My sentiments exactly!! I am 77 and have lived a long life and have paid for my own mistakes. I made them and it was my fault, not some one else's and it was my job to try to correct them.
The last 2 generations were not raised with our value system. Thank goodness for sidecars, motorcycles, and scooters. As the fuel prices start back up we will still be able to get around.
(Notice the clever way I got us back on track to side cars???? 8^) ) Keep on writing, Mr. Sweet.
When all they had to get around with was a motorcycle and Sidecar.
A few weeks ago I was visiting a good friend and his family. After a great meal and some quality time; something people today don’t seem to find the time for. We were looking at some old photo albums and came across a picture of his mother in law. It was a picture of her as a young girl in 1938 sitting on the back of her Dad’s motorcycle. On the left side was a sidecar that had an enclosed cab. As I studied the picture I remembered that she was from England and the picture had 1938 written on it. I thought to myself that would have been taken before WWII during the depression. My friend’s wife mentioned that her mother told her that at the time the only transportation that her family had was the motorcycle and sidecar. She then started telling stories that her mother had told her about riding in the sidecar and how her Dad took good care of the motorcycle because without it they would have to walk to get around. She told about the family outings and how everyone would load up on the bike and in the sidecar for a day in the country. As she was reliving her Mom’s experiences I started thinking about my family and how my Dad and Mom living in a parallel time in the United States also had a similar start in life and how it all revolved around motorcycle and sidecar. My friend who I have known for over twenty years doesn’t identify me with sidecars. In fact I can’t remember if he even knew that at one time I had the third largest sidecar company in the US. He then asked if I could identify the motorcycle. I told him that I could and told the following story. When I finished they said I should write about it because it was not only interesting but it filled out an enjoyable evening.
I’ve taken my friends advice and I hope you enjoy this sometime scattered story about my family that started out riding on or in a sidecar rig so many years ago.
As I looked at the picture I knew from the insignia on the side of the gas tank and the inline four cylinder engine that it was a Henderson from the 1920’s. I knew what a Henderson 4 motorcycles was as I thought back to when I was around fifteen years old and spent the summers working with my Dad and uncles. It was 1960 and I was working construction for the summer during school vacation in upstate New York. We were building new houses around the local area near the IBM plant. IBM had been growing and the contractors were turning all the old farm land into housing developments for the influx of workers moving to the area. I was away from home for the entire summer and it was a learning experience for not only me but some of my cousins. We were taught how to work and take care of ourselves just like adults. All of us kids were responsible for paying for breakfast and lunch and living on a budget while paying our own way. We even had to pay room and board every week. Thinking back my uncle who ran the house didn’t need the room and board money but it was a learning experience for us kids getting us ready for the life’s adventure that we had ahead of us. The room and board wasn’t taken out of our pay; it was up to each of us to pay the $10.00 out of our pay at the end of the week. This way we understood about paying; it wasn’t just a deduction in our pay and at the same time we learned about paying our own way not like what the world would become with some standing in line to get their government assistance. One of the best parts of this early life’s adventure was the evening meals. From Monday through Thursday the evening meal or supper was an event. On Friday nights after work we would head back home for the weekend driving the two hundred miles one way and returning on Sunday night ready for the next weeks work. As I think back on some Fridays one of my uncles at lunch would say “were going to quite work early today it being Friday”. Every day we worked till 5:00PM, no time clock to punch we just worked till five be it discipline or whatever, but quitting time was always 5:00 PM. So when we kids thought we were getting off early that became a big deal. In our minds we always thought it would be around 1:00 or 2:00. As the Friday afternoon would wear on it would be getting closer and closer to five and sure enough we would get off early, at 4:45 PM.; a whole fifteen minutes. When I think back what a great way to screw with us kid’s minds, or you know it could be that they would notice that us kids were fading after a long week’s work and with the thought of getting off early on our mind we kept on plugging never giving up. Whatever the reason it worked and as I write this I can’t help but laugh. Over the last fifty years I’ve observed adults taking teenagers kids under their wings showing them how to work. In construction they always start out as a laborer most time doing menial work. Not with my family; from day one all we kids had hammers, aprons, and whatever tools we needed. We learned how to drive nails within the first hour of being on the job and before the summer was out could drive nails as good as any carpenter with years of experience under their belt.
Preparing the evening meal required everyone having a job. Be it peeling potatoes or husking the corn to setting the table, or getting the charcoal heated up so that we could sacrifice some meat. There were no woman around and it was a guy thing and for us young kids a lot of fun. My Dad and his four brothers made it enjoyable and at the same time a learning experience for all of us kids. We stayed in an old farm house in the valley on a mountain road that was traveled by only the few that lived on it. The thing that always sticks in my mind was the Henderson four cylinder engine that sat on the back lawn between the back porch and the charcoal pit. To get to the charcoal pit you had to walk around the Henderson engine. Every evening when we got home from work one of my uncles would walk over to the Henderson engine and give it a few kicks till it would start. The Henderson 4 was nothing more than a frame, engine and gas tank. No front end or rear wheel and no battery because it was equipped with a magneto. About once a week someone put gas in the tank when it ran out. So as we prepared the evening meal my uncles and Dad
would tell stories about the old days or one of us kids might ask a technical question about something. That’s when whatever uncle or my Dad that was considered the expert on that subject would give a dissertation in depth on the subject. These Q&A’s were always interesting because all the adults had a flare for telling a good story with an experience that one of them had relating to the subject, or someone that they knew. The entire time the Henderson 4 engine would just sit and idle in the background. Some of you reading this may think “I don’t get it, this makes no sense”, but we kids understood. It was the summer of 1960 more than fifty years ago and my uncles and my Dad were living the old days from the 1920’s, 30’s, and 40’s and the Henderson engine was like the frosting on the cake when it came to telling stories. Not that they were done living life to the fullest, they had just purchased the skydiving school and would keep going for another thirty years. They would share the stories of when they were young. Stories of the days when there was no money and they would collect up old railroad spikes form the abandoned railroad tracks located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. They found two old hand cars and chained them together using them to transport the spikes the eight to ten miles down the tracks to the old Buick. With the 1923 Buick they transported a load or two of spikes per week and would cash them in at the scrap iron place for money to feed the family. But the best stories were about the Henderson and Super X racing motorcycles that they had, some with sidecars on them. They could pick up a complete Henderson motorcycle with sidecar for $15.00. My Dad would tell about riding in the sidecars when he was twelve or thirteen as his older brothers would be traveling the back roads going somewhere. About when my Dad was fifteen his share from what they would make scraping the old railroad spikes was $1.00? He saved up $15.00 over the summer and with $2.00 that he borrowed from an older brother purchased his own used Henderson 4 with a sidecar for $17.00. Once back in school in September he turned sixteen and for $2.00 got his license and he too was on the road with his own sidecar and bike.
It always seemed that some of the best stories were always based around the sidecars. We kids once asked why a motorcycle with a sidecar the answer was always the same. “That’s all we could afford after all it was during the depression”. Most people that could afford a car drove one, but some that couldn’t afford the insurance would drive the old car to the scrap iron yard and get rid of it. I remember thinking about how poor people had to be when it was the difference between eating and having insurance on a vehicle. I also wondered if my Dad ever had insurance on his sidecar rig being as poor as they were, I never thought to ask, and I bet he didn’t. This all took place during the depression of the 1930’s. So when one really thinks about it, a motorcycle and sidecar had very little value and would be an economical vehicle to own when you were poor. Many stories were about how cold it would get when driving a sidecar rig and how they always were on the lookout for a good woolen blanket to carry in the sidecar. The time when my dad who was only around thirteen riding in the sidecar wrapped up in a blanket and the blanket got caught in the sidecar wheel and it pitched him out into the street. Like Willy said, it was a good thing they were going slow or it would have killed him.
One of us kids once asked about the history of the Henderson engine that was running in the yard and was told that it was one of the old engines that they had picked up in the late 1920’s. Over time in the 1930’s it literally got the wheels driven off it. To us kids it was old, but today as I write this it was only thirty years from when they first picked the Henderson 4 up till we were all in the yard and they were reminiscing about the old days. That old Henderson came into the family over eighty years ago. Today it sets in my second cousins barn as one of the many family heirlooms.
The stories told by my Dad and uncles during my childhood always made me wish that I could have lived in that time in history. But I guess it was the way they told the stories that made them seem magical even though life must have been hard and at times down right miserable. One time when I was in my mid twenty’s and had lived a few of my own life’s adventures I mentioned to my Dad about how I wished that I could have lived in his time coming up threw with he and his brothers. He looked at me real strange like almost like I was nuts and gave me some advice that I never forget. He told me that we can’t control what time in history that we live in but he wouldn’t wish the depression on anyone. It was a hard time with little to no opportunity especially if you were poor. I was told to look around after all it was the 1970’s and if I looked hard enough I would see opportunity on almost every street corner, all I had to do was go after it and jump on for the ride. Well those words become a treasure trove for me my entire adult life and some that I took to heart. I did find opportunity and sure as heck jumped on board for the ride, such a ride during my Dad’s youth would not have been possible. But after WWII when they came back from the war my Dad and his brothers jumped on board and never looked back. It was a time that they had been waiting for their entire life and they sure didn’t waist it.
As a kid just after War II I remember riding in my Dad’s sidecar. It was a custom rig that he built himself and for a young kid it was an exciting time. But before I get ahead of myself I would like to go back to when my Dad was starting out and the only possession he owned was a Henderson 4 motorcycle and sidecar.
The only possession my Dad Charlie owned in this world was the cloths on his back and a Henderson sidecar rig.
When he purchased his $17.00 Henderson sidecar rig he was fifteen but at the same time he had been passing for eighteen years old and racing on the New England ½ mile Flat tracks with his older brothers who were five years his senior. His twin brothers Willy and Sandy had a yard full of old Super X Excelsior motorcycles that they picked up over a period of a few years for almost nothing. After all who wanted old outdated Super X motorcycles? All the brothers together cut trails down in the back fields and woods of the family’s one hundred plus acre homestead. The family lost all its money after the stock market crashed and at the same time my grandfather like President Roosevelt got polio, talk about hard times. The property had been handed down from generation to generation so all they had to do was come up with the tax money once a year. Our families are called “Old Blue Bloods”. Our ancestors settled the colonies in Massachusetts going back to the year 1635 when “John Sweet” with permission from the King settled seventeen miles from where the family homestead was in the twentieth century. Well as the story goes they were running their bikes down in the back yard and every so often they would run up and down the street to the local village. The Village was less than a mile away and it was the place to get gas. (Years later I would build three sidecars for locals in the same village.) The brothers and my Dad would always put on a show when running up and down the street and sometimes the neighbors would call the police. On one of these police calls the brothers were told that they couldn’t be running the stripped down racing motorcycles on the roads without license plates. He also asked if they knew that they raced motorcycles at the Topsfield Fair and that they paid money to the top placers. Thi
s was the first that the brothers had herd of it and they were going to look into it. A few weeks later they loaded up the old 1923 Buick with my grandmother, grand farther, two sisters, three racing motorcycles on a wooden trailer that they had built and attached it to the back of the Buick along with lunch, and my grandfather’s wheelchair. “It was off to the races at the Topsfield Fair”.
At the Topsfield Fair fairgrounds they got a chance to look over the track and couldn’t believe how smooth the surface was compared to what they had been racing each other on in the Back yard. After the first race finishing up next to the top and making some money they were hooked. They found out that every week there was a race somewhere in the New England area and the next week they were back in the lineup doing what they were born to do and that was to race motorcycles. They said that the reason they did so well was because they had never seen a motorcycle race and when they raced between themselves they had a different style than the regular racers had. Sandy, one of the twins had a style of sliding the bike almost sideways in the turns never having to turn the throttle back; it was wide open or nothing. This was the style and the way that he raced up till 1953 when he retired from the track.
My Dad was only fifteen and said he was eighteen and after he had been racing for a few weeks his older brother Elston arrived at one of the races and went to the official Fritzie Baer claiming that my Dad was only fifteen years old. He also stated to the officials that “there would be serious consequences if that young man races today”. The entire time my Dads yelling “HE’S NOT MY FARTHER” but with some very colorful language thrown in. This was told to me by my uncles Sandy as he was smiling and laughing as he told it. In the end my Dad still raced and the entire sorted affair never came up again. Elston claimed “he was only looking out for the young man”.
They raced the old Super X motorcycles for the next few years and on many an occasion would win over the New England Indian factory racing team’s best riders along with kicking the Harley riders around a time or two. Guys like Leon Newhall and Babe Tankry. During the 1935 racing season after beating some of the Indian team on many different tracks one of the Indian Racing Team representatives came over and asked if they would care to drive an Indian racing bike at some of the upcoming races. They jumped at the chance and were told to be at Keene, New Hampshire the next week.
They arrive at Keene’s Stafford Park the week of July 13-14 for the 200 miler and the Indian team had three new bikes ready for them to race. So they thought! As my uncle Sandy looked over the bikes he told the Indian Engineers that “we can’t drive those damn things”. The Indian Engineer asked “why” and were told that “there set up all wrong”. The Indian Engineers were confused but knew that these guys had been beating some of the best team drivers with old worn out equipment, so they must know something. At the time Sandy was upset because the Keene Gypsy Tour 200 was a national Championship event and he wanted to race in it. The brothers where then asked if they would like to come to the Indian factory or better known as the “The Wigwam” the next week and work at setting up the bikes the way they thought they should be. They agreed and the next week My Dad, Charlie and his older brother by seventeen years “the bad seed” Elsten along with the twins Sandy and Willy drove the seventy five miles to The Wigwam in Springfield Massachusetts. Charlie and Elsten rode in Charlie’s Henderson sidecar rig and Sandy and Willy took Sandy’s Henderson sidecar rig. Elston wanted in because he knew if he could get inside the factory he could get a job. He was a master machinist and there were no jobs.
I wasn’t going to mention about how Elston got to be a “Master Machinists” but no good story is worth its weight without all the facts. They say that every family has a bad seed and we sure had a big one. It was 1917 and while spending the summer in Vermont visiting family. Elston on the day that he was to get on the train and return home to go back to school (he was seventeen) decides to rob a neighbor’s house while they were out and then burned it down. The law dragged him off the train and threw him in jail. When he went to court and was found guilty the judge said “you can go to prison, of you can go into the Army”. (The US had just entered World War I) He chose the Army and was sent to Tucson Arizona. It wasn’t but a few days and he got drunk on a Saturday night and climbed up on the stand that they used in the company area to address the men using a megaphone. He was hollering in to the megaphone calling the officers very choice names with an exceptional amount of profanity thrown in and was soon removed from the stand by the MP’s. He was placed on what’s called extra duty, In this case counting guns and ammunition. While counting the guns and ammunition he said to the other guy working with him. “This is a waste of time; they know how many guns they have”. The other guy told him “No they don’t”. The other guy had been selling guns and ammunition to Pancho Villa. He was only within a few miles away across the Mexican border. Elston wanted in but later they were found out. Did Elston tell on his partner? We will never know. The other gun runner got the firing squad and Elston got life in prison in Leavenworth. The years in Leavenworth were not wasted and over time he became a Machinist extraordinary. In 1929 President Calvin Coolidge pardoned 1545 different people when he was leaving office; the third most of all the presidents. He said “we have no bad boys in Vermont” and in the list of pardons was one for Elston. Did Elston get rehabilitated? That answer was lost in time but he did take my Dad Charlie under his wing when he returned home and taught him many things looking out for him as a farther does a son. The older twins weren’t so taken in by Elston and till his death in 1955 there was always a friction between them.
When they arrived at the Wigwam and were given identifications badges that allowed
them to go anywhere in the factory. They were taken to the racing section that was next to the R&D area and settled in. The group spent two days at the factory setting up the bikes with Elson walking the factory floor in the west wing making friends and giving out advice on different ways to improve productivity when machining different parts. With the ID badge and coming in the back door he was making the rounds and at the same time telling everyone that would listen that he taught his brothers “everything that they know”. It wasn’t long before the factory production manager noticed and he and Elson got into a lengthy discussion about many of the different way that the machining productivity could be improved. Elston had brought with him a set of measuring gauges that he had made years earlier on how to check the angles of the cutting tools. As he made his way around the factory he would measure the angles of the cutting tools on the machines that were the next tools to be used. He found that every cutting tool was off as much as one to one and a half degrees in one direction or another. He explained to the production manager that if he set up a special person or persons to cut and sharpen the tools precisely and then adding an additional one degree of angle and increase the cutting feed on all the machines the machining productivity would increase by three percent. The production engineer couldn’t pass up information like this and asked Elston if he would like a job. Elston said that he was only an observer and was here with his brothers setting up the new racing bikes. At the end of the day the Indian engineers took the brothers out to dinner and in a few hours over a nice meal got to know the Sweet’s a little better. The brothers were put up in one of the company’s boarding houses and after a good night’s rest went back at finishing up the changes to the racing bikes. The next day Elston was offered a job a second time. He said yes provided that they also found a job for his young brother Charlie. They agreed and Elston and Charlie headed down the street to the company’s boarding house as Sandy and Willy said their good buy’s and headed back home. Sandy and Willy had gotten accepted to the WPA work program and worked the next few years on projects around New England while racing on the weekends during the racing season.
