A note from Crazyhorse: I was going through the Cantina and saw that you were featuring the old stories of our lifestyle. So I sat down and wrote this. It's my story of how I came to be the person I am.
I have a few other stories, good old crazy adventure stories from the early ‘80s. Nothing extensive, just short little pieces on a world gone by and how we lived in it. Here's the first.
In three years I'll turn 50. And I wonder, just how did that happen. It seems like only yesterday, I was a 20-year-old kid living fast and life's possibilities seemed infinite. As I am so busy keeping up with the pace of my life, I don't have the luxury of reflecting on my past very often. Sometimes it sucks that I am at the later half of my life. But when I do look back, I would never trade growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was a time of youth, freedom, and pushing past boundaries. It was a time of exploration.
I explored outer space, inner consciousness and pushed the known limits with sex, drugs and rock and roll. There was no HIV or over-indulged US presidents telling us how to live our lives. It was a time when being pulled over by a cop meant your biggest fear was not jail, but that he would tell your parents. Kids respected their parents. It was an amazing time when creativity knew no bounds. Plus you could buy a good used Harley for $1500 or less, sometimes a lot less. I bought a sweet hot rod Mustang for less than a grand. Parents threw cocktail parties and watched the Playboy Club on TV while we kids snuck out, exploring the nighttime neighborhood. It was a world I hoped would never change and whose frontiers seemed limitless.
It was a world ripe for the “outlaw biker culture.” I was always into bikes, even as a toddler. One day in 1963 I heard a low noise behind the house. As fast as my little legs could carry me, I ran out to the bluff behind our house that overlooked the entrance to the Bissell Bridge. Roaring onto the bridge was a man dressed in black leather on a long sleek bike, looking as though he was enjoying life at a level I had never known.
My friend Donna lived next door to a bar called the Polish Home. On weekend nights, while our parents dressed in “groovy clothes” and drank cocktails, Donna and I would sneak out of bed to watch the tough lean dudes in black leather, pull up on their Harleys. As the night wore on, the action became more extreme, with burnout contests, stoplight drags races and “heated discussions.” It was so exhilarating to watch. I sometimes wonder if those dudes ever looked up and saw our little 4-year-old faces watching them. I couldn't wait to grow up and be a part of that world.
Fast forward to 1976. I was 16-years-old and free. A driver's license and a ‘69 Mustang was a passport out of my little neighborhood and into the big exciting world I had only been able to gaze upon from afar. I drove a truck for my dad all over the state of Connecticut and at one of the stops, I heard about a biker party at the top of a mountain called West Peak in Meriden, CT.
That night two little “very worldly” 16-yr-old girls made their way into the darkened park. Audrey jumped out, jimmied the gate open and up the mountain road we went. It was a long, dark drive, miles away from any phone (no cell phones back then, baby. We lived for the sight of a pay phone.) When we got up to the top, the trees opened up into a huge parking lot filled with bikes.
You could see men in black leather everywhere. And there we were, right in the middle. I stopped the car, and it wasn't long before guys surrounded us. We chatted a bit and they brought us beers, but we didn’t get out of the car. After a half hour we said our goodbyes and left. It wasn’t a good idea to be the only women in a vast expanse of drunken bikers, many dark miles from any help.
It was right around that time I discovered a magazine that featured all the elements I craved, wild motorcycles, tough men, drugs and sex. I eagerly sought out Easyriders magazine each month and read it completely front to back over and over. It was also around this time one of my father's customers, Bob Derendes of Rocky Hill, turned me onto the art of custom painting. He said the combination of my gear-head and art background, made me a natural. He showed me wildly colorful paint charts from companies like Metalflake and House of Kolor.
While my dad yakked endlessly with his customers, I sat in his truck, pouring through every custom paint book I could find. Nighttimes were spent in my Mustang filled with my friends, driving fast, drinking hard, and living life like every day was the last.
But the innocent teen life had to end. I came from a very blue-collar family, and as the youngest cousin, I was the last hope of breaking the cycle of poverty and dead end jobs. So off I went to college in NYC, hoping to become the first college graduate in my family.
NYC in 1978 was a wild place. The B52s played the after hours clubs as the ‘70s wound down. But the next summer, 1979, my dad took ill and I took a job in a local factory to help my family. I would never go back to school, becoming instead a certified welder/fabricator. But one particular moment in that factory would change the course of my life. At the time I had no idea just how much.
John Beardmore, an old high school bud teased me one night. “So the hot shot artist is back here working. Down here grubbing with the rest of us bums. Hey if you're such a hot shit why don't you paint my bike tank?” he sneered at me that night and I was challenged. So I did, airbrushing a very decent copy of a Frank Frazetta painting on the top of his blue Sporty tank.
