I posted a couple of days ago and almost immediately thereafter I got an e-mail from my niece Heather, my older brother Butch's daughter.  She lives in Maine and appears to be doing quite well for herself.....we stay a little in contact, which is fairly good for Piersons as that goes.  I got to thinking about what kind of vehicles, besides cars, we opt for transportation.  The fact is that we have had several other vehicles that we used to get around.  Our grandparents got around with horse and buggy or wagon to start with.  In the 20th century we did other things, with other vehicles.

     I remember my dad ( Bill ) telling that when he got out of service in late 1945 or early 1946 he bought an Indian Motorcycle.  He said that it would fly.He told me that when he got out of the Navy at the age of 20, he weighed about 115 lbs.  At 5'10" that's pretty bony.  He said he was hauling down a country road on the bike and came to a stop sign ( that his father would have already stopped at a quarter of a mile back and gone right through).    He stopped and when he was ready to start up again, a cross wind caught him and the bike and he lost his balance and fell over.  The bike weighed about twice what he did and he couldn't stand it back up to restart it.  He had to wait about half an hour before someone else drove down the road to help him get it back up and running.     This wasn't the only non-four wheeler that my dad was involved with.  He had wanted to be a fighter or bomber pilot in WWII but got in to the war too late.   He was a side-turret gunner on a B-26 in the Pacific theater.   He definitely had the pilot bug though.  He and his niece's husband (Johnny Poznich) went into partnership on a Taylorcraft airplane. This was when we lived in Cherryvale, Kansas in 1950 and 1961. It was what they called a tail dragger. (as you can see from the photo).  Johnny had a pilot's license and my dad wanted one so they bought the plane and would go up periodically and fly around, practice landings and takeoffs, etc.  Don't know what kind of aerobatics they were into at that time, I do remember hearing the term Hammerhead Stall a time or two.  I (at the age of 10) even got to fly the plane one time.  Johnny was piloting and said, "Go ahead and take the stick and be the pilot."  I took the stick but could not move it in any direction, my feet did not touch the pedals on the floor, I could not see out of the front or side windows, but got to hold the stick for about 30 seconds and tell everyone I flew a plane when I was 10.    Dad and Johnny were even envisioning a pair of planes so they bought a frame of another Taylorcraft and put it into our garage.  Butch and I spend hours and weeks, ripping off the fabric and sanding the rust off the frame.  It was for naught, though, as my dad lost his job with Sherman-Williams paint company in Coffeyville, Kansas and we were not well off at all until he got back on in Orange, Texas at Spencer Chemical, where he quit working to take a job at Sherman-Williams and move back to Kansas.

     While we were in Cherryvale, my older brother Butch had a friend, Glenn Driscol that had a Cushman Eagle Motor Scooter.  I thought it fastest thing around.  Butch and Glenn would get a putter, a seven iron and two golf balls and head to the local golf course to play.  It was a par three 9 hole course so the two clubs they took (along with their level of play) were sufficient for the game at hand.  They never said what they scored, only that they had fun.  One time I was spending a week with my dad's mom (Granny) and Butch and Glen decided to come over and spend the night.  It was 60 miles from Cherryvale to Weir so it took them a couple of hours to get there, I think the top speed was only about 35 mph.  They looked a little wind blown when they got in, had lunch, drove around town a while (took less time to see the town that the trip to the town) and then Glenn decided that they would just go back the same afternoon.  After that summer Butch and I both had the motor scooter bug. 