Charlie and Elsten went to work in the Wigwam and as my Dad told me it was an education that couldn’t have been had anywhere in the world at that time in history. With his older brother walking the floor making improvements and as each day went by getting noticed by the heads of the company.
Charlie started out working on a center less grinding machine making ball bearings, and at the same time was making friends with the other young guys in the factory. The next weekend the racing circuit made its way to Pynchon Park in Springfield Massachusetts. All the big names were there even Iron Man Kretz. And the entire factory population came out for the races. The Sweet brothers would be racing for the first time with Indian colors against guys like Woodsie Castonguay and some of the Harley Davison racers like Babe Trancrde pronounced (Tank- re) whom Sandy had tangled with many times before but this would be the first time on an Indian. I heard those names threw my entire childhood. Sandy did well running right up near the top in the Class C races and Charlie almost winning his events. The next day back at the Wigwam all Charlie’s coworkers were coming up to him and shaking the young eighteen year’s old hand congratulating him on a job well done. Charlie worked the center less grinding machine job for about a week as Elston was making his presents known. Within a week Elston put Charlie to work on a new work station that he set up special for grinding the cutting tools along with the other new cutting tool workers. What no one knew on the first shift was that Elston taught Charlie at night how to sharpen the cutting tools. Plus the workers only worked four days a week and split the time allowing the Wigwam to run for five days. On Charlie’s time off he spent a lot of time looking in every corner of the old factory. They only used the West wing in the 1930’s and the East wing was rented out to different companies. Stored away were hundreds of old outdated engines and parts that were new old parts.
Within four months Elston was the head of manufacturing productivity and moved Charlie from job to job with Charlie learning something new every day.
They lived in a boarding house but were only there to sleep. The Wigwam ran day and night so when Charlie finished his day shift he slowly made his way into the R&D section after hours and made friends with the Engineers developing new ideas. It wasn’t very long and he transferred to the second shift so that he could work for no pay in the R&D section in the day time when all the action was going on. I was told that Charlie first learned how to run a lathe and then a milling machine. Elston believed that with forty hours running a machine doing the same thing over and over anyone would understand the basics. Charlie went from machine to machine and job to job each day learning more and more about setting up parts and sharpening cutting tools; at the same time always hauling around a twelve hundred page machinist handbook. From my earliest memory you could ask him a question relating to anything in the machinist handbook and he could tell you the page it was on and answer the question. In later years he became a master at it and all of us kids learned these same skills and had our own machinist handbooks that Dad had given us. It’s funny because I used the same teaching method when I taught different ones over the years including my son Eric. Charlie also spent some time in the foundry working at molding and pouring metals and worked for a short time in the pattern shop. He mentioned one time about helping on the intake manifold that placed two carburetors on the racing 45’s. Later the great Iron Man Kretz used the same set up when he won the National Championship. As a kid I remember helping make patterns for some sand castings, a project that my Dad was developing. With some coaxing from Elston the Engineers asked Charlie to work full time in the R&D area. Charlie’s first project was working on a dry sump oiling system. He then worked on the conversion from a point’s distributer to a magneto. Something in later years he helped me with when I was racing hydroplanes. He showed me how to improve the draw on the magnets using DC current with an electro magnet. He mentioned one time about profiling the cams and designing the new race cams. As a kid I remember his cam grinding machine and grinding race cams for his friends Harley’s. With all this going on Charlie also joined a group of other young guys who all worked in the factory. Indian had a deal that they allowed workers to rummage through the piles of parts that were seconds or parts that were rejected because of a flaw. All these parts were scraped but as the pile would grow the young guys would rummage through it. They had an area out behind the West wing one of the buildings with mounds and mounds of parts that would not be used. The group of young guys would put together motorcycles using these scrap parts at a cost of what the crap metal man would pay. I remember my Dad saying that his Indian 4 never even had serial numbers stamped in it. Items like batteries, headlight glass, seats, or carburetors were never on the list of scrap parts and the guys had to purchase them from the factory store as NOS parts. Over the course of six or eight months Charlie built himself a new bike and sidecar out of junk parts. I can’t remember if it was mentioned that the Indian 4 didn’t first come with a sidecar and the mounts had to be fabricated
or not. One of the young guys in the group worked in the paint shop and would make deals with the other guys trading off favors so that they could get their bikes painted; I’m thinking that they may have done this on the weekends. Charlie had his painted bright red with the Indian logo on the tank; I remember him saying that the Indian logo cost thirty five cents per side. Charlie mentioning that all the young guys built Indian 45’s and he was the only one with an Indian 4.
Back in the 1978 I took my Dad to Springfield Massachusetts for the Indian Motorcycle factory 25 year employee’s “Wigwam “reunion. While we were in Springfield we drove over to Agawam and drove along the river road next to the Connecticut River just like Charlie did with all the young guys from the Wigwam back in the 1930’s. As we drove along he told me stories about working in the factory and about some of the guys he worked with. All the young guys hung around together and the older men most having family’s kept to themselves. On every other Friday after getting paid in the morning the young guys would go out to lunch at a restaurant in Agawam. As they finished up lunch and were headed back to the factory one of the young guys, a fellow no older than twenty years old was running behind trying to keep up and as he made a turn going way to fast he ran off the road and was killed. At the time no one knew because he was behind them and he didn’t return back to the factory to finish up the day. My Dad said they thought he just went home for the weekend. On the next Tuesday the fellows Mother came over to the factory asking if anyone had seen her son. The last time anyone had seen him was at the restaurant. So all the young guys went out and traveled up and down the river road. They eventually found the spot where he ran off the road and sure enough he and his motorcycle were down next to the river.
While at the Indian reunion Charlie had the opportunity to see many of the old gang who like himself had gotten old but when they started talking about the old days at the Wigwam you could see the gleam come back into their eyes. I just stood back and observed these old timers taking it all in. I think one of Charlie’s most memorable moments was when one of the former Engineers, I believe his name was Jimmy Hill was addressing the group of former employees and their families and he noticed Charlie in the crowd. Mr. Hill made a big deal of it and talked about how the Sweet brothers were a big part of the Indian racing team in New England and of Charlie’s contributions when working in the Wigwam; thinking back after all these years Mr. Hill didn’t have to do that but it sure made Charlie’s day. On the drive back home after a long day I remember thinking about how lucky I was to have taken the time to spend that day of all days with my Dad. Little did I know at the time but he we would be taken from us in the next few years?
This next part of the story gets a little fuzzy. Charlie and Elston moved back home late in May or early June of the next year. It was never talked about but we in the family believe that Elston knew about bikes being sold out the back door of the Wigwam and was asked to leave. We never believed that my Dad, Charlie was involved because Indian still gave him new racing motorcycles every year up till the time they went out of business in 1953. Elston was truly a bad seed and the family kept their eye on him. Charlie was eighteen years old and had no intention on working forever in the Wigwam plus when his older brother was asked to leave he had no intention on staying on being alone and away from home. Plus he was home sick and had a girlfriend that he missed. So the two brothers returned home in Charlie’s new Indian sidecar rig with nothing more than the close on their backs. Charlie had sold his old Henderson sidecar rig to some young kid starting out. Years later Sandy told me that he gave it to the kid because the kids Mom objected to him having a motorcycle and you know how Charlie was.
I remember as a kid in the late 1950’s the dozens of Indian motorcycles and engines in the barn. In the late 1980’s my uncle Sandy still had fifteen or more engines and frames in his barn along with his 1953 Flat track 45. The Flat Track 45 was in the same condition as it came off the track in 53. It was covered up with a sheet in his garage and a few times a year he would start it up and drive it up and down the driveway. Sometime in the late 1980’s Sandy received a call from a gentleman who had in his hand a racing flyer from 1953. The flyer had the names of the different drivers and where they were from. The gentleman asked if he was the same Sandy Sweet that’s name was on the flyer and if so did he have any of his old racing bikes. Sandy told him that he was, and informed him that he did in fact have around fifteen engines and frames along with the last bike he raced in 1953, but that nothing was for sale. The gentleman asked if he could drop by and take a look. Sandy invited the gentleman to come and visit, but reiterated that nothing was for sale. When the gentleman came to look over the old racing bike and collection of parts that Sandy had it was like something out of a movie. You know when the guy shows up with a briefcase full of money, that’s just what happened. Over the years many people have wanted to take the parts off Sandy’s hands but never wanting to give very much for them. This gentleman made an offer that almost no one could refuse. Sandy didn’t need the money but later said that the bike and parts could never have been worth that much money. He never had any intentions of giving the bike and parts to a museum after seeing what happened to me when I donated my Miss Bardahl Unlimited Hydroplane to The Unlimited Gold Cup Hall of Fame and museum in 1983. Before the gentleman left sandy told him that he might want to take a look upstairs in his barn. As they went up into the loft the gentleman couldn’t believe his eyes. Sandy had his Piper Cub airplane complete with every piece labeled and packaged like the day he took it apart when he was done flying it. The gentleman also made an offer for the Piper Cub and it became part of the total deal. Like I mentioned earlier Sandy didn’t need the money but h
e had ten other brothers and sisters that had all died before him, Sandy was the last of his generation. So Sandy went around and made sure that everyone in the family had a proper head stone at their grave site with the exception of Willy, Sandy’s twin brother. Willy had been cremated and there was no place for Sandy to go and find some closure.
Returning Home
When Charlie returned home with his brand new Indian sidecar rig he had a few dollars in his pocket and nothing more than the cloths on his back. He had spent most of his money on food and rent at the boarding house. But the largest amount was spent at the Wigwam store purchasing parts for his new bike and sidecar rig. Being away for almost nine months he decided to take his prized possession for a ride to visit a girl that he had been secretly dating for almost two years. She would later become his wife and my Mother.
My Mom grew up on a large farm that was self-sufficient in that they made and grew everything that they needed to survive. The farm was two hundred acres in size and my grandfather, a tyrant made the farm work because he didn’t need to hire help with all the kids he had. The kids were forced to work the farm. My Mom was the second oldest and with time would have fifteen other siblings. My grandfather a brutal man worked the kids from the time they started school treating them like slaves. First came the girls and then the boys, it’s just the way it worked out. As the first girls turned around ten or eleven they would have a younger brother that they were responsible for just like a mother. From the time my Mom was ten years old she had a younger brother to take care of named Ollie. I remember her telling me what a nice kid Ollie was when he was young. She would be working in the fields weeding a row of whatever crop she was responsible for and Ollie would come out and ask for her to put him to bed. She would tell him “as soon as I finish this row we can go in and I will put you to bed”, and Ollie would sit at the end of the row till she was done. Ollie was all of five at the time. As I write this I’m trying to understand how hard it had to have been she was working till dark or after dark to get her rows done. If she didn’t have all her chores done my Grandfather would kick her around or any of the other kids that didn’t have their work done. It was a life that I never knew because my parents loved and respected me and I never knew such brutality as a child.
Every year when it was Topsfield fair time the Silva kids would show off their livestock and vegetables many times winning prizes. When the fair was going on the motorcycle races came to town racing on the fairgrounds half mile track. My Mom met my Dad at one of these races and they started secretly dating. Mom had to sneak out to see my Dad because she wasn’t allowed to see boys never mind a boy that wasn’t Portuguese. My Mom would sneak out sometimes bringing along Ollie who was at this time around seven years old. Ollie would sit up in the sidecar while my Mom rode behind my Dad as they drove the back roads. Ollie Silva would later become the greatest short track race car driver in New England’s history and the first inductee to the” New England Auto Racers Hall of Fame”. When I grew up and it was my time to go racing I became best friends with Ollie. He once told me that as a kid when he was sitting in the sidecar with the wind blowing in his face it was a great time in his life. He said at times when he was racing and making his way to the front of the pack in some championship race he often thought back about riding in that old sidecar; even back then he knew he liked going fast. At the time when he was telling me about racing and thinking about the old sidecar I didn’t understand it. . As the years have passed I today understand what he was talking about.
My Mom hadn’t seen my Dad in almost a year and when he left she never knew why. Years later at one of our family reunions I was sitting with my aunt Evelyn; it hadn’t been long after we lost my Dad. She was reminiscing and mentioned about when Charlie went to work at the Indian factory but no one knew because there was no way to get a message to my Mom. My Mom was hart broken and couldn’t understand why Charlie hadn’t said anything or didn’t come back. Every night she would walk through the pastures up to the spot along the road where my Dad would come and pick her up. Months went by but every night she never stopped making her trip up to the meeting spot regardless of the weather be it raining or snowing. Like Evelyn said any other girl would have just stopped going, but not Bea. More than nine months went by and as she sat wondering where Charlie was and then he drove up in his new bright Red Indian sidecar rig. I would have to think that it was a very happy reunion. They dated for a few more months and then one night when my Mom was sneaking back into the farm house my grandfather caught her. He gave her one heck of a beating blackening both of her eyes and splitting her lip along with bruising up her entire body almost breaking some of her ribs. It was a few days later before my Dad made it to the meeting spot by the edge of the road. At first my Mom hid her face but when my Dad saw her and what she looked like he almost went crazy. He made the decision right there and then and told my Mom, “You’re never going back there again. Charlie had two dollars to his name and he told my Mom that he would take care of her and no one would ever harm her again. When we kids were old enough my Mom told each one of us the story in our time because she always wanted us to know just what kind of man my grandfather was regardless of how well he treated us. Charlie brought my Mom home to his family and they welcomed her but have never seen anyone so badly abused. They were surprised but knew that Charlie had been seeing someone for some time. The next morning they went up the street across the border into New Hampshire and got married with the entire Sweet family following behind. In the state of New Hampshire the girl only has to be seventeen and the boy nineteen to get married and at that time in history it cost one dollar and fifty cents for the marriage license and they had fifty cents for gas. (How many times did my Mom tell me that?) They started their grand life’s adventure with fifty cents and a bright Red Indian motorcycle and sidecar. They went back to the farm to face the music and my Mom said that my Dad all one hundred and fifty pound of him was going to fight with my three hundred pound plus grandfather if he said anything out of line. My Mom said the strangest thing happened when they got to the farm. My grandfather welcomed them and gave them his blessing. The other sisters figured if my Mom went to the law and they had an investigation all his kids/workers would be taken away. My Mom went upstairs and got her cloths and she and my Dad went home to the Sweets. My Mom told me that the Sweets were poor and the farm had so much. A few days later she and my Dad made the trip back to the farm when my grandfather was gone to the market. Her sisters and small brothers filled the sidecar up with goods, everything from meat out of the hot house, eggs, vegetables and anything else they could think of. My Mom had to sit on the back of the motorcycle because the sidecar was full to the top. When they got back to the Sweet homestead they had food for a month. My Mom made sure that my Dad took her to the farm every few weeks because as she said my grandfather wasn’t getting off that easy for all those years of abuse. The thing is nothing changed on the farm and over the next fifteen years all the kids left one by one. The stopping off point when leaving the farm was my Moms or my Uncle Lionel’s hous
e. After the War Lionel married my mom’s sister Jenny whom they all called Girly. When I was a young kid just after the war we always had an aunt of uncle staying with us for a short time. I had some of the greatest aunts and uncles and when it was time for them to move on and make their way in the world I was always hart broken but my Mom always told me that I would be seeing them again real soon and I did.
When my Mom moved in with the Sweet’s she couldn’t believe how grand the house was but at first she didn’t understand why there was no furniture. And they were so poor. My Dad told her that when they lost all their money a few years after the stock market crashed and it finally caught up with them. They had to sell of all the family heirlooms some hundreds of years old one by one until nothing of any value was left. She was amazed at the books, hundreds of books and all the Sweet’s did was read all the time. As she would say; “they always had their noses stuck in a book”. The books were all over the floor in big piles in every room and she said on rainy days they would read all day long. Another thing she was always shocked about was if it was raining out and they had to work on the racing bikes getting them ready for the upcoming weekend they just brought them into the kitchen; she never saw anything like that before. Years later she said that the Sweet’s reminded her of refined gypsies; I never understood what that was supposed to mean. All my Mom ever knew was hard work and once she was feeling better she started cleaning the house. She would start working before any of the others ever got up and then made breakfast for the family. She then cleaned all day long and when she was finished would do it all over again. On the weekends the family would load up and head to the races. If the brothers did well there was money in the house. Like I mentioned before the only way around for my Mom and Dad was the sidecar rig. Over time my Mom learned how to drive the Indian sidecar rig and from what my Dad said “she got pretty good at it”.
