My Motorcycle History, Part 2: The Wino

The construction business turned to shit for me and a lot of other folks in 1980. Interest rates were at 21% thanks to the “FED,” and numerous other assholes I’m sure, and my boss came in one Monday morning with my paycheck and a handshake, wishing me good luck in whatever new adventure I may pursue. Well that was it, screw these people; I bought a 36’ crab boat in San Francisco and proceeded to make my fame and fortune as a commercial fisherman...a really dumb idea. After the crab season in San Francisco Bay, in early 1981, I moved the boat to Fort Bragg CA and fished the Rock Cod seas. I befriended several old salt fishermen from there, most notably Charley Fagg (he used to say “the only Fagg in Bragg"); super guy, took me under his wing and showed me the fishing business. Well one of Charlie’s buddies was “Wino” Willie Forkner...the actual Wino Willie from the 1947 Hollister 'riot'.  Holy shit Wino Willie! I was instantly enthralled asked him a million questions...and got shitfaced drunk, doing significant damage to my liver.  At that time Willie and Al Reynolds’ favorite was Southern Comfort. I still gag at the smell.  We'd drink for days and whoop it up at Al’s barn, when the weather was making the ocean into a smoking hole.

How Willie got his 'Wino' nickname...from the days when a big of Gallo was sufficient. [The Vintagent Archive]
One story that not many people know about Wino Willie was his stint in the Army Air Corps in WWII. He was a waist gunner on a B-24 in the Pacific Theater of Operations. That means you stand by an open hole in the side of the aircraft, flying at 20,000 feet, the temperature 'inside' is 20 below freezing your ass off, with a 50-caliber machine at your side, looking for some asshole in a fighter trying to shoot you out of the sky. Great job. Anyway, on one mission he was assigned to fill in on another aircraft that was short some crew, and did not fly with the his usual nine crewmen. On that mission his usual plane was shot down and all crew was lost! I know this had a profound effect his whole life -  and while he never brought it up to anyone, it had to.

The 13 Rebels MC in an undated photo. [The Vintagent Archive]
Before WW2 there was a motorcycle club in L.A. called the “13 Rebels” which had more to do with how many people could fit in the club trailer than any mojo with the number “13.”  Willie Forkner was a member of the 13 Rebels, along with several other veterans. After the war they found that most of the members had married, got steady jobs and settled down, which not much fun for a guy looking to party down.  Thus Wino Willie, along with John Cameron, had formed the Booze Fighters M.C., and on July 4th 1947, they had a Gypsy Tour to Hollister CA; they rode in for the AMA races and to party.  These guys had just got back from WWII, and I’m sure after going through all that, their attitude to life in the grand scope of things would be a little different than the rest of the citizens.

The Boozefighters MC trailer, famously towed to Hollister, as those bob-jobs had no room to carry booze! [The Vintagent Archive]
Anyway, it seems that the rig that the Booze Fighters were using to tow their club trailer (a For Model T) was overheating from a lack of water in the radiator. Bingo, some bright biker decided it would be easier to pee in the thing rather than drive it to the gas station. Well the cops took a dim view of this and arrested the gentleman and threw him in jail for indecent exposure. After a few beers at the local watering hole, a bunch of his buddies decided that this was a total injustice. They all marched down to the jail to free their friend. Wino Willie saw all of this taking shape, and being president of the Booze Fighters, figured this would be a bad rap for the club. So Willie goes down to the jail to talk some sense into the mob. He is standing in front of everyone with his back to the jail and arguing that this is dumb and the guy inside is better served if you let him sleep it off in the can. Well the cops looked out the window and saw Wino Willie standing in front of this crowd, but couldn't hear what he was saying; they figure he was trying to stir up the mob, so they came out and arrested Wino for inciting to riot and threw him in jail! This broke up the crowd and everyone goes back to the bar to bemoan the whole deal.

