A Six Shooter And A Panhead. A Story Of The Old, Wild West.

A Six Shooter And A Panhead. A Story Of The Old, Wild West. 

Originally published in BIKER December 2009

It was 1972, and I just got damned annoyed at riding in the rain. I was really tired of ducking that relentless rooster tail of water flying off my fenderless front wheel. If there was a Weather Channel back then, I didn’t know about it. It seemed that every time I threw a leg over my scoot, I found precipitation. The tinkling pianos of “Riders On The Storm,” by The Doors, seemed to constantly play in my head.

A friend had recently spun me a tale of New Mexico, a tale of him and his girlfriend and the desert. New Mexico was the desert, and I could ride my panhead in the heat next to modern day Western outlaws and hippies, and we could carry guns, and shoot whenever we wanted. I’d had enough of the New York rain, enough of helmet laws, and enough of the bullshit. I found myself a decent, used newspaper van, a white ’69 Ford Econoline, 3/4 ton, with a wide green stripe. I bought a sturdy new plank, for loading the Harley, and called my girlfriend. I told her I was leaving for New Mexico, and if she wanted to come, she should show up in the morning.

Though largely untested, the van ran fine. I drove as much as I could, then tried to sleep on the plank in the back, while Rose, my girlfriend, drove. Somewhere near Oklahoma City, she told me to look out the window at the fireworks. It was the Fourth Of July. We had huevos rancheros for breakfast in Texas, and actually started to feel the wonderful, dry desert heat. When we got to Albuquerque, we had to find my friend, Dino. He was working, at the time, and we found him at his place of employment:  Octopus Car Wash. 

Everybody had a gun in Albuquerque. All the folks coming through the car wash had guns under the seat, Dino said. You could wear one on your hip, unconcealed, like a cowboy, but empty in town. This really was the Wild West. Dino had done two tours in Vietnam, and I’d been there for 13 months. The thing we both liked about Vietnam, was the guns and explosives. So Rose and I familiarized ourselves with Albuquerque, and bought supplies. We got a small apartment with a brick enclosed concrete patio, to securely keep the motorcycle away from thieves. We bought a used black and white TV, a large cast iron frying pan, a military entrenching tool, a Ouija Board, and a Ruger single action six-shooter .357 magnum, with leather cowboy style gun belt. The Ouija Board met an early demise, when the girls decided to hold a seance, and wound up scaring the shit out of themselves. Me and Dino escorted Mr. Ouija out into the canyon, and blasted him to pieces with whatever we had in our arsenal. Old, blue-haired Mrs. Grimsley, was our landlord.

My first real motorcycle ride through the hot New Mexico desert actually occurred as a result of my van breaking down on the way back from my first weekend of debauchery, in Juarez, Mexico. We’d stopped for gas in the town of Truth or Consequences. When the van wouldn’t start, we pushed it away from the pumps and left it there with the promise to pick it up the next day. Rose and I squeezed into another car full of mescal-drinking partiers and headed back to Albuquerque.

The 1960 panhead had eight-over fork tubes, with stock rake, and short z-bars, but it was still low enough to ride up the plank and into the back of the van. As was common practice at the time, there was no air cleaner on the carburetor, just a small cover to keep out medium-sized critters and birds. There were no shocks, just some home-made black painted struts. I’d kept a couple of old tires in the back of the van, and used them as a cushion between the bike and the van wall. The Harley was tied to the van wall with thick, black telephone wire, the kind that ran along the tops of telephone poles. This system never failed to safely transport my bike. The plank had angled metal brackets on one end, that hooked onto the bumper.

The problem, as I saw it on the map, was gas. I’d put a 3.25 gallon coffin tank, mounted Frisco style, on the top frame rail. Because of the angle and positioning of the fill spout and petcock, I guessed I only had about 2 or 2.5 gallons of usable gas. I was still running the stock Linkert carburetor. There was no speedometer or odometer, so I really never knew how far I could go on a tank of gas. I estimated I was getting about 25 miles to the gallon.  

Belen was the first big town to the south where I could get gas, and from there I was pretty sure I could make it to Socorro. What worried me was the 72 miles of desert, from Socorro to Truth or Consequences - 72 miles with no gas stations. I brought with me only a bag of basic tools to get the truck running, or fix the bike, if need be. I would be experiencing the freedom of riding with no helmet, and the New York white skin on my forehead would suffer accordingly. Running only on fumes, I triumphantly reached the gas station in Truth or Consequences. The blisters on my forehead were just beginning to pop, but the van started up and ran like a champ for an easy trip home.