The two were inseparable and she would go with my Dad to pick up the lumber and nails for the “Wall of Fire”. What the heck is the Wall of Fire you ask? My Dad had a deal with the promoter Fritzie Baer that he, Charlie would get paid $15.00 for crashing through a wall of fire during the intermission at the races. Like my Mom always said it cost almost $10.00 to build the first wall but they got the price down the second week. My dad must have been a wild man before us kids were born. He never talked about the “Wall of Fire” and every time I asked he always changed the subject. Sandy told me that the longer Charlie rode up and down in front of the crowd the more the wall burned and the weaker it got so if Charlie did what was called pansy beds in front of the grandstand it took longer and the wall would burn longer and weaken. Sandy and Willy had to keep their eye on Charlie because he had some crazy idea that he could crash head on into a car with the motorcycle and live; a stunt. They would ask him how he intended on doing it and never got an answer. Willy told me that they were good friends with Fritzie Baer the promoter but warned him that if he put a deal together with Charlie for a stunt to crash head on into a car they would mess he Fritzie up. Fritzie knew they meant business because he has seen them in action and wanted no part of that so Charlie never did the head on collision stunt.
Back to the Wall of Fire:
Years later when I was talking to my Mom; at this time she was eighty five years old; she talked about the “Wall of Fire”. She would go to the lumber yard with my Dad and knew all about knotty pine lumber and what to look for. They used pine because it was a soft wood and the knots would brake easily. She even knew the difference between six, eight, and sixteen penny nails. Come to find out she helped build the Wall and knew how to drive the smaller six or eight penny nails used to hold up the cross boards. Later she was the one that built the wall when my Dad was out racing in his heats races. She would assemble the frame using sixteen penny nails and then would saturate the wood used for the cross boards with gas in the center so that they would light on fire and burn easily. Once the cross boards were soaking wet with gas she would nail them onto the frame with the six or eight penny nails. Her part of the act was to walk around the wall once she light it up and observe how it was burning and take notice on how far the wood had burned. All this as Charlie was running up and down with his bike each time just missing the wall. Once the wall was ready; when the wood had burned and weakened she would take off her “Red Beret” and give it a wave as she got out of the way. This was the signal for Charlie to come speeding down crashing through the “Wall of Fire”. She told me one time her Red Beret caught on fire and it burned part of her hair off before it was put out. I never knew my Mom was part of the show but I could see her dressed all in white with her Red Beret. My entire life she was always impeccably dressed when going out into public many times all in white. When the show was over and they got back to racing my Moms job was to knock off the burned board from the wall and break down the frame and strap it to the sidecar leaving the burned cross board behind. I could see her dressed all in white with a pair of gloves on not wanting to get her cloths dirty. They would use the frame the next week and just add new cross boards. When we were in our teens my Mom would have a fit if she smelled gas on us and always had us change our cloths. She mentioned that she got Fritzie to give them $20.00 for the act and they got the cost of the cross boards down to three dollars and the nails to ten cents.
I have a hard time putting the Wall of Fire into retrospective just like my kids do with me being a Green Beret or racing hydroplanes. As a kid growing up my Mom never rode in a sidecar that I can remember. When I was small I remember going to the races with Mom and her sisters with them always being dressed up. The thought of her getting on a motorcycle or getting inside my Dad’s sidecar would have seemed strange to me, but keep in mind not a word was ever said it just didn’t seem like something she would do. The Mom that I knew was a dance and figure skater on both ice and roller skates; so how did this come about. Before WWII when they were all young roller skating was very popular and the group would go to the different local skating rinks two or three nights a week. My Mom, her sisters and her sister in laws all enjoyed roller skating. After the war my Mom joined a local skating club and over time learned how to dance skate. The group took this seriously and started competing in club competitions. When I was small coming up through I remembered my Mom and her sisters in figure skating competitions and many times I went along and enjoyed watching it. She would always ask if I would like to skate but I was never interested and she never pushed me into it. When I was twelve years old my cousins who had all been skating for years talked me into skating one weekend while we were at the beach/shore. I took right to it and asked my Mom if I could take lessons like all my cousins. I had just started boxing at the Boy’s Club and my Mom wanted to make sure that I was serious about skating and it wasn’t just a passing interest. I assured her that it was something that I wanted to do and she made the arrangements for me to take lessons. I wanted to do the jumping and spinning called “Free Style skating”. She agreed but I also had to learn dance skating and my cousin Joyce who was a year younger than I would be my partner. Joyce and I skated together for two years; what young kid wants to skate with their cousin
. This was similar to Junior Cotillion that young kids learned back at that time but on skates. In the end it was fun and a great time for us kids. I competed in the Junior Boy’s Free Style division and later when I was fifteen the Men’s Division once winning the New England open Regional Championship. All of this didn’t mean much because some of my skating friends in the club were Nation Champions. I boxed till I was fifteen and skated till seventeen. It was funny when in High School and someone made fun of me for skating I would just punch em out; good thing I could box. It only took a few black eyes and the kidding new better than to make any comments about me skating. I had been doing gymnastics in school from the seventh grade and was best friends with the schools best gymnast. In the tenth grade my friend Bobby Cargil who would later become the National AAU All Around champion wanted to learn how to skate and do the spins. He was also a champion diver winning many swimming championships and included the spins or twists into his dives. I was never on the gym team but spent the mornings before class with all the guys on the team. I was good enough but between boxing and skating there was just not enough time; plus I had to keep my grades up. We did this for six years and I enjoyed doing hand stands and working the different pieces of equipment. Years later when I was in my mid thirty’s skating came back and I went back at it for a few years. It was funny going from racing hydroplanes at over one hundred and fifty miles an hour on the weekend to skating two nights during the week. As for my Mom, she skated up till she was sixty five years old. All the men partners got to old and she and her sisters had to give it up. It was something to see the poise and elegance that those ladies’ had out on the skating floor. So for me to imagine my Mom riding in a sidecar always seemed strange but is that any stranger than some of you reading this and your kids trying to imagine some of the things that you once did.
Fast forward forty years and I was building sidecars and pulled into my Mom and Dad’s driveway with a new sidecar. My Dad was home for the summer and my Mom had been working in her flower garden. She loved her flower garden and once a year would win the Flower Garden Clubs “Yard of the month award”. They walk up to the sidecar and whenever they did they always smiled. As I write this all I can think of is seventy five years ago all they owned was their sidecar rig and a son they didn’t know they would even have forty years later was building sidecars. As my Mom walked up to the sidecar she took off her left work glove and put her hand on the tonneau cover. She cupped it between her fingers and thumb like a child would with their blanket. She looked at my Dad and said “this would have been nice if we had one of these”. She was talking about the tonneau cover but I didn’t know that at the time. My Dad was standing next to her and he put his arms around her as she put her right arm around him as the two stood hugging each other. My Dad said “it’s OK that was a long time ago. A few seconds later my Mom broke the embrace and walked towards the garage and in a very loud voice saying “Ill heat up some coffee and some tea for Johnny” as she walked into the garage and in the house as she took off her other glove and work shoes. As she walked away it looked to me like she was crying. My Dad walked around the sidecar admiring it as we talked about his latest project that he was building on his lathe the entire time he was observing my Mom as she made her way into the house. A short time later my Mom called out “coffees up” and we went on into the kitchen. As we sat I asked about what they were talking about when Mom was holding the tonneau cover.
This is the story:
They had been married around five months and my Mom has just turned eighteen years old a few months earlier. They were out in the sidecar rig and were on their way home from somewhere and it started a heavy rain. It was in the high thirty’s and it was cold. All my Mom had was a wool blanket to cover up with and before long it was drenching wet. Even though she got down inside the sidecar she still got wet. My Dad had a piece of canvas that had two holes cut in it for his arms that kept the rain off him. There was no place to pull over to get out of the rain so all my Dad could do was continue driving. Almost an hour in the cold rain and they made it home. My Mom was wet to the bone and her core temperature was down and they couldn’t get her warmed up. She ended up with pneumonia and over the next day’s they thought that they were going to lose her. She was eighteen years old and strong but it was a time before penicillin was available and she got worse before she got better. In the end she survived and it was something the two of them never forgot. When I was told this story all I could think was my Mom saw the tonneau cover and her mind went back forty years earlier and how it would have kept her dry all those years ago. When we drive our sidecars it’s because it’s a hobby/sport or whatever else we want to call it but back in the day it’s all some had to get around with; life would have had to have been hard something because of their hard work I as a kid I never had to experience.
Their lives were about to change when moving to the Captain’s House:
Charlie’s oldest sister Electra came to visit and asked if they would like to move in with her family. Uncle Al her husband had a good job at the Ford Auto Plant in Somerville Mass and was the paint line manager. His family was well off and he inherited the big house up on the hill above the sweet’s place or what was known as the “Captain’s house”. A ship’s Captain sometime around 1840 had this monster house built and it was used in the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Years later we kids would play in the hiding places deep down below in the cellar. My Dad and Mom moved in and a few days later my Dad had a job spray painting Fords on the assembly line. My Mom spent all her time cleaning and cooking in the house and taking care of my cousin Ruth. They saved money and lived with my aunt and uncle for
a few years and then my older brother was born and they purchased their first car. The days of having to drive a sidecar to get around were over and I don’t think my Mom ever got into another sidecar for the rest of her life; she liked watching my Dad or me driving ours but never wanted a ride. Some would think that she would object to her children riding in a sidecar but it was just the opposite. She started her life’s adventure in a sidecar and when us kids wanted to ride with Daddy it was always OK.
You won’t believe what happened on the paint line.
Charlie raced motorcycles on the weekends in the summers and painted cars for a living all year long. He had quite High School when he went to work at the wigwam in his senior year and decided to go to night school to get his High School diploma. While at the Wigwam he had the chance to work with the engineers and made a promise to himself that he was going to be an engineer someday no matter what it took. I remember my Mom telling me when they first got married that Daddy always talked about becoming an Engineer. He also told her that he loved her but also loved his motorcycle. I always thought that was funny. He did have a love affair for motorcycles and at one time had twenty seven of them.
Charlie worked all day on the paint line and went to school at night and eventually received his High School diploma. After the war it took seven years and he earned a Mechanical Engineering Degree from New York University in Brooklyn. Come to find out my great grandfathers Cousin John Edison Sweet was one of the founders of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers that both my Dad and I have been a member of at one time or another. I remember as a kid sitting down with daddy doing our studying; I was all of five. Seven years is a long time and most would just loose interest but not Charlie. The courses were all done through the mail when he would be sailing in the winter months and the ship would dock in New York harbor he would go to Brooklyn and check in with his professors. I remember the commencement ceremony when I was around nine years old; the trip to New York was an event for the entire family and seeing my Dad receiving his diploma was really something special.
You won’t believe what happened on the paint line.
It was just a matter of time and working on the paint line got the best of Charlie and he needed to make a change. He couldn’t quite because his brother in law was the boss and he traveled to and from work with him every day, plus he lived in his home. As my Mom told me one day on the line the paint guns got mixed up. Every color on the line had a number, Black was always number one and green may have been five and so on and so on. Somehow the paint gun that was number one got mixed up with paint gun number seven and number four with number six and so on. The car bodies came down the line having the interior and door jams painted first and then into a heat room. Then the exterior was painted in the next room. As the bodies came down the line instead of the interiors and exteriors being the same color they were coming out with the interior one color and the exterior another. Pandemonium broke loose and guess who was fired. You got it, Charlie! My Mom told me she was mad as hell when he was fired because that was a great job and the depression wasn’t yet over. After a few years painting cars and getting on their feet it was time to move on. They moved into an apartment and for the first time had a home of their own. My Mom never forgot the help that Electra and Al had given them and as a kid I would go to the Captain’s house on some Saturday afternoons and play with my cousins while my Mom would clean the house. This was fifteen years later; she just never felt that the debt was ever paid. In fact she was still cleaning the house four or five times a year thirty five years later. My brothers and I never understood it but it wasn’t our call and it had nothing to do with us so we kept our comments to ourselves.
By 1941 Charlie still drove his sidecar during the warm weather and Mom drove the Lincoln Zephyr v-12. She managed to blow up the V-12 engine and I remember him telling me about installing a Ford V8 in it. When the cold weather came in Charlie put the Indian 4 in the barn at the Captain’s house. He pulled off the sidecar and removed the sidecar body. The sidecar frame was hung on the wall up around twenty feet in the loft and the bike was stored way over to the side way in the back, and the body was stored near the door. In December when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor Charlie and the boy’s left for the war and didn’t come home till it was over except for a day or two when the ship was being filled with war materials headed back to England. During the war they had metal drives and anything that wasn’t bolted down was scrapped for the war effort. Charlie’s sidecar body was scraped but the bike and sidecar frame were saved. After the War as I wrote before Frank and Charlie went back to England and picked up new Triumph 500 motorcycles. Late in 1946 GE started the first school on welding aluminum and stainless steel. Charlie went through the school and was one of the first to learn Heliark weld; today they call it TIG welding. We worked at GE welding the new jet engines making good money. It was time for another sidecar so he took four fenders from 38 Buicks and built his new sidecar body hand making the midget back end. Just before the war after leaving the Ford plant he worked in a chrome plating shop and had picked up a Harley 45 flathead that he completely chrome plated. The bike spent the war years in the chrome shop and after the war he went back and picked it up. He had a young friend named Speedy Blaze that looked out for it all through the war years. That’s a real name and uncle Speedy as I knew him as a kid was a nut!
He took the chrome Harley and found a sidecar frame and installed the new custom body on it. I remember the shiny motorcycle as a kid but then a new bike that was yellow and blue showed up and pulled around the sidecar. I asked one time about the chrome bike and was told that some guy wanted it and was willing to pay big money for it. After all how many bikes had every part on it chromed even the frame. When I looked into getting into chrome plating in my late twenty I was talked out of it because of the hazards from the chemicals. When Charlie worked in the chrome shop he had blisters all over his body from the chemical fumes and he sure didn’t want me to get into the chroming business.
Over the years different Harley’s pulled around Charlie’s custom sidecar and for a young kid it sure was fun. In the end the custom sidecar disappeared and like anything in life, out of sight out of mind. It wouldn’t be until the early 1970’s before I would get reacquainted with sidecars and find a new interest in them.
I hope that this story allowed you the reader to get to know the Sweet family a little better so that you can see that we are no different than anyone else. We are just your everyday people doing what they love, living life to the fullest because of the freedoms that this great nation allotted us. Back in the day my family wasn’t alone when it came to motorcycles and sidecars so our story is just one of hundreds that just haven’t been told. As the years pass these stories will be lost with time if they aren’t told so I did my part and I hope you enjoyed it. Was it my Dad’s love for motorcycles that allowed him and my Mom to start out their life’s adventure driving and riding in a sidecar? Or was it because of the time in history and life’s human condition that created it. Possibly it was both, but it’s interesting on how
it turned out; at least it was for me. My life could have gone in a dozen different directions. I could have settled on a corporate life and made my way up to a CEO for some large firm. In the end I’m glad that I chose the old fashion way and trusted in my belief in capitalism, and the free enterprise system. But like someone told me years ago; “If it was easy everyone would be doing it”. Manufacturing sidecars under the Sweet name was not only a testament to my family but a belief in everything with the Made in the USA tag on it. What will the future have in store for those that will come after us? That’s hard to say, but I hope that sidecars will still be a small part of some people’s lives one hundred years from now. As for me; building sidecars was a lot of hard work with a lot of fun thrown in something I would recommend to anyone.
Thanks for reading,
Johnny Sweet
Mr. Sweet has given the readers insight into the values that made this country great. It was a time when there was no welfare and people had to survive on their own
Families remained close to live and live they did. It would appear that that those values are sadly lacking in the present time. Read this latest chapter closely and more
than once and pray that those values will not be lost forever.
Thank you, Mr. Sweet for sharing this with us. And keep writing. Your 'book' is progressing.
