a genuine interest in 

everything connected with the Ace motorcycles. Being able to speak with someone who had 

actually worked for Ace in their factory during their earliest years, was just too fantastic to 

believe. 

“Well, I’ll say yes. But I’m going to tell you that I was a real big surprise to them over there. 

I went into there when they sold all of those Ace motorcycles to the Philadelphia Police 

Department. And they used to come in there and Joe had to fix them. That was me!” Joe said 

proudly and laughed. 

“You know there were guys, these here cops who rode the motorcycles, they were goofy! 

Honestly! They would run into things all the time. For instance, there was this one fellow 

who was always a steady customer, he was a heavyweight Philadelphia boxer, Dizzy Dean 

they called him. He’d come in on the motorcycle with the front-end all bashed in. 

“Well, I replaced the whole front-end since they didn’t have to pay for it. I went into the 

stockroom and requisitioned out a whole new front-end and put it together. And I said to him, 

‘Now for crying out loud, don’t smash it again.’ So the son-of-a-gun, before he got out of the 

building, doesn’t he go ahead and run into a big concrete pillar! 

“Bill Slater said, ‘Fix it again and YOU take the motorcycle out to the gate. Don’t let him 

drive it in there again.’” Joe laughed, remembering this particular episode as if it had 

happened yesterday. They say that memories associated with strong emotions are the ones 

that last the longest. It was apparent in Joe’s case that he treasured the humorous episodes 

more than the historic ones. 



Uncle Karl 

“Were you working for Ace when that picture was taken? Doug was again referring to the 

motorcycle rally and picnic picture. 

“That’s an interesting story how I got into this motorcycle business.” Joe began again to 

explain how he came to work for the Ace Motor Corporation in their factory. “Well, I was in 

motorcycling before, because my uncle was a board track driver. He used to race every 

Saturday night at the Point Breeze. Challenged anybody! He had the long Henderson with the 

footrests up front.” 

“The 1912 model.” Doug stated emphatically. 

“Yes.” Joe was quick to respond. “And he was racing with that. We were always wondering 

how he could beat everybody. I really was the one to found out how he did it. He was a 

machinist and he made his own sprockets. Because the Henderson came out with only one 

sprocket, he could build up a higher sprocket and really get a lot of speed out of it.” 

Tracking the XP-4 

At this point, my grandfather turned his attention to Doc’s XP-4. “Now listen here, I’m sort of 

surprised! How did you get that motor? Plass had it, didn’t he?” 

“Okay.” Doc began tentatively. “Doug, this is going to be on tape? I guess it’s all right. Oh 

gee, now let’s start. The records were set and the shop foreman, I think, got hold of this.” He 

was, of course referring to the original XP-4 engine, now resting in the replica racer that Doc 

had put together. 

“The shop foreman?” Asked Joe, concentrating on Doc’s account of how the engine had been 

preserved. 

“They said he got hold of XP-4. Somebody got it. Who got it?” Doc asked, turning to Doug 

for his input. 

“Plass took it away.” Doug stated matter-of-factly. “And Red accuses him of stealing it.” 

Whatever the circumstances, it is still unclear as to the fate of the rest of the motorcycle. 

“Well, Plass was the general manager over there.” Joe said this not having heard the previous 

exchange. He was hung up on Doc’s mentioning that the shop foreman took when he knew 

for certain that the general manager, C. W. Plass, was in fact the person who obtained the 

engine. 

“Plass got it. The general manager got it.” Doc said, finally agreeing with Joe and Doug as to 

Plass’ true function at Ace. He then continued with his account as to how he acquired the 

engine in the end. “Anyway Ace, as you know, was reorganized and reorganized. They went 

to Blossburg and they went broke. Then they went to Michigan Motors and they went broke. 

And Indian brought the remains and, evidently, Indian got this engine. 

“The motorcycle by this time was gone but they saved the engine of XP-3 and XP-4 and they 

ended up in the loft of the Indian factory. And Henry Wing, Sr., from Massachusetts, got 

these engines out of the Indian factory somehow when Indian was in the process of 

reorganizing and going broke, after World War II. Henry Wing from Greenfield, 

Massachusetts. Everybody knew he had them but he didn’t want to get rid of them. Nothing 

like that. 

“But eventually, he died and then his son died. And the family—they meant nothing to 

them—so they just decided to convert them into money and offered them for sale. They 

offered them to Steve McQueen. He had Red Wolverton verify that they were the engines and 

he paid Red Wolverton’s expenses for a trip to California and all this and that. But the price 

was exorbitant. Ah, the Wing’s, at that time, for this engine in a street frame, and the XP-3 

engine wanted… Wasn’t it thirty thousand dollars Doug?” 

“At one time, yes.” Doug replied evenly. 



“Or some fantastic price.” Doc continued. “And even Steve McQueen backed down from that. 

So then, they sat at the Wings’ and the Wings all died and they became available and the price 

came way down to a fraction, for just the bare engine. They took it out of the street frame. 

“So I bought XP-3 and XP-4 from the Wing family, the widow, for what I thought was still a 

heck of a price. But, I wanted this engine so badly and I had a couple of bucks so I bought 

this engine and XP-3. 

“Now what has happened somewhere along the line, the magnesium crankcase blew up. So 

they fitted, this is actually an Indian Four crankcase, which is practically identical. But the 

cylinders, the gears, the crankshaft, everything in it…” 

At this point, the tape stops and then begins again with them discussing turning XP-4 around 

so that my grandfather can see the other side and he begins talking about when he first came 

to Ace. 

“We’ll turn it around.” Doug offered and then began moving XP-4 around so that Joe could 

look at the other side. 

Final Assembly Testing 

“You know what happened?” Joe began again. “I’m over there, at the assembling department, 

as they were coming off.” He stopped, trying to explain but not getting the verbal feedback he 

was expecting. Doc and Doug were trying not to interrupt. “They had three platforms. Three 

fellows were… Not three fellows! Six fellows were assembling them. We had an output of 

twenty-two a day. Twenty-two motorcycles. 

“I’m over there fixing the machine up so that this fellow who was trying it…” His voice 

trailed off as he was trying to remember the term for a test rider. “If it was good, everything 

clicked. The frame was painted right, the gas tank was the right color, the fenders were right, 

and the motor was running good, then I would let him ride it. We had a track in the factory, a 

regular track.” 

“Every motorcycle was street tested? Doc asked. He knew this to be so; having heard it from 

Red Wolverton, but he just wanted Joe to confirm the fact. 

“Every one of them. I rode and the tester, he rode them too.” Joe replied quickly. “When he 

put his okay on them, then they shipped them away.” 

Art Lemon Comes to Ace 

That seemed to trigger different memory for Joe about when they were developing the XP-4 

in the experimental department. The term XP-4 was simply short hand for Experimental Four 

Cylinder. He went on. “I’m over there this one particular day when this motor was getting 

fixed up. I’m over there working, and Red is, from like here to that building was the 

experimental department where Art Lemon…I’m talking now about Art Lemon. Mr. 

Henderson got killed you know, when I worked there. When I worked at the factory, Mr. 

Henderson got killed.” 

“In the Fall of 1922 I believe he was killed.” Said Doc, trying to recall the general time frame. 

“No. It was a little later than that.” On some points, especially when he specifically 

remembered the facts, Joe would charge right in. 

“The end of December.” Doug offered. No doubt so they could continue and not go down 

another rabbit trail. 

“Yeah, so then this here Art Lemon got the job. I don’t know who hired him, I guess Plass 

hired him.” Joe reasoned. C.W. Plass was the general manager. It was more likely that Miller 

hired him. There was an account in the January 15, 1923 issue of Motorcycle and Bicycle 

Illustrated that spoke of a dinner reception for Art Lemon, giving at Mr. Miller’s home. 

“Well he was Excelsior and Henderson’s engineer…their chief engineer.” Doc knew that Art 

Lemon had been Will Henderson’s assistant at Excelsior-Henderson and that he, upon 



Henderson’s departure, assumed the role of chief engineer. Apparently, he didn’t mind 

following in Will Henderson’s footsteps once again. It seems that there were some 

fundamental problems at Excelsior-Henderson that drove both men away. 

XP-4 and Rochester Hill Climb 

“So, he came over there and I said to Red, ‘What in the heck do you have running over there?’ 

The whole building used to vibrate.” Joe said this with great emphasis. “There was such a 

roar!” Speaking of Red, “He said, ‘We’re fixing up a hill climber for New York.’ There was 

a big New York hill climb.” 

“Rochester?” Doc knew all too well about the Rochester Hill Climb. It was there that both the 

XP-4 and the XP-3 debuted. It was stated earlier that XP-4 simply stood for Experimental 

Four Cylinder. Art Lemon had in fact built up two engines. The less powerful of the two was 

dubbed XP-3. 

“It could have been.” Joe tried to remember the specifics. Apparently, he was not required to 

attend and did not go. He had other interests. “I had a date and I didn’t want to go up there on 

a Sunday. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to go on my date.’ 

“So Red came home Monday, back from New York.” Joe related the details as he heard them 

from Red. “And they took this motorcycle and they put it in a box. I didn’t even see it! They 

fixed this here hill climber up because hill climbing was a big situation in those days. So Red 

comes home from New York from this hill climb and I said, ‘Well, what happened?’ He said, 

‘Joe, you should have been there.’ You know what happened?” Joe asked his company. “A 

fellow by the name of Timken… Do you know who I’m talking about?” 

“Terpening! T.N.T. Terpening!” Supplied Doc. 

“Terpening!” Joe finally spat out after several unsuccessful attempts. “That’s the guy! Well, 

the motorcycle was in a box and Art Lemon wouldn’t take it out until the main event was on. 

Red was telling me, ‘Joe, if you would have been there, you would have laughed yourself 

silly.’” Joe laughed now, remembering Red’s comments. 

“So they get the machine out, finally the main event was on. The hill climb event. Red and 

Art Lemon took the machine out and got it started. Red asked Art to let him take a couple 

spins on it, to see if it would go up the hill. Finally, it was his turn to go up the hill. Then 

Terpening asks ‘Do I put this in low gear to go up there?’ and Red tells him, ‘No. You put it 

up in high gear.’” 

“High gear to go up?” Doug asked simply. 

“Oh my!” Exclaimed Doc. Apparently neither he nor Doug were aware of that fact. Who 

knows if Joe was even remembering correctly at this point in life. Still, if true, it would really 

speak to the low-end power of the wrung-out Ace four engine. 

“High gear he flew up in.” Joe affirmed. The conversation stops at this point when Joe’s 

daughter brings out some refreshments and Doug seeks to hook up an extension cord to the 

recorder in order to continue taping. 

After eating a little snack, Joe continued to recount Red’s account of T.N.T. Terpening’s hill 

climb run with the XP-4. “He said, ‘He went up and went over the top of the hill.’ He flew 

over the wire to break the record, the wire for the time. He flew over there with the machine. 

He came down and said, ‘I’m not going to ride that no more!’ He was so scared that he 

wouldn’t ride it any more. That was the funniest thing about that story.” 

XP-4 Replica Frame 

Joe changed stories again. “Well, about those tires on the racing machine. Are these the 

original tires?” He was indicating Doc’s machine. 



Listening to the tapes now, it appears that it was not entirely clear to Joe that the bike before 

him was a modern reproduction. A conversation he had with me shortly after Doug and Doc’s 

visit bears this out as well. At that time, he told me that the gas tank wasn’t quite right. 

Now, whether he was further confusing the XP-4 replica with a regular street Ace or that there 

was some other detail about the tank that Red didn’t mention, I do not know. He told me that 

he didn’t want to say anything because, speaking of Doc, “That fellow believes he has the 

original machine and I didn’t want to say anything to make him think otherwise.” That 

statement alone would seem to bear out my suspicions. Even as Doc tells him that he, Doc, 

built up the bike from scratch, Joe does not seem to be able to fully comprehend what Doc is 

telling him. 

“I built up these wheels. You see I had to build this whole chassis.” Doc explained. 

“Did you build that frame?” Joe asked, perhaps a little confused about how much of the 

machine was original. 

“Well, the frame I put together. I found a few pieces of frame. I found a piece that was cut 

off here.” Doc was pointing out an area on the frame. “I got it from Gene Aucott, by the way. 

He was going to throw it out. I said, ‘Hey, the junk man is here.’ So the frame went from 

here to here on both sides. 

How the Original XP-4 Got Merkel Forks 

“Then, out in Kansas, I found from here to here and I built the rest of that frame. Now Red 

was my advisor on the project so, it is right. For instance, see the forks? Merkel forks.” 

“They were Flying Merkel forks,” Joe said. 

“I made those. Those are built from scratch.” 

“You know they came out and asked me, ‘Where could we get a solid fork for our machine?’ 

Well I said that, ‘the only one that fits that frame is the Flying Merkel. You can get that at 

Bradley’s.’ I worked for Bradley too you know.” 

“Oh, did you?” Doug sounded surprised. “I know the Bradley brothers. I know the two sons.” 

“The two sons,” Joe replied. “Charlie and the other one was…? The middle one was…? 

Steven was the youngest one. Do you remember him?” 

“No. I don’t know him.” 

“This was just in the last ten years or so that we met them. Now they were big men. Were 

they big men? Do you remember? They were very tall. Did they sell Merkel? Did they handle 

Merkel? Why would they have a Merkel fork?” Doc just kept asking Joe more questions 

while he waited for a reply. 

“Well we used to…” Joe began to answer. “Charlie Bradley, his father used to buy 

motorcycles and sell the parts off of them. I used to junk them. I took a lot of them apart and 

junked the motors off of them. 

“The first time I went to work for Mr. Bradley, Charlie was only a little pup. He was only a 

little guy. Just about walking. He used to come to the shop in back and he used to call me 

‘Hunky Joe.’ I’d say, ‘I’m going to whap you one of these days.’ Oh, he was funny. Now, 

what was the name of the middle one?” 

Warren Bradley was the name of the middle son that my grandfather couldn’t remember. 

Again, I have not been able to reach any of the Bradley family. 

Doug proceeded to show him a picture of Bradley’s, but it was not the original location of 

Third and Diamond at which he worked. 

“When I left Bradley’s at Third and Diamond, it was after Ace went out of business. I knew 

the factory was going to be done. I went out and got a different job. 



“When I left,” Joe was speaking of Bradley’s now. “There was only the store at Third and 

Diamond. This store in the picture was somewhere else. 

First Record Attempt 

“Getting back to the tires. I worked in the service department with Bill Slater. That was at 

the time when they sold all of the motorcycles to the Philadelphia Police. He came over there 

to the service department.” Joe was speaking about Art Lemon. Doug showed him another 

picture. 

“All right.” Joe was now shifting his weight in his chair and was indicating the picture. 