Quite a crowd of locals, bikers, spectators, merchants, and cops at Hollister over the July 4th holiday in 1947. [The Vintagent Archive]
Meanwhile, back in San Francisco at The Chronicle, a reporter gets wind that a riot is underway in Hollister and jumps in the car and heads down there to get the story.  By the time he got there it was all over, there were just a few local drunks left in the bars. So he found this guy (Barney Petersen) coming out of a bar, has him sit on a motorcycle that’s parked in the street, scrapes up a bunch of empty beer bottles, and places them in front of the bike. Snaps “the photo” that ends up featured in Life Magazine with a story of how a motorcycle gang takes over a small town in California and that starts the process that leads to the movie The Wild Ones with Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin. Shit happens.

The Boozefighters MC having a little fun on the streets of Sturgis in 1947. [The Vintagent Archive]
[Ed Note: here is the relevant story from my book 'The Chopper: the Real Story':

The visiting riders mostly ignored the organized AMA scrambles and hillclimbs, and set about entertaining themselves on the main street in town.  They performed stunts (donuts, standing on saddles, wheelies; nothing has changed!) and racing each other down the street, cheered on by their friends, who became increasingly drunk and loud as the weekend progressed.  Not a single citizen of the town was injured or complained to the police, and accounts from business owners confirmed they’d made more money that weekend than at any time prior, and any physical damage to their businesses or the town’s property was minimal.  There was, of course, damage to some of the riders, with around 60 reported injuries, with three serious ones, including a broken leg and a cracked skull.  The police made 50 arrests for public drunkenness, reckless driving, and disturbing the peace, all misdemeanors.  Locals were quoted that while the scene was ‘a hell of a mess’, the bikers ‘weren’t doing anything bad, just riding up and down whooping and hollering, not really doing any harm at all.’  Even a local City Councilman stated ‘Luckily, there appears to be no serious damage. These trick riders did more harm to themselves than the town.’

The famous Barney Petersen photo as used in LIFE magazine, showing a drunk Eddie Davenport of the Tulare Raiders MC, with ‘Gus’ Deserpa standing behind. [Barney Petersen]
The ‘hell of a mess’ included an awful lot of beer bottles, scattered throughout the streets, which one enterprising photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle, Barney Petersen, artfully piled up around a Harley-Davidson bob-job, placing a very drunk man emerging from a bar (Eddie Davenport of Tulare, CA) aboard the bike – which wasn’t his – and made the epic shot of a drunken lout surrounded by broken bottles, the day after most of the riders had gone home, but before the town was cleaned up.  Apparently photographer Petersen came to the party late, or he would have taken photos of the actual events, and not a faked-up pastiche.  Motorcyclist were deeply suspicious of the photo, as no rider will park in, or surround his machine with, broken glass – changing a tire tube is a pain in the ass.  Confirmation that the photo was faked comes from the bearded bystander in the photo itself, ‘Gus’ Deserpa, who explained in a later interview “I saw two guys scraping all these bottles together, that had been lying in the street. Then they positioned a motorcycle in the middle of the pile. After a while this drunk guy comes staggering out of the bar, and they got him to sit on the motorcycle, and started to take his picture."

The rarely seen 'B side' of the LIFE magazine photo: here Eddie Davenport is identified, as he never was in the news stories. [The Vintagent Archive]
The AMA released the following statement (which they now claim they didn’t) regarding events at Hollister: "The trouble was caused by the one per cent deviant that tarnishes the public image of both motorcycles and motorcyclists" and that the other ninety-nine per cent of motorcyclists are good, decent, law-abiding citizens.” Which was very generous; given something like 4 million motorcyclists on the road in 1947, the AMA offered a ‘deviant’ population of 40,000 troublesome bikers, which is a hell of a lot more than showed up at Hollister.  But the ‘1%’ concept was too good a label to ignore, provided free by the ‘square’ AMA, and rowdy bikers forever after wore ‘1%’ patches with pride.]

Wino Willie passed away a few weeks before the 50th anniversary of Hollister 1947. His friends and family had him cremated and Wino attended the event in an urn.