Little Pilots and Dad:
My wife and I were sitting around talking about the old days and were telling stories about when we were kids. She and I have known each other for almost sixty years from the time she was nine and I ten years old. We went to school together from the fifth grade and in the seventh through the eighth grades we went steady as we called it. We broke up and didn’t talk all through school and years later found each other and have been together for the last twenty five years. There is something to be said about marrying your childhood “sweetheart”. When we were kids our Dad’s knew each other and to us they were brains and we often just stood by in amazement as the two of them would talk about technical things that at that time we couldn’t possibly understand. I can still see the two of us being no older than ten and eleven years old running all around her yard playing until we got out of breathe. All this as Our Dad’s where in her Dad’s shop talking. And there was the time when the two of us got in my Dad’s sidecar and he drove us around the block. The funny thing is the block was the same block that the now famed personality Jay Leno lived on all those years ago. My wife lived on Lincoln Street and Jay on Lincoln circle although Jay is five years younger than us. So as we talked about our dad’s and I told the following story my wife said “you have to write this one”. So I asked “what should I call it” and her answer was Little Pilots and Daddy, or Dad”. She was a teacher for forty plus yeas and even in retirement she’s still called in at the local schools to fill in and substitute sometime three days a week. The kid’s sure love MS. Sweet and after over forty years of teaching she understands children from the ages of between eight to eleven years old. So it was quite interesting as I told the story and she was identifying with the kids from that age.
My family has always been interested in piloting airplanes. When my Dad and uncles were very young in the 1920’s they would observe as the Airmail plane would fly over make its way north on its way up to “Down Maine”. I’ve always thought that this was an Oxymoron. After the war they got into building model airplanes in the evenings and on rainy days. I spent many an hour helping my Dad build some of the model Piper Cubs. When I was four years old I remember going down to the school yard to fly the bright yellow Piper Cub. It was cold out and the ice was frozen on the ground. The model plane was big to me with a six foot wingspan as my Dad had me hold onto the rudder while he propped the engine over. The plan was for me at four years old to hold the tail section, or rudder as my Dad fired up the small engine. This was done by what’s called propping it over. He spun the propeller with a few fingers and the engine would come to life. It was my job to hold onto the rudder so that the model plane didn’t take off as he made his way to the end of the control cables. This was a model plane with around fifty feet of line that had two cables with a handle on the end. They were called control line planes. Once the plane started and took off it would go around in a circle only being held by the control line cables. Control of the model plane was done by moving the handle of the cable left or right; it would run wide open until it ran out of fuel. As my Dad propped over the engine I held onto the tail or rudder and the plan was that once the engine started and he made his way to the end of the control line cable and picked up the handle he would nod his head and I would let go of the tail. We went over these instructions three or four times and each time I told him that I understood. He starts the engine and made his way to the cable end and as he nods I’m still holding the tail. He keeps nodding and I’m still holding. The little engine is running wide open and I’m still holding onto the tail. I’m standing on an ice patch that was around ten feet long and five feet wide and the model plane that’s bigger than I am at four years old starts moving across the ice pulling me along as I’m holding onto the tail with all I’ve got. My dad’s still nodding and telling me over the loud scream of the engine “let go”; remember I understood and we went over the instructions three or four times. About this time I slip and fall over letting go of the tail and the model plane takes off into the air. I remember it like it happened yesterday even down to the little woolen jacket, gloves and hat that I had on. I got up and headed into the center area where my Dad was the entire time as he was guiding the plane each time around so that at first the plane didn’t hit me and then so I didn’t get tangled up in the control line. The plane went around and around as I followed it just like my Dad who was piloting it with the control line and then I got so dizzy that I fell over in the snow just as the plane ran out of gas and my Dad brought it in for a landing. The entire time my Dad’s standing there laughing as he’s taking in the whole thing. My Dad always enjoyed telling that story.
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The playing with planes got even better especially when he started dealing with the real thing. When I was in the third grade I went to school and told my teacher that “I had a secret and I couldn’t tell anyone”. I didn’t know that my teacher was the daughter of the racetrack owner where my Dad once raced Jalopy’s race cars and she and my Mom and Dad were good friends. She asked me “what the secret was” and I told her that “we had an airplane in our front yard”; so much for third graders and keeping a secret. The day before when I got home from school my Dad asked me if I would like to take a ride. I was always up for a ride and got into the sidecar as my Dad fired up the Harley. We made our way over to a small airstrip in Haverhill Massachusetts owned by the Dutton family. My Dad was looking at a yellow Piper Cub that the Mr. Dutton had up for sale. As the two adults were talking business the son Donny and I went into the hanger and started crawling around in the old planes pretending that we were flying. Sometime later in 1956 Howard Dutton would win the US Acrobatic National Championships. And years later the son Donny would teach flying at the local airport and for fun would run down the runway upside down or inverted around six to ten feet off the runway showing off. A deal was made and my Dad purchased the Piper Cub airplane and we headed back home with me jumping around in the sidecar waving good bye to my new friend as we pulled away from the grass airfield. We had supper and my Mom asked “if I was going with Daddy to pick up our new plane”. I wasn’t going to miss this and was in the seat of the truck yelling out the window “come on Dad”. As we pulled up in front of the bright yellow Piper Cub I noticed that Mr. Dutton had pulled the wings off the plane and they were lying in the grass. They placed the wings up on the rack on top of my Dad’s pickup truck and tied them down. They then lifted up the back of the plane without wings on it and took the tail wheel placing it inside this thing that looked like a box that my Dad had built so it acted like a trailer hitch. Once it was tied down and we said good bye we headed for home with the wings on the top and the fuselage trailing behind like a trailer with the plane being pulled backwards. I could see someone attempting that trick in today’s world. We made our way through town and used a side road instead of going down the main street. As we made our way around a corner one of the wheels cut the corner to close and would have hit a telephone pole. It was interesting as we backed up and made a wider sweep while turning the corner. For the next thirty years when I was living in the area every time I would make my way around that same corner I would think about towing the Piper Cub airplane home with my Dad. In the end we made it home and the yellow Piper Cub airplane sat in the front yard for about a week. Every day when I got home from school I had something to play in that no other kid had; an airplane. On the way home from school one day as we were all in line with the older patrol leader in charge one of the girls at the end of the street said “ you Sweet’s think you’re so smart because you have an airplane in your yard”. She was mad because I let my friends play in the airplane with me but no girls. My Dad bought and sold so many planes over the years I’m not sure just what happened to that one.
I started flying with my Dad when I was around eight years old. Whatever plane he had at the time he would place wooden blocks on the rudder pedals in the back seat area so that my little feet would reach the pedals. As we would fly along he would say “take over Johnny” and I would take the stick holding onto it and placing my little feet on the wooden blocks of the rudder pedals. My Dad would hold the stick between his legs so that nothing could happen if I screwed up and at the same time would lift his arms up placing his hands behind his neck making me think that I was flying the plane myself. Over time as I gained experience I learned all the maneuvers except landing and taking off; that would come later.
My family believed that people regardless of their age had unlimited potential it just had to be tapped into. My younger brother and I were taught how to read maps and use a compass at an early age. My Dad made it easy and fun with my Mom always looking on starting on the kitchen table. He drew a map of the kitchen and everything in it and set a compass on the table and we pretended that we were going on a trip around the kitchen. When we mastered that he moved us outside into the yard and our imaginary trip got bigger as we walked around the yard with the compass in hand going from place to place. At this point we moved from the city to the farm and we had eighty five acres to play in. Once we understood working with a compass and reading maps he placed us in the airplane at the airport and as it sat on the ground he lifted the rear wheel and rotated the plane with us reading the compass heading in degrees; this is called a compass swing. We could do this when we were six, seven, or eight years old. Like he always said I could weld when I was eight years old. A child’s mind is wide open just yearning for new adventures it’s up to those that have lived the adventure to teach it. The problem is most people have to learn at their own rate if no one is around to teach it. When we were going flying we always had a preflight plan and went over the trip on the map going over compass headings and time in flight; even the amount of fuel being used and were we would refuel if needed.
It was always fun riding in the yellow and blue sidecar with the shark mouth on the front headed to the airport. It’s funny but whatever plane my Dad owned always had the same colors bright yellow with black or sometimes blue trim; the sidecar and planes always matched. I’ve always wondered if there is something in the genes when it comes to colors because my hydroplanes and sidecar were painted to match and even today in my shop I have a T Bucket Hot Rod and sidecar that are blue with soon to be trimmed in yellow.
Charlie in front of one of his Aeronca's. Note the maps in his pocket and the picture would have been taken in 1955. Out of the picture on the right would have been were the sidecar and bike would have been parked. That way it didn't interfere with getting in and out of the plane. At this time in history i would give almost anything for a picture of that old sidecar, but sometime when your living the adventure you don't take a moment to freeze it in time.
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On one of these flying outings my younger brother who was eight and I ten years old were in my Dad’s Stinson Station wagon. The Stinson was a larger plane than the Piper Cubs and Aeronca’s that we normally flew in. The Stinson had two seats in front and steering wheels and not a sticks so it was a little different to fly. My Dad had installed the wooden blocks on the rudder pedals on the right front and told my younger brother to take the right seat as I climbed in the back. We took off and headed north towards the White Mountains of New Hampshire. We had gone over the preflight and had a good idea where we were headed but remember we were still only eight and ten years old. Our job when flying was to always be look out for a place to land just in case the engine would quite. Back almost sixty years ago farms and pastures covered the landscape and finding a pasture or field wasn’t difficult because they were everywhere. This politically correct crap about no trees and the absence of them didn’t exist. Today sixty years later if you fly over the same terrain you can’t find an open field only trees with some houses thrown in. I submit so much for the depletion of the forests in the North East as they spread out and grown in size covering the entire landscape in the last sixty years; it’s all bull crap. As we made our way up and around the mountains taking in all the majesty and after flying for a while it was time to head home. My Dad said to my younger brother “take us home”. My brother knew that the sun came up in the east and the east was where the ocean was so he turned the plane headed Southeast at 135 degrees headed towards the ocean and south as we tracked across the landscape. We flew along until he saw the water and turned south traveling along the beaches until he spotted the Black Rocks at the entrance to the Merrimack River. He then turned the plane west and followed the river up till he saw the airport in the process pointing out where our ancestor’s bridge (“the Sweet Bridge” once crossed the river when it was a toll bridge for over a hundred years). He knew that the airport was next to the river and all he had to do was follow the river and he would find his way home. My Dad then took over and landed the plane; all this and he was only eight years old. My brother would later earn a multy engine commercial pilots rating along with an A&P and A&E aircraft license. It was always fun flying and the trip to and from the airport in the sidecar made it even more memorable.
Other flying times were also a lot of fun stating out with a ride in the sidecar to the airport. The local area had a flying club and many of the members had airplanes like my Dad; others wished they did. Other clubs would put on a fly in breakfast like what some of you do with a sidecar get together. The guys from the club would meet on Saturday morning around eight and the planes would line up and off we would go in a squadron headed to the breakfast. Beforehand we would all go over our preflight and one by one we would make our way into the sky. The average flight would be around an hour from home and then as we all landed we would line up on the tie down area and head for the restaurant or in some cases they would have a spread laid out. Sometimes clubs from all over the Northeast would show up and as many as seventy five planes would be in attendance. For a kid eight years old this was a great time. I knew the rules and never walked out in front of a moving plane and the biggest rule was never go near a plane that had the engine running and stay far away from the propeller regardless if the engine was running or not. If you got caught walking near a propeller because you were too lazy to walk way wide you got hell. It had to become second nature or when you had your guard down you could walk into a rotating propeller. The breakfasts were a good time often with former fighter pilots from the war. All the guys knew who the fighter pilots were. Some of the stories told by the guys that lived them were something special for a young kid to listen to. When the breakfast was over we would head for home and the squadron would line up and off we would go. Once back on the ground at the airport we would check out the plane and fuel it up and tie it down in our area. Sitting next to the plane was always the bike and sidecar; what more could a kid want flying in a plane and riding in a sidecar.
This is what a squadron would have looked like. Note the open fields even up next to the base of the mountains. Today to couldn't find a field and an emergency landing would almost be guaranteed to be in the trees.
My Dad bought, sold, and rebuilt planes until the late 1960. He was still in the Merchant Marines and some years would sail all year long and other times when he was starting or running a business he would stay on land for a few years. When we kids all grew up and headed off to school and later the service they sold the farm and my Mom moved into a small place making it easier on herself as my Dad spent a lot of time traveling to different parts of the world. On one of his trips back from the Vietnam War zone to the states he was having a chess game with a fellow sailor and the topic of airplanes came up. Come to find out the man had two planes just for fun. A merchant seaman can make a lot of money and no place to spend it; many were like my Dad and didn’t drink. Before the tr
ip was over my Dad purchased one of the planes from the sailor a Cessna 210 with all the avionics. A month later when the Merchant trip was over he went to Pennsylvania with all his paperwork and got the plane ready to fly it up to his brothers at the skydiving center in New York. As he taxied it out and did his run he wasn’t feeling well. As he lined the plane up and headed down the runway he was having a hart attach. He ran off the end of the runway and crashed into the trees. As luck would have it the fuselage ran between two trees and the wings were torn off taking up most of the energy of the crash. In the end my Dad was OK and he spent only a few days in the hospital. My Mom drove down the next day and they were home in a few days. He couldn’t get a fit for duty certificate for a year so he stayed around the house for a long well deserved vacation at the same time changing his diet and getting off red meat and eggs.
What did he do in his spare time; he built radio controlled model airplanes. My Mom loved her Buick’s and he bought her a brand new Grand Sport convertible white with white upholstery. On Sunday afternoons in the warm summer sun with the top down my Mom and Dad would go out onto Rte. 28 that was the old road that was the way up to the White mountains of New Hampshire; a road that they had driven on hundreds of times going back to the 1930’s when all they had was a bike and sidecar. They would find a rest area of a parking lot and my Dad would prop over the model airplane and send it into the sky. He would then get into the back seat and using his controls would fly the model as they went up the road. If they were running too slowly because of traffic he would just control the model plane to do a circle and as my Mom said “he would buzz the car with the plane as we were going down the road”. The planes was built with large fuel tanks and they could fly for almost thirty minutes before running out of fuel. My Mom was the driver and time keeper and when it was time to bring the plane in and re fuel she would find a place to pull over with plenty of room for a good landing and my Dad would get out and land the plane. A quick refueling and he would send it up again for another flight. My parents were really something and one must realize that this was no big deal to them. It was just something my Dad thought up and it sounded like fun for my Mom and she was in. Remember this was a lady that when she was young would build the “Wall of Fire” for her husband as he crashed through it. How many of our wives would do that; ya, right in our dreams. One time after I moved back home I asked whatever happened to the radio controlled model; I saw the controls but no plane. They were driving along one Sunday afternoon like they had been doing for many weeks and they went under a bridge and when they came out the other side the plane disappeared and was never seen again. It was fun while it lasted and the two of them just found something else to do. My Dad had a sidecar built a few years earlier when he was in the Philippines and it had been sitting in the shop. He installed it on a Honda and spent his time driving it around until the cold weather set in. The next year he was back out on the ocean sailing to and from the war zone moving around supply’s. Once my Dad couldn’t pass the FAA physical because of the hart attach his flying days were over and he never bothered with planes or the jump school again.
Having a Dad that traveled all around the world I once asked how many countries he had been to. His answer was “everyone but one”. I then asked what country was that. He said “I don’t know I must have missed one”. It was fun growing up in our family because we never knew what might happen next. My family’s thinking was the worlds a big place with plenty to see and do. I had a neat Mom; she was strict but when it came to a new adventure we never herd the words “not my kids”. We weren’t spoiled like my friends and had chores to do around the farm; although our farm had no animals of crops; we did have a dog, we had chores to do. Our main job was always school and my Mom treated it like it was our work and we better work at learning. Bringing home a bad mark on our report card just didn’t happen or it better not and it didn’t. She ran the house with an iron hand and we knew better than to talk back or be disrespectful. It wasn’t my Dad that we were afraid of but my Mom. The plus side to this was showing respect and doing our job gave us a life that some kids could only dream about and any falling from grace would have caused this to be taken away. For a young kid growing up riding in a sidecar, flying in airplanes and going to the races while at the same time being taught some of life’s greatest lessons through example from two parents that came up the hard way starting with nothing but fifty cents and a sidecar and motorcycle. We kids sure were lucky.
Thanks for reading,
Johnny Sweet
A Special thanks for all the personal emails and posts.
This is long overdue but I would like to thank those of you that have taken the time to personally email me and shared so many great stories. Some day’s there are three pages of emails waiting for me to read and at times it’s overwhelming. Please don’t think I’m complaining it’s just very humbling. I’ve read every email and feel somewhat embarrassed because to answer all of them would be my pleasure but difficult. Believe me I do appreciate each and every one. So many of you have asked the same questions and I will try to answer them. Like some of you have written if you were asking how many others were thinking the same thing; you may have something there, “or not”. Also I would like to thank all of you that have posted kind words whenever I post a story. When I first started telling my story I wasn’t sure if anyone would be interested after all that was then and this is now. All of you that have written me and those that have posted such kind words please except this in the spirit that it’s given. “Thank you so very much”!