I’d worked in Albuquerque for minimum wage until Dino and I both found work at a place called Ansley Blowpipe, making, of course, blowpipe. Lonnie, the owner, taught us how to rivet the sections of pipe, and we worked in the scrap yard, under a tree. I’d come to find out that the blowpipe we made was used to carry fan-blown sawdust from sawmills, to the big tee-pee-shaped, smoke belching sawdust burners that prevailed around the mills. To Lonnie, Bob and the rest of the guys, Dino and I came to be known as “the shade tree mechanics.” And late one Saturday night, near the end of a six-pack and cheap quart of vodka, we got a phone call from Lonnie. 

Dino, Janie, Rose and I were all pretty much drunk. Lonnie, it turned out, was up in Espanola at the sawmill, and would be needing a couple of extra “hands” in the morning. He gave us directions to the dirt road and trailer where they’d be. If we came tonight, he said, we’d get breakfast in the morning. Pure and simple, this sounded like an adventure, and we started loading the guns. The girls, pure and simple, didn’t want us to go. The panhead, we figured, would save us on gas.

It was probably sometime after midnight when we got out onto the interstate and rode out of Albuquerque. It was a dark and lonely highway, and the small Bates headlight did little to cut through the darkness at highway speed. My eyes were tired and somewhere out in the barrens I saw a shadowy object that looked like a body. I slowed and started to pull to the side, thought better of it, and poured on the gas. Dino saw it, too. Drunk as we were, it gave us the creeps. By the time we found the work trailer, it was sometime in the wee hours of the morning. We woke up everybody with the Harley, but they gave us some blankets, and we crashed on the floor.

My head was throbbing, it was getting light out, and Lonnie was cooking bacon. Co-workers were moving around the work trailer, stepping over me and Dino. I felt like I was in a fishbowl. Dino’s eyes looked like red-rimmed sinkholes. My mouth was dry and tasted like dirty socks. I felt like shit. Lonnie fed us good, then told us he wouldn’t be needing us that day after all. I was more relieved than surprised. He apologized, he was really sorry, he said, but I was kinda glad. We were in no shape to work. The sun was coming over the mountains and the air outside was fresh.

We got back on the panhead and continued our Western adventure. Just by chance, we happened to find a liquor store in Espanola, and bought a small, flat bottle of vodka. It was right around 8 AM when we cracked the cap and took our first sip. 

The Western landscape looked like something out of a John Wayne movie. We sipped as we rode south on the mostly empty interstate highway. Dino began popping road signs with his 9 mm, shooting from the back of the bike like an old-time stagecoach robber, from the high-speed perch on the pillion pad. Fresh air, open road, vodka and target practice. This was glorious. This was great sport. Dino swore he hit every one, but I couldn’t tell and didn’t care. The signs passed in a blur and the prairie was vast; I saw no puff of dust. There was nothing but the rising sun, the open road, and the sweet roar of the Harley, accented by the occasional crack of the pistol. 

When Dino ran out of bullets, he unsnapped my holster, and slid out the six-shooter. He fired a shot at about the same time as an official-looking car drew abreast in the left lane. It wasn’t a police car, but it had an insignia on the door and a yellow “gumball” light on the roof. Dino had the revolver in his right hand pointed skyward when we made eye contact with the “official”, who immediately assessed the situation, and dropped back about a quarter of a mile. Dino later told me that when he first saw the car, he reached back and put his hand over my license plate. 

I flogged my iron horse all the way to Bernalillo, but the official stayed behind us maintaining a safe quarter-mile. In a cloud of dust, and at highway speed I got off fast at an exit and tried to shake him, blowing stop signs and making fast turns. Up ahead I saw a gas station, recessed off the road and quickly pulled in and hid the bike behind a parked van on the side of the building. We stripped off our leather jackets and gunbelts. I grabbed a broom that was out by the pumps and started sweeping, trying to look like I worked there. The official car drove by slowly…and continued on.

A cute girl pumping gas into a beat-up pickup truck turned out to be the daughter of Bob, a guy we worked with, who was up in Espanola. Dino told her the story of how we were hiding from the “sheriff.” She offered to take our leather jackets and gun belts, and said we should follow her to her house which was just down the road. The official must have made a u-turn because he came by again, going slowly, suspicious and gawking. The actual gas station attendants were cool; they kind of detached themselves and watched the whole thing from the side. They seemed glad to have someone else sweeping. We waited until we thought it was safe, waved goodbye to the gas station guys, and followed the pickup truck a few miles down the road. 

Our “escape” proved successful and we “hid out” at Bob’s house for a good portion of the day, even drank some more vodka. And, yes, I did have some explaining to do when I got home. 

Rose and I left Albuquerque on Halloween, when snow covered the top of nearby Sandia Mountain and early squalls blocked the northern passes. There was no way for me to hide the big, spreading panhead oil stains on the clean concrete patio. Mrs. Grimsley was irate and glad to see us go. We packed the panhead, the TV, the entrenching tool, and the frying pan, and headed for Denver, my first top-end teardown on a Harley, and a long, cold winter. It was not exactly John Wayne, but that was what life was like in the old Wild West.