“When this was happening, when they broke the motorcycle record, I was over there with 

Plass and a couple other people. Bill Slater was over there with us.” 

“During the record run?” Doug asked excitedly. 

“Yeah. And they tried to get me to go into that sidecar that they hooked on. It looked like a 

big sausage. There was a rope in the center and you pulled yourself in. They wanted me to 

get in. I said, ‘No way. I’m not getting in there.” Joe laughed. Doug and Doc laughed with 

him. 

“When they did the record run, one of the questions we had…” Doug began to ask. “They 

had the two bikes for the record run. XP-3 and XP-4. Was XP-3 used on the second run, for 

the sidecar?” 

“Now I don’t know how the heck that sidecar got on there.” Joe answered. “It was a Flxi 

sidecar. Not a…not a…? There were three different kinds of sidecars made. One was Flxi, of 

which I had one. You could ride the cycle just like you didn’t have a sidecar on. The other 

one was a Rogers. And the other one was a…? Cannonball Baker used that one once to 

break the cross-continental record. What the heck was the name of that one? It was a sidecar 

that wasn’t too well used because they had a failure. They had a bar in the front and that used 

to break.” 

“A Goulding sidecar?” Doug offered helpfully. 

“Goulding!” Joe exclaimed. “Yeah. That’s it!” 

“Now, back to the tire bit.” Doc took up the questioning. “As I recall, the world record was 

set on those skinny board track tires.” 

“That’s right.” Joe confirmed. “Twenty-eight by three.” 

“These are twenty-eight by three. But they were even smaller.” Doc was speaking of the 

original XP-4 racer. 

“No. That was about the size. Twenty-eight by three,” Joe insisted and then went on to talk 

about Art Lemon. “Because he came into the service department—he used to call me 

Jehovah. ‘Jehovah’ he says, ‘We can’t get the tire man to put them tires on that rim. Do you 

know anybody who would put them on?’ I said, ‘You’re looking at him. But it will cost you 

a dollar a tire.’ Joe chuckled as he told the story. ‘All right. Put one on. Let me see if you…’ 

I said, ‘No. You don’t stand here. It’s a secret on how to put them on.’ Because they have an 

inner tube and if you pinch that, you’re out of luck! 

“He said, ‘Are you sure you know how to put them on?’ I said, ‘It’ll cost you a dollar apiece 

no matter what the heck you’re talking about.’ So, Bill Slater says, ‘Joe. Do you know how 

to put them on?’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘When I worked for the Indian crowd we used to…’ 

“We had two racing Indian motorcycles. Hedstrom models. Do you know what Hedstrom’s 

are? And every race, this here guy that I worked for…this Indian guy…he said, ‘We’re going 

to put new tires on. I’m always careful because anything can happen. If a tire blows, a guy 

gets killed!’ So that’s how I learned how to put those tires on. I didn’t know how to do it but 

they taught me how to do it.” Joe was speaking of the Niley brothers. “So, that was that.” 



Street Racing the XP-4 

“But there was another secret about this motor.” Joe continued unprompted. “After the hill 

climb, they got on Art Lemon’s back about making one to break the world’s record. You talk 

about a roar when he had that on the dynamometer. I used to call Red and say, ‘What the 

heck’s happening!’ He said that, ‘He’s got it pretty near done.’ 

“Another thing happened over there, you see where that clutch throw-out lever is? There used 

to be a lever there for the brake. Back there because it had two drums in the back. Anyway, 

it was a Saturday morning and he [Red] said, ‘Joe. Stick around because Art Lemon just fixed 

the bike up for Sunday, for that race that you set up.’ 

“I got them a race because I was in a motorcycle club. I used to always talk about these guys 

[Ace development group]. They [club members] used to always talk about speed. We had one 

fellow there, it was funny; his name was Art. He had a JDCA Harley specially made for him. 

And he was saying how he could be anybody. I said to him, ‘How would you like to race us 

on Sunday?’ He said, ‘Fine!’ So I told Red, ‘I got you a race for Sunday morning.’ 

“Sunday morning, we’re out on the Boulevard [Roosevelt Boulevard]… Artie Boyer was his 

name!” Joe suddenly remembered the challenger’s name. “He’s got his Harley fixed up real 

good, you know. Snappy as anything! So we got there and Red said to him, ‘You go ahead 

and start. I’ll be right in back of you.’ Red passed him so fast that he almost fell off the 

Harley.” Joe laughed. 

“Is this a true story?” Doc asked Joe. Chuckling, Joe replied in the affirmative. “Have you 

ever heard this one?” Doc asked, turning to Doug. 

“I never heard this one,” Doug replied. 

Doc turned back to Joe asking him, “When…do you have any idea…would this have been 

around October or so…?” He couldn’t get his thoughts together and his words out fast 

enough. He was so intrigued. This would have meant that the Ace XP-4 was run on the street 

while under development. 

“It was in the Fall of the year,” Joe replied. 

“In the Fall,” Doc repeated thoughtfully. His voice trailing off. “Okay. So this would have 

been before this other one.” Going back to the story, Doc stated with a grin, “So he blew 

away the Harley!” Turning to Doug, he continued, “Don’t tell me a two cam?” 

“Yupp,” said Doug. “That’s the A-Model. Two cam Harley.” 

After a pause and some sips of iced tea, Doc continued, “That’s very interesting. That’s one 

that I didn’t know.” 

“Red never talked about that one,” Doug agreed. 

“Red never mentioned that,” Doc added. And then, indicating XP-4, Doc said, “Well Red 

said that T.N.T. Terpening never really mastered hill climbing with this…although he did win 

some races with XP-4” 

“He only rode it once,” Joe commented. 

“Is that right,” Doc said, mildly surprised. 

“At the Rochester hill climb.” Doug stated flatly. 

“When that came back from there, that machine never went out anymore,” continued Joe. 

Continuing on, Doc said, “Well Red had said that he had mastered the art of keeping it, when 

it’s airborne—when the engine runs away it tends to tilt—and Red had mastered putting body 

English on to hold it level.” 



“That was why you could never ride the Ace motorcycle without holding onto the handlebars 

with both hands. The twins—like Indians—the flywheel was running that way.” Joe 

indicated forward. “But this one, is this way.” Meaning, sideways. 

“If it bounces, it tends to….” Doc began to say but Joe completed the thought. “It pulled you 

over.” 

XP-4 Replica’s Narrow Gas Tank 

“Do you notice the tank?” Doc stated, again pointing towards XP-4. 

“Yeah. Real small tank.” Joe put up his hands in front of himself with his flattened palms 

facing one another. “They brought it together.” 

“I made that!” Doc said. “I made that from scratch. I made the forks. I made the handlebars. 

Now, when we first made this up, it wasn’t painted yet…we took Red out to lunch, to show it 

to him. He looked at it, and you tell something was wrong. Because I had the handlebars up 

at street level.” 

“Yeah. Too high.” Joe agreed. 

“He said, ‘Doc, when we set the record it wore board track drop bars.’” Doc recounted Red’s 

words. “So then I had to take it home and I sawed the handlebars off here, put a slug in, put 

them down and welded them back together. But without Red, I would have been wrong.” 

“We’d have never known about the tank either,” offered Doug. 

“We’d have never known about the tank because all of the pictures were taken from the side 

and we couldn’t tell how thick the tank was. Also, the lever is missing here.” Doc was 

pointing to where the clutch throw-out lever is normally located. “He stripped off as much as 

possible for this bike. And, see the pedal, he had to cut-off the clutch pedal and drill it full of 

holes. I did all of those things as Red told me to. It was quite a project. It really was. But, I 

just did it for a fun thing but then, first thing you know, it shaped up into a pretty neat piece.” 

Cannonball Baker’s First Attempt on Ace 

“It was funny, when I was working there…Mr. Henderson was alive yet….” Joe had been 

listening politely, waiting to get back to his story. “…when they hired this Cannonball Baker. 

This Cannonball Baker was a great big man. I don’t know if you ever saw him or not,” he 

said to Doc. 

“A big man,” replied Doc. “I never saw him in person but I saw many pictures of him.” 

“He was a big man. And a little bit cross-eyed too,” Joe said, chuckling. “Just a little bit 

funny looking. Anyhow, the crew—I don’t know who made it but it was made there at the 

factory—they made him these handlebars about that wide.” His arms were out in front of 

him, gripping imaginary handlebars, his rolled wrists and gripping fists indicating a distance 

further apart then that that would seem comfortable. 

“Just for him?” asked Doug. 

“Just for him!” Joe replied. 

“It does look wide in those pictures,” Doc exclaimed, agreeing with what Joe had said. 

“So they put them on one of those Ace’s, like that!” Joe said, indicating Charlie Cole’s Sport 

Solo model Ace that was parked nearby. “We asked him to show us how he rides when he’s 

braking the record. In back of the factory, there was a road where we used to, once in a while, 

just for riding…not for speeding. So, we asked him to show us how he rides. Well, if you 

ever saw anybody ride a motorcycle, big a man as he was, he must have been doing about 

seventy miles an hour on that dirt road and that thing was bucking like this and it didn’t even 

bother him a bit! You talk about a… 



“Well, anyhow…they got the machine ready for him and they sent it out West. Sure enough, 

that’s where he started, with a solo machine. All of a sudden, we get a notice…a flyer…that 

Cannonball Baker is in the hospital. Do you know what happened? One of the forks…you 

see the fender on that? Well, he was telling us that there was a place where there was 

something like twenty-five to thirty mile distance of nothing but rocks. One of those rocks 

got in there and threw him over!” 

“It jammed up the tire.” Doug added. 

“He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks.” Joe chuckled, finding humor in Cannonball 

Baker’s misfortune. “They sent the machine back to the factory. I was there. I saw the 

machine when it came back. It was pretty well beat up. The front forks…the front wheel. He 

took a header this way.” Joe rolled his hands forward, in a tumbling motion. 

Cannonball Baker’s Second Attempt on Ace 

“So, he finally came up to the factory and they decided to give him a different ride to start 

from New York with a Goulding sidecar with a twenty gallon can full of gas to be kept in the 

sidecar. Here he was, coming down the Boulevard on the Ace and we were there waiting for 

him—Bill Slater, one of the floor mechanics, some others and myself. He’s coming down the 

Boulevard like hell, and smoke! You know, from the exhaust. I turned to Bill Slater and said, 

‘There it is! I’ve been trying to tell you people what’s wrong with the motorcycle and you 

won’t listen to me.’ 

“You see we had a splash system, not a forced feed…through the crankshaft. Anyway, the oil 

couldn’t get in there somehow and the motor got too hot and it started to burn up. He came 

by there and we stopped him at Broad and the Boulevard. I said to Bill Slater, ‘He’ll never 

make it!’ ‘Oh yeah Joe,’ he says, ‘He’s a terrific chauffeur. He’s a terrific driver. He knows 

what he’s doing!’ 

“He got down as far as Maryland somewhere and finally the thing burned up. Completely! It 

was completely ruined. They brought the machine back again to the service department 

where I worked there. I looked at Bill Slater and looked at the motor and he said, ‘Let’s take 

the motor apart.’ I said, ‘All right. I’ll pull the motor out of there.’ I took the motor out. 

Would you believe, all of the rings were frozen. Frozen solid! It got so hot, the oil caked up 

and stuck the rings.” 

Cannonball Baker’s Record Run on Ace 

“Here’s what happened next. They decided to fix up another machine for him. Solo. And 

they sent it out there again. From the other end…coming in. I said to Bill Slater, ‘I hate to 

tell you this. I’m going to get in wrong for opening my mouth. He’s not going to make it!’ 

They sent the machine out—it was all fixed up for him—with the big handlebars and 

everything, and he finally came across. At the same time, Wells Bennett…I don’t know if 

you know him or not, if you’ve heard of him?” 

“Very famous…yes, yes. Iron Man Bennett. ‘Iron Man’ they called him.” Doc knew of 

Wells Bennett. 

“Yeah, he was a racer too! A very good racer.” Joe replied. “He was following—right in 

back of—Cannonball Baker. When Cannonball Baker found out that he was following him, 

he raced like hell back here to set the record. But Wells Bennett—Red was telling me—had 

motor trouble. They were determined to beat Cannonball Baker.” 

“Bennett rode a Henderson on that run,” Doc told Joe. 

“Yes, a Deluxe Henderson that time,” Joe remembered. “Finally, he found out that he was 

being followed and he really put the gas on as hard as he could. He, naturally, broke the 

transcontinental record. But Wells Bennett didn’t. Anyway, here’s what happened.” 



Riding Cannonball’s Record Setting Ace 

“We get the motorcycle in to the service department—where I worked. The machine’s there 

and I’m looking at it thinking, ‘Boy, I’d like to ride that. I bet that’s real good.’ Slater says, 

‘Joe, there’s a show in New York,’ a motorcycle show. They had a display there where they 

used to assemble a motorcycle. Half an hour, they put a whole motorcycle together.” 

Joe pointed to a photograph, “This is one of the pictures that I was telling you about—that 

fellow. He was one of the fellows who worked over there at the New York motorcycle event. 

‘Would you like to ride that solo machine? Jimmy would like to go see the show too.’ he 

said, quoting Slater. “He was a boy who worked in the stock room. When you needed 

anything, you’d go tell him and he’d bring it to you. 

“I said, ‘Well all right. I’ll take him.’ We put a Goulding sidecar on that solo machine that 

Cannonball Baker rode and we go for New York—we went to New York for the show. We 

got as far as Trenton. 

“When we got to Trenton, I said to this Jimmy, ‘We’re not going to make it with this thing. 

It’s got no guts at all!’ Finally, I nursed the thing, making sure there was oil in there and got 

to New York with it. We saw the show and then we came home. It took me three hours and 

one half to come from New York to Philadelphia with that machine. 

“Monday, I said to Slater—who was my boss, ‘This is the biggest hunk of junk I ever drove in 

my life! It won’t do over thirty miles an hour.’ He said to me, ‘You’re not right, Joe!’ I said, 

‘I know what I’m talking about. It doesn’t have any power at all!’ He says, ‘I’ll tell you 

what. Pull that motor out of there will you.’ 

“So I pulled it out of there. It took me…ten minutes and I had the motor out. We put it on the 

stand and took it apart. Every cylinder’s rings were froze to death.” Joe chuckled as he told 

the story, his eyes twinkling. “Now that was the motor that he broke the world’s 

[transcontinental] record with.” 

First Impression on Meeting Red Wolverton 

“The first day that I met Red Wolverton was funny.” Joe began. “When he first came to the 

factory he came with Art Lemon. They brought him over to me and Art Lemon says to him, 

‘This is Joe. He’s an Ace man over here. He takes care of these machines, to get started when 

they go to get wrapped up.’ 

