Tommy in Harley Davidson's magazine

32 HOG

HOG 33

34 HOG

This is a story about two riders who left
town and rode west 40 years ago. The trip didn’t set any distance
records. The riders didn’t visit remote and exotic locations around
the globe, and no single thing they did was anything most riders
haven’t done on some road trip before or since. So what was
unique about this trip? The answer can be found in this question:
When did you last set out on a 3,500-mile
run without a cell phone, a roadside assistance card, a GPS device,
or a motel reservation – instead carrying the tent you would sleep
in and food you would eat after making camp at night? Also,
would you make that run on a bone-stock ’70 Sportster® or ’56
Panhead hardtail chopper?
Well, there’s your answer right there.
The year was 1972, and my good friend
Jerry Mehl and I had a big idea: to take a motorcycle trip across
the Southwest to backpack into the Grand Canyon. Friends since
junior high, “Deputy Dawg” and I shared many interests, including
photography, camping, motorcycle travel, and a desire to see the
country off the main roads. This was our chance to do it all.
Two years earlier I had purchased a 1956
Panhead from my friend “Snake” Ragland for $200. He kept it
under a shower curtain outside his apartment, and, needless to say,
it needed some work. Over the course of about a year and a half, I
fixed it up from a near basket case to a classic 1970s-style chopper.
In those days, that meant fabricating most
of the parts myself – custom parts catalogs were rare. By the time
I was done, my new ride featured, among other things, a modified
Sportster fuel tank with hand-carved Maltese cross; a custom
metal-flake airbrushed paint job, with 50 coats of hand-rubbed
lacquer; a hand-welded chain-link sissy bar; and handmade
twisted, square, stock highway pegs to match the nine-inch-over
Springer front end. I also had the motor and transmission totally
rebuilt by the local H-D® dealer.
Jerry’s bike, a 1970 1000cc Harley-Davidson®
XLCH Sportster, was less exotic than my own, but nearly as
impractical for making a 3,500-mile journey. Saddlebags? Tour-
Pak® luggage? What are those? We just strapped what we needed
to whatever we could find to strap it to.
Camping equipment has changed a lot since
then. Have a look at the size of the bedroll and jungle hammock
on the front of my chopper. Today, these things would fit inside a
touring bag. But there was something about having your bedroll
strapped to the front of your scooter that gave a rider a feeling of
going somewhere when where didn’t matter.
On that warm and humid morning in June,
where was the Grand Canyon. But just about everything else was
yet unknown. So a definite excitement hung in the air as we did
a few last-minute checks on our equipment and scooters. When
we were satisfied that everything was as ready as it could be, Jerry
started his Sportster with his right thumb; I cranked the Panhead
with my right foot. After stopping to fill our gas tanks, we were on
our way west but not before making a couple more stops: We both
had to tell our mothers we were off and to not worry.
Our plan, to the extent we had one, was to
leave Monroe and make time to somewhere around Dallas, Texas,
then slow the pace and stay on two-lane blacktop after that. Jerry
was in charge of our navigation system, that being the Texaco
road map he picked up to help find our way along the back roads.
I liked him being in charge of that because it let me sit back with
my boots on the highway pegs and enjoy the ride. All I had to do
to make sure I was headed in the right direction was listen for the
Sportster’s pipes.
(The pipes, by the way, were black. The
chrome was sand-blasted off, and the heat-resistant paint was
cured in his mother’s oven. She was not pleased. Remember, in the
early 1970s there were no catalogs to order such things.)
As a rule, we made our camps miles from
nowhere. No KOA campgrounds, no state parks, no “Mom-and-
Pops” – just a remote spot away from lights and sounds. In terms
of excitement, making camp the first night ranked right up
there with kicking the motor through to begin the trip. We were
somewhere west of Jacksboro, Texas when Dawg and I started
looking for a place to stop. With the sun low on the horizon, we
pulled far enough off the road to put a stand of tall grass and short
trees between us and the two-lane blacktop. After setting up the
tents, gathering wood, and cooking supper, we settled beside the
campfire to let the day end quietly while our scooters cooled down
in the night air of the Texas plain.
HOG 35

