An Indian and A Short Rope

Growing up on a farm ,I didn’t really get into the ball and stick games the kids in town played ;other than football and track the only sports I really cared about involved the internal combustion engine .When other kids my age were reading Inside Baseball I was devouring Hot Rod, Motor Trend, and Motors manuals, Learning what makes cars and motorcycles run. One of my friends grandpa restored old cars as a hobby ;and noticed my interest so one afternoon he pulled an old buck rake( Abuckrake was a model A Ford that they had taken the body off of ,and made it into kind of a tractor)into my parents driveway and said if it was alright with them he would just give it to me to tinker with since it had just been sitting out in a pasture for years and didn’t run he thought it would give me some good experience. Well when my friends parents came over to pick them up that evening they found us out in the pasture sitting on buckets on that ole buck rake just flying back and forth across the pasture. I had got it running and we were just trying it out. Needless to say Gramps came over the next morning and the buck rake was gone. So that’s how things got started, I had the reputation that I could get anything running And so enters Nicky Hovie; Nickie hovie had a real nice sixty three chevelle convertible Yellow,Black interior 327 4 spd ,nice car .Well he drove in and said he was given an old motorcycle and the motor was froze up and wondered if I thought I might want to try to get it running for him. I said sure thing ,so the next day he brought it over and we put it in my parents garage. Some one had painted it White with household interior paint and it really looked bad but It was an Indian Motorcycle. I pulled out the spark plugs and filled the cylinders with diesel fuel and let it set. In a couple of days I put it in gear and with the sparkplugs still out I rocked it backward and the engine broke loose. Now I could use the kick starter and I checked to se if I could get spark and I could so I had new spark plugs and put them in and with fresh gas I tried and tried but could only get it to pop. The next Saturday Nickie came over to see how I was coming and I jumped on the kick starter and It popped and Nickie got all excited .”lets pull it with my car” he said So I proceeded to get a rope, tied my end to the bumper hitch of Nickies Chevelle and handed the other end to Nickie.Well we got all straight so that I could pull him straight down the street and we were ready .----These old Indians were a lot like the old Harley 74 In that they had what people called a suicide clutch as the clutch was down at your foot and the shifter was next to the tank But on the opposite side than that of a Harley for some unknown reason. ---So I eased out on the clutch of the Chevelle,the rope became taunt, and down the street we went. As we gained speed Nickie stomped on the clutch on the ole Indian and I heard bap---bap-bap-varoom as Nickie roared past with a huge smile on his face. Un be known to me Nickie had foolishly tied the rope onto the handlebars of the motorcycle. As you can guess when Nickie came to the end of his rope things progressively got worse. Dave Shriver

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