Where it began...
My dad worked at Sears from '60 til '68. About '63 as a 12 year old kid, I would drool over those scooters and massive Allstate 250's. I didn't know what I was looking at, but knew I liked them. I started buying all the cycle mags and memorizing facts and figures.By age 17 I rode my friend Terry's Honda cub fifty, and begged my parents for a bike, a scooter, anything with a motor.They had a strange mentality about bikes. I could borrow a bike and ride and that was ok, but OWN one and that was too dangerous! One day a friend told me about an old cushman turtleback for thirty-five dollars. Off my friend Ray and I went to see it. It did run ok, and while I was haggeling over the princely sum he was asking , Ray said "Hey look at this behind the shed". There sat a complete '65 Allstate Compact, with the rare footshift.Only one thing wrong....it didn't run.A quick conference with my buddy and it was decided, a bike with three speeds that didn't run was better than any sissy old Cushman with a lawnmower motor and no gears to shift. An offer was made and accepted. twenty-five dollars later we had the Allstate in the trunk of Ray's parents '67 Le'Mans and on the way home.We kicked, we cleaned, we took it apart, we pushed, we cussed, but finally we hit on the right gas, and timing, and there she goes....wide open...blue smoke belching as well as any Homelite could hope to. We got it ideled down and it never failed to start after that.We rode the hell out of that, jumped ditches, wheelied, and in general tried to destoy it, but it refused to die.I sold it the next year to a man who wanted to put it on his motorhome.Got thirty-five dollars for it and thought, "Man what a sucker"That thing was still running the last time i saw it 3 years later.Wish I had it back.I used the money to fund my first real bike, a '65 s-90.By now I had a dream job at the local Honda shop and the rest is as they say ...history |
 |