“I looked at Red and I said to myself, ‘What is he supposed to be!’ So this fellow who was the 

tester over there—what was his name.” Joe was frustrated that he couldn’t immediately recall 

the man’s name that was a test driver at the factory. Joe Dixon was probably the name he was 

trying to remember. “I’m starting to forget names already—at my age.” 

“We’ll forgive you for that,” Doc said chuckling, understanding that at 88, Joe just might 

have some trouble remembering some names and details. 

“He said, ‘Would you like to take a ride on our track here?’ Joe related the test driver’s offer 

to Red. “Red said, ‘Yeah.’ So, he stepped on it—kicked one over—and he took it around 

once. As I looked at this guy that was our regular tester I said, ‘He ain’t so hot of a rider is 

he?’ 

“I don’t know what happened. Red put the gas on. When he got down there to where the stock 

room was.” Joe made a loud motorcycle engine noise, laughing heartily. “All around there. 

The stand was rubbing the wall all around. He slid that whole room. 

“All those guys on those milling machines that heard this here thing roaring, when they heard 

him coming they all ran out of the room from their machines. When he got to the other end, 

he swung it around. I thought to myself, ‘This guy can really ride!’ 

Doug and Doc were both chuckling and Doc commented, “That’s our Red! Oh, I love that!” 



“He used to,” Doug began to say as Doc and Joe’s laughter began to subside. “He used to do 

that in the Henderson plant—the Schwinn plant. He’d ride on—I think—the third floor and 

ah…I think with Roy Artley they used to do that and he clipped his head on one of the 

concrete pillars one time. That sort of slowed him down a little.” 

Beginning in Ace Assembly Department 

Joe laughed at hearing of Red’s riding endeavors while at the Excelsior-Henderson factory. 

“Believe it or not, when I worked there in the assembling department, we had people—” Joe 

didn’t complete his thought and went on with another. “When I first went to work there, I 

didn’t want to go to work there but I was in the club—the motorcycle club—and this fellow 

that worked there, at the Ace factory now, he used to take the motors when they got…that 

they were—. 

“We had a belt that they were putting those motors on. The motors used to get built upstairs. 

And they put them on there and they hooked up the chain on there and they used to run, 

breaking them in, the motors. And this guy used to have a stand there where he used to try 

four of them at one time. Then they would come off of this stand when they were loose 

enough. You could tell by the chain…that the chain wasn’t snug…that the chain was just 

riding easy. 

“Then the motor was good enough to come off of there. And we put it on there and we put 

the…ah…” He was having trouble organizing his thoughts and finding his words. “We timed 

the motor, from the flywheel there, where the flywheel is,” he said, pointing towards the 

flywheel of the nearest Ace. 

“There was an exhaust centering mark. We used to time there and then put the wires on and 

the spark plugs in and start them up. To see if they would run right, if there was anything like 

the rocker arms would be loose or if the valves needed adjusting, we had to adjust the valves. 

We had four of them to run at one time. We had a gas line hooked up to the carburetor.” 

Joe paused and then got back on track about how he came to work at the Ace factory. “He 

belonged to the motorcycle club too, this fellow that did all of this, at the factory. I was only 

at the club. He said to me, ‘Joe. Aren’t you working?’ I said, ‘No. It’s wintertime. I don’t 

have to go to work. My father keeps me going. 

“I had a Reading Standard. I had a short-coupled Harley, if you know what a short-coupled 

Harley is? I had one of them. And I had a Reading Standard, a 1921…20 or 21 Reading 

Standard. It was blue in those days. Afterwards they were brown—the motorcycles were 

brown. Anyhow, with a Flxi sidecar. 

“This fellow, that I bought that off of, he got married and his wife told him that he had to get 

rid of the motorcycle. He came to the club there and asked me if there was anyone there who 

wanted to buy his motorcycle. He said that he was going to have to sell it—that his wife 

didn’t want him to have a motorcycle. I asked him how much he wanted for it. It had a Flxi 

sidecar. It was beautiful! The machine was beautiful, so was the sidecar. 

“He said if he got two hundred dollars for it, he’d let it go. I told him that I’d go home and tell 

my father, see if he’d buy it for me. I went home—my father, he was a cement contractor. He 

had money. We weren’t rich, but if I wanted anything, he’d buy if for me.” 

The “A” side of tape One ran out at this point. However, according to my grandmother, it turned out that 

the bike was stolen and subsequently repossessed from my grandfather by the authorities. 

Tape One: Side B 

Side “B” of tape One begins with Joe talking about a machine owned by the man at the Keystone 

Motorcycle Club who got my grandfather into the job at the Ace factory. 

“…with the overhead valves.” Joe was describing to Doc. 

“Yes. Overhead conversion.” Doc stated confirming that he did indeed know to what Joe was 

referring. 



“He had one that could fly!” Joe emphasized the speed of the machine. “He used to beat 

motorcycle guys with it. Anyway, he says, ‘Aren’t you working Joe?’ I said, ‘I don’t have to 

work.’ He said, ‘I need somebody at the factory, to help.’ I thought to myself, ‘He’s full of it.’ 

But I went down there anyway. Sure enough, they hired me. 

“I’m over there working with him. Everybody knew me at the club…who I was. I was Dutch 

Karl’s kid. That was my uncle. He used to race down there at the Point Breeze. He got me a 

job with the Niley boys. I don’t know…do you remember the Niley boys? He was at the 

Indian—that’s where I learned how to put the tires on. 

“I go over there and he broke me in good…taking those…getting those motors on the stand. 

The two of us, we put them on, got them all hooked up, and got them running. All of the 

sudden, I got stuck with that job.” 

“You were too good at it.” Doc joked. 

“No. He quit. He left out of there. So, I’m over there struggling by myself. I’m doing 

good…they…as soon as I needed help, they gave me a helper…to put the motors on the 

running belt…onto the stand where we had everything hooked up to the carburetor.” 

Paint Shop Blues 

“I’m working over there…really doing a good job. Every one of those that I put on that stand, 

they run good. Really run fine. I adjusted the carburetor…a Schebler carburetor…and they 

were doing fine, and they sent them to the paint shop. 

“That is why I used to always know if someone had a different motor in there because every 

Ace motor was painted. Painted blue. That’s why I said to you today, ‘How’d you get that 

motor?’ Anyhow, here’s what happened. 

“I’m working over there, all of the sudden, I’m looking around and the whole place is full of 

motorcycles. And this guy who was in charge of the assembling department, he was a pugilist. 

I don’t know if you know who I’m talking about. He was Italian but he went under an Irish 

name. He was a fighter. 

“He comes over there and says, ‘I feel like punching you in the nose!’ I said, ‘What for?’ I 

wasn’t too skinny, I wasn’t scared of him. He could have knocked me all over the place. I 

looked at him and I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘None of those motorcycles 

are running. What did you do? Didn’t you adjust them, get them running before you sent them 

to the paint shop?’ 

“I said that every one of them that left over here was running in good condition. Because that 

used to be all done. All they had to do was put it in the frame, the assembling guys. I bet there 

was about seventy-five or a hundred motorcycles all over the…” 

“Were they motorcycles that you had tested?” Doc interrupted. 

“Every one of them wouldn’t run. So, here’s what happened. Before they got together…” Joe 

was struggling to get his thoughts together. “Everything was hooked up, they’d give it a start 

and it wouldn’t run. He came over there and he really got me sore, telling me that I didn’t 

know what I was doing. 

“He hired a couple of mechanics and here they had some of them with the…some of those 

guys changed the magnetos on them, some of them took the manifolds off, the carburetors off, 

some of them had the front timing gear covers off.” 

“After you had them running?” Doug asked. 

“Well, after it was…after it was… It was running when I left it.” Joe was trying to explain. 

“When it got to the paint shop, all they did was to paint them…paint the crank case.” 

“They painted the motor after you had it assembled?” Doug asked for clarification. 



“Everything was done. It was running good.” Joe was trying to understand what Doug was 

asking. 

“After you had a running motor, then the engine went to the paint shop?” Doug was trying to 

clarify when and how the engines were painted. This information was not available anywhere 

else and Joe would be their last chance to find out. 

“Yeah, the engine went to the paint shop.” Joe confirmed. He leaned forward in his chair, 

anxious now to continue his story. “I said to him, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, 

‘Look at them! None of these motorcycles are running. You didn’t have them running when 

you sent them over to the paint shop.’ 

Compression anyone? 

“He had hired a couple of mechanics and they couldn’t seem to find anything wrong with 

them. Now he wanted to find out from me. I asked him to let me look at one of them at least 

and he agreed. He told me to leave the four engines running that I had on the stands. 

“I got over there and I kicked one over and I thought, ‘That’s funny!’ It spun around like there 

was nothing to it, no trouble. I thought that it was funny that it didn’t want to go. And then, it 

came to me! When we sent them over to the paint shop, they were running. 

“We used to have to start them by hand. We didn’t kick them, they were up in the air. We’d 

turn that little lever around and we went down on it and every one of them felt good going 

down…tight. I went to another one and kicked the thing around and, same thing. It just spun 

around. Wouldn’t catch on or nothing. I thought to myself, ‘When they put them in the paint 

shop that’s when the trouble started.’ I went back to my department where the motors were 

running and got myself some oil and a little gasoline and I mixed up a little gasoline and oil. 

“This first one that I kicked over, that spun around so easy, I took the spark plugs out and 

squirted a little oil and gas under the cylinder and kicked it a couple of times until I heard, 

woosh…Woosh…WOOSH.” Joe was making wooshing noises as he pantomimed cranking 

over the motorcycle engine. 

“You know, when you kick it over…the compression? I put the spark plugs in and put the 

wires on, kicked it and then….ZZOOM…when it went off! He ran over to me and asked what 

was the matter with it. I told him that I didn’t know yet.” Joe laughed over his discovery. 

“I did another one the same way and got it started. He looked at those two guys he hired, with 

the magnetos off and the front covers off, manifold off, carburetor off, and he said, ‘You 

guys, get your @#$% tools out of here! You’re fired you @#$%.’ You should have heard 

him. 

“He said to me, ‘What was the matter with them?’ The trouble was…it wasn’t that they 

wouldn’t run…they put those motors in that oven, during the night. That was the last thing the 

painters did because they did all the painting. They painted the motors and put them into the 

oven and they were in there all night. So, guess what happened, during the night?” 

“They got too hot?” Doc offered. 

“Yeah. All of the oil came off of the cylinders. They had no compression. Well, I got them 

going and that’s how I lost that job, running the motors in. I lost that job and got put into the 

assembling department there where they used to come off of that machine. You ought to have 

seen how quickly I cleaned up that gang of motorcycles.” 

“So,” asked Doug. “When they painted the motors, they painted everything? They painted 

over all the screws, all the hardware, everything?” 

“All the screws and everything. Believe it or not.” Joe confirmed. 

“They didn’t dip it? They just brush painted it?” This was an important point for Doug. 

“No. Just with a brush.” Joe assured him. 



“They brush painted them?” Doc began to say. 

“And then they baked the finish.” Doug continued. 

“…and left the cylinders black.” Doc completed. 

“No. They didn’t touch the cylinders.” Joe offered quickly in response to Doc’s statement. 

“But they touched it…they did it with a brush. They painted everything…” Joe was cut off by 

Doc. 

“I’ll be darned. Everything was painted. All the nuts and bolts and seals.” Doc’s voice trailed 

off. 

“Yes. Everything is covered. Good.” Doug confirmed to Doc. “That’s probably why a lot of 

the plating is still good on some of this.” 

“From then on,” continued Joe. “I was the Ace mechanic over there.” Speaking about how he 

diagnosed the reason why the bikes wouldn’t start. 

“The Ace mechanic.” Doc repeated and then laughed pleased with Joe’s description of 

himself. 

“If they wanted to know anything, come to Joe!” Joe said with great pride. “Joe will tell you 

what’s wrong with it.” 

Sidecar Shuffle 

“Here’s a couple pictures.” Doug showed Joe some photographs. “Here’s one of Art.” 

“Yeah,” Joe looked at the photo. “This is Art Lemon.” 

“Here’s another one of Red.” Doug continued to point out another photo to Joe. “I took that 

down at the factory.” 

“Now, who was this?” Joe asked, not hearing clearly and just beginning to study the 

photograph. 

“That’s Red!” Doug motioned towards the picture. 

“That’s Red Wolverton as an old man.” Doc repeated. 

“Oh yeah, well he got…” Joe began and then had another thought and laughed. “I’ve got a lot 

of stories to tell about Red Wolverton but I better not tell them.” After a slight pause, he 

began again. “He said to me when he first came here, ‘Is there any girls around here?’ I said 

yes, there were plenty girls. I took him around and showed him some of the girls.” 

Doug and Doc both laughed. “A ladies man.” Doc stated. 

“Red could really ride!” Joe exclaimed, changing track again. “I was…was…do you know 

what we did on Sunday when we used to ride?” Joe leaned forward and became quite 

animated as he demonstrated. “He used to get close to me and turn the gas off on me. On the 

throttle, you know? They wanted to see if I would be chicken enough to see if him and I 

would race off down the road like a son of a gun. I’m telling you, he was…Red Wolverton, I 

say, was about the best rider—driver—I ever run into.” 

“Well they picked the right man to set the world’s record then, didn’t they?” Doc asked Joe. 

“Yes they did. Yes they did.” Joe nodded reflectively. 

“Now, on that.” Doc said referring to the speed record. He was anxious to find out some 

specific information. “Do you remember…? Now they set the sidecar record…” Doc paused 

to formulate his thoughts. 

“Yeah. A hundred and fourteen miles per hour.” Joe said matter-of-factly. 

“A hundred and six I believe, but it doesn’t matter.” Doc corrected. However, Joe was quoting 

the speed that was incorrectly reported as a result of the first record attempt made on 



November 12, 1923. Joe assented and Doc went on. “Was that done with XP-4 or XP-3? Do 

you remember?” 

“Now, I don’t really know. If I told you…” Joe began to say but was cut off. 

“Some say it was XP-3 with the sidecar, and others say they bolted the sidecar onto XP-4.” 

Doc was clearly hoping that Joe could provide first hand knowledge as to which machine was 

in fact used. 

“Well, you know, it was funny.” Joe said, speaking of the day on which the record attempt 

occurred. “There was such a…we had a pretty good crowd there. After Red rode the first 

race—solo—a big crowd came around. I don’t know who put that sidecar on.” This statement 

would indicate that the sidecar was bolted to XP-4 rather than two machines being on hand. 

“You don’t know which bike it was put on?” Doc asked, insisting that there were two bikes. 

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” Joe shook his head. He seemed disappointed that he couldn’t 

shed any light on the issue. 

“Did they have time to change? It didn’t take long to put it on, did it?” Doc’s questions came 

quickly. “It was just a couple of pieces of pipe and a piece of stove pipe.” 