Last article I listed a group of acronyms, listed below is the translations.

RUBs “Rich Urban Bikers”

Sewers “Suburban Weekend Riders”

Ahabs “Aspiring Hard-ass Bikers”

Riots “Retired Idiots on Tour”

Bastards “Bought a Sportster, Therefore a Radical Dude”

Igloos “I Got the Look, Will Own One Soon”

Hoots “Have One Ordered; True Story”

My wife and I just got back from the Laughlin River Run. Looking back at Holister 1947 and comparing that to 53 years later the only thing that’s changed is the numbers. Same press thing, same cop thing, same local businesses making windfall profit (i.e. Water $3.50 per bottle). The bikes are Harley, but they are no longer bob-jobs as in 'take off all the crap you don’t need and shorten the rear fender with a hacksaw'. Now it’s $50,000.00 wonders that some RUB cashed in his 401k for.

 

Ron Peck is a former motorcycle dealer and restorer, with a lot of great stories to tell. He's now retired, so can hone his stories!  See all of Ron's stories for The Vintagent here. 

by Ron Peck

My Motorcycle History, Part 1

It all started in Elk Creek, CA. in the summer of 1951. I was seven years old and in the first grade. This gang of bikers came to town, bought some beer at the store and proceeded to climb the hill across the street. I don’t remember the exact number but it was four or five guys, more motorcycles than I had ever seen at once, and the townsfolk’s population (50) were in an uproar - someone call the sheriff! Well the sheriff was in Willows 20 miles away and when he arrived the bikes were long gone. That was the slickest thing I had ever seen. The bikes were probably Indians, H-Ds, and maybe a Triumph or BSA in the mix, whatever they were they put on a show for an hour. Climbing that hill (looking back the hill is fairly steep but a good run out on the bottom, but only about 50 feet high) blew my mind, never saw any thing like it before. I was hooked, and never forgot that day.

While Hillclimb was a huge spectator sport after the death of the Board Tracks in the 1920s, and became a very specialized sport with freak racing machines, ordinary riders liked testing themselves against the local hills too. [The Vintagent Archive]
Fast forward to 1956, I’m now in the sixth grade still looking at every bike I come across and dreaming of the day. By now I had moved to Willows (population 2000, huge town!) and a local was selling his 1940 Powell scooter for $35.00. I bought it! What a day! Anyway there were some problems with the thing, it seems the crankshaft keyway was wallowed out so bad that after about 50 feet the centrifical clutch would fly off, jam the chain, and come to a screeching halt. After weeks of trial and error I found that if I pounded a piece of a toothpaste tube (they were made from lead, remember?) into the keyway, then pounded the key in that and then pounded on the clutch it would last almost a whole day, if I took it easy.

A 1949 Powell P81: the Powell Manufacturing Co. was based in Compton CA, founded by Hayward and Channing Powell in 1926 to manufacture battery eliminators and table radios. They quit the radio business in 1932 to build scooters during an American scooter boom. After WW2 they built models C-47, P-47, and P-49 step-through designs, named to sound like the military designations for aircraft. Powell built their first lightweight motorcycle, the 1949 P-81, using a 393cc engine of their own design, with cool disc wheels and great styling. [Mecum]
I made a trailer to tow behind the Powell and spent the next two years, in the summer and after school, collecting scrap iron, working on the Powell and saving my money.  In 1958, there was a boat dealer in Orland where my step-father bought a boat. The guy was also a dealer for Cushman scooters and had a brand new Cushman Eagle on the showroom floor. That was it! I had to have it, but $525.00 was a huge sum of money. I begged, I made huge promises, and I had $280.00 saved. My folks gave in (from exhaustion) and I had a brand new 1958 Cushman Eagle. Two speeds, tank shift, badass ride. I was in heaven. I worked on it constantly, dual exhaust, chain drive from clutch to tranny, new paint job. It would lay rubber (about 12” on slick pavement), and I worked on it so much that when I had finished it was F.U.B.A.R. I sold it soon after I found out girls would rather ride in a car, and bought a 1953 Ford in 1959 for $300.00. Life was good!

