It was 1982. I had just gone through my second divorce. I landed a new job at United Home Foods. They were a company that delivered a month’s supply of food to people who lived in the country. They had a sales staff who phoned people all over the state and sold them these monthly packages. They offered terrific beef from Nebraska sealed in plastic.
They ran all over the country with a fleet of brand new box trucks. I remember five Mercedes and five Volvos. My job was to maintain them. Any serious work went to the dealer. They were all under warranty. I did oil changes and lights and kept the diesel and electric refrigeration units working. I was on call 24/7 and lived next to the shop in a travel trailer. They paid me $500 a week, and I had a van and a credit card for anything I needed. It was the best job ever.
My supervisor was Glen Jackson. Glen was a ladies man. He was very charming and all the girls loved him. He had a crew of several girls working in the warehouse putting together orders and loading the trucks. They covered the whole state of Oklahoma. These girls all fooled around with Glen. Most of them were married and so was Glen.
We became great friends. I got in on that fooling around stuff a little. There was a gorgeous blond named Kelly who worked in the office. She fell for me and would come visit me in my trailer often. She was 19 and had a little baby. These were the most unfaithful married people I had ever seen.
We had a Christmas dinner 1982. The whole company was there. I noticed a little short blond named Donna. She worked in the finance division of the company. Her job was to get people to pay their food bills. She had this cute manner and voice no one could say no to. I asked if she wanted to go for a motorcycle ride. She said she would love to. She was separated but still married. She had a six year old daughter but she was with her dad in California. After a couple of rides on my 76 FLH I was in love. She seemed to like me too. We fit like a glove. We took a long weekend and rode to Santa Fe.
It was a great trip, the summer of ‘82. We did many more short rides that year. She loved riding. She was always good to go and never bitched about anything.
This company was very liberal about taking off. As long as I kept those trucks running, I could do anything I wanted. I was constantly buying and selling bikes and cars. I sold the Electra-Glide to my friend Ross. He owned it previously and I owned it before that. We just passed the thing around. I scored a real complete ‘47 Indian Chief from a friend of one of Donna’s relatives.
I gave 800 dollars for a complete Chief and most of another one in pieces. I brought the thing home and got it running for the first time in 20 years or so. I sold the basket job for $400. The reason I sold the Electra-Glide was for running money. Donna wanted her kid back and I drove her all the way to San Jose, but when we got there the father wouldn’t let her go.
We had to get the law involved and the girl ended up with child services while we drove all the way back to Oklahoma to engage a lawyer. Fortunately she knew a good one. He got her divorce filed and temporary custody. She traveled all the way back to California on a bus. I had a friend out there who gave her a place to stay and helped her get her daughter back. They showed up at the house where she was living just as her dad was loading up a U-haul to move to Ohio with the kid.
Donna called the police. They arrived, she showed them the custody papers and dad was forced to relinquish the kid. When they got back to Oklahoma, I got to know her daughter. Not a very nice child. The trauma of all the shit she’d been through messed her up. I had a daughter the same age. They got along good. I kept busy keeping the trucks running.
We rolled into 1983 and I tinkered with the Indian. I didn’t have a bike, but I did drive a ‘76 Eldorado. That’s what we drove to California. Gas was cheap back then. The national speed limit was 55.
Sometime around then I sold the ’76 Caddy and bought a ‘79 Eldorado. I was a Cadillac man in those days.
Donna and I split up for a little while around Christmas of ‘83. I realized I really loved her and didn’t want to lose her. We rode the old Indian for a while. I rebuilt the engine and it ran great. I had about 1200 dollars in it and I wanted another Electra-Glide. I traded it for a ’79 Glide.
Donna on the Indian her daughter standing behind her.
Donna in 1986 on a Honda I cut down for her.
The bike I traded the Indian for. The burgundy one is the orange ‘76 with a new paint job by me. I also painted the ‘79. It was originally gold.