The early 1970s was a time when a Harley-Davidson
rider still carried the stigma of a borderline outlaw and was
often viewed with suspicious eyes. We got pulled over by “The
Man” more than once, for no apparent reason. One time, while
two Texas policemen were checking out us and our bikes, a
bunch of teenagers across the road grouped at Dairy Queen to
watch the show. When the cops couldn’t find anything wrong
and sent us on our way, the kids all cheered. Very cool. We
waved in appreciation of their support and rode on.
Small-town gas and food stops were also exceptions
to the “outlaw” perception. While fueling up, a friendly voice
might ask where you were from or where you were going.
If there was an old timer around he would want to know
how far you could make it on a tank of gas – a good thing
to keep in mind in the desert! But curiosity more typically
centered around the mystique of the motorcycles themselves.
Dawg’s Sportster always drew onlookers, but the alien lines
and radical appearance of my chopper always called for
closer examination.
36 HOG

Other encounters were memorable for different
reasons. Once we came upon a café on a mountain road in
Arizona and stopped for a meal. When she – call her “Desert
Flower” – came to take our drink order, it occurred to me that
I might be making the trip back to Louisiana by myself. The
Dawg never shows an opening, but I was watching, and with
the click of a shutter recorded for all time his enchantment
with Desert Flower. He was enamored and moonstruck all in
one bundle. And embarrassed. Yep, he sure was.
Resisting the charms of young waitresses was one
challenge; keeping the Panhead rolling was another.
One afternoon on a broad, sweeping curve, I felt the
rear end begin to fishtail. By the time I stopped, the rear tire
was all but flat. To my knowledge, this was before the handy
CO2 inflatable tire kits many riders carry now. What I did know
is how to find rocks to support the bike, remove the rear wheel,
load it on the Dawg’s Sportster, and head back to a small burg
we recently passed to repair the tube. While I was doing all the
work, the Dawg rested in the open sun of an Indian reservation
near Tres Piedras.
When we finally made it to the Grand Canyon, we
parked our scooters at a ranger station warehouse and began
our trek down the Hermit Trail at the South Rim. By the time
we had descended a few hundred feet along the trail, I had the
feeling of getting a tour inside the largest living thing on earth,
as the canyon felt absolutely alive. On one side, a wall rose
hundreds of feet straight up; on the other, it dropped hundreds
of feet straight down.
We made camp on the trail and fell asleep to
undisturbed quiet like I had never heard. And until that night
I only thought I had seen the stars.
HOG 37

Today, the “Canyon Run” remains a marker for Jerry
and me. He once told me he still smiles every time he thinks of
it. Sure, we rode together before that run, took trips with other
riding buds, sat around other campfires. Since that time, we’ve
done the same on Harley-Davidson Evos and Twin Cams. The
Dawg currently rides a 2010 Street Glide.® I have a ’96 Softail
Custom that my wife and I rode two-up on trips together until
last June when we bought an ’09 Ultra. And yes, I’ve kept my
’56 Panhead.
But that 1972 adventure remains a click or two up
the adventure scale compared to how we ride today. Before
throwing a leg over the trusted steed, I often now ask myself,
“Got the cell phone?” And then I chuckle. My buddy Joe carries
more communication devices with him than NASA probably
had on the first moon mission. I use the CB radio when on a trip
with him because it makes him happy. But personally, I prefer
just the sound of the twin pipes and the wind.
The definitive question remains: Would I do it
again? Would I straddle that 1956 Harley-Davidson motorcycle
loaded up with camping equipment, leave behind the array
of electronic devices Joe carries (though perhaps make room
for one emergency tire repair kit), and head west again with
Deputy Dawg?
Crank ’em up, I’m in.
And that waitress in Kanab, Utah? Turns out she was
right about Colorado: We couldn’t get there from where we
were, not back then anyway. Trouble is, the same thing is now
true about 1972.
But maybe that’s just as well.
38 HOG

HOG 39

Find out more about the
adventures of Tommy Gibbs and
his first novel,
One Picture, Two Journeys,
at the website:
www.tackyrooster.com