Why We Ride Page #2

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basic understanding of 'em.

Which means that anybody

who had these early bikes,

you know, it wasn't a

convenience, it was a dedication.

It was all about the

racing and, predominantly,

the two major bike companies

were Harley versus Indian.

And these guys were out

there with these bikes with no brakes,

going around the track,

close to a 100 miles an hour.

You've gotta be kidding

me, horrible tires, horrible chassis,

lots of horsepower, how do you

manage that stuff, you know?

Well, you just do it until you crash and

then you figure out where to go from there.

It was a very dangerous sport. If

they went off the outside of the track,

they went through the fence and flew

through the air, into who knows what.

A lot of, lot of good racers

and young men died racing.

Until Henry Ford did his thing,

cars were basically for the wealthy.

So a young enterprising man,

who was a working man,

a working family, his dream would

be to buy a motorcycle and a sidecar.

My great-grandfather, Fritzie Baer,

had a '23 Chief with a sidecar.

Brought his pregnant wife to the

hospital in a motorcycle and a sidecar,

and the newborn baby came

home... in the sidecar.

Over the next five years, she

had another three more children,

and all four of us were

brought home in that side car.

You would had to have lived

through the Depression

to know what

the period was like.

People didn't have

a lot of money.

I can remember

when a can of pork and beans

and a roll was a wonderful

meal, I'm not kidding.

Fun was hard to come

by. Entertainment was expensive.

As people got into

motorcycling and the club,

the club itself became

their entertainment.

And this club

with Fritzie running it,

there was all kinds

of things to do.

They were busy, you know,

four or five nights a week.

They went out

on these little rides.

It just went on and on.

And, of course,

back then you got dressed up.

You dress and act

like a gentleman, or you got fined.

And if you couldn't abide by the

rules... you're out.

And people are begging

to get in.

Always had a

waiting list for members.

And then once they started

with the auxiliary,

now it became joint affairs.

Now we had boys meeting girls.

And you know

how that works out.

After the Depression,

it was hard to keep those big factory

things kinda going in those years,

and the AMA got together

with the manufacturer and said,

"Let's create a form of racing that

would be more production bikes. "

So they started this thing

called Class C.

And it was a bike that was based

on production model bikes,

and it was basically built around

Indians and Harley-Davidsons.

You can't know about racing,

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