The spring of ‘84 Donna and I took a week off and headed south on the ‘79 Electra-Glide. We planned to go all the way to Tucson. We took back roads to San Angelo. Roughly the route I had ridden a year before on my trip to the Big Bend. From San Angelo we rode to Van Horn and hit interstate 20 and 10. They run together there. The engine was making a whining noise and running rough. I had to keep adjusting the points. If I had electronic ignition it would have quit right there.
We made it to El Paso. I pulled it apart in a Kragen auto parts parking lot right across the street from Barnett’s Harley-Davidson. I strolled in and met Sherm Barnett. He was friendly but wouldn’t let me borrow a cam bearing puller.
I bought a Sifton 440 cam and a new inner bearing from him. I bought a puller in the local auto parts house that I was able to pull the bearing with. The early 80-inch Shovelheads were loaded with a cheap version of inner cam bearings. The Torrington bearing they used before was quality.
After about 30k miles it came apart. I recently found the same type bearing in my ‘98 Evolution engine. I replaced that one too. Anyway I was able to clean most of the pieces of the roller out of the cases with a flexible magnet. Some of it slipped through the crankcase breather gear and chipped of a piece off the case, but it didn’t hurt anything.
I wrenched it back together with limited tools, but then we didn’t have enough money to go on to Tucson. We headed up to Las Cruces and through Alamogordo and cloud Croft and then cruised through Ruidoso. Winding roads slid along verdant rolling hills scattered with pine trees and vistas overlooking Ruidoso lakes.
All the way Donna hung on like a trooper and never bitched about anything. It was early spring, March I think. We rode through Lincoln and saw all the Billy the Kid stuff, then over to Roswell and up to Clovis, where we got a room. The next day we peeled across the Texas panhandle against a terrible crosswind. We made it home on the rumbling too- old Shovelhead still running great. Soon after that it started blowing oil out of the breather hose. I pulled the oil pump apart and found a piece of cam bearing in the return pump. I found more pieces in the breather gear screen. If you have a virgin Shovel from ‘78-‘84 replace the inner cam bearing quick. Also if you have a ‘90-‘99 replace it.
During the summer of ‘84 the food company slipped downhill fast. I turned my job over to my buddy Ross Collins and sold the ‘79. I borrowed my friend Don Ward’s ‘71 Electra-Glide, put a full coverage insurance policy on it and Donna and I hit the road again. This time we headed west with the idea in mind to leave a bunch of drama in Oklahoma behind and find a new place to live.
We rode out of OKC in early July 1984. We headed back to New Mexico. That old bike was loaded down. We rode to Santa Fe again and met another couple on the road. They were from the Santa Fe area and Rode with us up through Chama where they still have a running steam train.
We crossed into Colorado and rode over the Wolf Creek Pass to Creede, where Bat Masterson once ran a saloon. We stopped for a while and had beers and listened to a band then headed back down to Pagossa springs. We stopped at this beautiful waterfall called Bridal Veil falls. We said goodbye to our new friends and rolled west to Durango where we got a room. Durango is a great town. We considered moving there but we kept going to Cortez the next morning.
On the way we rode up to the top of Mesa Verde and saw the Clift dwellings. It is crazy the things primitive people were able to accomplish. We rode up 666 to Monticello, Utah. Now it’s on highway 491. The first motel we pulled into didn’t have any business but they saw a couple on Harley as someone they didn’t want, so they told me flat out “we don’t have a room for you!” We straddled our ride and rumbled down the main street and found a much friendlier motel.
Next day we headed west on scenic 95 through Natural Bridges park and onto Hanksville. From there we took Highway 24 to 89 then hit 50 at Salina. We took 50 to the Nevada line where we camped by to road. We had a sleeping bag and we used it there.