“No. It was a flared…” Joe was trying to answer even as Doc continued to ask more 

questions. “Three pins.” He finally stammered out. “And a big sausage.” They both were 

referring to the odd shape of the custom made Flxible sidecar. 

“But they would have had to change the gearing.” Doc said this more as a statement than a 

question. “They would have had to change the sprocket.” 

“Not necessarily.” Doug weighed in on the subject. “Thirty-four pounds?” 

“Yeah. With the wind dragging…it would have been a lower…you would have had the same 

RPM for both records. They would have dropped a tooth on…” It’s difficult to hear what Doc 

is saying on the tape. 

“They weren’t worried about midrange, they were worried about top end.” Doug said clearly. 

“I asked Red, ‘About what speed was it…how fast were you going before you put it in high 

gear?’ You know…the racer? The solo job?” Joe asked, making sure they understood what he 

was talking about. Then, speaking of Red. “He said, ‘I was doing better than seventy miles 

per hour when I finally dropped it into high gear.’ He also said, ‘You talk about something 

that really flies.’ 

“He was also a little put off with me because I didn’t go in with him…into that sausage. I said 

that I didn’t want to go in there. It was only thirty-one inches wide or something. It was very 

narrow.” 

“It wasn’t wide at all. And it was in the back and, you know, you were in like this.” Joe 

pinched his shoulders in close showing how you were stuck in the sidecar, like being inside an 

inner tube. 

“All he would had to do is this,” Doc gestured a wrenching or twisting motion, “…and it 

would have flown over. Right!” 

“He said Everitt DeLong went in.” Doug had heard this from Red Wolverton. He had to 

repeat himself since Joe didn’t hear him. “He said when Everitt DeLong rode the sidecar the 

jewels in his watch broke from the vibration. 

Apparently Joe was having trouble hearing Doug because he proceeded to tell them who 

really rode in the sidecar. “Well, the fellow that really got in there…I know who got in there. 

It was this here fellow that was assistant to Art Lemon in the experimental room.” 

“DeLong!” Doc stated the name loud and clear enough for Joe to finally catch it. 



“DeLong!” Joe quickly repeated. “DeLong. He finally went in there. ‘Joe,’ Red says to me, 

‘Go ahead. Try it. You’ll be all right.’ I said no way! I wasn’t going to get in there.” Doc and 

Doug began laughing with Joe at his refusal to get into the sidecar. 

“It had a rope in there to pull yourself in. Well I had pretty good… I was a pretty good size 

shoe on too.” I found this last statement to be especially interesting. 

At the time, there must have been some good-natured ribbing going on about who would have 

enough nerve to go into the sidecar let alone who could actually fit into it! When interviewed 

in Motorcycling and Bicycling Illustrated afterwards about how he came to be the one who 

volunteered, he said that he had ‘number seven shoes.’ Even then, he had to remove his shoes 

to fit inside. This interview was conducted on the heels of the first attempt. 

Canned Heat 

“Do you remember—now when they were tinkering with it before hand, they probably 

changed spark plugs, for the run, they probably put new plugs in—huh? Did they? Start it up 

on one set; warmed it up. Red said they put canned heat under it to warm up the engine. It was 

a cold day. Did that hold out?” Doc paused, waiting for Joe to reply. Joe just looked at him 

blankly. 

“You don’t remember? Red said that they put heat under there?” Joe didn’t seem to remember 

this. Especially since he was probably only there for the first record run and not the second 

when the heat was used. 

“They put heat under there to warm it up.” Doc repeated. 

“No,” he finally replied. “That I didn’t see because I was right there, I didn’t see it. There was 

such a crowd around there. They had the police around there, all over the…” Joe was trying to 

relay the sense of commotion and confusion that must have existed at the time. Photos taken 

at the time of the first attempt show a lot of people posing behind Red and the XP-4 machine. 

“The reason I’m talking about this is…” Doc pressed on, cutting Joe off. “…I have—see, 

that’s the right…that’s the Scintilla magneto. They used a Swiss magneto.” Joe nodded in 

agreement and Doc went on. “And boy oh boy—if that gets just a little damp, now like this 

morning—it’s done! It’s finished! You don’t get anything out of it.” Joe continued nodding 

and voicing his agreement with Doc. 

“I have to put a heat lamp—it sits outside or anything—I have to put a heat lamp on that and 

cook it awhile before it dries out enough. It is the most sensitive magneto that I’ve ever 

take… I wanted to know if there’s any truth… Do you remember anything like that? Of 

course, did they drive it…they didn’t drive it up from the factory—to Roosevelt Boulevard, 

did they?” 

“No. It was sent up there with a truck. It was all in back. And DeLong had the job of doing 

that. He was the one that was also assistant to Mr. Henderson.” Joe may have meant Art 

Lemon. It’s not clear when Everett DeLong first came to work at Ace, whether before or after 

Lemon’s arrival. “DeLong was also Mr. Henderson’s…second man, you can say.” 

XP-4 Pistons 

“Now, another thing,” Doc went on to say, indicating XP-4. “The pistons in this…have real 

high domes and have one ring.” 

“One ring?” Joe asked in confirmation. 

“One ring.” Doc repeated. 

“Well, the ones that we put in there were the larger pistons. The first pistons were cast iron 

and then we went down into aluminum pistons. But not with the dome on them like you say.” 

Joe was speaking about production bikes now and not the experimental engines. 

“They were just flat.” Doc offered. 



“Flat. Yeah.” Joe agreed and then went on. “And, ah, floating pins with a bronze plug in the 

end of each one. Every one of them…afterwards we were even fixing the motor up that came 

in there from other places—that were sent in to be fixed. Then when I finally got into the 

service department I was doing some of that work with the connecting rods and putting the 

new pistons on there with the floating pins in it. They were all noisy when they first started up 

but boy, afterwards they went so smooth.” 

“Yeah, aluminum pistons were that way.” Doc agreed but they were now off of the subject of 

the XP-4 in particular. “The pistons are drilled all full of holes then on this…to lighten them.” 

“We didn’t do that on the standard jobs. When somebody sent one in we fixed it up.” Joe 

didn’t seem to have specific knowledge of the internal components used in the experimental 

engine. 

XP-4 Magneto 

“I’ve had an awful lot of trouble with this magneto—just a heavy dew and this thing won’t 

go. I have to put a heat lamp on it and cook the magneto. Very sensitive.” Doc was trying to 

steer the conversation back to the XP-4 and the record run. 

“You should put the right magneto on that they had on there.” Joe said this, as if the XP-4 

were just another street Ace. “It was a…” 

“A Simms.” Doc filled in the name of the standard magneto for Joe. “The street bikes had 

Simms on them.” 

“It’ll run just as good as with that magneto on there.” Joe was referring to the Scintilla 

magneto currently used on the experimental engine. 

“For what I do with it, I think it would run better.” Doc had to admit. “This magneto is a pain 

in the foot! But Red said it used a Scintilla magneto, so I put…” 

Red’s Close Call at Factory 

“Well they did everything special on that.” Joe indicated the experimental machine in passing. 

“Because, Art Lemon…you know, when he first came there I told him—I even told Mr. 

Henderson—I said, ‘I have a little 61 Harley with a sidecar and I can beat a solo Ace.’ He 

asked me—Mr. Henderson now.” He probably meant Art Lemon. Apparently he had 

complained to Mr. Henderson about the Ace’s lack of power in the past. 

“Because I worked with the fellow that tested the motorcycles [Joe Dixon] before they got 

shipped away, I worked there with him to get the machines ready for him to test. He [Art 

Lemon] came over there and he said, ‘Do you do all that to the motorcycle before the tester 

runs them?’ I said yes, I make sure that the clutch is adjusted right, the brakes are right—to 

see if there is a cotter pin in it because we had one cotter pin failure over there. 

“Red was…the second week he was there—when Art Lemon took over. When he was there I 

told him we had fellows up at the motorcycle club that are running us down about the Ace not 

being so fast; they’re too slow. 

“Art Lemon was there two weeks—his first two weeks—this is on a Saturday. He says to me, 

‘Jehovah, don’t go home. We’re going to try something after the gang gets out of here.’ We 

had that track in there, in the factory there. I said, ‘All right. I’ll stay.’ 

“Whatever Art Lemon did to that motor—Red was testing it. They had a young fellow in the 

experimental room—a little bit—about the same age as I was, and he worked in there. Don’t 

you know he forgot to put cotter pins in the [unclear]—in the brakes you know? Red didn’t 

know it. 

“He was over there riding it on the track, riding the heck out of it. All of the sudden, I see, he 

put out his oars. He couldn’t stop! Heading for the pit! Because the railroad had an entry in 

the factory there and they used to back in the…they used to load that up with the cycles and 

send them out…and there was a plank across there and a big fat wall on the other side. 



“I knew there was something wrong because when Red put out his legs, I knew he couldn’t 

stop. I ran after him, he hit the wall and I grabbed a hold of him. There was a plank about that 

wide across the railroad siding.” He was indicating the thickness with his thumb and index 

finger. 

“Art Lemon came over there—that whole front end—that front wheel got square!” Joe was 

once again laughing over the incident. “He must have hit that about a good forty mile an hour 

or better. I just grabbed him in time before he would fall down into the pit with the 

motorcycle on top of him. I got a hold on him. He said, ‘Jehovah, thanks a lot!’ I said, ‘You 

better thank me a lot.’ 

“Anyway, we got him back. Art Lemon comes to me, he says, ‘Go in the stock room and get 

another front end and put it in. We’re going to see if Red lost his nerve.” Everybody had a 

good laugh over the story. 

Art Lemon’s Tune 

“Red told me that after Art Lemon started,” Doug began to give a possible explanation as why 

the Ace’s performance woes. “He found out that the cam timing was off by seven degrees and 

that’s why they were slow.” 

“The first time that Mr. Henderson asked me how I liked the Ace motorcycle I said that, 

‘they’re all right, but they don’t have anything. No speed, no power.’ He went back inside, 

into the experimental room. He didn’t give me an argument. The nicest guy in the world, that 

you would ever want to talk to…this Mr. Henderson.” Joe probably meant Art Lemon. 

“A couple of weeks afterwards, I said to this guy that was testing the motorcycles, ‘Did you 

notice something?’ He said, ‘Yeah. I was going to ask you if you noticed anything.’ The 

machines were getting faster. Real lively! I don’t know what Mr. Henderson had said to 

upstairs—where the motor department was—but they changed something in the motorcycle. 

In the motor.” 

“Red had said that… The crankshaft, as you know, is offset a little bit—to one side. The 

crankshaft isn’t dead center and Red said that this gives a seven-degree difference in your 

spark timing; and they found that if they advanced the spark seven degrees it took care of that. 

That’s probably what they did.” Doc believed the two accounts reconciled each other. “Seven 

degrees is a lot of advance!” 

Sporting Solo 

“Whatever Mr. Henderson did… Now I’m going to tell you something.” Joe began but then 

uttered his favorite phrase that meant that he’d changed course again. “He was a… When he 

designed that drop bar, he…so…I said this is…I said…” Joe’s words tumbled out as he 

searched for what he wanted to say. “I got him to do that! I said that you sit like a…like 

nothing on there.” 

“You put the Sporting Solo bars on there?” Doc indicated the brightly nickeled handlebars on 

the street Ace. 

“Yeah. You put them… He made the different bars. And then, at the same time, they changed 

the manifold… The exhaust manifold?” Joe looked at Doc and Doug, looking for their 

acknowledgement. “And they called it the sport…the sporting model. You know—with the 

drop bars. Twenty-five dollars! Twenty-five or seventy-five dollars more dear.” 

“Well that’s the…ah…putting the pins on the intake boxes Doug, huh?” Doc turned his 

attention from Joe to Doug with this question. “They changed that in 1922 or so?” 

“Yes, and the exhaust manifold changed too.” Doug seemed reluctant to say too much. He 

wanted to hear as much from Joe as possible and only entered the conversation to confirm 

some point or another. 



“All of a sudden, they were starting to get a little livelier.” Joe continued his story about the 

increased performance of the production machines but Doc’s moving the XP-4 around 

silenced him. 

“You see—you take that stand off when you run it.” Doc had removed the rear stand from 

XP-4 and was turning it around. “We want to turn it around so the other side shows where the 

manifold is on.” 

“We changed the manifold. You see—the manifold that’s on there now, that was built up. 

That wasn’t the standard manifold.” Joe was speaking about the custom exhaust header on the 

race machine. “The exhaust manifold I’m talking about.” After a pause he continued. “We 

didn’t have the oil pressure gauge on it. Did you put that on?” 

“I put the oil pressure gauge on,” Doc replied. 

“Did you put a forced feed shaft in it?” Joe asked Doc. “Is it a forced feed?” 

“That’s the original. That’s the experimental engine,” Doug joined in, trying to help Joe 

understand. “The experimental engine had the pressure feed.” 

“Oh, they had the force feed in the crankshaft?” Joe asked. 

“Just for the experimental motors.” Doug replied. 

“But the other ones didn’t.” Joe turned back to the race machine. “Has this one got a splash 

system in it?” 

“No, no! Forced feed—this’ll run seventy-five pounds of pressure,” Doc answered proudly. 

“It must have an oversized pump or something. And another thing here, you see—this cover is 

cast aluminum.” 

“Yeah, the other one was tin,” Joe said, referring to the type of timing gear cover used on the 

production motorcycles. 

Rocker Arm Oiling 

“Just stamped tin. The production ones were stamped tin.” Doc continued pointing out 

authentic features of the Ace XP-4 engine to Joe. “The little rocker arms are so neat—instead 

of just being flat on their sides, they’re all machined. The rocker arms are light weight and 

machined.” 

“That used to be one of our failures,” Joe said, indicating the rocker arms on the engine. 

“Nobody, after they bought a machine off of us, oiled the rocker arms…on the top…on the 

intake.” 

“I put pieces of felt inside them and I keep the felt soaked with oil. Like on blackboard 

erasers, you know, that thick felt?” Doc motioned towards the rocker arm cover and lifted the 

spring-loaded flap to show Joe. “I have a piece of felt…” 

“Inside there?” Joe asked. 

“See it there?” Doc was pointing at the piece of felt that filled the space between the top of the 

rocker arms and the cover. “I keep it soaked with oil.” The flap snapped back with a loud pop 

when he let it go. 

“We used to get machines that would come back to the service department where the rocker 

arms were so worn that half of the lift was gone!” 

“They just let them run dry,” Doc agreed and then went on to describe another original part on 

his machine. “Do you see the aluminum intake manifold?” 

“That’s not the right one…that was on there.” Joe kept insisting on pointing out how the XP-4 

differed from the production motorcycles while Doc continued to describe the unique pieces 

used on XP-4. 



