No no, they say, bikes just run out.

But if you love them they don't.

Well then, where are the loved ones? they demand.

And at that point it is tough to prove them wrong because so many motorcycles are killed so young. Its like they have no life, that they are really no different than a dishwasher. But they are, they are different. And here and there, in scattered fistfuls, old motorcycles are with us, defending their honor. In actual fact, bikes from the 1930s can, in some ways, hold their own against today's machines. Although such things as lights, brakes, and shocks would fair poorly, many of these models offer simple and effective power units within overall designs that are more elegantly fashioned and finished. Nevertheless, most guys refuse to believe what I am telling you, because they need to keep telling themselves that they didn't kill that bike, it just ran out.

But they live.

They were intended to age with dignity and strength, but machines which are not seen to be alive are not loved and so they sputter past youth and die young, and that is generally what happens and it happens more and more because motorcyclists are dying, leaving the bikes to people who do not know that the bikes are alive and that living things demand our love. How can you love what you don't see as alive? You can't, and so in a way you do not even know what love is in even its most general expression. If you can't love a motorcycle, you can not love a woman. You are not yet wise enough to marry, the Rabbis would say. Because a motorcycle is so much easier to love than a woman: it demands so little, and yet most guys use it with such indifference.

God, the average guy practically about spits on his bike. For example, they generally simply mount her, insert the key, turn it, press the start button and ride off. What kind of motorcyclist wouldn't at least walk around his bike once before getting on it? Is there anything leaking, any dirt, and new burns, splatters, or discoloration on the engine, the cables, the hoses, the exhaust pipes? At the same time that you are looking, you discover in yourself the capacity to flatter, to tell yourself you must be the luckiest man on the earth right now--look at you, you have nothing stopping you from getting on a bike and riding! Such rituals allow you to discover deeper depths of love within. While walking around eyeing the bike, you tell her you will never part with her; you review the myriad of modifications you have at one time contemplated, everything from new pipes to racing carbs to the latest tank bag with elegant leather stitching. These impulses reflect the capacity to love.

But you are not a motorcyclist. Instead you think it somehow slightly funny to love and cherish an object--or worse, that you can only relate to such a story--a story say, about a motorcycle, the men who loved her, and her killer. And you act astonished to learn that everything man makes slowly kills us with some form of cancer. It's as if they hate us, don't they? We keep making and using what we make with such indifference and when you treat a woman with indifference, what will she do? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, the poet said. I suppose all those feminists out there should be encouraging guys to take up motorcycling--it would certainly thin the ranks of the murderous thugs we all live in fear of. Of course a lot of guys crash and die. They torture their own mounts, sitting at a light, constantly lashing the throttle--"wooden, wooden, wooden." Some day you just know she is going to break under such abuse, and she might very well decide the best time to seize and buck him off is when he is doing something foolish at 130 mph. (Of course, then again maybe he did nothing to deserve such luck.) Motorcycles are far more forgiving then women, and yet guys, through a brutish indifference and stupidity, practically make their motorcycles rise up and kill them.

All of us, we kill so many things without understanding that they were alive in the first place--how can we be surprised those objects are now striking back, that this is what it means to have polluted the world. That is what the life of a motorcyclist teaches you: these are basic truths, and they are wound inextricably into a love for craftsmanship, a love of good words and good deeds. On a motorcycle, you don't learn how to make life perfect or immortal, and you don't learn how to stop killing, but you can start to learn that what you can do is help prolong the life of and ease the death of everything we are inevitably killing.

Bikes die; even the haughtiest bike. If you do not bestow on it the kind of affection thrown away on the objects of sexual desire, you will kill it. I first learned this lesson in the summer of 1939. Only in high school, totally innocent, unable to imagine what it would mean, how it would feel. Indeed when it happened, I watched its passing with the same heartbreak I felt when I lost my first girl.