I wanted a fire but didn’t have any matches or a lighter, so I pulled up some sticks and unhooked my battery negative cable and turned on the lights, and then I dipped a stick in the gas tank and held it by the battery terminal and touched the cable to the terminal. When the sparks hit the stick, we had a fire. We also had a pint of whiskey. We had a few shots and crawled into that bag and had a real good time. We slept like tired babies that night. No cell phone and no gun.
The next day we headed west on the loneliest highway in the US. Just west of Austin the rear tire blew. There we sat until an old yellow Chevy pickup with 4 big Indians in it stopped. We loaded that old dresser in the back and sat there with it all the way to the Honda dealer in Fallon. It was right next to Crown auto body which had painted my ‘55 Chevy in 1968. The same guy now owned the Honda dealer. I bought a tire and tube from him and put it on in the parking lot. I was stationed at NAAS (navy auxiliary air station) Fallon from ‘66 to ‘69.
We rode onto Reno where I found a friend I knew from the Navy. We decided that was the place for us. But we kept riding into San Francisco and found my old buddy Roark in Foster City. He helped Donna the year before, when she fought to get her kid back. I love that guy. He is still around and I hope he is well.
We hung around a couple of days and headed back to Reno to check on some jobs. Everyone wanted a local address so we headed south on 395 all the way to Barstow where we hit I-40 and headed home. It rained cats and dogs around Williams, Arizona. We stopped at Walmart and bought some of those yellow rain suits. We kept riding east. I can’t remember for sure where we spent the nights. I think Needles and Gallup.
We tired by the time we reached OKC two weeks from the day we left. That was the best two weeks of my life. Donna was awesome. We traded a ‘69 Coupe Deville to my cousin Jimmy for his ‘81 C20 Chevrolet truck. I hooked it to my 24-foot park model Travel-ease trailer and headed back to Reno. Ross held my old job. I loaded all my tools and all our clothes and Donna’s and her daughter into the truck and trailer and rolled to Reno.
We made that trip with no trouble and moved into an RV park in Reno. I got a job wrenching at Halman Chevrolet and Donna got on at Miller’s Outpost. We were flat broke by then and my old mom sent us 500 dollars. We did well in Reno and got married in September ‘84. Donna had problems and birth defects from a drug her mom took to prevent miscarriage in older moms. Turned out there was a class action lawsuit that Donna never took advantage of. She didn’t think she could get pregnant again but after 2 years of sex with her every night, she got pregnant about 5 minutes after I married her, go figure.
I got a better job working at Sierra Sid’s truck stop as a mechanic. I got a license to do smog tests. I bought an ‘81 moto guzzi 850T that had been on fire for 300 bucks. A little rewiring and spray paint and a Yamaha seat and I had a cool bobber.
Here is a shot of my old pal Ross Collins and the evil Midget Mike Cook. He has been on monster garage and he was the paper boy in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Ross has been my best friend since 1969 I have mentioned him before and Little Mike has been my friend since I first met him in Ross’s shop in the late ‘90s. Mike’s dad owned Steve Cook Creations, the finest custom cars ever built, like Dave Kindig in Utah only no tv show.
I traded the Guzzi for a ‘51 Ford Pickup with a Buick motor. I got it running good and Donna and I stopped by the Harley shop just browsing. At that time it was a small friendly dealer. McDonald’s H-D. McDonald himself told me I could have this limited edition ‘85 FXR if I could come up with 1000 dollars. They were using Ford credit at that time. I sold the pickup for 1000 dollars and bought a new Harley. Donna was several months pregnant. It was around March of ’85 and still chilly in Reno, but I owned a brand new Harley. In early June we went for warm winding mountain ride down to Placerville and part of scenic highway 49 in the gold rush country. We never had a problem of any kind.
My Boy was born on July 11, 1985. Our 7/11 boy, we named him William Andrew after me and my father. We called him Andy. In 1988 we moved to Vegas. The rest of the story is 12 years of hard work and wheeling and dealing to survive. Our relationship suffered because of drama stuff not related to bikes. so I will end this tale here. More later.
–Bill May
