IT STARTED A LONG TIME AGO
Written by Henry N. Patterson

I started working while I was a sophomore in high school in a bicycle shop. At that time it was mainly bicycles but a few motorcycles would come in and I became fascinated by them. I started doing minor work on them and that made me more interested. In 1930, after finishing high school, I started working full time and one day a fellow came in with a 1928 21 inch single and wanted to sell it. I drained my pockets and borrowed some money from the boss so I could pay the $80.00 for it. I really thought I had something and I was going to really enjoy riding it. That was Saturday so the next morning I was going to have a great ride. I got about three miles from home and the front tire went flat. Patch number twenty-six had come off and down went the tire. Kinda hairy the first day out. People now days do not realize how many flats there were in those days. All the upholstery on the buggies and the first automobiles were put on with tacks and they would fall out. This bike and I got along well for about six weeks until a car thought it should not let me cross the intersection. This ended me and the motorcycle until late 1933. Somewhere I came up with a basket case of a 1929 45 inch for $65.00. This became quite a project to rebuild. I put in all new rollers and ordered a set of pistons. I took the cylinders to the machine shop where they chucked them up in a big lathe and bored them. Back then the cylinders were to be .005 smaller at the top than at the bottom. That was to keep them straight when they got hot. I painted it maroon and copper with a tank panel to match the 1933 model. It ran real good.

With a bit of wanderlust I decided to go see an uncle in Chicago and also to see the Worlds Fair which had been held over into 1934 because it had been so successful. This turned out to be quite an experience. When I left Grand Junction, Colorado, my home, I had about three miles of pavement and no more paved roads until about ten miles from Denver. The roads were gravel and they were very corduroy and chunky. Sometime before I got to Denver the bike quit. I found a broken battery bar. Back then the cells of the batteries were connected with external bars made of lead. The shaking of the machine had broken one of them. I squeezed it together with a pair of pliers and was able to get into Denver where I had it soldered together. I spent the night in Denver with an old schoolmate and then headed to the eastern plains of Colorado and Nebraska. These roads were all sandy gravel and also quite chunky. Battery trouble continued to about ten miles from Omaha, Nebraska and the pliers would no longer make a connection. I hitchhiked into Omaha and bought a battery. They were nice enough that they took me back to my machine on a brand new bike. What a ride. It was so much smoother than my 45. No more trouble except to tighten down the generator about every time I got gas. That little vertical generator was not a great engineering feat. Getting around in Chicago was another adventure. The cars would race from stop light to stop light and my little 45 with its weak clutch had a hard time keeping out of the way.

The Worlds Fair was an exciting place to explore. My uncle had to leave to go to work about four in the morning and I would sleep in and go out to the Fair later in the day and he would meet me there after he got off work. We spent many enjoyable evenings together. One memorable event about the Fair was that I got to be on TV in 1934. They had a small theater where you could go to the projection booth, if you wished, and they would send your image and speech to the big screen. Very primitive to what we have now. Another memory was the Ford exhibit. At that time they had not accepted hydraulic brakes for their cars and they were trying to prove that mechanicals were better. They had built a board tract about a quarter of a mile long with steep grades and curves on it. You could get in line and take a ride and they would demonstrate how good the brakes were. I hung around there quite a long time and noticed that particular cars would make only three or four trips and then disappear for awhile. They were readjusting the brakes that often.

I had planned to go to the Harley-Davidson factory while in that area and got up early one morning Milwaukee bound. I found 3700 Juneau and went in. I told them who I was and where I was from and asked if I could have a tour. They sent me to the waiting room where there was lots of written propaganda and post cards. They furnished the cards and postage so you would send your friends cards from the factory. A young man came in while I was waiting and asked me which machine was mine. He told me they were going to move it and that I was to pick it up at the south door after the tour. I was the only tourist that day. As I remember, the tour guide was Jim Coats. He was very friendly and gave me a real good tour. I remember going by the big turret lathes-milling machines galore and by the million-dollar tool room where they kept the extra tools for the lathes and other machines that made multiple parts. We went by the frame building area where there was a frame suspended above a vat of molten brass. Large gas flames were turned on each place where there was a joint and when it was hot enough the attendant would dip with a small ladle hot brass and pour it on the joints. As I remember the frame was then dipped in oil to temper it. Then it went to the frame table where it was trued, if necessary. We went by where the blind ladies were sorting rollers by hand. They had go and don't go gauges to sort all the bearings to correct size. The factory at that time had a program which allowed each dealer to send in his mixed up bearings and they would sort them free of charge. We went through an area where there were a lot of mufflers but no one was working. Jim said they had built their quota for the day and they were hiding out in the rest room. We went by the area where they were soldering tanks together and off to the side they were straightening tanks for dealers. Welded tanks did not come out until 61's arrived. The tour ended and Jim showed me the way to the south door. Was I surprised--my machine had been cleaned up, tuned up along with two new spark plugs and a full tank of Harley oil. Back then you really had to keep track of your oil. There was no circulating oil until 1936. You had a drop of oil going to the front chain about every twenty seconds. Oil was pumped into the lower end and the surplus of that was splashed up on the cylinder walls to oil the pistons. There were no oil rings to keep it down so what went up was burned. A total loss oil system. Even with that we did real well. We would check our oil every time we stopped for gas and would buy the thickest oil they had at the filling station. I decided on the tour through the factory that I did not want to be a factory worker. As I watched, all one guy did was to diamond test wrist pins and crank pins for hardness after they came from the heat treating processes.

Back to Chicago and the fast traffic. I found the Schwinn Bicycle Factory and asked for a tour. My guide was an old employee of the Excelsior Motorcycle Company. This was in the same building and still owned by the maker of the Excelsior Motorcycles. I said goodbye to my uncle and made my way back to Colorado by the way of Colorado Springs and from there took an old road which at one time had been a railroad to Cripple Creek and Victor. I stayed there with another schoolmate. The highlight of that visit was when my friend bribed the lift operator of the mine and we went down into the old Cressen mine three or four thousand feet. Then home with many wonderful memories and a real education.