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What were the early days of working as a
mechanic like for you?
Well, I was in Stockton, Kansas with my junior rider and he fell off on the first day and broke his collarbone. So here I am - a nineteen year old
kid in the middle of the United States with a race bike and no rider -- and this crazy little redheaded kid came up to me and said “That BSA looks
pretty fast, can I maybe ride it tomorrow?” I asked around about him and everybody said “He’s got junk for motorcycles, but he doesn’t crash and he’s not crazy.” That kid was Gary Nixon. So Nixon rode my bike the next day; the first day he didn’t make the main event on his Triumph, the second day he won the main event by half a lap on my Gold Star. Gary rode for me for the rest of the year and he rode for me part of 1960, but he didn’t want to come to California and I didn’t want to move to the midwest, so he went his direction and I went back to California. I parked my bike and one day I got a call from Neil Keen, he said “I blew my bike up and I need a ride for a couple of weeks. Can
I ride your bike?” I said “Sure, no problem ‘cause it’s just sittin.” The second night out at Ascot he won the main event and that was the start of my connection with Neil Keen. He never did go back to riding his own bike; he finally got it together by getting other people to ride his bike and he con- tinued to ride mine. In 1961 at Ascot, there were twenty-nine main events and we won twenty and you know, Ascot in the ‘60’s was a national every Friday night. If you had a letter on your number plate, you were good.
You joined up with Yamaha in the late 1960s to build engines and manage their factory race teams — how was it stepping
into that new role?
Yeah, I had gotten out ‘cause Neil moved to the midwest and I didn’t want to move. He moved and I parked my bike, I was just working in a shop as a mechanic. I got a call from Yamaha that they needed a race mechanic, so I went down and
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