Interesting story http://dcclassiccycles.dynamitedave.com/graveyard.html Motorcycle Graveyard 3 by cseward, on Flickr Motorcycle Graveyard by cseward, on Flickr
amazing.....Americans?!....if that had been some Kiwis finding an abandoned building full of bikes wrecks/parts....we would have backed the truck up the same night!!....not waited for the owner to give permission....
When I was working in Nelson an old boy told me how the war dept seized all motorcycles at the start of war in the area...never used them and buried them in the 1950's. Ford apparently had a dis assembly line for Model T's in Newmarket you'd take your old one in and they would scrap it to keep the prices up
Good story, If it was over here we may have organised one of our "monthly" rides to go on an expedition!
Lol!........
As part of my internet wanderings I stay in touch with a few most interesting charcters in the US, one of whom ran a Harley spare parts business for over 30 years. To do that you have to be a character. I sent one of them a link to the motorcycle graveyard above and I got this response. (Quite long so I have to break it into a few parts). Howdy Do! Thanks for the forwarded link to that nightmare collection of destroyed machines. I guess that I mostly feel "lucky" for getting to meet Anna Kohl in the flesh.......what a unique and sharp-witted (read: shrewd) woman, and what an unlikely "Collection"(TM) of burnt, busted, and beleaguered motorbikes! The dimly-lit vision of those twelve (or so) mangled and melted Ariel square Fours, sitting just inches away from a gaping hole in the second-story warehouse floor....... making it literally impossible to inspect them more closely..... will forever be congealed in the aging synapses of the Occipital Lobe of my brain. Ok, ok.....so I looked that term up on Google. I'm only human, dude! Kinda funny how the "legendary" tale has reached all the way to the far corners of the Earth. I shouldn't be surprised, considering the all-seeing "eye" of the innerwebs. I am glad to have gotten to that "legendary" place BEFORE it was sold-off to the money- grubbing youngster, who obviously cared more about turning a few greenbacks than he did about the machines themselves! From Anna Kohl, I was able to learn about the history of her husband, and meet a genuine character: the mythology of the place- and of the woman herself, reached me in Brooklyn through the mouth of a foolish young man that I was sharing a garage space with. Although some of the particulars turned out to be different than first "explained" to me by this scooter-trash kid...... Anna Kohl as a character didn't disappoint!!
This kid, Jim Haas, told me that there were "hundreds of old Indian motorcycles.... as well as examples of every marque known to man." While I was already somewhat used to him exaggerating about such things. Jim was a "recovering" Heroin addict....... and although he had stopped stabbing himself in the arm, his ability to spread copious amounts of B.S., was still active and healthy! After hearing his "stories" over and over, for several months.....and getting an independently verifying version of the tale from a second party....I decided it would be worth a journey up to Lockport, NY. I drove up in U-Haul's smallest box truck, thinking it was waaay to far to travel, if I wasn't actually prepared to drag something back to make the trip worthwhile. The whole deal was a bit shaky from the very start: Anna only opened up for "business" on Saturdays.......and then, not even EVERY Saturday.......so I realized that the whole journey could easily become a waste of time. Apparently, she would park a beat-up old Allstate Twingle in front of her house, as a signal that she was "open". If you didn't see it parked there......you shouldn't bother trying to interrupt her by ringing the bell........'cause she wouldn't answer the door! Imagine my joy, then, when I pulled up on the quiet and deserted two-lane road to her house........ 400 miles later....... to see the fabled Allstate sitting there in all of its rusty glory!! It was immediately obvious that Mrs. Kohl didn't suffer fools gladly. She was there for one reason only: to sell of any remaining motorcycles from her husband's decade's-long career as a BSA dealer - and "pack-rat" of EVERYTHING motorcycle related! He had died many years earlier, and she mentioned that she was also involved in the Dealership years ago. As a naive city-slicker, I simply had to try my luck with an "angle" or two. What a mistake!
We had been poring over several of the "almost" running bikes that were now moved from the dilapidated warehouses to one of her personal outbuildings on the property behind her house. One bike in question was a 1964 Ducati Monza Jr. 160cc machine. Everything appeared to be in decent shape, but the engine was seized. After she gave me her price on the machine, I hemmed and hawed for several moments........ just like every single other used vehicle buyer in the world, and stupidly said: "Well..... I won't have any idea why the engine is seized until I get the thing apart" Looking over at her quickly to see if I could "read" her facial expression, I couldn't help noticing that she maintained the exact same stony face that she had displayed since giving me the price! She simply said: "Yep, that is true, and THAT is still the price". Yikes! I felt like a complete jerk now! The price she quoted was actually extremely reasonable..... whether the engine was frozen or not! What was I doing?! Luckily..... I immediately said: "I'll take it, Thank You!" and we quickly moved on to the next object in question. It seemed that I was instantaneously "forgiven" for my foolish attempt to "talk her down". From that moment on, I didn't even entertain the idea of haggling with her. She had what appeared to be a Photographic Memory........ every detail of every bike in the building, and there were DOZENS and DOZENS, were memorized in terms of Year, Model, Condition, and most importantly. price! It was as if everything had been priced by her husband before he had died, and it was HER mission to sell them EXACTLY as he had intended
! Ultimately, I loaded: the '64 Ducati Monza Jr., a mid-sixties Norton Electra 400cc, a 125cc Benelli, a 1974 Benelli Tornado 650cc (the big-money purchase!), a 90cc Ducati 'Cadet', and a folding BSA paratrooper bicycle that had been part of her husband's personal collection since WWII. I purchased everything at the exact price that she mentioned to me! And she "volunteered" to give me a giant stack of 'The Enthusiast' magazines from the Early to Late '40's at a slightly discounted rate. Although I never laid eyes on a single Indian motorcycle.....let alone "hundreds of them"......I will never regret that interesting experience! I feel like I was graced by the presence of a Real Character from the world of Motorcycles.......and THAT alone was worth more than the "hundreds" of dollars that I made by getting those things running (and in a few cases NOT), and simply selling them at NYC prices. Heck, I might have even covered the costs of the truck rental, gas and hotel ??!!
that's a cool story bender !
Apart from some shed full of BMW stuff in the Norf Waikato you don't hear stories like this much here......
