Who is This?

Endless summers and motorcycles.
By Peter Hyde

 
It was 1967 and I was in the fourth form at Westlake Boys High.  One of the guys in my class mentioned that his father had an old motor bike that he had pulled apart and was not going to put it back together and wanted to sell it.
They didn’t live very far from me, just around the corner in Nile Road, so that evening I trotted off to see this motorbike.  When I got there Gordon’s Dad opened the garage door and there stood a large wooden crate and inside was a motorbike in a million bits, he had pulled it down to the very last nut and bolt with the intention of restoring it.  It was a 500 cc Matchless 1958 model, when I asked him how much he wanted for it he replied $50.  I went home wondering how I was going to get that much money.  Over dinner I told my father about the project that I wanted to do , “and what might that be” he enquired, then I told him about the basket case around at Gordon Stringers place and how $50 was cheap for a motor bike even though it was in a million bits.  He relented and gave me the money.  As soon as I could I was off back to Nile Road handed over the money and dragged the wooden crate all the way home to Tristram Ave which in those days was a dead end street that finished in a swamp at the bottom.
Slowly I pulled all the pieces out of the crate laid them out on the floor and without a manual or the internet I started to rebuild the bike.  All the parts appeared to be there until I got to the clutch unit, there just didn’t seem to be enough parts to assemble the whole thing, and then I discovered the clutch plates were missing.  I went to see Gordon’s dad and told him what I discovered and he said “oh that’s right I lent them to Dean so and so (his last names escapes my memory) and he never returned them”.  I knew the guy he was talking about, he lived in Crown Hill and was one of the original Hells Angels.  He rode a  500cc AJS single with huge ape hanger bars which shared the same parts as my 500 single Matchless  and he had a nasty reputation although he still lived with his dear old mum.  Great I thought, as the plates were about the last thing I needed to complete the rebuild. Taking the bull by the horns I decided to go around and see this guy, after all he was only a few years older than I was and ask for the plates back.  Nervously I walked up to his front door and knocked.  His little old mother opened the door and told me Dean was not home and so I explained the reason for my visit.  She said that she would tell Dean about my visit and that I should come back several days later.  Several days later, one evening I walked back to the house wondering what the outcome was going to be.  As I approached the back door steps I spotted a pile of clutch plates on the step, I couldn’t believe my luck, I had them under my arm as quick as lightening  and was  gone down the road.  Interestingly enough this same guy who at that time lived very near to the water tower at the top of Crown Hill,  painted in big white letters AJS in a circle and if you know where to look it is still there behind the trees.
I got the bike completely back together and the big day came to kick it into life.  I filled the tank with motor spirit (petrol), tickled the carby, retarded the spark with the lever on the handle bars and proceeded to kick the living daylights out of the stupid thing.  It sent jets of flame out of the carb, it back fired and all but broke my leg with the kick start lever.  My father came into the garage, who, up until now had been absent from the rebuild to find me bathed in sweat slumped over the bars chest heaving.  He said why don’t you give it a bit of a rest, go and see your mates for a while maybe it will start in the afternoon.  Reluctantly I got off the thing and stalked off down the driveway feeling dejected.  Half a dozen hours later I returned home, my father said why don’t have another go at getting the monster going.  We went out into the garage, me not believing that why should it start now.  I duly climbed aboard, turned on the fuel, tickled the carb, brought the piston up on compression and gave it a mighty kick and to my utter surprise the beast fired and after fiddling with the advance lever and some screw turning on the carb it idled not too bad.  My father stood there with just the faintest of smiles on his face.   I pulled in the clutch thumped it into first gear and roared up the driveway and away up the road.
So started my life on two wheels.  I could not wait to ride it to school to show off to all my mates, look what I had built without any help.  On the Monday morning I rode in through the school gates past the Head Masters office where the heaving monster just happened to backfire as I throttled off past his office and up to where some of the other students who were lucky enough to own bikes parked. I made this grand entrance for the rest of the week.  On the fourth morning the Head Master could take no more of it.  As I was pulling the bike up on its centre stand he came towards me, I could almost see the steam coming from his ears.  He stammered “You can take that thing home and leave it there and you can stay home for a week yourself you are suspended”.  It started a trend where I was forever being thrown out of somewhere because of bikes.
But I was a hero at school.
Part two of endless summers and motorcycles in the next newsletter.