Johnny Sweet PE.
Mr. Sweet, you are welcome. Your stories are much more than just back in the day side car history. You are sharing the story of a family that had true family values and lived, survived thru
the toughest economic times in this nations history. Those values seem long gone now days but they can be brought back. Families like yours were what made this nation great.
God bless you for sharing the story with us.
Are we having fun yet!
I would like to thank those of you that have spent the time to email me over the last few month. I've had three requests for instructions on how I did the modification to Charlies Velorex sidecar body so that the front would lift up. I'm in the processes of finding and assembling pictures of the project and soon hope to post them with instructions in the technical section for all to view.
My shop has been abuzz with different project and I just got back out on the road after a lengthy sidecar hiatus. I keep five sidecars around the shop but have proffered driving my T Bucket Hot Rod over a sidecar but that all changed a week ago. My interests are so varied that I go through periods from time to time and the Summer of 2013 will be a sidecar summer.
The Goldwings were in town for one of their national events and I was somewhat disappointed at the sidecar turn out. The two wheel count was around five thousand bikes and we only counted three sidecars the entire week. Trikes made up over one hundred units and they were well represented. I spent some time at the Cherokee Victory dealer visiting with old friends and they got me fired back up on sidecars so I went back to the shop and looked around and threw a sidecar togehter in a few days. It's rained off and on for the last thirteen days so I've only put twenty miles on my new rig.
We have a few of my Sweet SL model sidecar being restored in the New England area and even a new owner on Prince Edward Island in Canada. I dragged out my old Consew machine and stitched up three new upholstery's for different guys asking for them. It's been fun learning how to stitch all over again, but it's like riding a bicycle you never forget.
A twenty six year old gentleman named Joe picked up one of my Sweet SL-440 sidecars complete with the original Honda motorcycle. The rig was built before he was born and he's in the processes of restoring it. I hooked Joe up with one of my guys that worked in the shop back in the day and he just completed the paint restoration.
Well thanks again and I figured I would post a few pictures of projects being worked on and some that are completed so that those that are interested can see what's been going on.
Thanks for reading,
Johnny Sweet
This is my new Sweet Classic sidecar. I built the body a few years ago and painted it "Old School" with black lacquer. The paint is well cured and I spent the time to color sanding and buffing. Never again; I forgot how hard we worked back in the day painting and buffing that old lacquer paint. The bike is my son Eric's that he's had for years and we figured it was time to install a units on it. He's planning on building an SL-220 like he built when he was in High School;twenty five years has flown by. I no more than left the yard and ran the sidecar into a muddy area, but have since cleaned the sidecar tire. They talk about the shine being a foot thick; check out the sidecar wheel reflection on the side of the body. We lost the seat years ago so I built one from scratch and stitched it with the same materials as the sidecar. Right off the shop floor the sidecar runs straight and no adjustments have had to be made, so I'm very happy with it.
T Bucket with a Corvette LS-2 engine. A fun drive and can get on down the road. Retirements a lot fun with everyday feeling like a Saturday.
Before: Bill Hoyt's shop with Joe's SL-440 sidecar body in the condition that he got it in before he started the restoration.
After: Bill does great work and it's funny how when he was fourteen years old he came to the shop and stood in the yard just watching us build things until we invited him in. He went on and became one of the best paint and body men in the New England area. I guess true friendships are forever and I'm glad I could count on Bill after all these years to take care Joe and his Sweet sidecar. Bill's even going to help Joe with the installation of the upholstery that I stitched up for it.
Man, they do shine, don't they.
Any one ever approached you about putting your sidecars back in production? Be nice to see them on the road.
Mr . Sweet, you have done it again. Beautiful craftmanship, you are a true artisan. Now about the T Bucket. 60 years ago, when I was a teenager, I wanted one of those but never
had the money or the skills to build one. The Ford B model bucket was also a favorite back in the day. I agree with NewYorkBear and might add that it would be of great benefit
to the Fancy if you could teach your craft to others.
Are we having fun yet? It's been a great Summer and I've put a thousand miles on my new temporary rig between rain storms.
The littler T Bucket on the right was built for car shows and parades. It's half sizedT Bucket with one of my full size Hemi fiberglass/plastic display engines in it. Little T is powered by a handicap scooter electric motor and goes three miles per hour. When I show up at a car show it always draws a big crowd. It's funny but theirs always an old timers wanting to buy it for their grand kids.
Dad and son after twenty five years making it up the driveway. When my son was just a kid he rode in my sidecar and when he turned sixteen he built his own. Twenty five years later he will build another SL-220 sidecar for he and his son David who is going on three. This picture was taken the other day when Eric was up for a visit and he took me out for a ride. It's been over twenty years but he still knew how to drive a sidecar rig. The sidecar is already sold and will be installed on a friends bike at the end of the season.
Eric at sixteen back in the 80's with his SL-220 that he built without any help. In all he built four sidecars for himself and drove them in High School and when he went off to Engineering school. No one else in his class had a sidecar and the girls seamed to always like em. Eric and David's new Sweet SL-220 sidecar will be the same as the one that he built back in High School but will be yellow and on the Honda that I'm presently driving. It's funny but over sixty years ago my Dad had a yellow and blue bike and sidecar that I rode in.
Joe and his new old Sweet SL-440 sidecar.
A new owner of one of my old SL-440 sidecars Joe just had it painted. Joe lives in Massachusetts and I hooked him up with one of my old friends Bill Hoyt. Bill came to my shop when he was fourteen years old and stayed and learned a few things. Bill's made a good life for himself and sure as heck perfected his trade. It's rewarding when you can call on an old friend to do a good job for young Joe and he doesn't let you down. Some friendships are for life and I'm lucky to have Bill as a friend.
I stitched this upholstery up for Joe and shipped it to him with instructions on how its to be installed. It looks like it fits OK and soon I expect to hear that he's out on the road
with his new old Sweet SL-440 Sidecar.
Bill on the left and Joe on the right. Bill and I haven't seen each other in almost thirty years and time stands still for no man. Joe wasn't even born when his Sweet sidecar was manufactured. As the years pass I'm still amazed that a new generation has come along that are finding my old sidecars and restoring them and finding a new enjoyment just like we did back in the day.
A few sidecar waiting in the wings:
The SL-220 in the background has been waiting for a few year for me to find the time to take it out. I have it on a Suzuki 650 and the body was built to fit the bike weight wise. My sidecars only weigh around 120 pounds or less but have the strength values higher or as high as any on the market. Never had one brake in over forty years.
The black SL-440 has been built and set up for an early Goldwing and will have black upholstery. The body still has to be buffed and polished.
I've always liked diamond tufted upholstery and the blue paint and upholstery will be the same on one of my sidecars and newest T Bucket. I use tape to hold the upholstery
in place when I'm fitting it to a body
Little T and a broken Cobra in the background. When they wreck their Cobra's they ship em to me to get em fixed. This one came in from Michigan and I built a new fender for it.
My latest T Bucket that will be painted blue like Little T and my sidecar. The 3D flames on the side are a first anywhere on a Hot Rod. I got the idea back in 2000 when I was
working for Water Mark and we designed and built a Kayak named "The Blaze" with 3D flames on the body. I've been wanting to do it for years and figured "what the hay".
The old man doing what he does, making things. In this case sanding my 3D flames on my T Bucket.
Thanks for reading.
Johnny sweet
As always, Mr. Sweet, you come up with great pix and exciting projects. As a young man I hungered for a T-Bucket but could not afford one. At 77 I am not that hungry any more.
Thanks for sharing with us.
One of my SL-110 sidecars that was found on Craigslist on the coast of Virgina. I built a little over fifty of this model. Even when I came out with the next model the SL-220 I was still being asked for this model. It was a wind in your face sidecar and you would be surprised at how many people prefer the wind in their face. I found that most people drove their sidecar rigs locally and a day outing in New England was no more than a few hundred miles.
At one time I was driving down the road and noticed a sidecar rig coming my way and as I looked over I could see that it was one of my SL-110 models and in the passenger compartment of the sidecar was a lawnmower. It takes all kinds of people in this world and I had the fortune of meeting a whole lot of em. Someone should have a good time with this rig. It's around six hundred miles from where it was built. Very few of my sidecars made their way out of New England.
I was planning on running this rig this year but got sidetracked with a few other projects. I've always liked the Suzuki 650 single and figured I would install one of my Sweet SL-220 sidecar on one. Fifty years ago I had a Matchless 500 single and liked the pulling power. I had saved for two years and purchased a Norton Atlas 750 and ran the heck out of it. Two weeks later I wrecked it up on cemetery hill racing between the tomb stones. My buddy's and I carried it home in the back of a pick up truck. My Mom was mad as heck plus I was headed off to school and the plan was to take the Norton with me. So a new plan and that's when I picked up the Matchless. It wasn't as fast at the 750 Norton and possibly save my life but I always like the sound and reliability of a single. I had been following the Suzuki 650 for some time and when I was offered one I picked it up. Since this picture was taken I painted the fenders and tank with the blue base coat clear coat like what's on the sidecar. I took the seat and stitched up a clean looking diamond tufted upholstery for it so that it matches the sidecar and my T Buckets. I may change and go to a new fabric that I've been playing with that looks like "Carbon Fiber". They have a great looking blue that should blend nicely if I re do the sidecar and bike. If I don't like it all I have to do is change it back to what I have at the moment.
I hope to get the rig out this year but I can only drive one at a time. Note in the background another SL-220 with the whale tail that I hope to set up on something soon. Like I need another project.
I went with my Sweet method of mounting sidecars and as you can see it's very clean and unencumbered. My system is totally different than what you will find others doing. With my set I start by mounting the frame to the bike using my "Hot Rolled Rod system". The brackets are first fabricated and bolted to the motorcycle. Then the frame is set on blocks at the correct ride height and aligned with the bike. Next the rods are bent to shape and installed on the frame and inserted into the brackets. The lower rods are installed first starting with the front and then moving to the rear. I then set the bike at one to two degrees camber away from the sidecar tipped out at the top. At times I have to take into consideration the weight of the driver of the bike and then adjust accordingly. I then weld the rods to the frame brackets and that part of the set up is complete. If a final adjustment to the camber on the bike is needed it can be performed later with the adjustable rod ends on the top rods. The camber on the bike can be adjusted at any time and never changes the tow in or ride height; they always stay independent of each other. I then set up the swing arm and wheel adjusting the "toe in" at 5'8" to 3'4". Once this is set I weld up the swing arm brackets in place and the tow in is set for life. The shock and the ride height is the last step and I'm finished with the set up. My way of doing it allows the customer to remove the sidecar from the bike as many times as they would like and every time when they re install the sidecar it is always set up correctly. It takes from three to five minutes to remove the sidecar from the bike and from eight to ten to re install it; try that with any other set up.
I've asked people that have my sidecars; some over thirty five years old and they all tell me the same thing. It's still in alignment after all these years.
I do have a new set up that I just recently designed that will allow a person to bolt the rods onto the sidecar frame like I did for one year back in the 1970's; I think it was 1977. This way the rods aren't welded to the frame but bolted and can be removed and changed if the sidecar is to be mounted onto a different model motorcycle in the future. The set up is the same with the frame being installed first to the motorcycle. The swing arm is also bolted with grade 8 bolts and the new set up allows for the swing arm to be moved forward or aft up to four inches. This allows the sidecar wheel lead to be fine tuned to the bike. How often have I read that a particular sidecar would not hook up to a motorcycle with the correct sidecar wheel lead or with to much lead. The new set up also allows for the tow in to be adjustable along with the ride height. My thinking is that I can manufacture a sidecar (in fact a new model) that's no more than "a sidecar in a box". My new design will be manufactured so that the pieces go together for a specific model motorcycle and the customer once he takes the crate apart can remove the sidecar and mount it onto the bike specific in one hour with all the adjustments and tow in completed. I built a jig fixture for the Sportster back at the first of the year when I had one in the shop and will start with the Sportsters up to 2003. In the South East they are very popular and my buisness model shows that it's a good starting point. I also intend on a version that's for guys like myself that can fabricate and weld. You would be surprised at how many guys can weld and fabricate in fact I have two different gentleman at the moment going through the mounting exercise. Check out Roman's Sweet sidecar and how he set it up in a past post.I figure that I can do a video and walk anyone with fabricating skills through the steps. If I can do it with just emails and pictures then a video would only be a plus. I use one inch solid "Hot Rolled" steel rods on all my sidecars. Once the rods are set in place they never move plus they are very inexpensive to make and easy to work and I have no plans on changing a tried and proven system that's worked for over forty years.
So if the Good Old Boy's show up with their older larger Harley's Ill set them up with my new set up; I've had some requests latley since I've been out on the road. I figure Harley made enough big bikes with sidecars to supply the ones that want them for some time to come. I beleave that not every bike is suited for a sidecar regardless of what others that know more than I think. It's never made any sense to me to have to install a new front end and car tires just to make a rig work and yes I know that it's done every day and a lot of people are making a good living doing it but it's not for me and what I manufacture. As I get up in age I have very little time to spend disusing trivial minutia so you will find that I will not respond to any discussion pro or con on this matter. I figure it is what it is and I'm on the other side of the fence but if others are doing it then so be it and I wish all of them the best.
A clean and simple mounting system!
This is what my new "Sweet 16 Sidecar" will look like. I got the idea from different custom bike builders that took old sidecars and mounted them on new bikes using new materials. I took to the look and idea right away and couldn't stop thinking about it so I decided to do something about it. That's how the new frame design was born so that it could go along with the new body design.
This is "not my sidecar" but a custom rig that I got my idea from.
A few models to get an idea as to what I'm looking to achieve:
I will eventually build two different versions and each one will have a door in the side. I started with one of my Liberty bodies and cut, shortened, and re fit sections and came up with something different. The hood on the Liberty when shortened has an interesting look to it so I decided to make one model with this design. The second design will have the hood area like the forty percent model sitting inside the full size version and the red sidecar in the picture also with a working door.
While I was at it I built my own helmet because I didn't see anything that I liked. It doesn't have a Snell rating so I can't use it outside of South Carolina but that's OK. But I did cheat a little because thirty years ago I was develo
ping crash helmets along with many of the other company's and went through the Snell Foundation study and the requirements. It was a product that we looked at and did a buisness model. My partners at the time wanted to run with it and I wanted to go in another direction. I ended up working on the development of the new at the time knee replacement. My project was the development of the second design phase. I always wondered how the helmet buisness would have worked out. For those of you that don't know it the fee for the Snell rating is or should I say was $1.00 per helmet and they test a helmet at random off your assembly line.
Thanks for reading,
Johnny Sweet
Sweet Sidecar SL-440
This is just one of the latest Sweet sidecars to be found and restored to better than new condition. This one was found North of Boston and had been sitting in a back yard for over twenty years. The metal frame and rods were in good condition and only needed some cleaning and paint. The tire was replaced and the rim re painted. The body being made from fiberglass was still in good shape but the shine on the black finish had lost it's gloss so I set Joe the new owner up with one of my old friends that started out working in the shop when he was fourteen years old. Bill Hoyt has become a world class painter and is a master at his trade. Bill spent around a month in his spare time working on the SL-440 body and when he was finished with it the end result was a show quality paint job that anyone would be proud to own. I stitched up a new upholstery in my shop a thousand miles away and boxed it up and shipped it to Joe. Taking his time Joe installed the upholstery just like I explained using pictures and nothing more than emails. Joe designed, cut and fabricated a new windshield with his own design and the finished product looks as good or better than anything we produced back in the day. It's exciting to see one of my old sidecar coming back to life after all these years. The great part of it all is that Joe is only twenty six years old and my Sweet/Lyon sidecar was built before Joe was even born. Congratulations Joe on a job well done.
Joe took his fiance out for her first ride and she totally enjoyed the experience. The plan is to keep the Sweet/Lyon sidecar in their family and someday their children will ride in it. This is what makes it all worth while.
From Sidecars to Trikes, it was bound to happen.
When I first started writing this installment about my Trike experience I hadn’t been back out on the road with one of my Sweet sidecars in twenty five years. Months have passed and I’m proud to say that I’m once again a one percent sidecar nut. I still have the passion for sidecars and wonder why I stayed away so long.