It was a remarkable Indian Sports Scout. With me on it, I watched the speedo tick regularly past the last marking, 80, and then lay on the far side of the counter as if it had gone to sleep, nursed by the steady high pitched, but soothing sounds of the mighty motor from Springfield Ohio as it chuffed on. It did almost as well with the sidecar attached and that loaded down with cases of whiskey. My buddy Mac and I were running the moonshine together: nothing on two wheels or four could catch us. The local Regulator, Mr. Ed Cottrail, gave chase to us on more than one occasion in a souped up '34 Hudson he had confiscated from another local moonshiner. But at night, on winding country roads we knew well, no car stood a chance--that is if the bikes did not fail us, which they never outright did, but one night we turned on to the Old Haw River Road, and soon I could hear the tiny wail of a siren somewhere far behind the exhaust note of my Indian. A few moments later, I realized that my Scout had lost half its power--something, a fouled plug, a dropped valve, had robbed me of my front jug and I had to make due with only one cylinder and I pressed on while my Rachel (as I called her) protested mightily; then she started to sicken. I felt eratic shudders from her as she tightened-up, and my speed began to slow. The air smelled of wood smoke because it was in the early autumn of the year and the nearby farmers were burning their fields. It was a clear night and we weren't running our lights. I remember watching Mac in front, pulling away until he seemed to be floating just above the ground, up off the road, and I could hear the Regulator's wail behind me growing louder, and I could feel the heat growing underneath the seat rising between my legs as the lone jug began to seriously overheat, yet I couldn't roll off the throttle and I told her I was sorry and I listened to her die as I begged her to just get me home safe, just not seize right here and leave me stranded, and alone.

I fell further behind Mac, bearly holding fifty now, such that I could see only a glimpse from rise to rise in the countryside, a flash of his silver Norton International in the moonlight. And even at that moment it was an unforgettable sight to me--to see him go and to watch it from a motorcycle--that part was independent of the sick Scout and the cop behind. The amazing thing was that the old girl tarried on, it clung to life, keeping up just enough speed so that when I pulled into the old wooden shed behind Mac's house, Mac and I had enough time to lock the doors and appear out on his front porch, cigarettes in our mouths and beers in our hands waiting to greet our Mr. Cottrail. And in just a few moments, we saw the headlights and then watched the Hudson cruise past. On such nights, he would pull over to the curb and call out: "Evening boys."

"Evening," we called back. And Mac always offered, "Why don't you stop a spell and stretch your legs, Ed."

But Cottrail always answered, "Can't, can't. I'm on duty." And then he would drive off. In those days, it was still a game of honor: the Regulator knew he had to either catch you red handed at your still or in the act of transporting, busting into your home was out of the question. And as we watched Cottrail disappear, Mac and I clinked bottles, and I'll never forget the broad grin on his face. Back then Mac was a handsome devil, a regular Gary Cooper on wheels. Any man a few years his junior, like I was, would have looked up to him. He was sinewy and powerful, built like forged steel, a real roughneck. Mac was only twenty but he was already in that peak stage of virility. I think all men tend to decline at about the same pace, and so it is the lucky few who reach maturity early that get to enjoy full-blooded life longer.

Here was a man who came from nothing, a sharecropper's son, and yet he exuded confidence, good looks, intelligence, and charm. He had learned how to be an expert in the bootlegging game. He had stills set up in Tennessee where he made very fine, quality whiskey, and he ran it into big high demand markets: Asheville and all along the Carolina coast. On top of that he was an expert motorcyclist and a natural with a wrench. Bikes he set up were tuned flawlessly, pulled like Satan's horses, and were reliable bordering on the boring. And hardly ever a damaged shipment. This was a smart man, and I recognized it immediately the first day we met when we chanced upon each other while each of us was out for a Sunday motorcycle ride.

We were out on what's old 86 and naturally as we were both on bikes, we stopped for a smoke and a chat. Almost impossible to imagine now but that is how rare it was to encounter another motorcyclist when you went for a ride out in the country in 1939. Christ, you hardly encountered another car outside town back then, let alone another motorcycle--and to top it off Mac was on his Norton International. A goddamned Cammy! All the guys had heard about them, but it was very rare to see any kind of British iron over here before the fifties. I, for example, was on my Scout, a splendid American bike. But even then Mac was already crazy about British bikes. I think it had something to do with his having been born and raised in horse breeding country, where something of a distinguished colonial attitude still reigned. He enjoyed a big brutish American cycle as well as the next guy, but he also had that British love for trim yet elegant bikes. Simply put, Mac was the modern day descendant of the gunfighter who liked to conduct his affairs with the savoir faire of a continental gentleman. It was an act, of course, but it takes a poor kid with his nose to the glass to really strike the pose. There are of course different continental styles for the motorcyclist to choose from, and Mac opted for the British, which differs as one might expect from the German or the Italian. For now, let us say that Mac was my introduction to sophisticated motorcycling of a distinctive Anglo-American mix.