I was almost done when he insulted a friend of mine one night. Sure it was true. She was a skank whore, but I stood up for my friends, right or wrong. I told him to take it back or I'd remove the mural from his tank.
“Screw you, you ain't got the balls.” John had quite the wake up call the next morning when I drove my Mustang right up the sidewalk of his house, hitting the front steps. He came rushing out screaming. I threw the tank (minus a mural) right at his chest. After that I became known as “That crazy little chick that paints bikes.”
My boyfriend Derek began buying old Triumphs. At one point I came very close to buying my dream bike, a ‘64 Pan with a VL springer front end. But the day I was due to pay for it, my dad confessed that he was behind in the house taxes. I helped him out and used the few bucks I had left to buy a '66 500 Triumph Trophy.
Swap meets in those days were treasure troves, that only now, I can fully appreciated. We'd spend all day, picking through the piles, making deals, and making friends. It was unusual to go home after a swap meet. Chances are you'd meet someone who was having a party. You'd go hang in a house with walls were decorated with Dave Mann centerfolds and bike parts. Drink beers, smoke weed, sitting in worn out, cast-off furniture as money was spent on bike stuff, not frivolous things like store bought home furnishings and new clothes. A big clothing purchase was a NEW leather jacket and chaps, maybe a silver skull ring or two. Easyriders was filled with ads for companies like Zango Bango jewelry. They sold stash pouches, for when “you're going into a heavy neighborhood.” We thought days of lazy weekend swap meets and bikes parked in living rooms would never end. We'd be young and bad assed forever.
Arlen Ness tells the story of how he had one bike he kept changing parts and paint on every year 'cause he couldn't afford to build another. Back then Arlen was a young guy with brown hair and a sly smile, always coming out with wild colorful creations.
Jump to 1991. I was 31-years-old and down on my luck. A failure and a family embarrassment, due to the whole biker thing, I found myself painting out my first shop again– my parent’s basement. A friend from high school, Dave Bolasavitch was in a similar situation. Manufacturing jobs were few and far between after the Reagan/Bush years. We spent our days painting in my parent’s backyard and scamming for rent and grocery money. I pipe-dreamed about finding a real job. Dave dreamed about us finding fame and fortune as famous bike painters who are featured on the covers of Easyriders. We even prayed for straight reality. We’d both find respectable jobs, and the biker world we grew up with and hoped would last forever, would away as we became honest, responsible citizens who paid their bills on time.
Eight months later Dave died of a massive heart attack and I looked south to Florida, a place where a new world of custom bike building was growing like crazy. It was a small seed, of a future business, that would explode into one of the biggest and most successful trends on the planet. I packed up and headed south.
Fast Forward to 2007. I have been published many times over as a motorcycle journalist with my articles appearing in nearly every major motorcycle magazine including Easyriders, American Iron and The Horse. I'm an author of four successful books, two of them on motorcycle painting. My paintwork has won some of the top awards in the country. People call me one of the most respected bike painters in the country.
I see the world from the seat of a motorcycle, riding all over the country and parts of the world, from Laconia, NH to Spearish, SD, to the Florida Keys to Tahiti. And the legendary Arlen Ness, whose creations and painting I eagerly pored over, knows me by name. The man, Keith “Bandit” Ball, behind all those old Easyriders I lived for and through, is a friend and supporter. Dave's pipedream of the cover of Easyriders came true not just once, but twice, one being my own personal bike.
The Harley I dared not even dream about, my husband and I built. It was a chopper that was designed for me, but is in fact, an investment that must be sold in order to pay bills. After the bike was finished, I sat in the dark shop, gazing up at the incredibly detailed chopper on the lift. I thought of Dave and all the dreams we shared. At that moment I know I will never let this bike get away. Somehow I will figure out a way to keep it.
There are other magazine covers as well. And very soon, I will be featured in one of the most respected magazines in America. Southern Living is featuring a story on my work and bikes. This will be the first time they run a motorcycle related story.
My parents passed away a number of years ago and did not live to see their disappointing daughter become less of a disappointment. And while I'm not able to buy that elusive ‘64 Panhead or luxury items like plasma TVs, I live a life that is far better than the hell days of being two weeks late on my rent and hoping against reality that somehow, I would not end up living in whatever junk car I was driving at the time. But always, underneath it all, there is that little girl, who romanized about a world on two wheels. I was just a teen who sat at a swap meet table with her young friends, whiling away a lazy sunny Sunday, not thinking beyond the setting sun.