I’ve noticed some post on this site and on others about motorcycle trikes and the likes and dislikes. I always found it interesting that one group or another will always have different opinions about different things, but let’s face it; it’s the way of the world. Motorcycle sidecars and trikes are no different. I have a passion for sidecars and never would even consider a trike while others are trike lovers and will turn their noses up to a sidecar. Then you have the largest group that wouldn’t have either until they get into a situation and need a third wheel. So for those of us that have a passion for sidecars the thought of owning or driving a trike probably never comes up. When I was in the thick of building my Sweet sidecars in the 1970’s every so often someone would come into the shop and mention trikes. In very short order they were first asked to change the subject and if they didn’t I would ask them to leave. I will admit that I wouldn’t even have a friendly or spirited discussion about trikes. I had no intention of filling my head with such minutia and would make it known. How things change from one generation to the next with people my age and younger looking for a new adventure and finding it in motorcycles. It’s amazing who much Harley Davison has done for the motorcycle industry. Love em or hate em they and the American people have taken motorcycles and a brand to a place that others could only dream about and what’s been proven over the decades is that many want a product with the “Made in the USA” stamped on it. It’s funny but these lovers and followers are a breed into themselves with a split between the lovers of the old Harleys and the new owners circle. The majority of this new group of riders will all tell you how they have been riding for decades but in truth most are newcomers all because of the Harley Davison brand and good financing.
I retired in 2006 and moved up next to the base of the mountain range to what’s called horse country. It’s been declared as one of the five different places in the US that the baby boomers go to when they retire to for fill a lifelong dream. A few roads over from my wife’s and my Arabian horse farm is a road called the Cherokee Scenic Trail. People come from all over the country and travel the trail on their way in and out of the mountain range. I’ve noticed that on any given spring, summer, or fall day hundreds of motorcycles can be seen driving up and down the trail and along with these two wheelers dozens of trikes will also be out cruising. From 2006 till 2008 when I saw these different trikes I thought to myself that they sure have come a long way from the old days when they were nothing more than a VW converted to some piece of crap or an old Harley Davison police bike that someone wasted a lot of time and money on. But you know the sad part of this it that I only saw one sidecar during the entire two year period and even five years later I’ve only seen three more.
While living a more relaxed life I had been playing in my shop working on whatever fit my fancy, in 2008 that would change and my life went in a different direction. I had been building 427 Cobra race cars; a reproduction of the Shelby 427 Cobras of the 1960’s. I had built three Cobras for a select customer base; old friends that had a background in racing with deep pockets. These cars were nothing more than stripped down “Road Rockets” that could be driven on the street. One of my buddies when out running the roads on one of the few warm winter days that we had made a stop off at the local Victory Motorcycle dealership to look over the bikes. He parked his little Cobra in front of the entrance and the owner of the dealership Dan Paterson noticed the Cobra and went out to take a look. Dan asked who built the Cobra and my name was given along with a synopsis mentioning that I was also one of those old time designers that could still sculptor in clay. Dan mentioned that he had herd that name before and could he get my phone number. My buddy gave Dan the information and the following Tuesday I received a call. It was Dan, he asked if I wouldn’t mind coming down to the dealership to visit and talk about a project that they had been considering for a few years. I agreed and we set a time to meet. I had never been inside of the Victory dealership but had driven by it for almost two years at least four or five times a week. Once inside the dealership I was surprised at the number and quality of the motorcycles and trikes; this was a first class operation. I had been out of the sidecar and the motorcycle game for some time and hadn’t kept up with what was going on. Dan gave me the tour and in the process a quick overview of what Lehman Trikes the largest trike manufacturer in the world at that time was all about. I counted twenty five Lehman trikes in the show room and another ten of more in the warehouse. I had no idea that the dealership was that large. Looking at the trikes and the high quality was an eye open.
I was shown the different Lehman Victory Trike models that were nick named “Bar Hoppers”. They had some very nice lines but weren’t equipped for the open road. For that they had the bigger bikes with larger trunks and custom boxes for carrying luggage. Then came the Victory Vision motorcycle and I was told that this was what they wanted to convert to a trike. I couldn’t believe my eyes, the lines and styling of this motorcycle in my opinion was out of this world. I’m an old school designer and loved the cars from the 50’s that I grew up around, and this motorcycle had what many of us in the design world call a “Timeless Design”. Some of you reading this will have a different opinion and call the Victory Vision a “Star Wars” looking design. Each to his own but in my opinion and the
designer Arlen Ness along with the sales numbers the public have a different view. Dan told me that they; Lehman had been to BMW looking for a design from their design team but could never put anything together plus what they were going to get for an exorbitant amount of money wasn’t what they were looking for. At this point Dan had my attention. At first I thought his dealership, like most was living from day to day and hand to mouth something I had observed first hand when I was young and the entire time I was manufacturing my Sweet sidecars. What I’m talking about is the guy’s that have an unbelievable amount of talent and ability and ran these small motorcycle shops around the country barely getting by. I knew many guys like this running small Mom and Pop operations with so much talent it was scary but they chose to run these little shops and in the end when the world went in a different direction they got left behind; to me it was always sad, but it’s the way of the world. If you don’t keep up you will get left behind. After seeing all this and listening to Dan I still wasn’t making any sense of it all. We spent some time going over the lines of the Victory Vision and he asked me how I would go about designing a trike body for the Vision. I explained about using the lines that already exist on the motorcycle and incorporate the style and type of lines on the trike body making the entire unit flowing and fluid like. We then went over to some of the other Lehman trikes like the Harley conversion and I started to critique the designs in different areas. I explained that in my opinion the lines in the front like the tank have a sweeping timeless design to it and even the fenders sweep fore and aft have a nice line even at the crown of the fender. I then asked why they would design a trike body that was square and didn’t match the lines of the motorcycle. I could see that I was putting him on the spot and that wasn’t my intent so I moved on to the Honda. I discussed a few more areas that I would have changed of not have done at all. I think I got his dander up but that wasn’t my intent, he asked and I gave an opinion. In fact he never knew how close I was to just walking out of the dealership never to return, but if I’m anything and that’s very thick skinned. I have been known to be opinionated and if I’m asked I’m going to give my opinion. I had been in the public eye back in the day when I was racing and sometimes the critics could be brutal. One day there on your side and you can do no wrong the next day you’re a bum. I always thought that was funny when you look at the human condition. we have critics; people with very little talent and absolutely no ability that attempt to tell the masses what’s good and bad. Dan and I walked back over to the Vision and talked about a few more ideas. He then invited me into his office and that’s when I started to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. I had brought a portfolio with me filled with pictures of different projects that I had designed over the past thirty five plus years. Dan took the time to look at every picture studying the smallest details with interest. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about people and how they carry themselves. People that have been involved in building things will look at a picture for instance and study every detail or when their looking at almost anything mechanical will inspect it with great interest just to see how it’s made. Then you have others that are so smart that they know absolutely everything and can’t be taught or shown anything; those are the ones I stay away from. When Dan was finished he looked up at me and said “we’ve been looking for someone like you for over two years and we’ve looked all over the country and you were in our back yard all the time”.
At one time Dan had been the head of the Kennedy Space Center and then headed up one of the aircraft company’s. After retirement he purchased the Victory dealership that his son runs. Dan then took the position of CEO of Lehman Trikes that was the largest trike manufacturer in the world at the time. To build a trike for the Victory Vision was his prize project and before he retired from Lehman he wanted to see it happen; so Dan had my attention. I had been retired for a few years working on whatever I chose to, but it looked like I was going to be back in the working world again. Dan asked how much I would charge to design and sculptor a model and make two prototypes. I had worked for other captains of industry and new from firsthand experience that these kinds of men make their minds up in five seconds when all the pieces of a project fit together. I gave Dan a price and some conditions and sure enough within ten second he said OK let do it. He then got on the phone and hit a speed dial and a few second later one by one five different voices came on the speaker phone. It was the different departments of the team at Lehman Trikes in Spearfish South Dakota. Dan explained that he had found what they had been looking for in a designer and introduced me to five different voices on the phone; that was a first for me. The Lehman team welcomed me to the group and we talked for a little while about the same things that Dan and I had discussed earlier about what it will take to get a production body for the Victory Vision making it into a trike. The group then thanked me for my time and hung up.
Earlier on as Dan was giving me the tour I noticed that he had a high dollar spray booth that wasn’t being used in the warehouse so I asked if the spray booth could be used when I was sculpturing the model. I thought that they were going to give me a new Victory Vision motorcycle to make the model off. I didn’t want to be responsible for the bike and was more concerned about scratching the paint during the modeling process. I once did a project for Peterbilt trucks and they gave me a new tractor that I was responsible for. I spent more time protecting the asset than working on the project.
This is when the entire game changed, Dan asked if I would be available to fly to South Dakota to the Lehman plant to go over the design with his team and set up the initial plan. I agreed but told Dan that they needed to find a commercial artist that would work with me on the initial design and was capable of drawing scaled artist renderings of what we wanted so that I would have something to go by when sculpturing the original model. I also mentioned that I could work within twelve thousands of an inch and what plus or minus where they looking for. I almost laughed when he said one eighth to a quarter of an inch would be fine. We ended the meeting and I went back to my shop wondering if what had just happened really happened. I had driven past the dealership no less than a hundred times over the last few years and all the time they were looking for a guy like me to come in and introduce himself.
A few days later I received a call from a lady in South Dakota giving me all the booking information about my trip. They picked up everything, airfare, car rental, hotel rooms, everything. I was even paid for my travel and consulting fee. When doing design work for most corporations we the designers will almost always have to pay for your own travel and expenses and then bill the company getting paid weeks later if at all. So this was a pleasant surprise for me, or should I say a first.
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Headed to the Black Hills:
I left the following week and spent one day in the air going from airport to airport. No direct flights from South Carolina to Rapid City South Dakota. When I landed in Rapid City they had a new car rental waiting for me with directions on how to get to Spearfish fifty five miles away. It was early March and it was still minus four degrees below zero. I grew up in New England and new all about cold so I was prepared. I headed up the interstate towards Spearfish and as I approached the Sturgis exit I got off and decided to take a little trip around town to look things over. Places like Sturgis are like ghost towns in the winter months with less than three hundred people living in such a place in the off season. I made my way back onto the interstate and traveled the seventeen miles to Spearfish. I checked into the hotel and made my way over to Walmart to pick up some items that I would need to measure the project bike and to take notes with. With the way things are today at the airports I wasn’t sure what they would let me take aboard the plane and I sure didn’t want any of my expensive measuring tools to be taken away from me because after all, I like every other American today is a potential terrorist.
The next morning at the plant I was introduced to the plant manager and told that Dan would be coming in the next day. After signing a non-disclosure agreement, something I had done many times before. I was told that the project t was going to be called “The Open Road” project, and that it was top secret and could not be discussed outside of the special room that was designated for it; our “Skunk Works”. I was told that Harley engineers were in the R&D building and that Victory was one of Harley’s biggest competitors and this Victory project had to be “Top Secret”. I also was told that they; Lehman were working on the new Harley Trike project and would be building the first Harley trikes when they first came out. I was then shown around the plant and R&D area and introduced to the engineers. At this point I was just the guy they brought in to help design and sculptor the body for the new open road project and the engineers did what engineers do and gave me the cold shoulder. They were polite but it was like I wasn’t even there. The engineers did invite me to lunch but I think they were told to do so. As we were looking over the menu I noticed one of the Engineers had on his pinky ring. I mentioned that I hadn’t worn my “Order of the Engineers” ring in many years because it gets in the way with the type of work that I do. (The Order of the Engineer is an association for graduate and professional engineers in the United States that emphasizes pride and responsibility in the Engineering profession.) They look at me with surprise and one said “we thought you were just a guy coming in to sculptor a trike body”. I laughed and said “you never know who you may meet in life so never rule anything out”. At that point it was like we were all in World War II together; all smiles and fraternal brotherhood. They then asked if they could see my picture portfolio. It was funny because five minutes earlier they could have cared less, but since I was one of them all of a sudden they were interested. This wasn’t the first time that something like this had happened to me over the years and I’m too thick skinned to ever take it personally; plus I understand this mind set. My problem has always been that I’m an engineer and designer first but can do the craftsman like work using my hands that the untrained and unskilled could never do. Not meaning this in a bragging way; this is very rare and very few people that follow different disciplines cross over and can do both or in some cases many. A good example is Dean Webster a friend of mine that I have mentioned in different writings. He’s achieved a Masterly level of achievement in many different disciplines in his lifetime. Probably the smartest and most capable person I have ever known. In Dean’s case he chose the corporate life and has exceled at it. Another thing that I’ve learned over the years is that it’s best to hold back what you may know or have achieved until it’s asked for. As the guys were looking over the pages of projects they noticed my sidecars. That’s when the questions started; they first asked if I ever had trouble with some sidecars shimming. My answer was “it’s something you live with but the sidecars don’t shimmy the front end of the motorcycle does”. They mentioned that they every so often have a trike that will shimmy and have used shimmy dampers. I exchanged information about the different ones that I had used over the years. The rest of the meal was pleasant and when we returned back to the R&D area I was invited into the inner sanctum. The R&D area was up to date with the best of equipment for what they were doing. They even had a machinist and a metal fabricator that could make almost anything they could dream up. The machinist probably had the neatest working area of any machinist anywhere. The R&D building is up on a hill in what’s called a “Hog Back”. The machine shop area has large picture windows behind the machines with a full view of the Black Hills to look out at. I stood there in amazement and mentioned to the machinist that he had to have the best view of any machinist while working in the world. He just smiled and agreed as he told me it was a better view than the farm pastures in Wisconsin where he was from.
The Engineers showed me around and then took me into what they called “The Skunk Works”. With the Harley Engineers walking around they had a special room with a coded security lock on the door and when the door opened all one saw was a blue tarp and nothing more. Inside the skunk works they had two Victory Vision bikes that were used for prototype work; so much for me having to worry about scratching a new bike. I was shown the mechanical workings of what the drive train was going to look like. This gave me an idea as to what I had to work around. They were planning some changes to the frame extension that would be used on the production trikes but other than what they had sitting there was what they were going to use. We then went back to the discussion of the shimmy problems and went back into the machinist area to look over a Harley that had been giving them a problem. They had half a dozen trikes in the shop with each one having some little problem. I think it was more of them making improvements than the trikes having a problem. It was cold out but that didn’t stop them from running trikes up and down the road and on the skid pad. Having not been around trikes this was a
new experience for me and I was interested in how they would match up to a sidecar rig. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I didn’t want to waste it. The” Lehman solid rear end “is what makes every Lehman trike perform so well. Some without any knowledge or experience when it comes to trikes claim that they are unstable but I’m here to tell you that the Lehman Trike is very stable and to turn one over would take a lot. I saw some of the factory riders putting them through rigorous maneuvers and in a right hand turn only a racing sidecar could compete. The left hand turn would most likely be a draw between a sidecar rig and a Lehman Trike. The down side is a trike has very little storage or luggage area compared to most sidecars and the sidecar allows the rider to fall asleep inside the sidecar without having to worry about falling of the bike. I’m still in favor of a sidecar but don’t think for a second that trikes are unstable or dangerous to drive; if you’re thinking that your miss informed.
In my opinion a funny thing happened and I was told this story. The Lehman team takes customer requests very seriously. They did have a request that was asked for more than once and I thought was funny. More than one woman would write in or phone asking if they made an extra wide storage compartment for behind the passenger seat. Evidently some have a wide girth and want to hide it when sitting on the back of the trike. Some gave detailed stories about being laughed at when driving down the road on the back of the trike and asked if Lehman would custom make a wide trunk compartment for them. That way they wouldn’t be laughed at any more. Back in the day when I was manufacturing sidecars we never had a problem like this but I guess it’s the way things are today. Back in the day I don’t remember people starting out the day with a forty two ounce “Big Gulp” just to get going; and some wonder why they weight three hundred pounds. I will say this about the Lehman team; all were very respectful and even though they were behind the scenes they never showed any disrespect for people with sly comments. I on the other hand kept my feelings and comments on this subject to myself. I have been known to being a jerk at times but that’s what you get when you’re a free spirit.
We were told that Dan and the artist would be coming in the next day. Evidently Dan had a condo that he lived in when he was in town up on the other side of the hill behind the factory. We finished out the day in the inner sanctum talking about ideas and different directions that we could go in with the open road project. At the end of the day the group of engineers that car pooled the fifty five miles back to Rapid City left for home and I was on my own. I drove around Spearfish with a population twelve hundred and looked for a place to eat. If there are twelve hundred people in the town I don’t know where they were but I don’t think I saw ten people the entire time I was driving around town. I made my way back to the hotel to find out that I was the only one staying in it. The person at the front desk was pleasant and at eleven they made a shift change. It was funny watching the local TV news at nine o’clock because there is no crime unlike South Carolina where a large portion of the news is taken up covering different murders and arrests of the day.
