Flat Track Hookup

After my teenage days dirt racing with Willy [see Doug's previous article], I didn’t continue with racing for many years.  It wasn’t until my mid-40s that I discovered road racing with the USCRA (United States Classic Racing Association).  I raced solo bikes as well as a sidecar outfit.  To cross-train my skills, and also to race in another discipline during the long interval between road races, I took up flat tracking in the early 1990s. The bike I raced was a totally modified 750cc Triumph T140: I built that sled, but it was a lot faster than I was.  The engine literally came out of the boneyard at my buddy’s shop: the cases from a pile of cases, and every other part of it came out of a pile - all the bolts and screws, the cams, everything.  We built it with a stock 5-speed gearbox, with buttons on the rockers for a bit more cam lift, and big Mikuni carbs. It was a bear!

Doug Boughton with 'The Bear'; his Triumph T140 flat tracker. [Doug Boughton]
My first time racing at Weedsport, I did well in the daylight practice sessions.  It was my first time on a clay track, and laid out as a 3/8-mile in a D-shape.  I thought to myself, could I actually make the main?  At night when the lights came on, turn three was very badly lit; it was like going through a dark tunnel. I needed a headlight!  It was frankly dangerous, and I had a business and payments to make for my kids, so I rolled it back a little during the race.  I ran my heat, and almost got third, but they only took the top 3.  In the Last Chance Qualifier, I got bumped off the bubble on the final lap on good old turn three. I was not disappointed; I already had a bump on my left collarbone, and didn't need another.  It was all good; the field is very big in these Nationals, and I was amazed at how fast some of those guys were. Having raced in many disciplines after re-starting my racing career in my 40s, flat tracking was the hardest of all.  So much to learn: backing that Triumph in, reading the changing track conditions, guys pushing you up or leaning on you on the outside, with speeds on the chutes that must have been over 80mph.  It was so physical, but at least on the half miles you catch a break on the chutes, compared to a short track.

Becky, if this was you, please call Doug. [Anonymous]
I'd arrived at Weedsport with this hot blonde named Becky – I wish I had a picture [maybe...].  It was one of those ‘bumped into her at a bar and we hooked up’ things. As you know, flat track guys are horn dogs, so my pit in the afternoon was full of riders who came over to check her flirting ass out; fine with me, just a hookup enjoying the elite company, all in fun. Then David Aldana came sauntering in and said, “Oh, I can tell you’re one of the fast guys!” I laughed and told him the truth.  He was racing Ken McGuire’s 250 Bultaco Astro: Ken was the promoter of the race, and my friend of many years. As I didn’t make the main event in the race, Becky and I grabbed a couple of chairs, and watched the racing from the stage on the inside of the track. The 500/750 classic brakeless race came up, and it was some great racing: George Bejian (hope I got the name right) was pretty famous in the Northeast, and was running in the top pack.  But as he came off the sharp turn 4, he looked back under his armpit to see who was coming, and his KR’s front wheel climbed the boilerplate, and he wrapped himself around a telephone pole.  He was dead before he hit the ground, it was terrible. But the thing was, he had terminal cancer and didn’t have a lot of days left anyway. I knew him, and we’d talked about him finding me a Scout to run in vintage road racing.  In the end, is it not better to die racing than die from cancer?

Doug in action on the clay at Weedsport. [Doug Boughton]
Of course, it was a late night before the last race went off.  I went and took a shower with Becky at the campground. We’d set up a tent on a hill with no one around, but as we walked back to it, there were now tents all around ours, with a ton of choppers.  Biker gang, shit!  I’d been studying martial arts since I was 22, but no way was I going to come out on top of this mess. They had a big fire going near our tent, and were sitting around hooting and hollering.  We walked right into the middle of them; me carrying my leathers and boots in shorts, no shirt, Becky had short-shorts on with a tight tube-top. They stopped, looked at us, and we looked at them in a long silence.  Someone finally said, “Hey, you’re one of them racer guys, WHOO,” and suddenly everything was OK. By then it was late, like 1am, but we sat with them and had some nice cold frosties. They were chill, and just wanted to know what it was like to sling a 750 sled around a dirt track.  We finally climbed into our tent, with our sleeping bags already zipped together.  As we settled in, Becky said ‘What if they decide to collapse the tent on top of us and do their bad biker shit?” I pulled my compact Glock 40 pistol from my bag, showed her, put in under my pillow and said, "they’ll be sorry."  But they were good. We got up in the morning, packed up and left.

Doug Boughton with flat track legend Dave Aldana. [Dough Boughton]
Sometimes a lot more happens at a race, than a race.

 

 

Doug Boughton is a life-long rider who started age 13 on a 1964 Honda S90. He has vintage road raced, flat-tracked, ridden trials and enduros, and helped to found the MotoGiro USA with Bob Coy. Doug writes about riding, and continues to ride both vintage and modern bikes; to date, he has owned 185 motorcycles. Read his stories here.

by Doug Boughton

Willy, the Hot Redhead, and the Loaner Goldie

By Doug Boughton

To make a long story short, I got into bikes at the tender age of 13. By the time I turned 16, I was entering off-road races - scrambles and TTs - but only when I could find transport to and from the tracks. That changed when I befriended a National-level flat track racer...who had just gotten out of prison. Yeah, Willy Massey and his hot little redhead wife Suzy moved into the trailer next to us; it’s a long story.

