The Blemishes

By Doug Boughton

I was downstairs in my shop having a beer and cigar (cigars having been banished by Bazzy to the dark underworld), and as I sat, my eyes ran over my 1956 BSA Gold Star. There it sat on my bench, definitely a “Special” – a mishmash of a dozen swap meets, and entire days lost to pursuits like driving to a distant friend’s house to go through their junk pile to see if they had a part I needed.  Then the two years to fit it all together so it looks like the picture I had in my mind, because this bike started years before the pieces were bought and built. It’s black, the big Goldie 500cc alloy cylinder massively fills the engine cavity. A fiberglass A65 tank sits diminutively above the engine and behind it is a BSA period race seat. Alloy fenders cover the tops of 19″ shouldered alloy rims, shod with Avon race tires that complete the period café look. Engine innards are full-race Goldie guts sans the high-compression piston (a 9:1 piston is required for street gas), a Triumph clutch, electronic ignition, Mikuni carb, and it runs perfectly.

Its good looks are backed up by a sound that TOTALLY fills the air. There is no room for thought or anything else as the big single rolls through the rev range and drops back down with an almost animal snarl. Behavior on the road is typical Gold Star, with a real sweet spot beginning at 4k and topping out at 6800rpm, this old girl has surprised a few modern bike riders on back roads. But what makes the bike most alive to me are its blemishes.  The toolbox has the most perfect black paint you will ever see, but you can still make out a dent in it if you look. The cases are shiny but have the look of use, the clamp nut on the megaphone faces out for function, there are nicks in paint already, and other odds and ends – functional blemishes that speak of purpose. No trailer queens for me, I prefer machines that are beautiful in their given purpose, have grown muscles in their use, and now appear as the real deal, scars and all.

I never liked perfect bikes, and embrace imperfection as being more human. I find “perfection” as an unnatural state that can only be touched on occasion, but never possessed. It’s the little things that make life fun, the little blemishes that accentuate beauty, especially when they’re attached to something that is so good to begin with.  I really like all my bikes, they work well, they look good, but I enjoy the eccentricities the most. That’s what gives them personality, and brings them close to me. I gave life to many of them after their parts had been scattered throughout a dozen barns and cellars, I wheeled and dealed, sought and bought, then I formed them into a purpose and a way; they represent their artist, me, and like children, I love them both for their strengths and weaknesses, the things that reveal the nature of the life within them. But then, that’s the way of a happy life: don’t live for the unobtainable, but love and appreciate life for all that life is, both good and bad. There is gain to be had in all of it.