The next morning I had breakfast at the hotel; they had a self-serve breakfast bar and I was the only one in attendance. I arrived bright and early at the R&D area and was informed that we were having a meeting in the big room at ten. At the meeting we went over the project and what they were looking for. I was then told that they had a fellow coming in from Rapid City that was a motorcycle builder named Michael Prugh who had won what’s called a “Biker Build Off” on discovery TV. I never saw any of this biker build of stuff so I had no idea that he was “famous”, or at least in today’s shallow world of fame. After the meeting it was back to the inner sanctum and keeping away from the Harley Engineers. I was expected to attend lunch with the Engineering group; what a difference in twenty four hours. Dan and the entire marketing team along with the general manager all came along. We went up the hill to the Holiday Inn; the club house for the Hamsters; a motorcycles group that Dan and his head of marketing Ken Niles who was a former Blue Angles pilot belong to. Some of you may have seen the TV documentary about a group that rides to Sturgis every year called the” Hamsters”. People like Arlen Ness and Peter Fonda are all members riding with their yellow t shirts. Big whoop, but we were in the restaurant hall that they have their meetings in. I had to have all this explained to me as I sat thinking who gives a flying you know what. You the reader would have been proud of me because I was a perfect gentleman even though I think very little of the phony baloney so called celebrities.
When we came back from lunch I got to meet Michael Prugh and after introductions and some small talk we were sent into the skunk works to do our thing. Michael is an excellent designer and we hit it off right from the start. I spent the time later to check out these biker build offs and noticed that it’s a clown show of the highest order; the bikes are great but why each participant have to look like something out of a circus is beyond me but it’s the way life is today and one has to except that regardless of how one feels. This is what I liked about Michael; he looks like a normal person and is not pretentious in any way. Our ideas seemed to flow together and as we talked about different lines and how they should blend into each other he was taking notes and doing some sketches. After about an hour the entire Lehman team came in to see how we were doing. We went over our ideas and what happened next is very common. They looked at a few of the sketches that Michael had done and the both of us using our hands explained how the lines would flow around the body then there was silence. People like Mr Prugh and I look for ideas from others and not just compliments on what a great job we were doing. So I had to give the group “The Talk” and when I got them to understand that it was their project that we were designing and not ours they then got the point and started giving us feedback. I then explained how the best designs are always done by what’s called “Designing by Committee”. We spent the next two hours going over ideas with Michael sketching the entire time and before we were done we had a great looking trike concept thought out even if it was still just an idea. Michael took my phone number and I his and we planned on calling the next week to see how far he had gotten with the artist renderings. Michael left for Rapid City and I went back into the inner sanctum spending the rest of the afternoon working with the engineers and the fabricator on a new idea for a shimmy damper. Dan and the general manager came in and I was asked if I would spend one more day working with the engineering group and would it be OK if they picked my brain. I agreed and spent the rest of the day working on some ideas that looked promising. After work I went down the hill to Walmart and purchased a swim suite. The hotel had an indoor pool with hot tub, steam room and sauna and I was going to take advantage of it. I was still the only one in the hotel and went for a dip and steam even though it was below zero outside. It was just fun being the only one in the hotel and swimming with it being below zero outside. How often does one get a circumstance and condition like that, almost never?
The next day went by way to fast and the engineers asked if I would drive down to Rapid City after work and we could all go out to dinner in the down town are
a at the “Fire House restaurant”. One engineer rode along with me and we had a better chance to get to know each other. Everyone showed up at the Fire House restaurant even the general manager and we had one great time and I received a talking tour of the greater Black Hills from people that live and play there. The travel agent had me booked into a hotel in Rapid City and I spent the night with just a short trip to the airport in the morning. Another day spent in the air and I was home in South Carolina.
Headed to the Black Hills:
I left the following week and spent one day in the air going from airport to airport. No direct flights from South Carolina to Rapid City South Dakota. When I landed in Rapid City they had a new car rental waiting for me with directions on how to get to Spearfish fifty five miles away. It was early March and it was still minus four degrees below zero. I grew up in New England and new all about cold so I was prepared. I headed up the interstate towards Spearfish and as I approached the Sturgis exit I got off and decided to take a little trip around town to look things over. Places like Sturgis are like ghost towns in the winter months with less than three hundred people living in such a place in the off season. I made my way back onto the interstate and traveled the seventeen miles to Spearfish. I checked into the hotel and made my way over to Walmart to pick up some items that I would need to measure the project bike and to take notes with. With the way things are today at the airports I wasn’t sure what they would let me take aboard the plane and I sure didn’t want any of my expensive measuring tools to be taken away from me because after all, I like every other American today is a potential terrorist.
The next morning at the plant I was introduced to the plant manager and told that Dan would be coming in the next day. After signing a non-disclosure agreement, something I had done many times before. I was told that the project t was going to be called “The Open Road” project, and that it was top secret and could not be discussed outside of the special room that was designated for it; our “Skunk Works”. I was told that Harley engineers were in the R&D building and that Victory was one of Harley’s biggest competitors and this Victory project had to be “Top Secret”. I also was told that they; Lehman were working on the new Harley Trike project and would be building the first Harley trikes when they first came out. I was then shown around the plant and R&D area and introduced to the engineers. At this point I was just the guy they brought in to help design and sculptor the body for the new open road project and the engineers did what engineers do and gave me the cold shoulder. They were polite but it was like I wasn’t even there. The engineers did invite me to lunch but I think they were told to do so. As we were looking over the menu I noticed one of the Engineers had on his pinky ring. I mentioned that I hadn’t worn my “Order of the Engineers” ring in many years because it gets in the way with the type of work that I do. (The Order of the Engineer is an association for graduate and professional engineers in the United States that emphasizes pride and responsibility in the Engineering profession.) They look at me with surprise and one said “we thought you were just a guy coming in to sculptor a trike body”. I laughed and said “you never know who you may meet in life so never rule anything out”. At that point it was like we were all in World War II together; all smiles and fraternal brotherhood. They then asked if they could see my picture portfolio. It was funny because five minutes earlier they could have cared less, but since I was one of them all of a sudden they were interested. This wasn’t the first time that something like this had happened to me over the years and I’m too thick skinned to ever take it personally; plus I understand this mind set. My problem has always been that I’m an engineer and designer first but can do the craftsman like work using my hands that the untrained and unskilled could never do. Not meaning this in a bragging way; this is very rare and very few people that follow different disciplines cross over and can do both or in some cases many. A good example is Dean Webster a friend of mine that I have mentioned in different writings. He’s achieved a Masterly level of achievement in many different disciplines in his lifetime. Probably the smartest and most capable person I have ever known. In Dean’s case he chose the corporate life and has exceled at it. Another thing that I’ve learned over the years is that it’s best to hold back what you may know or have achieved until it’s asked for. As the guys were looking over the pages of projects they noticed my sidecars. That’s when the questions started; they first asked if I ever had trouble with some sidecars shimming. My answer was “it’s something you live with but the sidecars don’t shimmy the front end of the motorcycle does”. They mentioned that they every so often have a trike that will shimmy and have used shimmy dampers. I exchanged information about the different ones that I had used over the years. The rest of the meal was pleasant and when we returned back to the R&D area I was invited into the inner sanctum. The R&D area was up to date with the best of equipment for what they were doing. They even had a machinist and a metal fabricator that could make almost anything they could dream up. The machinist probably had the neatest working area of any machinist anywhere. The R&D building is up on a hill in what’s called a “Hog Back”. The machine shop area has large picture windows behind the machines with a full view of the Black Hills to look out at. I stood there in amazement and mentioned to the machinist that he had to have the best view of any machinist while working in the world. He just smiled and agreed as he told me it was a better view than the farm pastures in Wisconsin where he was from.
The Engineers showed me around and then took me into what they called “The Skunk Works”. With the Harley Engineers walking around they had a special room with a coded security lock on the door and when the door opened all one saw was a blue tarp and nothing
more. Inside the skunk works they had two Victory Vision bikes that were used for prototype work; so much for me having to worry about scratching a new bike. I was shown the mechanical workings of what the drive train was going to look like. This gave me an idea as to what I had to work around. They were planning some changes to the frame extension that would be used on the production trikes but other than what they had sitting there was what they were going to use. We then went back to the discussion of the shimmy problems and went back into the machinist area to look over a Harley that had been giving them a problem. They had half a dozen trikes in the shop with each one having some little problem. I think it was more of them making improvements than the trikes having a problem. It was cold out but that didn’t stop them from running trikes up and down the road and on the skid pad. Having not been around trikes this was a new experience for me and I was interested in how they would match up to a sidecar rig. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I didn’t want to waste it. The” Lehman solid rear end “is what makes every Lehman trike perform so well. Some without any knowledge or experience when it comes to trikes claim that they are unstable but I’m here to tell you that the Lehman Trike is very stable and to turn one over would take a lot. I saw some of the factory riders putting them through rigorous maneuvers and in a right hand turn only a racing sidecar could compete. The left hand turn would most likely be a draw between a sidecar rig and a Lehman Trike. The down side is a trike has very little storage or luggage area compared to most sidecars and the sidecar allows the rider to fall asleep inside the sidecar without having to worry about falling of the bike. I’m still in favor of a sidecar but don’t think for a second that trikes are unstable or dangerous to drive; if you’re thinking that your miss informed.
In my opinion a funny thing happened and I was told this story. The Lehman team takes customer requests very seriously. They did have a request that was asked for more than once and I thought was funny. More than one woman would write in or phone asking if they made an extra wide storage compartment for behind the passenger seat. Evidently some have a wide girth and want to hide it when sitting on the back of the trike. Some gave detailed stories about being laughed at when driving down the road on the back of the trike and asked if Lehman would custom make a wide trunk compartment for them. That way they wouldn’t be laughed at any more. Back in the day when I was manufacturing sidecars we never had a problem like this but I guess it’s the way things are today. Back in the day I don’t remember people starting out the day with a forty two ounce “Big Gulp” just to get going; and some wonder why they weight three hundred pounds. I will say this about the Lehman team; all were very respectful and even though they were behind the scenes they never showed any disrespect for people with sly comments. I on the other hand kept my feelings and comments on this subject to myself. I have been known to being a jerk at times but that’s what you get when you’re a free spirit.
We were told that Dan and the artist would be coming in the next day. Evidently Dan had a condo that he lived in when he was in town up on the other side of the hill behind the factory. We finished out the day in the inner sanctum talking about ideas and different directions that we could go in with the open road project. At the end of the day the group of engineers that car pooled the fifty five miles back to Rapid City left for home and I was on my own. I drove around Spearfish with a population twelve hundred and looked for a place to eat. If there are twelve hundred people in the town I don’t know where they were but I don’t think I saw ten people the entire time I was driving around town. I made my way back to the hotel to find out that I was the only one staying in it. The person at the front desk was pleasant and at eleven they made a shift change. It was funny watching the local TV news at nine o’clock because there is no crime unlike South Carolina where a large portion of the news is taken up covering different murders and arrests of the day.
The next morning I had breakfast at the hotel; they had a self-serve breakfast bar and I was the only one in attendance. I arrived bright and early at the R&D area and was informed that we were having a meeting in the big room at ten. At the meeting we went over the project and what they were looking for. I was then told that they had a fellow coming in from Rapid City that was a motorcycle builder named Michael Prugh who had won what’s called a “Biker Build Off” on discovery TV. I never saw any of this biker build of stuff so I had no idea that he was “famous”, or at least in today’s shallow world of fame. After the meeting it was back to the inner sanctum and keeping away from the Harley Engineers. I was expected to attend lunch with the Engineering group; what a difference in twenty four hours. Dan and the entire marketing team along with the general manager all came along. We went up the hill to the Holiday Inn; the club house for the Hamsters; a motorcycles group that Dan and his head of marketing Ken Niles who was a former Blue Angles pilot belong to. Some of you may have seen the TV documentary about a group that rides to Sturgis every year called the” Hamsters”. People like Arlen Ness and Peter Fonda are all members riding with their yellow t shirts. Big whoop, but we were in the restaurant hall that they have their meetings in. I had to have all this explained to me as I sat thinking who gives a flying you know what. You the reader would have been proud of me because I was a perfect gentleman even though I think very little of the phony baloney so called celebrities.
When we came back from lunch I got to meet Michael Prugh and after introductions and some small talk we were sent into the skunk works to do our thing. Michael is an excellent designer and we hit it off right from the start. I spent the time later to check out these biker build offs and noticed that it’s a clown show of the highest order; the bikes are great but why each participant have to look like something out of a circus is beyond me but it’s the way life is today and one has to except that regardless of how one feels. This is what I liked about Michael; he looks like a normal person and is not pretentious in any way. Our ideas seemed to flow together and as we talked about different lines and how they should blend into each other he was taking notes and doing some sketches. After about an hour the entire Lehman team came in to see how we were doing. We went over our ideas and what happened next is very common. They looked at a few of the sketches that Michael had done and the both of us using our hands explained how the lines would flow around the body then there was silence. People like Mr Prugh and I look for ideas from others and not just compliments on what a great job we were doing. So I had to give the group “The Talk” and when I got them to understand that it was their project that we were designing and not ours they then got the point and started giving us feedback. I then explained how the best designs are always done by what’s called “Designing by Committee”. We spent the next two hours going over ideas with Michael sketching the entire time and before we were done we had a great looking trike concept thought out even if it was still just an idea. Michael took my phone number and I his and we planned on calling the next week to see how far he had gotten with the artist renderings. Michael left for Rapid City and I went back into the inner sanctum spending the rest of the afternoon working with the engi
neers and the fabricator on a new idea for a shimmy damper. Dan and the general manager came in and I was asked if I would spend one more day working with the engineering group and would it be OK if they picked my brain. I agreed and spent the rest of the day working on some ideas that looked promising. After work I went down the hill to Walmart and purchased a swim suite. The hotel had an indoor pool with hot tub, steam room and sauna and I was going to take advantage of it. I was still the only one in the hotel and went for a dip and steam even though it was below zero outside. It was just fun being the only one in the hotel and swimming with it being below zero outside. How often does one get a circumstance and condition like that, almost never?
The next day went by way to fast and the engineers asked if I would drive down to Rapid City after work and we could all go out to dinner in the down town area at the “Fire House restaurant”. One engineer rode along with me and we had a better chance to get to know each other. Everyone showed up at the Fire House restaurant even the general manager and we had one great time and I received a talking tour of the greater Black Hills from people that live and play there. The travel agent had me booked into a hotel in Rapid City and I spent the night with just a short trip to the airport in the morning. Another day spent in the air and I was home in South Carolina.
The next week I received a call from Michael Prugh and he was making good progress and informed me that they would be ready for a showing the next week. Dan gave me a call and we were on for the next week. It was time to go through the whole traveling thing again. Dan had been doing this traveling thing while running the company for a few years; I don’t think I would have cared to do it myself.
I left on the following Monday and went through the airport to airport thing one more time. As I was in the Denver terminal walking to the gate for Rapid City I came upon a soldier sitting in the area headed to Rapid City. As I looked at his right shoulder patch I noticed it was a Special Forces patch. The right shoulder patch represents that he was in a combat. I went up to the Lieutenant and introduced myself. I then pulled out my Special Forces Challenge coin that I have carried with me for forty seven years as I write this. He pulls his out and we exchange the coins using the hand shake. We then sat and talked for around an hour and then we got the call to board. We shook hand and boarded the plane. The lieutenant was sitting in the last row and I was three rows in front of him in the aisle seat. I got settled in and the gentleman next to me told me that he was with a group from Florida that comes up to the Black Hills every year to run snowmobiles. As we were talking in my left ear I thought I heard” Ranger”. I looked over to the gentleman across the aisle from me and said “excuse me, but did you say that you were a Ranger”. He said that” he was not but was in Special Forces”. About that time I squirm around in my seat trying to get my hand in my front pocket and pull my coin out. While he’s reaches into a little pouch he has on his belt and pulls out his. We both laugh and he said “what the chances of three of us being on the same plane from three different generations”. I was from the 1960’s, he was from the 1980’s and the Lieutenant was present day. As we flew along we told different stories about the funny things that happened and some about the training never giving away any secrets but about some of the more difficult parts of it all. As we talked and told these stories the people around us were asking questions and before long I could tell that they were genially interested in what it was like to be a Special Forces Soldier or as the public call us a “Green Beret” and what it took to become one. The trip from Denver to Rapid City was over in no time and as we were getting ready to disembark a lady behind us said “I can see why you gentleman are “SPECIAL”. And at the same time others thanked us for the stories and our service. We in turn looked back at the Lieutenant and both of us must have been thinking the same thing and thanked him for his service. At that point we asked the Lieutenant if he would please disembark first with all our respect for his service. As we made our way into the terminal I noticed a gaggle of people with signs “Welcome Home Lieutenant”. His first name was on the sign but I don’t remember what it was. As I was driving up the interstate I started thinking about “what were the chances of three of us “Long Tabs” from three generations being in the same place at the same time. Long tab is the military phrase for “the Special Forces Tab above the shoulder insignia”. Airborne and Ranger are also tabs but are shorter, hence Special Forces; long tab. Back when I was in Special Forces they didn’t have a tab that read “Special Forces” that came in later years.