Doug Boughton in his late high school years, with his scrambler-converted Honda CB160. [Doug Boughton]
Willy was the real deal, hard as nails anytime he needed to be, always on edge when he wasn’t around family, or with us young racers. Because he treated us like we were his age, being around him was an education in how to be an adult. But he never totally lost that criminal element, he had just grown more clever… plus he’d done 5 years already. He and Suzy allowed each other their unspoken sins, and he had a lot of them…a lot.

Willy in his Expert days, racing at Daytona Beach with a rigid-frame BSA Daytona Gold Star. [Doug Boughton]
Of course you want to know how he ended up in the slammer: when Willy was a young and wild punk, he was in a 1%er motorcycle gang. I think he used to get really hammered with them, but after his prison stint, never. Someone in the club had the bright idea of stealing a safe from a local business: they backed a stolen tow truck right up to the business late one night, and busted the window to get inside. Once in, they wrapped a long chain around the safe and back out the window to the tow truck. Then they gassed it, and blew a huge hole through the side of the building. But they didn’t stop somewhere to lift the safe up, they just dragged it down the street, like no one’s gonna notice. They drove right to their clubhouse garage and pulled the door down, leaving a nice long scratch in the road for the cops to follow. Not the brightest bulbs.

The rigid Goldie at speed on the Daytona sands. [Doug Boughton]
When Willy and Suzy moved into his brother’s trailer, he brought along a Parilla 250 Wildcat Scrambler. At the time he was racing TTs and scrambles in the Amateur class, and a lot of them: it’s the perfect place to be for most of us, as National Expert is another world. God smiled on me because he had an extra slot on his race trailer. Willy became my bad ass Uncle, who transported me and my stripped down Honda 160 to events. During those drives, and generally hanging around him, he taught me so much about motorcycles and life. Willy was no longer racing flat track, but was still campaigning a Gold Star using another rider: he had blown out his knee on a sandy corner at the original Daytona beach track, and could no longer race that discipline.

Bad day at the beach: Willy Massey makes the front page of the papers, for the wrong reason: he's the one kneeling, trying not to get hit. [Doug Boughton]
Eventually Willy quit all his racing, but still wanted a daylight street bike, so he converted his full race Daytona Gold Star into a street bike; he dummied up some lights, and put a license plate on it. By that time he'd moved into a proper house, as he had a well-paying job as an ironworker. If I came over and mowed his lawn late on Sunday, he’d let me borrow his Goldie, so I could ride it during the week when he was busy at his job.

The BSA Gold Star in a swingarm frame for TT racing or the street, beside a few of Willy's trophies, taken by him or the rider he sponsored. The bike was converted to a roadster - note the taillight. [Doug Boughton]
The Daytona-spec motor had a very high-compression piston, and the Competition magneto was locked at full advance. If you tried to kickstart the beast, you paid, so I always parked the Goldie on a hill, or if none was available, I had to beg for a push. It always fired right up.  One day I was down in Troy, New York, putting some money in my meager bank account. There were no nearby hills, so I needed help, and spotted this big biker type dude walking by. I asked him for a push and explained to him that the Goldie wouldn’t start using the kicker: it had to be pushed.

Willy makes the cover of Cycle magazine in 1966 - on the right, with his favorite #69, riding his Parilla Wildcat. [Doug Boughton]
Well, he said he rode a kickstart Harley, and called me a pussy. Then he said he’d start the bike for me. I said, 'be my guest.' He lumbered onto the bike, rose up from the seat, and came down with a mighty swing of his leg, rolling the throttle as he followed through. Ptooeee! It was like the bike hawked up a huge lugee; he went flying off and landed on the ground, then the bike fell on him, hahahah. I helped get the bike off him; he stood up and said 'Get on kid, I’ll give you a push.'

Willy Massey with two BSA Gold Star racers; a TT racer/scrambler, and a flat tracker with no front brake. [Doug Boughton]
I stayed friends with Willy until he died; he gave me all his photos and so on. These images are mostly from the late 1950s, when I was just getting out of high school. Willy was what Hollywood was selling to the public as a leading man, but he was the real deal.   It was always like we were making a movie when he was around; kind of epic. I honestly don’t miss him though, because he’d just show up, get in your face, and want to go ride street bikes fast. In later years he would keep up with me on my ’93 Ducati Monster while riding an ex-cop Harley Dyna that was stroked and bored. He had a lot more mass to stop when we passed a line of cars, and used to curse me out if I caught him up short. Then all of sudden, he could be gone for years before you saw him again. In fact, he may not even be dead…

Willy also drag raced a customized Chevy Corvette...[Doug Boughton]
"I like the picture of him on that XLCH Sportster: he went to Florida in the winters to work. He's kinda got that James Dean look."  Dig the striped socks and loafers. [Doug Boughton]
 

 

 

Doug Boughton is a life-long rider who started age 13 on a 1964 Honda S90. He has vintage road raced, flat-tracked, ridden trials and enduros, and helped to found the MotoGiro USA with Bob Coy. Doug writes about riding, and continues to ride both vintage and modern bikes; to date, he has owned 185 motorcycles. Read his stories here.

by Doug Boughton

The Blemishes

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.

Warts and all: the Big Black Goldie. [Dough Boughton]
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.

After the hours and years, it all comes together, but the scars give it character, and make it real. [Doug Boughton]
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.

 

 

Doug Boughton is a life-long rider who started age 13 on a 1964 Honda S90. He has vintage road raced, flat-tracked, ridden trials and enduros, and helped to found the MotoGiro USA with Bob Coy. Doug writes about riding, and continues to ride both vintage and modern bikes; to date, he has owned 185 motorcycles. Read his stories here.

by Doug Boughton