XP-4 Replica Details 

“That’s aluminum,” Doc went on—indifferent to Joe’s previous comment. “Do you see the 

aluminum carburetor?” 

“Yeah, yeah. That’s a Schebler too?” Joe answered. 

“That’s a Schebler,” Doc confirmed. “That was the one they had… That’s the carburetor that 

they had cast special for this. 

“The push rod…ah…the tappet guide. They’re different. See the bulge on the top? Ace didn’t 

have that. See that bulge? That’s different. And it didn’t have those little caps on it. They 

had…Ace had like…those little hexagonal caps.” 

Room for Improvement 

“You’d be surprised…” Joe had been only listening half-heartedly to Doc and now wanted to 

steer the conversation back towards his days at the Ace. “As smart as Mr. Henderson was, he 

didn’t realize how hot that used to get. Because, when I got a little bit…after I got to know 

how the machine was running and everything, I used to have too much to say. 

“I used to say that there ought to be oil coming up through the rocker arms and onto the top. I 

got into a lot of trouble. They hired a fellow by the name of Dixon…Joe Dixon. Do you 

remember him? He used to be a racer for the Indian motorcycles.” 

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Doc began to say to himself. “Oh, not Freddy? Joe Dixon! There was a 

Freddy Dixon that raced for Indian. An Englishman.” 

“Yeah. This guy was an Englishman.” Joe didn’t sound so sure that the man’s name was 

Freddy but he did remember him being English. There is a photo showing the development 

staff posing behind an Ace motorcycle and he is identified as Joe Dixon. “They hired him and 

they put me in with him because he always found plenty wrong with them.” 

Down on the Farm 

“This…if you let it sit, without moving…” Doc switched. “…will get hotter than Hell! 

Hendersons are the same way. They get hot. My Henderson…I have a Henderson too by the 

way. I have a 1928 Henderson. It’s a sweetheart, it really is!” 

“Twenty-eight is the long one, isn’t it?” Joe asked. “With the foot board in the front?” 

“No, no, no, no.” Doc said quickly. “The foot board… You mean out in front of the engine?” 

“Yeah,” Doug nodded to Doc. “He’s talking about the thirteen.” 

“Nah, that went out in thirteen,” Doc responded to Joe. 

“Thirteen?” Joe asked quizzically. “Well, that’s the kind my uncle had.” This brought 

something else to Joe’s mind. “Do you know what I had? When we came from Ohio, from the 

farm—after my mother died—my uncle had a 1914 Indian with a sidecar on there, with the 

gear shift on the side. The kick starter was up in front.” Joe began to laugh. “If you didn’t…if 

it kicked back, you got a sore foot.” Continuing to laugh, Joe added again, “Boy, you got a 

sore foot.” 

“I don’t have one of those,” Doc interjected, “I have a thirteen Indian.” 

“Well anyhow,” Joe went on, “It was funny. On the farm—I was born 1903—this was in 

1914, my uncle had this sidecar outfit. And my cousin, he wanted to run that motorcycle in 

the worse way. He wasn’t heavy enough to kick that thing around. Finally, my uncle had that 

starter changed back to the other transmission and it was a kick-starter. 

“Well, I used to get on my cousin’s back,” Joe laughed as he began to relate the story. “And 

he used to try to get that down there…” Joe bent over and made a cranking motion and 

laughed as he demonstrated their efforts to start the machine. “We could never get that son-ofa-gun 

started. Because, when it was bad weather—he had left it out on the main highway, not 



too far from our road, in a secluded place because you couldn’t…there was too much mud! It 

wouldn’t go up the hill. The farm was up on a hill. 

“So we would just go out there, every once in a while to see if we could start… It was a good 

thing we didn’t start it because we would have gotten killed!” Joe chuckled. 

Sporting Solo Details 

“What do you…” Doc stopped and rephrased his question. “Do you recall anything, Joe, 

about that exhaust manifold? They said that it was made very specially for this.” 

“Yeah. It was made specially for that.” Joe replied. 

“It has very short stacks. He said Art Lemon experimented a little until he got the exhaust 

manifold right.” Doc turned to Doug. “Remember Red talking about that?” Doug simply 

nodded yes. 

“That’s about…” Joe pointed. “Is this the one that came with the racer?” 

“This is it.” Doc stated. 

“Finally, Mr. Henderson—when he made the short…when he made the drop bars—he made a 

different manifold casting.” Joe was speaking about William Henderson’s development of the 

Sporting Solo model Ace four. “It was beautiful! It looked real sharp.” 

“They finally made it in one piece,” Doc confirmed and then indicated the race replica. “This 

is still three pieces but,” he paused, “this has fins on here you see. The 1920, 21, and 22 did 

not have these fins on them.” 

“On the intakes?” 

“On the intake boxes,” 

“Well the other ones were straight. They didn’t have that.” 

“Straight sided. No fins.” They were both agreeing. 

Old Riders Never Die 

After a pause, Joe looked at Charlie’s bike and began again. “You know, it was a surprise. We 

went up there to Charlie Cole’s place, when he was living yet. I told… I told Mister… I told, 

ah…” They were interrupted by Joe’s daughter who had brought out some refreshments. 

After serving them, she turned to Joe and asked, “Are you tired yet?” 

He looked at her incredulously and replied quickly, “No! I’m doing fine.” Doc, Doug and 

Joe’s daughter all laughed, knowing that he was having a wonderful time. They both asked 

her to let them know when she thought it was too much for him, being concerned not to tire 

him out. 

“The last time I rode a motorcycle,” Joe began to say between bites. “The last time, 

when…ah…Gene Aucott took us to a rally where they had those old time cycle guys and 

machines. I don’t know what got into him. 

“Gene Aucott, he says, ‘Joe. Sit on this and ride this one will you. Do a number eight for us. I 

had the fellow—that I learned a whole lot about motorcycles from—he was with us. He said 

to me, ‘You’re liable to fall down with that!’ I said that I wouldn’t fall down and that I would 

never forget how to ride a motorcycle.” 

“We couldn’t get Red to ride for us, could we?” Doc told Joe and then turned to Doug. “Did 

you ever see him ride?” 

“Uh huh. Yeah,” Doug replied immediately. 

“What did he ride?” 

“Aces,” Doug said matter of factly. 



“Who’s Ace…Lou’s?” Doc asked. 

“Yeah. Bob McLean’s and Lou’s.” Upon further reflection, Doug added. “No! He didn’t ride 

Bob McLean’s. He just posed with it.” 

“Red had said—when he was out in California—they took him to a meet and they sat him on 

an Ace.” Doc this story to Joe. “He didn’t want a whole bunch of people standing around, 

watching it. 

“He gets on the Ace and it had a real fast clutch—some of them did—he lets the clutch out 

and off he goes. He’s fishtailing all over the place and thought, ‘This is awful!’ When he 

comes back, everybody was applauding him. He said, ‘Hell, I didn’t put on a show. I was out 

of control!’ He lost it, you know!” Doc laughed, remembering Red’s story. 

“Anyhow,” Joe continued his story about riding at the Fort Mott meet in 1967. “Gene said to 

me, ‘You get on this and ride this for these fellows up here.’ So I rode it. I made a figure 

eight. And when I got back where Gene was I said, ‘Grab this son-of-a-gun before I fall 

over!’” 

“Was it an Ace?” Doc asked. 

“Yeah. An Ace four cylinder motorcycle,” Joe answered. “Up at the place there,” Joe was 

talking about his summer home in the Pocono Mountains. “The last time…he was up there 

with one of those English motorcycles that he rides—. He can still ride! 

Slow Race 

“Hey Sis!” Joe called out to his daughter. “Have we got any of those pictures left yet, inside? 

Of motorcycles and me on them?” 

“I’ll see if I can find them,” she replied and then, after a pause, “You gave them all to… You 

gave them away! Didn’t you give them to Gene?” 

“I gave him a whole lot of… I gave him that picture of…three of them. Picnics and stuff.” 

This triggered another memory from Joe’s past. “There was one picnic that I was very much 

interested in. We had a slow moving contest. Do you know what a slow moving contest is?” 

“A slow race.” Doc corrected. 

“Yeah. A slow race.” Joe continued. “I was hooked up with this fellow—this Indian dealer in 

Pottstown.” 

“Kiss!” Doc interjected. 

“I brought that… 

“Huh?” Joe asked, cutting off Doug. 

“I just brought that article with me.” Doug said to Joe. “I gave it to her.” Referring to Joe’s 

daughter. 

“Kiss!” Doc repeated. “Frank Kiss?” 

“I think it was,” Joe answered tentatively. “I was on the Ace. Before that, I was working in 

the service department. Who comes over but the…” 

“That’s the article,” Doug said, handing Joe a photocopy. “There you go.” 

“Where’s that out of?” Doc asked Doug. 

“Motorcycle and Bicycle Illustrated. That’s the article, the picnic he’s talking about—with 

Frank Kiss.” Doug pointed out the account to Joe. “You’re mentioned right over here.” 

“Yeah,” Joe was reading it now. “Joe Steffens. They even got the name spelled wrong. 

“Anyhow, this guy that worked for the Schebler carburetor people—used to be an ex- 

Excelsior driver.” 



“Maldwyn Jones!” Both Doug and Doc chimed in together. 

“Huh?” Joe asked, not quite catching the name. 

“Maldwyn Jones,” Doc repeated more carefully so that Joe could clearly hear. 

“Maldwyn Jones!” Joe repeated, remembering the name now. “I’m over there at the factory, 

when I was in the service department. I said to him, ‘Gee, I’m going to be in that slow race 

with my Ace and I would like to have a carburetor that the motor wouldn’t stall.’ Because, as 

soon as you put your foot down, you were done! 

“So he says, ‘I’ll tell you what, Joe. I’ll send you a carburetor—to put on your Ace—that you 

can put the brakes on and the motor will keep on running.’ Honest! As sure as I’m sitting 

here. 

“We got the carburetor—this is on a Sunday. We go up there and Frank Kiss and I, we’re on 

the job. He’s to the side of me. Don’t you know he beat me by half a wheel! I was so damned 

mad! I said to Bill Slater, ‘As hard as I worked on that!’ 

“Before we put the carburetor on, I had the motor out and I cleaned carbon and grind valve. I 

had it in such good shape. I felt so good that it was running so nice with the other carburetor 

on there.” 

“Well he must have done a little more work than you did…to beat you.” Doc offered. 

“I don’t know how he did it,” Joe replied. 

“You were just barely moving, huh?” 

“Just barely moving.” Joe’s voice trailed off. 

“Well, the clutch would be a little tough. You had to slip the clutch, right?” 

“I did everything I could to beat him,” Joe chuckled. “Everything I could think of.” 

Identifying XP-3 and XP-4 Engines 

“No, I’ll tell you, when we went and looked at these engines, Joe…” Doc began to talk about 

the XP-3 and XP-4 engines again. “The first thing I saw was that manifold and I said to 

myself that this has got to be it. The second thing I saw was the aluminum cover…and Red 

Wolverton said to the people, ‘Would they take that cover off the timing gears?’ He said, ‘I 

want to see the timing gears.’ 

“So I said to the guy, ‘Could we take the cover off? Could we have a screwdriver?’ He said, 

‘Sure.’ So we pulled the cover off, took out all these screws, and took the cover off the front. 

Red’s standing here, and he just broke into the most beautiful smile and he said, ‘This is it! 

That’s the first I’ve seen that engine in sixty years. Those gears gave it away. They’re only 

about—” 

“There was such an argument on who got that machine. Red wanted it. After that race, 

nobody knew where that machine had gotten.” Joe was referring to the fate of the XP-4 after 

the record. We know that it went to the Chicago show, but C. W. Plass, the Vice President and 

General Manager, is generally believed to have wound up with it afterward. 

“Bill Plass took it,” Doug replied. “And then Art Lemon had to buy it back when he was up at 

Michigan Motors.” 

“But anyway, when we saw those timing gears…they’re only about that thick, Joe.” Doc 

indicated the thickness with a narrow space between his thumb and index finger. “Machined 

off, with great big wholes in them.” 

“Yeah, that’s it. Full of holes.” Joe agreed. 



“Now, I tore it completely apart and everything was okay.” Doc paused. “The over engine, 

XP-3…that had blown up on the Martin’s Creek Hill Climb in 1924. Not with Red on it, 

somebody else was driving it…and it blew up. 

“Evidently, nobody got into it all those years because I tore that engine down and found that 

the oil feed to the center main bearing was plugged and this cut out the oil feed to the two and 

three connecting rods. And, the pistons were disintegrated—they were in pieces—and the 

rods were like pretzels. 

“So I straightened the rods and through Doug I got a set of stock pistons and put them in. 

Now it wears stock pistons. I should have brought one of the old pistons along. One ring.” 

“Yeah, one ring.” Joe confirmed. 

“It’s running now too. And it’s lively, even with the stock pistons. Aw, that son-of-a-gun will 

go. But it has a Simms magneto on it so there’s no trouble starting it or anything like that. I 

would start this for you, but we probably better not. The neighborhood—.” 

“No! Don’t start it.” Joe was quick to turn down the suggestion. “I remember what it sounds 

like.” 

“Why not?” Joe’s daughter asked 

“Oh, it screams!” Doc said enthusiastically to her. “Hey, it screams. And I…to tell you the 

truth…I’m not a good driver. I love to ride motorcycles—my street bike is a fifty-four Harley 

and I love to ride—but I’m not really good. So, what I should do sometime is have a real race 

driver drive the thing. Hey! This will go!” 

“Well, we don’t have anymore of those guys around,” Joe expressed his sentiment. 

“There’s some good guys out there,” Doc countered quickly. “But they don’t understand the 

foot clutch and the hand shift. These forks… It handles beautifully. See there’s just a little 

action. Do you see that? Just about an inch. It handles very well, really. 

“The only thing is now I’m getting old. See, I’m sixty-eight. I was born in twenty-three. And 

to put my head… I’ll tell you… Let me show you.” Doc got on XP-4 and leaned way over the 

tank. “He rode, he said, like this.” 

“Yeah, that’s it. Right down there.” 

“But I can’t twist my head up. All I can see is down in front. And I get a headache from trying 

it. He would put his hand here like this and hold here. And he said his chin was bloody the 

first trip from banging on the tank there. So they put a pad here for him. 

“Hey, I want to tell you. It’s lively! It’s no good at all at low speed. When you get up above 

thirty-five or so, it’s a sweetheart.” 

Old Photos 

“You know something, it was funny. I was telling you about how I got myself into a lot of 

trouble because I knew a heck of a lot.” Joe said. 

“I think he gave most of these away,” Joe’s daughter Helen was telling Doug off to the side 

while Doc and Joe were talking about Red’s riding style on the XP-4. “You can see that 

they’ve been torn out of here.” She was holding a tattered old photo album, the kind with the 

heavy black pages on which people mounted photos. 

