The Pick Motorcycles
L to R: Dennis Pick (the author of this story), Tom Nuebel, Guy Pick, Steve Berendes (1966)
Richard, Guy, and I all pitched our money together and bought a 50ccHarley Davidson motorcycle in Sioux City. I think I was in 7th grade. It was a teeny weenie motorcycle with absolutely no power. We took it home and almost immediately took it back and replaced it with a black 125cc Harley Davidson Rapido (the one in the picture with me, Tom Neubel, Guy, and Steve Berendes).
It was partly a street bike but mostly a dirt bike, designed for off-road riding. It had tremendous torque and would do wheelies (front wheel came off the ground) whenever you wanted it to. The rear tire would spin and dig up dirt (our lawn) like a shovel. I remember crashing that thing in the yard so often that it didn’t even bother me – I’d quickly get up, dust off, and return to doing wheelies. The spark plug would foul out very, very often – what a pain!
We also had two silver Honda 160cc motorcycles. These were much better machines than the Harley: Smooth and powerful. They would go very fast for such a small vehicle (top speed of about 80 mph) and were designed for the road. Once we took to the road, the crashes were much more serious. I remember one time leaving a friend’s farmyard and while turning onto the road, putting on the gas, and spinning out of control on the gravel. I put my bare left hand on the road as the motorcycle and I fell – ostensibly to break the fall. That was a terrible idea and helped me understand why motorcyclists wear gloves. As the motorcycle and I were moving down the gravel road on our side, my hand was being embedded with gravel. Boy that hurt!
The end of my Remsen motorcycle career came one night on a low-traffic secondary road when taking a friend home on the 160cc Honda. We were going as fast as the motorcycle would go. The headlight screws were loose so the headlight kept pointing downward toward the front wheel and not onto the road. I had to hold it up with one hand so it would shine onto the road while driving with the other hand. The headlight had dirt on it and visibility was bad.
Suddenly, out of nowhere appeared a red picket snow-fence strung across the road immediately in front of us blocking our path! God must have intervened because when I hit the brake, we dropped to our side and slid directly into the snow-fence (not flying over it), stretching it like a rubber band as it slowed us down to a stop. We got up, essentially unhurt, and peered over the fence to see a 30-40 foot drop into a rocky stream. On the fence was a sign that said, “Danger! Bridge Out!” It turned out the batteries in the Plymouth County warning flashers were dead.
Moral of the story: Motorcycles are dangerous, particularly for kids.