I made my way up to Spearfish to the hotel and it was a full house with one other guest. The next morning I made my way over to the R&D area and the greeting was somewhat different than my first entrance on my first trip. We had a few hours before the big meeting and they had brought in all the directors and the big stockholders along with Mr. Lehman and his family and some of the original investors. They even had the Polaris and Victory people in attendance because any project using a Polaris product had to pass final inspection. The engineers wanted to show me all the things that they had been working on since my last visit; you would think that I had been working for the company as long as they had. We went over some of the designs ideas that we had talked about and how they had improved upon them. It was time to go out and be introduced to the family as they called them. As I looked around the room I could see that this was an important day for these people. With the Victory becoming as popular as it had and after two years of planning the” Open Road Project” was finely becoming a real thing. After Michael Prugh and I were introduced to everyone we went into the Skunk Works along with the engineers and went over the artist renderings. He had drawn four different design versions and anyone of the four would look good. We didn’t ha
ve to worry about the Harley engineers because they had gone back home and wouldn’t be back till the next week. Michael also pulled out a drawing of his next project and asked for an opinion. It was something he had been thinking about for some time and intended on building it for the upcoming “Biker Build Off”. About that time the meeting was called and we made our way into the big room. The meeting room was set up so fifteen or so could sit at the table with chairs for a second row and a viewing area for those that wanted to stand. Dan opened the meeting and introduced Michael and I officially to the group. He then had Michael present his Artist renderings to the group. Everyone liked the drawings and I soon figured out that they thought that they were all the same design. Michael had figured the same thing out and as I sat there I had to come up with a way to make this group understand that there were four designs so that I would know what design they wanted me to sculptor. This had to be done in a polite and respectful way. So I started to compliment the artist renderings going over different lines and asking for opinions. The screen was large enough so that all four drawings could be seen without any difficulty. Using one of those lazar pointers I went over some of the different lines and started asking questions like what line looks better as I went from drawing to drawing. Michael picked up a marker and the two of us together worked as a team asking and answering questions. I could see that they started to understand there were slight differences in the drawings and before we were through I hoped to find out what design they wanted me to build. Dan made a statement that they all looked good and to let Johnny work with all four and we know he will come up with something that we will all like. That was easy and we went on to other steps in the development of the project. As they made their way down the list they came to the measurement of the width of the new Open road trike. Lehman had a company policy that no trike would be over fifty three inches wide. I was looking for fifty six inches, and that’s when the bidding, begging pleading and just plain asking for fifty six inches came about. I was a designer in the wilderness with everyone insisting on fifty three inches and I wanted or needed fifty six. I had done what’s called an aspect ratio comparison and felt that fifty six would work better for this one project but remember I was the new man in town and had the entire company wanting to go with the company policy of fifty three inches. I had done weight and balance, roll and Center of gravity calculations and in my opinion firty six inches was needed. In the end they relented and I got my fifty six inches, but before it was over months later in the middle of the project Dan would have me redesign the model to fit the fifty three inches and that’s what we ended up with and I ended up taking one and a half inches out of each side. When the meeting was over everyone went out into the main area of the R&D area and with a new project soon to be started excitement was in the air. As we were standing around talking the word went out that we were having lunch at the Holiday Inn and everyone was invited; it didn’t take long to empty out the R&D area. At lunch they sat Michael and I together and I had a chance to spend some more time with him. We talked about working in a mentoring capacity with the younger kids. I mentioned to him that he was becoming famous and the kids could identify with him and who knows one in the bunch could become another Michael Prugh. At this point he had not but a few years later I saw on the internet that he had a thing going with one of the schools working with the kids. I couldn’t help but think that a few words at that lunch may have got him to thinking about it. We finished out the day and the next morning I was on a plane headed back home to South Carolina.
On the flight from Rapid City to Minneapolis I was seated next to an older lady and her daughter. As we talked the conversation went around the block as it will and the subject of her late husband being in the service came up. Come to find out the lady’s late husband and she and her daughter were at Fort Sherman in the Panama Canal Zone at the same time that I was in 1966. Her husband, a Sargent like me was part of the cadre that trained us. They were stationed their full time as I went through Jungle School. Years later they lived in Florida and the daughter worked at the Arabian Knights Supper club working with the Arabian horses. Her instructor/trainer was the same person years later that became my wife’s instructor and trainer allowing my wife to get good enough to win a National Championship on our prize winning Arabian horse. Talk about a small world.
Once home all I could do was wait for the scaled drawings and the Victory Vision motorcycle to be shipped to Dan’s dealership so that I could pick it up and start on the Open Road Project.
Modeling a one of a kind trike body:
The victory Vision trike was delivered to Dan’s dealership and I went down and picked it up and took it to my design shop to start the project. It took another week before the scaled drawings came in from Michael Prugh. I went down and had the drawings that Michael gave me scaled and printed on a grid but didn’t dare to use them just in case I was off the smallest amount. The drawing did come in and when I compared them to mine Michaels were scaled the same; so much for a wasted week.
When I built my design studio it was constructed as a modeling shop so that I could do work like the Open Road project. As the concrete on the floor was being poured and smoothed out extra time was spent so that an area ten feet by eighteen feet is perfectly level and could be used as a surface plate for precise design work. I decided that the Open Road model would be built on the floor rather than up on a surface table. That way when viewing during the design process it will be sitting on the ground in its natural state. I started by drawing a grid on the floor using three inch squares with a center line and a datum line that the trike rear end would be aligned with. Taking a 2 D drawing and making it into a 3D sculptor can be fun and at the same
time confusing to accomplish. The scale drawings of the body were of the top, rear, and the left and right sides. I took these drawings and gave the squares on the grid a number or station and a location. These same line designations were transposed full size on the surface plate on the floor. I then took a one inch thick board stock and drew out the same full size grids on three different boards; one for the top and the other two representing the left and right sides. I then built an arm extension protruding off the trike frame so that the top board could be placed on it parallel to the plane. I did the same for the left and right sides using the axel flange to mount them to measuring off the center line.
With the grid every three inches I transposed the dissecting points and started the sculporing process building first what’s called the armature. For this project I decided to use wood, foam, and fiberglass for the armature. This allowed me to use auto body filler over the fiberglass for a solid model. I could have used clay but moved to auto body filler more than forty years ago. For me it’s easier to work with and is more permanent than clay.
I have built many different projects for a lot of company’s over the years and one thing a designer has to look out for is not getting paid. Corporations can be worse than armed robbers on the street when it comes to paying. Working for Lehman Trikes was like a breath of fresh air. They set up a payment program and throughout the entire project they paid on time. I learned years ago that you don’t want to wait to get paid when the job is completed and if a company insists I tell them to get someone else to do the job. At that point they have the model and can make you wait for your money for months or even years or forever.
Every Monday morning around eleven O’clock we had our Open Road Project meeting over the phone. I would take pictures of my progress and would email them up to the engineering group and they would in turn have a slide show on the big screen in the meeting room. I think it was more of a learning experience for the entire group as I went over the steps that I used to get to where we were each week. The group would always ask questions about how I did this or that and it was fun explaining the different steps. At times I would explain other ways of doing a step and why I chose the process that I did. Around four weeks into the project Dan flew in two of the engineers to make a change to the frame and they spent a few days with me. Dan left for home and the engineers and I spent more time traveling around the mountains attending one of the local Air Shows than working. I had gotten close to these two and they enjoyed spending time in my shop even learning how to make fiberglass parts; they built a trunk lid for a 427 Cobra even getting their hands dirty. They had fun for a short time but realized quickly that working with their hands and getting dirty wasn’t for them. The funny thing is when on their own time they would get knee deep in the mud when running their dirt bikes. They even spent some time with our Arabian horses. All of us were from different parts of the country and one being from Denmark so our interests and experiences were diverse and that was fun talking about them.
The engineers brought down three or four different taillights to try on the back end of the body. Whatever light that was going to be used had to have a DOT certification on it. The cost of designing a custom light for the project and getting certification for something as simple as a taillight could run into thousands of dollars and sometimes take years. A DOT approved light was the simplest way to go and they settled on a light that they were already using on another Victory trike. In the end the two taillights on the body were discarded and the original Vision center light was used and the savings were deducted from the overall cost of each unit; more of Dan’s good product development skills. It was funny as we were in the taillight phase of the project. My wife who would come in every day as she was going to or from the barn while working with her horses would check out the project and what progress I was making. When the discussion of a taillight was going on she had it on her mind. One evening when coming in from a night out dining we pulled into the garage and as we walked by our collector cars she stopped at the back of our 1973 Rolls Royce and asked “I wonder how a Rolls taillight would look on the trike”. I started laughing and said “great except for the price”. We both went into the house laughing with me saying “they probably cost a thousand dollars apiece”. At the next weeks Monday morning phone meeting they got a good laugh out of it when I told the story. Then the general manager said “we may have to get your wife to sign a non-disclosure agreement” and the entire group was in stitches. The Monday morning phone meetings were always a good time.
The shape and design of the model came right off Michael’s artist renderings with the exception of the gray areas that I had to design. When the model was completed I removed it from the trike frame and built a fiberglass mold that gave me a copy in revers of every square inch of the model. From the mold I fabricated a fiberglass copy of the model. This became the new model and all changes would be made in fiberglass from here on out. I installed the new fiberglass model on the trike frame and when Dan and the group came in for an inspection we found that the foot rest for the passenger was too far in and had to be moved out one and a half inches on each side. This was something that wasn’t taken into consideration when the artist renderings were being drawn. We had no base line to work off and sure were charting new territories with a brand new fresh design. When designing automobiles we used full size templates of the driver and passengers and they were used as guides in the development process making it much easier than how we had to do it. Dan still wanted the fifty three inches max on the width and I couldn’t talk him out of it so I cut the fiberglass model and moved in each section one and a half inches. I had to sculptor a new sweep into the body and it was almost like starting over but it had to be done. I learned a good lesson that I shall not soon forget.
As the project was progressing Dan and a few of the directors along with Ken Niles came over for a visit to go over some changes that were going to make the project much easier to construct. Originally we planned on fender skirts and Dan thought that we should cut out a wheel opening saving the time and expense. I can’t say that I was disappointed because I knew what we were up against having designed the fender shirts years earlier on my Sweet 55 T Bird. I had spent a little time on the fender shirt locking mechanism and was more than happy to just put it to bed. I drew some lines on the side of the body representing possible wheel openings and the group decided on the line that would look the best. In the end they saved five hundred dollars on every unit with the different changes that Dan came up with. Ever wonder why people like Dan were in charge of places like the former Kennedy Space center; because they know what they are doing and can take charge of any situation. When I got to a point that wasn’t spelled out in the artist renderings Dan gave me artistic license to design whatever I thought was needed to complete the project. He knew form experience to let a guy like me do my stuff and in the end it would come out right.
An open road trike needs a large trunk area and this became a problem designing
two luggage compartments in the back end of the body. With the wheels and frame extension in place it didn’t leave much room for a trunk on the left or right sides. They also wanted the openings to be large enough for a safety helmet to fit in. There just wasn’t enough room so the change in plan was to just go with the luggage compartment that came on the back of the Vision motorcycle along with the two small luggage areas in the body. The hatch openings along with the hinges had to be designed and that was going to fall onto the R&D fabricator so I fabricated up a set of prototype hatches and outer rear body sections for him to use as a guide to work off. I also had designed many hinges over the years starting with my 55 T Bird back in the late 70’s and even my latest Cobras had custom hinges so I made up a few with different shapes and placed them in the box when I sent up the hatch parts to the R&D department. Weeks past and the model completed and the group came in for a final inspection to write off of the body. It was accepted and no changes needed so I built a mold and fabricated two prototype bodies. When the open road project was completed I brought everything down to Dan’s Victory dealership and we place all the parts in crates and it was shipped off to the Lehman factory in Spearfish in one of Lehman’s big transporters. As I was driving back home I started to think about what a great bunch of people they had at Lehman and that I would miss getting up every day with the Open road project on my mind. So with another project completed I would still have to wait almost a year before the finished project would be presented to the public. They still had to take what I gave them and build production molds. In the end they used ninety five percent of what I gave them with just a few slight changes around the rear taillights and hatch openings. The first 2010 model year Crossbow trikes were presented to the public at the 2009 Sturgis motorcycle rally with mixed reviews. For those that like this kind of design they had rave reviews and others who were less favorable were saying that it looked like a star wars vehicle. Over time the Crossbow has been well received and dubbed as a timeless design with sales numbers that surprised everyone. In fact victory motorcycles limited the number of Victory Vision’s that they would release to Lehman for conversions to the Crossbow so Lehman went out and purchased bikes around the country off showroom floors and converted them to Crossbows. They say that timing is everything in life and who would ever think that we as a nation would have gone with this new “Hope and Change”. Ya, how has that change worked out? For the trike industry and Lehman it couldn’t have been worse. I don’t know the circumstances but I was told that for a time the operation was shut down and the assets sold but that they are up and running and sales are strong.
Little did I know at the time when I was designing the Crossbow but I had been sick and the symptoms were about to come out. I had the same thing that hits many men at my age. It didn’t take long and the doctors filled me up with medication that almost killed me and when I felt like I had six months to live I said “enough”. I got off the medication and went the natural route and five years later I’m one hundred percent and the doctors just look at each other, “I wonder what happened, he’s cured”; Ya, with no help from any of them.
I spent most of 2008 working on and around trikes, an experience I shall not soon forget. It was something that I never thought I would have been involved with but it just goes to show that one should never say never because you may have to eat your words. Working with the Engineers in the “Sanctum Sanctorum” at Lehman allowed me to get a complete understanding about trikes and the industry. At the same time I got to meet some very interesting people and to put one more feather in my design cap if there is such a thing. I’m still a sidecar guy but trikes are much more than some people may think. Would I own or drive a motorcycle trike over a sidecar? No, in the end I put the trike thing to bed and I don’t see myself going back to them. Today my health is good and I’m back doing what I was meant to do and that’s designing and building motorcycle sidecars. In my life I’ve been involved in a vast number of different projects but always seem to come back to sidecars. The two most exciting life adventures by far was the privileges of serving in the US Army as a Special Forces combat soldier sometimes called a “Green Beret” and the other driving those crazy hydroplanes but it always seems that I come back to sidecars. I’ve sometimes sat and wondered why I always choose sidecars with all the other things one could do. It’s interesting that I’m in the middle generationally with my Dad and grandfather that rode and drove sidecars in the past to my son and grandson who will follow in the future. Our family plan is to introduce a new sidecar to the market place sometime in 2014 and who knows it may take off and in time possibly my son and grandson will take over where I left off once I’m gone. Little David is slowly being groomed but you never know what direction a young mind will go in. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants if he becomes a future trike designer? Some have asked “where have all the sidecars gone” but I submit that they haven’t gone anywhere it’s just that there are more people in the world and not enough sidecar manufacturers. Also another undeniable truth is that some people seem to be drawn to trikes more than sidecars or at least the numbers show that.
Well I hope that some of you enjoyed the story and in doing so learned a few things. I know that I sure did and at the same time I had the opportunity to meet some really great people that were dedicated to designing the best motorcycle trikes that they could produce.
Johnny sweet PE.
Master Modeler, Mechanical Engineer.
This is what the end result would look like.
Every good project starts with an artist rendering.
The old man laying out the grid on the floor around the Vision/ Open Road frame.
Going from 2D to 3D can get complicated at times.
I started by building the two outer body sections off the center line of the rear end hubs first.
Wood, foam, fiberglass, and auto body filler were used to make the original model.
Each side was built within a .012" tolerance even though I was given 1/8" to 1/4".
Once the outer body sections were completed it was just a matter of filling in the rest.
It takes a lot of time to get to this point in a project.
These were the lines that I drew for the wheel opening and the group made the decision on what line to use.
Original lights that were later discarded in favor of no lights with a saving of $500 per unit with all the other changes to the original concept.
Note the crisp body lines; they would later be softened up for production.
The new fiberglass model made from the original mold off the first wood model. Note the cuts in the fiberglass where I had to move the body in to get to the 53" and the foot rest changes.
The finished product first shown in 2009 representing the 2010 Crossbow model. Note that my sharp very distinct lines were softened up for the production model. Myself I would have used the sharp lines but I didn't have the last say on the matter.