“That was one of his, I think?” She said looking at the panoramic of the picnic. 

“Yeah, that picture is from Gene,” Doug told Helen. “In fact, I got two from him and I let a 

friend of mine have one. It had old Harley Davidsons on it.” 

“It looks like that’s all I have left. Show him that that’s all I have left. Tell him,” She 

prompted Doug. 



“There’s your JD Harley,” Doug showed the picture to Joe. 

“Huh? Oh, that was the Harley Davidson we had…” Joe started to say after examining the 

picture. 

“That’s all I have left in here Dad. You sort of, kind of took them all out of here.” 

“That’s one of those old Harley’s I had.” 

“I have a ’27 Harley,” Doc continued. “A ’27 JD, and I have it hooked to a commercial 

sidecar. Delivery car.” 

“Yeah, it looks like he’s given them all away already. I don’t know.” Helen turned from Doug 

to Joe. “Who’d you give them all away to Dad, Gene? Did you give all of your pictures away 

to Gene?” 

“Gene got them all. He was interested. You know Gene. Get him to show you some of the 

pictures. I had some real dandy ones.” 

Tape Two: Side A 

“…—ed mechanic around.” Joe was saying. “As young as I was!” 

“You made a name for yourself.” Doc offered. “If it hadn’t have been for Gene Aucott, this 

bike wouldn’t be here. Because, he gave me those two pieces of frame and that started the 

whole business.” 

Charlie Cole 

“Me, Gene Aucott, and Red…we went up there to Cole, up there in Reading. We swore that 

he had that in the cellar…that racer. That he had got a hold of it somehow. 

“You know, when he was…when I was in the factory, in the assembling room, he used to 

always come down with a train and pick up a machine. He used to always have the prettiest 

girls that he’d bring down with him. I said to Red, ‘I wonder what he’s got.’ Such good 

looking girls used to always come with him. 

“I used to fix it up. We used to electrify them, you know. Put a generator on them and battery. 

It had a battery in back of there.” 

“Were some Aces sold without headlights?” Doc asked. “Did they sell them with no lights 

and with no generators?” 

“No lights at all. But if you wanted it…the machines that came out of there, they were 

stripped. Towards the last, we had real lights on them and stuff like that on the battery. But 

when I first went there, they were sent out just plain motorcycles.” 

“No lights?” Doc asked. 

“No lights at all,” Joe replied. 

“Did you hear that Doug?” 

“Yeah well, I have pictures of them like that,” Doug replied to Doc. 

“We could do an Ace with no lights.” Doc suggested. 

“I know that! I have pictures of them like that! I have pictures from Charlie Cole though with 

gas lights.” 

“That picture that have there on the top. What’s that from?” Joe asked. 

“This one?” Doug replied. “That’s Charlie Cole, 1919.” 

“Hey, is Charlie Cole in that picture? The little guy there looks like him.” Doc pointed. 

“I’d have to look. I’d recognize him if I saw him.” After a pause, Doug handed Joe some 

pictures from his collection. “Here’s some more—” 



“It’s too bad Bill didn’t come along Doug,” Doc said referring to his brother. 

Red’s Henderson Dealership 

“He would have enjoyed this.” Doug agreed. “That’s Red with Reickert in their…” 

“Yeah, when they had the…” Joe began. 

“The Harley dealership I guess it is.” 

“No, they had the Henderson dealership.” Joe corrected. 

“Henderson? Oh, okay!” Doug deferred. “He said that he never got along with him.” 

“You know why don’t you?” Joe asked. “He was sort of a cheapie. He wouldn’t—” 

“Charlie was—” Doug was cut off. 

“This guy that Red went in business with, on Germantown Avenue here in Philadelphia, he 

was a fellow that worked in a meat place. This was Red—” 

“Well this is his shop in Reading,” Doc tried to correct Joe. 

“No, this is Philadelphia here.” Both Joe and Doug replied in unison. 

“He sold a lot of Hendersons to the park police.” Joe continued. “But they never got along 

good because this guy was cheap as anything.” 

“That was the guy Red didn’t get along with?” Doc asked Doug. 

“Yes,” Doug replied. 

“What was his name?” Doc asked. 

“Reichert!” Continuing with other pictures, Doug pointed. “Here’s a nice picture of Red.” 

“Even towards the end of the time he was in business, I used to see him on the streets of 

Reading.” Doc recalled. “I guess he had a car, but he always drove—like going up town to the 

bank or for groceries—drove the Harley and sidecar.” 

“He was the Harley dealer in Reading.” Joe stated. 

“On Skuylkill Avenue,” Doc added. “I was in his shop many times in Reading. We used to 

talk. When he found out that I had a Henderson, I was his buddy then. But, he couldn’t help 

but say, ‘Well the Henderson’s great, BUT!’ Then he talked about Ace.” 

“That’s my…I have a ’21 Ace at home.” Doug was showing Joe more photos. 

“This is the kind when I first went there…this is the kind they used to send out. No lights or 

anything on them.” Joe said. 

“Red said that he was going to buy me a can of paint for it.” 

Racing Giants 

“My hat’s off to Red.” Joe went on. “Nobody, I found, could ride like him. I saw a lot of 

fellows in my time. I even knew Ralph Hepburn—that got killed in an automobile race in 

Indianapolis—I knew him. And I knew Jim Davis.” 

“You knew a lot of guys. Jim Davis is still around!” Doug told him. “He’s doing very good.” 

“Do you know that Jim Davis?” Joe asked Doc. “Jim Davis and the other one that was… 

There were three of them. There was Ludlow. Do you remember Ludlow?” 

“Freddie Ludlow.” Doc told him. “He went 129 MPH on a Henderson on a board track.” 

“He was a good driver.” Joe remembered. “He became a policeman in California.” 

“Yeah, that’s right! Yes he did!” Doug joined. “And then there was Joe Petrali.” 



“And there was…ah…Walker!” Joe finally remembered the name. 

“Gene Walker.” Doug added. 

“Walker, Jim Davis, and then…the other guy. You just named him.” 

“Ludlow.” Doug responded. 

“Ludlow!” Joe took up. “That was the team. They used to come over with the…from the 

Harley people. And they used to race over here. We had a mile track up here in Philadelphia, 

in the suburbs up here.” 

“Which suburb?” Doc asked. 

“Oh, up here somewhere. It’s all gone now…houses and everything.” Joe was probably 

talking about the Langhorne Speedway located north of the city. 

Hallowed Ground 

“What part of Roosevelt Boulevard did they hold the speed record on?” Doug asked. 

“Alright. The Boulevard was just being built. Do you know where the Nabisco factory is? 

That was the end. From Broad Street to up there where the bakery is—its still up there that 

bakery. 

“It’s funny. I put the Ace people in the racing business. Because this here Art Lemon says, 

“Joe, do you think you can get somebody to race us on Sunday?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll try.’ I got 

this Artie Boyer with the JDCA—one of those really hot Harley’s. He was always beating 

everybody. I said to him, ‘Would you like to race?’ He said, ‘Oh, I can beat an Ace good!’ 

“I told him to be up there Sunday morning. I’d have Red up there and the other fellow…his 

helper…Art Lemon’s assistant. DeLong! I said that we’d be up there. 

“So, during the week he had it all tuned up, his Harley. All fixed up real good. I went all the 

way up there, where the bakery was and there was a trough there for horses to get water. 

Because in those days, there was a lot of horses that used to travel on those roads. Guess what 

happened? 

“These two were racing, this colored fellow with a Henderson—a Deluxe Henderson. He 

came over there and he gave him a race. I’m over there waiting and they’re coming on fast. 

Of course, this Henderson wasn’t so fast as Red was. Red beat the heck out of him. 

“The front tire blew on this Henderson. Now, I’m going to tell you something. I saw this with 

my own eyes. I don’t know how he got off, but he was running…heading right for the water 

trough. He fell into the water trough, and scared to death.” Joe laughed. “The font tire blew on 

this Henderson. If he had gotten killed, it wouldn’t have been funny. I had never seen 

anybody run so fast!” 

Ace Record Racer Tires 

“Now Red said that they carried a 110 pounds of air pressure in the tires when they set the 

record. Is that right?” Doc asked. 

“We carried 125 pounds when I worked at the Indian factory.” Joe actually worked for a local 

dealership. 

“And those dinky little tires held that?” Doc was amazed. 

“They held it, yeah!” Joe insisted. 

“A lot of these guys today… You can buy these tires brand new now. They make up these 

tires but they run… Modern motorcycles only run maybe twenty pounds of air in their tires at 

most. If you run these at twenty pounds, they slip on the rim and they come off. I run these at 

thirty-five.” 



“We used to…that was the first thing that he tried out—when I put those tires on—that was 

the first thing they tried out, to see if it held a hundred and twenty-five pounds. They really 

blew them up tight!” 

“Did you ever bust one?” Doc asked. “Did you ever bust one testing it?” 

“No.” Joe said matter-of-factly. 

“They never broke?” Doc was clearly surprised. 

“No.” Joe insisted. 

“On the rims you mounted,” Doug posed a new question to Joe. “Was there a blue stripe on 

those rims do you remember?” 

“Was there a blue stripe here?” Doc was pointing to a rim. “A blue stripe to match the main 

color?” 

“No, they were flat…they were more…they were clincher type.” Apparently Joe didn’t 

understand what they were asking. 

“Yeah, this is clincher,” Doc assured him. “But you don’t recall if the rims wore a stripe here? 

In some of the pictures, it looks like there was a painted stripe on the rim. Do you recall at 

all?” 

“No. I can’t say that I remember that. But we were so particular; I even called his attention to 

the spokes. I said, ‘You make sure that none of those spokes are coming out.” 

“Into the tube?” Doc asked. 

“In to…because it had a flap on there.” Joe went on. “The tube was inside, and then it had a 

flap on there. And that flap had to inside of that rim. Or otherwise it wasn’t put on there right. 

That there is why I was so particular about putting them on for them.” 

“So that the tube wouldn’t rub right on the ends of the spoke nipples?” 

“Yeah well, it hit the nipple.” 

“They used that on the drop centers too.” 

“You talk about something real fancy.” Joe seemed to wound down, not being able to think of 

anything else to say on the subject. 

Title Race 

“Do you know what happened up there…at Charlie Cole’s place?” Joe remembered another 

story. “Well he got into an argument with the Indian dealer. He got in trouble with that Indian 

dealer up there. They had an argument of some kind.” 

“Fritz?” Doug asked. “With Horace Fritz? Or R.B.?” 

“Cole said that, ‘We could be any Indian motorcycle around.’ The Indian dealer up there had 

a real nice shop—a nice business there. A nice store—everything nice. They bet house for 

house. He said, ‘If I beat you, I’ll take your place over.’ They mixed it up about who was 

going to be the winner. 

“What could Charlie do but call us; call the factory. He told them, ‘You better get a machine 

ready because we’re going to race; house for house.’ Whoever would win would take the 

Indian—. If Cole would beat the… If the Ace would beat the Indian motorcycle up there, 

Cole would have his place and the Indian guy would have to move into… Well, Charlie Cole 

only had one building there, one store if you remember. He didn’t have an elaborate place.” 

“It was a tiny little shop.” Doug offered. 

“He sold a hell of a lot of Ace motorcycles for us.” Joe went on, not really hearing Doug. “So 

he called up and he said that he was in trouble and that he was going to have to race him. 



“Red [Wolverton] got a motor from the experimental department and we put it in the side car 

and up we went. Charlie Cole had a motorcycle frame up there with the motor out of it. He, 

Red and I put the put the motor in and…what’s his name, ah…Art Lemon was there too! I 

don’t know what he was doing there but he got mixed up with it too. 

“We kicked the thing over and…you talk about a RRROAR! That motor that we took, it was 

supposed to do at least a hundred miles an hour. It was a real good one! 

“They took water! The Indian guy took water up there. He wouldn’t race us. He wouldn’t race 

the Ace motorcycle up there.” Joe chuckling at the memory. “I said to Red, ‘I’m going to go 

home.’ I had my own bike… I had my own Ace along with me. 

“Don’t you know, his son was running after me! They were going to beat me up! I took him 

all over Reading. He couldn’t catch me—with my Ace. I finally got rid of him and I could 

come home. I told Red what had happened. He laughed like heck. He said, ‘Why didn’t you 

stop and have a fight with him?’ I said, ‘What for? He was about thirty pounds heavier than I 

am. He could run over me!’” 

Joe’s Resume 

“I did a lot of funny things,” Joe continued with a different story. “I quit a job to go work 

with… We had trouble, years ago, with an Excelsior. You’d kick your head off before it could 

start it. We had one guy come up there—he was a motorcycle mechanic—and they used to bet 

on him that it wouldn’t start when he’d go out. They used to bet all kinds of money on him. 

“This guy had his Excelsior so well tuned—he knew what to do with it to make it start easy. 

One kick and it went off, every time. They couldn’t understand it. 

“I worked for the Harley people. I quit the Harley place and went to work at Charlie 

Bradley’s. He worked at Charlie Bradley’s.” After a brief pause, Joe added, “I found out his 

secret about the Excelsiors; how to make it start easy. I quit a job to find that out.” 

“How do you make an Excelsior start easy?” Doug wanted to know. “What does it take to 

make an Excelsior run better?” 

“It was all in the compression release. There’s a compression release starter—” 

“That automatic one?” 

“Yeah. When you first put your foot on the starter, to kick it down to raise the exhaust valve. 

You had to know how to adjust that.” 

“I was real disappointed with my Excelsior. The…ah…it’s made poorly. It’s a nice running 

motorcycle but it’s so light and there are no races on the connecting rods. If you wear the 

races out, you have to throw the rods away. That might have been fine back then but now, 

there’s no more rods being made. There’s not enough meat in there to put a race in. 

“The Japanese do the same thing. Your bearings run directly on the connecting rod. 

Everything is real poor…as cheap as possible! Even Red said that. He said, ‘You’re going to 

love the motorcycle when it’s running but when you go inside, you won’t like it. Because it’s 

junk!’ It’s very frail.” 

“I was very much disappointed. I couldn’t imagine—as much as I knew about motorcycles—I 

couldn’t image what he did to make it start easy.” 

“That was a piece of junk when he started with that one.” Doug pointed to another 

photograph, possibly of Gene Aucott’s completed Ace. “That particular bike, that was all junk 

when he got it. In fact, it’s got parts from Charlie Cole’s shop on there. I sold him some 

things.” 



Zoomer Pipes 

“When I first went to work there, they gave me an Ace…for seventy-five dollars. They told 

me, ‘Instead of you riding that Harley.’ I had a short-coupled Harley and a Reading Standard. 

He told me to pick up this one at the Ace agency on Market Street. It was at 5 th and Market. 