        We nagged Dad, when we got back to Texas to get us a scooter.  About a year later when we were more financially recovered, he bought us an Allstate Scooter.    The scooter looked somewhat like the one here except that it was red.  You had to stomp the crank to get the engine started.  It had a centrifugal clutch on the motor that would engage the chain drive only after the motor reached 300 or more rpm.  The top speed the thing would reach was only about 20 mph, which sucked for the experienced and expert Butch, but was thrilling to Chuck "Green".  We lived in a new house, in a new subdivision.  There were only about 20 houses there when we moved in.  There were probably a dozen in various stages of construction.  Down the street were the newest starts in construction.  The houses were being built on the right side of the street and on the left side were big mounds (at least 30 ft in diameter and 12 ft high.  Butch and I went down there to ride "The Hills."  We were both dressed in gym shorts, no shirt and tennis shoes...standard uniform for playing outside in August in Orange, TX.  He said I could take the first ride...I don't know why I wasn't suspicious, but I wasn't.  The first hill was about 100 feet in front of me.  I gunned it and headed for the hill.  As also is the case in Orange, TX in August is to get some drenching rains on occasion.....we had had a couple of inches of rain a day or two before.  I went up the hill at full throttle.  At the crest of the hill, looking down on the other side, I saw the ruts.......about 6" wide and 6" deep.  The rut started at the top of the hill and about 3 feet below the crest, the rut took or at a 45 degree angle to the left, which the scooter followed like it had eyes.  I, on the other hand, continued down the center of the hill, sans the scooter.  If you have never seen a 12 year old crawl over dirt and rocks and gravel at 20 miles per hour to keep his soft white underbelly from dragging the terrain, you haven't seen a miracle.  After about 30 or 40 feet of crawling 20 miles per hour, my hands and knees were pretty torn up.  There was barely any dust on my belly, and no scratches.  Can't say the scooter made out so well.It looked more like the picture on the left, but not quite so bad.  When it turned over on its side, the oil must have gotten up in the piston and either shattered it or broke the crank shaft.   We had to push it home.  Butch was bound and determined to get it going again.  He started to tear it apart, with no idea of what was what.  The stuff he took off he piled up against the back wall of the garage.  When dad came home, he asked what happened. We told him the story.  He looked at the disassembled scooter and told Butch he took apart everything except what had the problem, the engine.  Dad took the head off the engine and you could see the broken piston.  He said he would see if he could find another and see if we could get it going again.......We did in a month or so.  The reassembly of the non-broken parts took the longest to get back together, the clutch, chain, throttle cable, foot brake........live and learn.

     When I got out of the Army in 1970, we moved in next door to my in-laws, John, Helen and Mike Gilmore.  John had bought Mike a Suzuki 350 motor cycle.  He would let me ride it every now and then.. One day I decided to take it to Weir and visit with my Mom and brothers.   The way to get to Weir was to take the 69 Bypass around Pittsburg, to 69 South and go west on 103 Highway to weir.  A trip of about 11 or 12 miles.  I made it over to Weir just fine and took my little brothers for a ride (Stan and Andy) and then headed back to P'burg.  While on the bypass, I was doing about 65 and a hardshelled insect hit me right between the "running lights"  (eyes) and almost knocked me off the bike.  I really thought someone had shot me.  I pulled over and stopped and checked my forehead to see if there was a hole with blood pouring out of it......nothing but a bump that had started to rise.  I was safe for the time being.....Now I understood why they recommend a helmet with  a shield in the front.....I obviously wasn't wearing it, left it with my bro - in - law.....ALWAYS used one in the future when riding.


     Some time around January of 1972 my older brother Butch decided he needed a motorcycle.  He wasn't going to get one of those kid's scooters like Mike's 350 cc suzuki.  He needed a 900 cc "Snortin Norton" motor cycle....It would probably do 135 mph or more...twice the speed I would drive in a car.   He went to test drive it when the outside temp was about 30 degrees.  He had a big thick mustache at that time, but not the full beard.  He drove it out of the store and was gone about 20 minutes or so.  When he got back his mustache was totally white from the ICE that was packed on it from his breath.   He went to brush it off and part of it broke off, hair and all.  He was not a happy camper.  His "stache" looked a little weird for a couple of weeks, until it grew back out.  Seemed to have the I'll have one better than you frame of mind. 


       If you can't remember, my dad's brothers were Dan, John and Bud.  I talked about Dan and Bud in my last post.  John gets some time here.  He also liked motorcycles.  I remember before my grandmother moved to Tennessee with Bud in 1975, John came by to visit one day.  He was on his BMW motor cycle.  It seemed like it was big enough to be a car on two wheels.  It didn't seem exactly right for someone that old to be a biker.  I never saw him on a bike before, I guess it was just a little unusual.









    His son Jack also liked bikes. I don't have a picture of any of his, but I think his wife said he had 47 in his garage about 10 years ago.
  He has travelled all over the US on his bikes with some friends that also have bikes.  I guess it has
 to be in you blood to make the most of it....I just didn't have the particular knack to handle the obstacles
 I ran into when I was biking.  I'm sure that no matter what kind of picture of a bike I would post here, Jack would have one in his garage....Maybe not now, I don't think his wife Mary was exceptionally happy with what he had then.


Oh, well.......I guess this is pretty much like any family with wheels of one sort or another.