Ok, I know it’s ancient but my main ride today is a 1939 Indian Chief. I learned how to ride on one just like it in 1965 as a 19 year old boy from Brooklyn NY and a life long love affair began. My Dad often told me stories about riding Indians in his youth (1930s) and I was intrigued. I had already bought a 1939 Plymouth(red!)for transportation and belonged to an antique car club. There I mentioned my Dad’s Indian experience and a member said he knew of an old Indian Chief for sale near Allentown PA. He was able to purchase the 1939 Chief for me, sight unseen, for the princely sum of $75.00. In truth, I had never seen an Indian before and I guess I half expected it to look like a (then) modern motorcycle, only older. Wow! Was I disappointed when I first saw it: faded blue paint, rusty, engine frozen up, totally strange looking leaf spring front end, foot clutch (left foot) and stick shift (right hand), backwards controls (left hand throttle), something called “manual spark advance” (right hand) which rotated the distributor, no return spring for the throttle or spark and where was I going to get parts! About the only thing that made sense was that the hand and foot brake were on the right side. Well, through the antique car club I was introduced to Chuck Myles, then in his mid 20’s who was a local Indian “nut” and had experience and parts beyond his years. I also located Colavito’s Motorcycles in Amboy, NJ, a place my father had gotten parts for his Indians as a boy. Turns out Colavito had a warehouse overflowing with obsolete Indian parts: the mother lode. Need a ’39 engine: $25.00! Linkert carb: $1.00! Those days are gone forever!
When my Dad found out that I had purchased a motorcycle, even an Indian, he was furious with me: no scooter trash in his family! Seems it was OK for him to ride but not so for his son. Having no where else to store the Chief, I rode it down the coal chute into my grandmother’s brownstone apartment building basement in Brooklyn and there disassembled the Chief piece by piece until it covered the floor. That’s when I discovered the 1st Law of Motorcycle Restoration: “Everything is broken”. Each piece was cleaned, restored or replaced and taken out of the basement in the back of my Plymouth to my Uncle’s large garage in Staten Island for reassembly. After about a year, it was ready to go. What a sensation. This was my first bike and I had a lot of learning to do but since I was learning for the first time on a vintage bike it became second nature to me. I didn’t have to unlearn anything and I felt at home with what to others would be a confusing set up. I was drafted into the Army in 1967 and sadly wound up selling my beloved Chief in 1970 for $150.00. Ouch!