“I went over there and, sure enough, there was the Ace over there. They already told them that 

I was coming over to buy that Ace. I got it for seventy-five dollars. It had the old-time gears 

in the transmission that used to holler like hell. Finally I put spiral gears in it to quiet it down. 

It was a nice running job. 

“I was the first one to have one of those kinds of mufflers on like this here.” Joe indicated 

Charlie Cole’s machine. 

“The zoomer pipes?” Doug asked. 

“I had that put on myself. They got that idea from me.” 

“Oh yeah! The zoomer pipe was your idea?” 

“Yeah, that was my idea.” 

“What about the handle bars? You said something on that too.” 

“Not the handle bars. I wasn’t too hot on the handlebars. I would like the handlebars a little 

bit different. But that was Mr. Henderson’s idea.” 

“They look like English bars.” 

“Yeah, English bars…like on English cycles.” Joe’s voice trailed off. 

Doug’s Collection 

“Charlie’s bike is really tremendous! It’s…I call it my Henderson eater. It’s really 

powerful…better than my ’21. I don’t know what he did—” 

“Is that so! How many of them motorcycles have you got?” 

“I’ve got four Aces. I have these two and I have two more in parts.” 

“My my! They’re now…let’s see…1920. The one I had was made in 1921.” 

“I have a twenty-one. This photograph’s my twenty-one.” 

“That’s a twenty-one? This is the kind I paid seventy-five dollars for.” 

“And that’s pokey compared to this.” Doug indicated Charlie Cole’s machine nearby. 

“Oh yeah. This has got a lot of ginger! Did you do anything to the motor?” 

“I have never been inside to see what he’s done to it. He’s got to have done something 

because it comes on so fast and so strong that it’s really—. I don’t even ride this anymore 

because I have so much fun on his…this one.” 

“Yeah, that’s a good one. It’s got a lot of smoke. Oh…we had lots of—” 

“But ah…it used to be pretty. Back in 1958 that thing looked like a new motorcycle. I have 

pictures—” 

“Do you know what I told Mr. Henderson? I told Mr. Henderson, I said, ‘When I ride mine I 

get a sore neck over here.’ Don’t you know they redesigned that fork! You know, where the… 

Give me that book here again.” 

“Which one? The picture?” Doug handed him the book. 

“This here,” Joe said pointing to the forks. “Why, he redesigned that; made that a little bit 

longer.” 

“Because I know they lengthened this, the spring fork, a little bit too.” 



“Don’t you know, that thing rode real nice. It took away my—. Mr. Henderson was a real hot 

designer. No kidding!” 

“I swear that Charlie put a block of wood in the spring fork because I can’t get it to budge. It 

doesn’t move! 

“Doesn’t move at all,” Joe agreed. 

“I’ve never torn it apart. I just ride it. I ride all over the place. Back home, I’ll go into three 

different counties. I’d be gone all day, riding around.” 

“Well now, you’re riding around with a motorcycle that was made in…let’s see…in nineteen 

twenty—. That’s a—” 

“That’s a twenty-three.” 

“That’s pretty good, huh?” Joe was proud, I think, that an Ace was still being driven on the 

rode after all of these years. 

“Yeah. This is the bike when Charlie and Red ran the six-days trial in nineteen twenty-three.” 

“Oh yeah? I remember that!” 

“That’s the bike!” 

“That’s the bike he used?” 

“That’s why the number plates are on the front. I found the number plates down in Charlie’s 

basement.” 

“I was supposed to go on that,” Joe said about the 1923 Six-Days Trial. “But, we had too 

much work to do at the factory; they couldn’t let me go.” 

After the Record 

“Red told me that they were working on XP-5; with four carburetors.” 

“On the Ace?” 

“Yeah. And ah—” 

“We had one there with two—. We had a manifold made with two carburetors on it but that 

didn’t work out.” 

“Well, he told me that they hand one…Maldwyn Jones was working on it with them to make 

four special, small bore, Schebler carburetors that had—.” 

“On there?” 

“Roy Artley and Red were going to run this thing. It was supposed to be an estimated…they 

wanted to average a hundred miles an hour on it…to do a cross-continental record run on it.” 

Factory Track 

“We had people that used to come there from China…oh, from Yugoslavia—. We had them 

from all over the world. We made them ride that track. Every one that came over there wanted 

to ride that track. When they saw that it was not me or Charlie—. What was his name…the 

fellow that was the tester? If he were on the machine, they’d stay there at their work. If it were 

somebody else, they’d scram because we lost a couple Aces there. 

“The fellows would come over there and try to ride it. It was a pretty good track; you had to 

be a good driver to drive that track. Some of them would hit the parts department; they’d run 

like hell. Everybody ran out of there.” 

“This is a picture of Red—up in New York. It was raining that day and the track was real 

greasy. It was a scrambles track. We’re out in this Ace sidecar; he’s going faster than—at this 

point, Red’s eighty years old and he’s going faster around the track than anybody else!” 



“Is that so?” Joe sounded amused. 

“Yeah. He’s the oldest man out there, he’s going faster than anybody else, and he had perfect 

competence.” 

“I’m going to say to you again; I never in my life saw anybody—and I rode with a lot of 

them. I rode with Bennett, I rode with—.” Joe interrupted himself. “This is you too, isn’t it?” 

Joe was leafing through more of Doug’s photographs. 

“Yeah. This is all of my stuff.” 

“This is a foreign job isn’t it?” 

“No, it’s a Harley.” 

“A Harley-Davidson?” Joe sounded dubious. 

Great Riders 

Continuing on to his previous train of thought, he said, “I never saw a man who could handle 

a machine like Red! And I had seen a lot of them!” 

“He was a natural.” Doug agreed. “It sounds like you’ve ridden with just about all of the big 

guys at the time. You’ve been around them.” 

“He was out of this world.” Joe was lost in reverie, hardly listening to Doug. “Then when that 

Cannonball Baker came over, when he saw how Baker rode, I told him, I said, ‘Red. Do you 

see how he rides?’ He says, ‘Aw, he’s alright but I could beat him!’ 

“I said to myself, ‘I know damned well you could beat him!’ And that Cannonball Baker 

could ride!” 

“Red always told me that he liked—out of Wells Bennett and Cannonball Baker—he always 

liked Baker the best because he said that when Baker went out on one of these record runs he 

just went. But Wells Bennett went out and he had spares all over the place.” 

“Oh yeah! He had places to get fixed up along the way.” Joe added. 

“He told me that one time, in nineteen twenty-two when Henderson took the transcontinental 

record, well they changed engines in Kansas City.” 

“Oh yeah! They changed it in two places.” 

“Two places?” 

“Yeah…two of them. Two motors they put in there.” 

“They would never tell you that in the magazines.” 

“Nobody knows that; but I know that! Red and me knew that! We talked about that. When 

this fellow was chasing Cannonball Baker—he had motor trouble. They changed the motor. 

Right after they changed it, how long—it didn’t take long to—. Especially if you…I could 

take a motor out of there—. I could break that motor down, when I was working, inside of six 

minutes; I could take that motor out. 

“That’s a good speed! I could put it back in—in ten minutes I could have it back again. Now, 

in ten minutes time, you could catch a guy—maybe—if he’s fifty miles ahead of you. If 

you’re doing seventy, you can catch him inside of about three hours; you can be right on top 

of him. And that Bennett was right on Cannonball Baker. When Baker found out that he was 

being chased, he really took off—to come in as fast as he could. He didn’t stop anymore; 

anywhere!” 

Spare Parts 

“One of the things I’m working on at home is…ah—. I just bought a bunch of Ace material at 

a show and it has a pressure feed crank in it.” 



“Has it got one in there—a pressure feed crank?” 

“Yeah. They came pressure feed in nineteen twenty-seven. A three-main bearing pressure 

feed. So I want to build up another Ace from Charlie’s junk. I mean I’ve got brand new 

engine cases; I have everything new!” 

“Have you got all that stuff?” Joe was astonished. 

“New fenders, new tanks, new exhaust systems, wheels. I have everything but a frame! Now 

see, Doc has the other experimental engine…the XP-3 motor…and I gave him a chassis to put 

that bike together; but that was my only spare chassis. So now I’ve got to go find another 

frame. I found one in Australia.” 

“How are you going to find them because there are very few of them that have anymore of 

these parts around?” 

“You just keep beating the bushes until something shows up. Doc just found a frame out in 

Minnesota. It was a chopped up frame that they made a mini-bike out of an Ace frame and 

he’s putting it back together. 

“But here’s a… alright, I found a frame—. A friend of mine has half a frame, he’s about ten 

miles from me, and he promised it to me but I haven’t got it yet. Meanwhile, I found another 

frame in Australia. But I have enough—with Charlie’s material—I can put two whole 

motorcycles together.” 

“No kidding!” Joe sounded impressed. 

“I’ve got brand new fenders sitting there!” 

Old Timers 

“Not too long ago—before Red died—before he went into the home we went over there to see 

that guy up in Reading…the Reading dealer—Cole.” 

“Charlie Cole,” Doug said at the same time as Joe. 

“And this Gene—Gene Aucott. He’s got a lot of parts; I know that. He was looking for a 

frame. He was trying to get a frame.” 

“He bought a frame from me.” 

“He got one together and showed it to me. He brought the machine around and showed it to 

me. I said, ‘That’s not a standard bike…not a standard frame.’ I said to him, ‘Where’d you get 

that?’ He said, ‘Well, a lot of fellows rejuvenate those frames.’ You know, fix them up 

again.” 

“The frame I gave him, the front half I think was brand new. But they cut out a center section 

so he welded two sections of frame together. But he didn’t weld it straight!” 

“Now, this is about six inches shorter because the battery case used to go right underneath the 

seat there. See where the seat is? Now let me see on your other bike. Yeah, see! There’s a 

difference in the length.” 

“We copied this frame off of my nineteen twenty-one frame!” Doug insisted. 

“The motor just sets in there and you couldn’t put a battery in there.” 

“No! You could put a battery in there!” 

“You could make something for it. Yeah.” 

“A battery would fit in if you wanted it too.” 



William Henderson Listens 

“This horn, that holds that seat in there, I told Mr. Henderson—when he was alive yet—I said, 

‘You know, this is a dangerous seat. If that breaks, you fall back on the fender and you lose 

control of the motorcycle and you can get killed!’ 

“Don’t you know that he had changed that! He went and drew up something and changed that. 

We got the bucket seat like you got. We got them put on the machine—coming through with 

the bucket.” 

“That was a big selling point too!” 

“I told him if that that horn was a dangerous horn. I said that it breaks—that it broke on me! 

He said, ‘It did?’ I said, ‘Yeah. I’m afraid that that seat’s no good.’ That horn is not strong 

enough to hold your body…you fall back.” 

Riding Fast 

Joe stopped and called out for his daughter who was in the house speaking with Doc Patt. She 

couldn’t hear him and he turned back to Doug who said, “They’re in there chatting away.” 

“I’m so glad you came,” Joe said to Doug with great sincerity. “My missus and I were talking 

already to Gene Aucott—the first time he came over here—we were, I bet you, ten hours! 

You should have seen all of the pictures I had.” 

“He never showed them to me,” Doug said disappointedly. “The only thing—he let me have 

that picture.” He indicated the panoramic from the Hulmeville picnic. “In fact, I got two of 

them from him.” 

“Well, the other ones are the ones where I’m sitting there…not too far from that colored Ace 

motorcycle dealer.” 

“The other one I had were mostly Harley Davidsons. It was like a Harley dealers group. You 

weren’t in that picture were you?” 

“I think I was.” Joe’s voice trailed off and then he began again after having another thought. 

“I was very because of my uncle. My uncle was a racer here in Philadelphia. He was a…well 

that there was what killed him also. He never had any protection on himself and he got such a 

cold that went into pneumonia. That’s what killed him.” 

“I used to race motor cross.” 

“You better dress up good!” Joe cautioned Doug. 

“I don’t do it anymore,” Doug assured him. 

“That was why I didn’t, why I never… Red used to say, ‘Let’s really go, go really fast a long 

way!’ I said that I would go with him for a while but that I made a promise to my uncle that I 

would never go crazy about racing. My uncle said to me, ‘Look! I’m suffering for it.’ I said, ‘I 

know you are Unc.’ I told him, I said, ‘Unc, you’re dying slowly.’ He said, ‘I am.’ He finally 

kicked the bucket…from the motorcycle…from getting that cold. He got consumption from 

it.” 

Winding Down 

“So what do you think of this?” Doug asked Joe after a respectable pause in deference to Joe’s 

memory of his uncle’s passing. 

“Very nice!” Joe responded. “I have a picture of this.” He began calling out again for his 

daughter. When she replied, he asked her to bring him his duffel bag. 

“What’s neat is that the XP-3 motor has ‘SAMPLE’ stamped underneath the transmission.” 

Doug offered while they waited for Joe’s daughter to bring his small duffel bag where he 

remembered having some old motorcycle photographs. 



“You know that you are really setting me up something; that I only remember that one 

powerful job that he made for the hill climb.” 

“Well there were two of them.” 

“The other two…I was lost already! I wasn’t so active anymore because I had other plans.” 

Joe stopped when his daughter brought him his bag. He unzipped it and began rummaging 

through it. “Yeah. Here you are.” He pulled out an old magazine and handed it to Doug. 

“Ah, it has a picture of Red on here.” 

“No, that’s not it.” Joe continued rifling through the documents. “There’s another guy that 

built these things, these racers. I never—” 

“Yeah, well this is the machine here,” Doug said, indicating the XP-4 replica standing nearby. 

“Now the thing is though, this is a stock engine in this photograph. We built the bike 

originally with a stock engine and then after the thing was finished, Doc was offered the 

racing engine. So we put the racing engine in.” 

“Yeah?” Joe asked. 

“That’s what that’s from.” Doug indicated the picture within the magazine again. “That’s a 

stock motor. We built the racing pipe. Do you see how the exhaust pipe comes straight down? 

They don’t have any sweep-back to them.” 

“You see, that fellow built that because he wanted another bike just like the one that Red 

raced.” 

“Well, that’s Doc’s here!” 

“Here, give me that a minute.” Joe indicated the magazines. Doug handed him the magazine 

featuring the XP-4. Joe examined the article and pointed to the author’s name. “This fellow 

here, I don’t know who this guy is,” Joe said. 

“Alan Cathcart wrote it,” Doug told him. It was an article that appeared in the March 1986 

issue of Cycle World magazine. 

“Do you know him?” 

“He’s an English author.” 

“They tried to tell me that that was the one that Art Lemon fixed up. I said, ‘No. It wasn’t.’ 

“There’s Art here,” Joe said pointing to a picture in another magazine. “Here’s Red here.” 

After a pause, he extended an offer to Doug. “I have a place up in the mountains. You should 

come up there to see me.” 