My first encounter with Mac was a day I'll never forget. We swapped off and I had me my first ride on a properly hotted up Cammy! Man it was exhilarating--just looking over at Mac who was on my Sports Scout, absolutely screaming as it labored to keep up with this Norton, which was showing me seventy with no effort whatsoever. After that day, I often stopped by to visit Mac who was then living with his mother over on Good Hope Church, and he had a regular boffin's workshop set up out in the garage wherein we promptly set about making many, many mods to my Indian, which transformed her into a real ringer and a perfect bootlegger's bike.

And that is what a lot of guys forget--those old bikes may have left the factory with a top speed of sixty, but that's how the builders wanted it; cruising at forty-five was considered by them to be ideal for the rolling countryside, and the massive heavy engines these men designed delivered the needed power while at the same reducing frame and seat vibration, exhaust noise, problems overheating, problems braking, and in general made for a very safe bike that traveled at a brisk yet elegant pace forever. Such distinguished touring machines, with their classy good looks, reflected a particular vision of motorcycling, because from its inception, the motorcycle was seen as a sport for the upper crust. It was marketed as a perfect activity for young well-to-do men. As the motorcycle became more reliable, its buyers expanded to include farmers and businessmen who saw it as cheap transport. And of course, all along, motorcycles continued to attract the attention of guys who would later be called hotrods. This last bunch immediately set about enlarging the motor and lightening the bike, all in the pursuit of speed. And indeed, hotrodding emerged as a distinctive streak in your average red-blooded American male. Soon private owners like Mac were far beyond what a stock bike could do, and such transformations happened here and there in garages all over America, fostering an ideal environment for a few aficionados. In part it was an perfect time because the manufacturers did not wish to comply with the coarse demand for an off the rack race bike because they understood that such bikes would be dangerous in the hands of a novice. It was seen to be better to let the experienced owner decide on making such an upgrade, at which time the motorcycle company would be there to provide any parts or assistance. Such a business attitude is inconceivable now! Yet guys like me and Mac became very close as we tinkered with our bikes. For the life of me I don't know how young men can become friends today when they have so little to do together.

Once I had fully gained the trust of Mac, he revealed his moonshine operation to me, and I agreed to run with him, splitting the profits 40-60 which was very generous considering he did everything involved in the production end: buying the sugar and so forth, brewing, and bottling--all I did was run it with him and drop it off to the restaurants. Access to well heeled customers--that was what I offered him because my father was a butcher, and he sold to all the restaurants. It was my job to carry over the meat. Every day after high school I lugged my father's meat around, so I was able to sell bootleg whiskey quite conveniently to a lot of places that would never have trusted Mac, and together we really expanded his business and my customers could pay more because they charged their patrons more. These were upscale places that everybody knew in town because my father ran a kosher butcher shop and everybody knew kosher was always the best meat (he also sold pork but only wholesale out the back door so the store customers never knew). Anyway, that end of the job was completely safe because all the restaurants paid the cops off and the health inspector and everybody else so there was never any problem and though Cottrail and his bunch of Regulators knew Mac moonshined, they didn't know where the stills were (across state lines) and they could never catch us when we brought it to Mac's mother's house so there was very little risk, and besides, at that time and place, it wasn't much frowned upon. Hell every businessman plays a little free and lose with the rules.

The end result was that until the war started in, and we both went in '42, he and I made good money and had a lot of fun. We may have been stupid but we just didn't worry about the law, we didn't much think about it except for the thrill of watching Cottrail drive by us while we sat on the porch sipping beer, and so we did not get all riled up and on edge with the world and each other like you see in the movies about small time operators like The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, or The Getaway, with that marvelous performance by Steve McQueen.

In fact, the night I killed my Scout has become one of my cherished memories. But God I'll never forget how sick it made me when we removed the heads and I first saw Rachel's insides. I felt terrible for days, depressed and very sad over what I had done and what it said about my character. At night I would lay in bed picturing the broke up parts, and telling myself I did not want to do the same thing again ever because it made me feel too bad. Yet in a few days, Mac and I had landed me another beautiful machine, and I was a happy young man once again. We soldiered on running moonshine right up into '41 when we had to leave our lovely bikes to fight another terrible war that was to take so many.

So that is the story of my Indian, my first real bike. After I hit the kill switch and coasted into Mac's garage that night, my lovely girl never came to life again. The broke-up pieces and the bent rods lay like dead branches amid scattered leaves. Looking at it after we tore down the engine I knew there was no way it could have continued to function on that ride in the night but it had. It had continued to live out of love for me, me, who at that very moment was its tormentor. Such is the love of motorcycles, a constancy unknown to man.