Yamaha 80, the dream machine
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.
While both Ethel Goller and Hank Weiss gave me passing grades, in those two classes, the Regent's exams were not so kind.
But instead of riding a bus to Jamestown, I signed up the Chautaqua High School program which necessitated wheels, as my mother would not let go of her automobile for my commuting - particularly when she had given me the summer school money for Jamestown, not up the lake.
At the time, Yamaha 80 motorcycles were the rage. Bud Hooper had one already and so I purchased one on a time payment plan, $16.23 per month. Bob Fulcher and Jim Carr ended up with machines, too. What a summer!
I only crashed a few times and once jumping one of the hills at SWCS my girlfriend Cindy Hall slipped off the back and landed squarely on her ass.
Seems funny today, but at the time, she didn't see the humor and had a bruised tailbone for weeks.
Most of us got pretty good at popping wheelies and speed shifting. I remember that the fastest I could get the machine going was 55 mph, full out on Summit Avenue headed down towards where Cheryl Towers lived. We used to encircle Bill Loftus, who had a Honda with a smaller engine. He wasn't too steady on it, either, and more than once we thought he might end up in the ditch.
I once eluded the Lakewood Police by cutting through back yards up on Winchester, shutting the engine off and pushing my motorcycle home the long way around, covering it quickly before the police figured out which red motorcycle was popping wheelies in front of Mayor Roland Rapp's house on Erie Street, right near where Randy Carlson still lives.
That's exactly the kind of story you shouldn't tell your children. My eldest son tried the same trick with his small cycle but got caught. In fact, I must have been the luckiest kid alive because I rarely got nailed for the things we were doing, but my boys - after hearing tales like this - were in constant hot water.
I've owned two other motorcycles since that Yamaha 80, a BSA 441 Victor and Yamaha 200.
The BSA Victor rarely ran. I should have learned from owning two Triumph Spitfires. The Yamaha I sold when I was about 40 and had one of those close calls that screamed - LAY THE BIKE DOWN - except that I didn't and somehow made it through a gap between a car and a truck that Chester Anderson's nose could not have fit through.
Still, seeing the photo posted with this blog reminds me of riding all the way around Chautaqua Lake on summer days - without a helmet, of course.
When the helmet law went into effect in New York, that's when my red Yamaha 80 and I said goodbye.
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