“Up in the Poconos?” Doug confirmed. “I tried to get a hold of you a couple of years ago and 

I never seemed to be able to make it.” 

“Oh yeah!” Joe exclaimed satisfactorily and then asked, “Do you see this here?” He was 

holding up two pages that were torn out of a magazine. “You put these two together… Let’s 

see, is that—? This is that—“ 

“That’s Terpening, yeah,” Doug confirmed. “That’s at Rochester, July 4 th , 1923.” 

“Do you see this,” Joe said laughing. “He flew over the top.” 

“Yeah, that’s the Lancaster hill climb. I photographed all of Red’s pictures that he had at 

home.” 

“Now, I think that this is the one that Red was riding if I’m not mistaken. Am I right? This 

job?” 

“Well, that’s this bike.” 

“This bike here?” 



“But that has a stock street engine in it.” Doug handed the magazine pages back to him. “Here 

you go.” 

“Here,” Joe handed them back to him. “You can have that.” He picked up the rest of the pages 

and magazines and handed them to Doug as well. “You can have this too!” 

“Okay. Are you sure? Because we probably have this at home.” 

“You can have it because I won’t need it anymore.” 

“Who’s the guy in the middle?” Doug asked, pointing to someone in a photograph. 

“He looks familiar but I don’t know who he is to tell you the truth.” Continuing to examine 

the people in some of the other photographs he stated, “I don’t know who this guy is either.” 

“That’s Art!” Doug told him. “Art Lemon.” 

“Is this Art Lemon?” Joe was astonished that he didn’t recognize him. 

“That’s not Frank Snook is it?” 

“It looks like DeLong.” 

“Oh, here’s Cannonball Baker!” Doug pointed him out to Joe. 

Joe examined the picture closely. “But you see,” he said, “He didn’t have bars like this.” 

“No, he had stock ones.” 

“Huh?” 

“He had the early bars.” 

“Regular stock handle bars,” Joe agreed. 

“That’s Charlie Cole and Red in the Six Days Trial.” Doug said pointing them out in another 

photograph. 

“Very good,” Joe was impressed with Doug’s collection of photos. “Boy, you’ve got a lot of 

pictures!” 

“Well, these are all from Charlie. I’ve got everything Charlie owned.” 

“Who’s this guy?” Joe pointed to another photo. 

“That’s…umm…Cannonball.” Doug responded after looking at it. 

“Cannonball Baker?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Yeah, that’s him.” Joe added after looking at the picture more closely. “Did you know that 

he was a little cross-eyed?” Joe said this in a conspiratorial tone edged with humor. 

“Yeah, you said that.” Doug replied, reminding Joe that he told them this earlier. They both 

laughed. 

Sorting through Photos 

At this point, Doc rejoined them in the back yard. He had been in the house paying his 

respects to Joe’s wife, Helen. 

“Now, what are you guys up to?” Doc said in a gregarious manner. “Hey, I’ve been 

entertaining the ladies. I don’t get along too well with men; I get along with—.” Doc stopped 

abruptly when he saw the picture, at which they were looking, and then exclaimed, “Hey! 

There he is!” 

“Cannonball Baker,” Joe nodded. 

“Yep!” Doc replied. “He was a big man.” 



“Yeah,” Joe agreed. 

“Now he wore on his… He wore just a corduroy jacket; look at that!” 

“Well, that all depends on what season it was because—” Joe began say. 

“Well this wasn’t summertime with that outfit,” Doc interrupted him. 

“Red said that he used to just get up and go,” Doug offered, speaking of Cannonball Baker. 

“He was tough!” Doc added. 

“Ah, I just brought something here,” Joe indicated the Cycle World magazine article to Doc. 

“Show it to him.” He motioned for Doug to show it to Doc. 

“Yeah, this here.” Doug handed it to Doc. “You have that, don’t you?” Joe began laughing in 

the background; pleased with himself. 

“You saw that?” Doc asked Joe. “Did you have this?” 

“Yeah, that’s mine.” And then after a slight pause, “I’m giving it to you guys. I don’t want it 

anymore.” 

“Where did you get it?” 

“Don’t you know, I got that from—” 

“You see that… This is the road… This road goes right in front of my house,” Doc 

interrupted. 

“Yeah?” Joe responded perfunctorily. “Red gave me that. He said, ‘Joe, look at this. Here’s a 

guy that built one just like it!’ Like the one that he—” 

“That’s me!” Doc said pointing to his name being mentioned in the article. “See. Here I am!” 

“Let’s see,” said Joe. 

“See the name,” Doc showed him. “John Patt.” 

“John Patt?” Joe repeated. 

“That’s me,” Doc exclaimed proudly. Joe laughed. “How about that.” 

“Hey!” Doc shouted towards the house; to Joe’s daughter Helen. “He has my article. Did you 

see that?” 

“How ‘bout that! No, I didn’t see it. Did you write it?” She asked. 

“No, it was written about me. See, there’s the bike.” Doc showed her the article. 

“Do you recognize any of these guys?” Doug resumed showing Joe more pictures. 

“This one doesn’t have the fins on the boxes,” Doc noted and then upon looking closer he 

exclaimed, “It has gaslights! Oh, wouldn’t that be neat to do one with gaslights? Forget the 

generator. Would that be neat?” 

“This is… At night, you had to have lights.” Joe was referring to the picture in his hand of an 

Ace motorcycle equipped with a gaslight. “You see this here motorcycle? This is a Presto 

tank. This is a Presto-Lite.” 

“That’s Charlie Cole’s first Ace.” Doug informed him. 

“Charlie Cole’s first Ace?” Joe repeated. 

“Uh huh. Probably a 1920 model.” 

“My uncle said, ‘It’s too bad that that Presto tank being on the handle bar is too heavy.’ I still 

have one of those tanks here. A Presto tank.” 



“Do you?” Doug asked with some surprise in his voice. “Oh, that’s neat.” I don’t see why 

Doug should have been surprised, I saw at least half a dozen laying around Doc’s shop. 

“So I said to him, ‘Unc, I finally—” Side A of Tape 2 ran out at this point. 

Tape 2: Side B 

“—1913. 1913.” Joe can be heard finishing a statement at the beginning of side two. They 

had been talking about gaslights and Presto-Lite tanks and must have started to discuss when 

electric lights began to be offered as an option. 

“Because I guess Indian didn’t have an electric lights until 1914,” said Doug. 

“Here’s a guy who looks like me but… This is how I used to look because I used to always 

have a poncho in case it rained.” 

“Are you sure that that’s not you? I don’t know where those pictures were taken.” 

“This guy looks like me, but it’s not. That’s not me but this is how I looked.” 

Cannonball Baker at the Factory 

Joe picked up a different picture, most likely of Cannonball Baker—probably sitting on a 

1918 Indian Power Plus. “I have pictures up the mountains like this with him riding. I see the 

handle bars are the old handle bars.” They were. “With the old handle bars because he was an 

awful big man!” 

“With the gauntlets.” Doug noted. 

“I said to him one time, ‘When you’re on a run like this, what do you do when you have to 

stop and take a pee.’ He said that he just takes it out and pees all over the cylinders.” Joe 

“Doesn’t even stop?” Doug asked. 

“I said, ‘Did you get away with it?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah!’ He liked me, this guy did.” 

“I heard that he didn’t like to be called Cannonball though.” 

“No, we all called him Mr. Baker. We didn’t call him Cannonball Baker.” Joe saw Doc 

returning again and said to him, “I was just telling him…you can come closer to me, I don’t 

want to shout out. I asked him, Mr. Baker you know…Cannonball Baker? I asked him, ‘What 

do you do when you have to take a pee? Do you always stop?’ He said, ‘Hell no! I just take it 

out and pee all over the cylinders.’ He was a son-of-a-gun, no kidding!” They all laughed 

loudly at this account. 

“He was a big man.” Doc finally said. 

“Positively a big man.” Joe agreed. 

“You say now that they made… Isn’t there a picture of him on the Ace that shows the handle 

bars?” 

“Yeah,” replied Doug. “That’s one of his record attempts. I think that’s out in Indiana.” 

“He had awful big shoulders,” Joe added. 

“Tremendous endurance,” Doc continued. “He was tough!” 

“He was a… You see this guy here…my grandson?” Joe was indicating the mailing address 

on the cover of a recent issue of American Motorcyclist. “He’s an ace in the service…on 

boats. He used to ride a Honda motorcycle. He gets these books and he’s the one who sent 

them over to me.” 

“Who gave the article about this? Gene?” 

“Gene… No, Red!” 



Ace XP-4 Replica Article 

“That guy who wrote the article,” Doc began, “he came over from England and he stopped in 

Massachusetts to pick up his photographer—a professional photographer—and then he came 

down and did two articles. He did an article on this and he did an article, I believe, on Rollie 

Free’s Vincent that set a world’s record after the war. About 1950 or so, Rollie Free set a 

world’s record—he was an Indian dealer. Anyway we took Red and him, and a whole bunch 

of guys, out to lunch at the local diner and we had a great time. 

“Another funny thing happened with Red. When I did this motorcycle originally, I did not 

have this engine. I just used a stock Ace engine because it doesn’t look that different. But I 

made a manifold as close to that as I could figure. I hand built that from scrap to look like this 

manifold. I couldn’t find the aluminum manifold and I couldn’t find the aluminum carburetor 

for it, so it had the stock carburetor and the manifold I made. It was just a stock engine in it. 

That’s what that article was written about. 

“But since then, I got the real engine. So I just pulled that stock engine out and put it to one 

side and put this engine in…after I’d gone through it. Also, this wore Rajah plugs when it set 

the world’s speed record. Can you believe that I found a full set of Rajah plugs? In fact, 

overall, I found four sets.” 

“You could find parts for these?” asked Joe’s daughter. 

“Oh, there’s plenty of parts. I found a set of Rajah plugs and then found three other sets. I 

found that magneto—the Scintilla magneto—I found all of that stuff. When I bought this 

engine, it had a Scintilla magneto on it.” 

“It’s funny that you’re having trouble with this one particular mag,” Joe asked. 

“When it’s damp, just cloudy; some magnetos are that way. They’re very sensitive. The shop 

where I keep it is dry but it’s very cold in there because it sits back in a mountain where it 

stays very cold. If I let the door hang open a little, you get condensation. I have a little 

machine shop. I have a lathe. I have a milling machine and that’s where I make all of these 

parts. 

“But anyway, you know how a lathe is heavy cast iron? The water just runs off of it if I let the 

door hang open. The warm air comes in and hits the cold lathe and the cold engines; that’s 

what happened to it.” 

Coming to America 

Joe’s daughter—who left to pick up a pizza for their lunch—interrupted Doc’s discussion 

about how the magnetos are prone to condensation. After she drove off, they continued with 

some small talk. 

“Your wife’s Hungarian?” Doc asked, having spoken with Joe’s wife earlier. 

“I’m a Hungarian too,” Joe replied 

“Are you?” Doc exclaimed with some surprise. 

“Sure,” Joe assured him. “I was born on the other side. I wasn’t born here” 

“How old were you when you came over?” Doc asked. 

“I think nine years old,” Joe said tentatively. “The time when we came over here is when 

Roosevelt was running for President. 

“1932,” Doc stated. It’s more probable that he was referring to Theodore Roosevelt rather 

than Franklin Roosevelt.. 

“No, not Roosevelt,” Joe quickly corrected. “What was the President’s name in 1912?” 

“Taft?” Doc offered. 



“No, ‘Hurray for…’ Wait a minute. I’ll find out.” Joe was befuddled. 

“My one supervisor at work; just came over. She’s Hungarian,” Doug stated. 

“I was born there,” Joe replied. 

“Do you get to speak it at all? You and your wife, do you speak Hungarian?” 

“Oh yeah! I can speak Hungarian.” Joe assured him. “Very good! I have no trouble at all.” 

“But you have no accent,” Doc insisted. “None at all.” 

“A lot of people don’t know this,” Joe continued. “When my father heard that I wanted to get 

married he said that I had to get out of the house. My father was stern in some ways and good 

hearted in other ways. I said, ‘Pop, are you kidding?’ 

Tape stopped and restarted later. 

Final Thoughts 

“…I gave my son a ride on it…five bucks!” Joe was saying something about a used Ace 

motorcycle that he picked up at about the time he left the factory. 

“What year would this have been Joe?” Doc asked with interest. 

“In the fall?” Doug can be heard saying in the background. 

“It would have been. Let’s see, to be exact. I left in… It was in 1926 I left…twenty-five or 

twenty-six.” 

“An Ace for five dollars, and it was only a couple of years old.” Doug said somewhat amazed. 

“It was an old bike. It had electric lights but he didn’t have a battery for it. I had to buy that 

and some other stuff.” 

“It’s nice to know that you had a hand in that engine right there—at one point,” Doug said 

nodding towards one of the nearby Ace motorcycles that they had brought with them. 

“You had your hands in both of them, back in the 20’s,” Doc repeated since Joe was having 

trouble understanding Doug’s comment. 

“This one here for sure,” Joe agreed. 

“Both of them!” Doc insisted. “Both of these motorcycles. You worked on them. Your 

hands.” 

“Positively,” Joe finally agreed. “I put the tires on this one—well, on the racer. And the—” 

“Did you ever get to ride the racer?” Doug asked. 

“To tell you the truth, I never got that—I was too busy in the shop. When this was going on, I 

was in the shop already, taking care of all the police in Philadelphia that had the Ace 

motorcycles.” 

“Do you have your camera with you Doug?” Doc asked. When Doug indicated that he did, 

Doc turned to Joe. “We want to get your picture with each bike and maybe we can arrange—” 

“I’ll sit on it. I can sit on them yet!” Joe told them. 

“Can you get on it?” Doc asked. 

“Oh yeah!” Joe insisted. “Of course, you’re going to help me a little bit.” Joe chuckled. 

“Do it now?” Doug asked. “Put the bikes right here; the car is not—” 

“Yeah, this was a Philadelphia cycle,” Joe said while continuing to look through Doug’s 

collection of photographs. 



“Here you are. Here’s something here. Do you remember me telling you about the fellow that 

used to assemble them? This is one of the guys. This is where the factory was. This is outside 

of the factory. You see none of them has any headlights on them. You can see it.” 

“Yes you can. Isn’t that neat,” Doc agreed. 

With Doug and Doc’s assistance, Joe climbed aboard XP-4 for some photos. Doc jokingly 

cautioned him not to kick the starter because he would be off and running. 

No more can be heard on the tape as they pose Joe on the Ace motorcycles for some pictures. That was four 

years before he died at home on November 8, 1995 at the age of 92. Many adoring children, grandchildren, 

and great-grandchildren survive him.

From 1920 through 1924, Ace motorcycles were built in a ... - WebRing

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?