The Cushman brothers – Everett and Clinton – started their company in 1903, and by 1922 produced their single-cylinder sidevalve Husky engine.  Their Auto-Glide scooter was built from 1936 as a platform for their Husky engine, and it proved a profitable sideline. Cushman’s small motorcycles were used by the US military during WW2, and their specialized Model 53 Airborne model was so good it was civilianized after the war as the Model 53A. More conventional designs followed in the late 1940s, with simple sheet metal shrouds, including the ‘turtleback’ models that evolved  into the famous Cushman Eagle of the 1950s and ‘60s, with a centrifugal clutch and a two-speed gearbox, welded-on footboards, and the fan-cooled Husky motor that produced 4hp, made 40mph, and gave 75miles per gallon of gas. [Mecum]
After I was 'asked' to leave high school in my senior year (1961) I joined the Air Force and spent two years at Lakenheath AFB, near Cambridge England where I honed my interest in British bikes. After my return from the USAF (1965) I started racing scrambles, TT, and flat track on BSA and Triumph 650s. I was 21 years old and lookin’ for a woman to marry and a good motorcycle to race (young and dumb). I found the woman and still got her (Mardelle Peck - read her story here). The bike was a 650 BSA Spitfire Hornet, and that was 40+ motorcycles ago. We started a club called the Willows Scramblers; most of the guys had Honda Scrambler 250s and 305s, and started putting on races around Willows and up at Stoney George Lake (as in Hall’s customer appreciation ride/camp out spot). In 1968 Mardelle, Kim and I moved to Chico and I went to work for Bill Brownell Honda-Triumph as a salesman, and later a parts manager and general manager, which brings us to the point of all this B.S. so far and why I enjoy being the “Historian”.

Ron getting a peck from the trophy girl aboard his 1965 BSA A65 Hornet Scrambler. [Ron Peck]
You see, Brownell knows about everyone on the planet who ever had a motorcycle, a least back in the 40s, 50s and 60s. He is from L.A. and hung with the bikers there. He worked for and raced for Hap Jones in San Francisco before he bought the shop in Chico in 1947. He raced at Hollister on July 4, 1947, was friends with Wino Willy and John Cameron - founders of the Booze Fighters MC (more about this later). Evel Knievel used to stop by the shop and work on his motorcycles on the way thru here. He jumped at Orland Fair Grounds (more about this later). The list goes on and on. I was there during a time (1968 – 1975) when a lot went down in the motorcycle sport. When I moved to Chico I also joined the Chico Motorcycle Club, and we put on a few races and field meets at Black Butte and Cycleland Speedway.

One of Bill Brownell's extraordinary photos from the notorious July 4 1947 Hollister rally. Brownell was friends with John Cameron and Wino Willie of the Boozefighters MC: note their club trailer in this photo - BYO! [Bill Brownell]
The thing that has always been slick about our sport is the diversity of the people it attracts. From Malcom Forbes to Wino Willy and from Dykes on Bikes to Bikers for Christ and 1%ers to Wall Street Brokers. Plus the machines themselves from a belt drive bicycle with an engine, to a Twin Cam 88 B Duce.  It all leaves endless topics in both current events as well as historic, like the events in Hollister July 4, 1947, which led to the LIFE magazine July 21 issue about biker gangs taking over a whole town. Which led to the movie in 1952 “The Wild One” a story about the 1947 Hollister Gypsy Tour race put on by the Salinas Ramblers. Then there's the July 1969 release of the film Easy Rider (powerful stuff).  And in 1990s we had the onslaught of “RUBS” “SEWERS” “RIOTS” “AHABS” “BASTARDS” “IGLOOS” and “HOOTS”. More about all of this later.

Ron Peck is a former motorcycle dealer and restorer, with a lot of great stories to tell. He's now retired, so can hone his stories!  See all of Ron's stories for The Vintagent here. 

by Ron Peck