Motorcycle Heroes: My Life in Motorcycles Part 2

During my childhood, many of the people who became icons to me were athletes. A few were, of course, ballplayers in various sports. Most of them, however, were motorcycle racers. I loved playing sports but had almost no ability to excel in any team sport involving a ball. I did have a fanatical love of motorcycles.

My introduction to motocross was a product of a Fourth of July celebration in Rabun County. The location of the Covered Bridge Shopping Center in Clayton was a vacant parcel of land during the 1970’s. As part of the (I think) Bicentennial celebration, a temporary motocross track was bulldozed and a day of racing commenced. Mama and Daddy loaded us up with a picnic and went to check it out. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I remember Mike Penland’s amazing ride, and I think Perry Thompson raced as well. I was hooked. I bought my first mini-bike a few weeks later with my own money and started reading Dirt Bike magazine whenever I could beg Mama to buy a copy for me.

In the days before the Internet, and with only three television channels, reading magazines was my only link to the stars of motocross. I spent half of my childhood ripping around the woods at home on my dirt bike, pretending I was racing with Marty Smith, Mike Bell, Bob “Hurricane” Hannah, and Andre Malherbe. They were who I wanted to be when I grew up.

By the early 1980s, the coolest event in the sport for me was known as the Superbowl of Motocross. In later years the format simply became called Supercross. Held in NFL sized football stadiums across the country, the venues made for excellent viewing. There wasn’t a bad seat in the house. By 1984 the event had made its way to Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium. It was scheduled for the first week of March. It was also the week of my birthday. To this day I can’t believe that I begged and conned Daddy into taking me to Atlanta for the race. We’d been to several Braves games with my grandparents, but Daddy never, ever went down there. Unless he was hauling a load of liquor, but that’s a story for another time. He didn’t want to drive us himself, so he bribed a young guy who worked with him to drive us. Steve Coleman also rode dirt bikes, and being a fun-loving guy himself, agreed to haul us to the big city.

For the week leading up to the race I couldn’t contain my excitement. I was up a daylight on Saturday morning. The races were at night and Steve was to pick us up in late afternoon. By twelve noon I was ready to go. By three o’clock I was pacing the floor. The rotary-dial Bakelite phone on the living room table began ringing. Mama grabbed it. She rolled her eyes as she hung up the phone. It was Steve. He was at Toyota of Easley buying a truck and running late. Really late. He was still signing papers. Back in those days it took two hours at best to get back to Clayton.

Steve finally slid into our driveway around dusk and we piled into his new and tiny regular cab Toyota pickup for the drive south. About 20 miles from the stadium, we hit gridlock. Steve tried out the off-road capabilities of his new truck and drove several miles on the shoulder of the interstate. We parked in the lot with minutes to spare, and the race was amazing.

Even after I achieved the dream of all teenagers by getting a license and a car, I kept up with the sport well into my thirties. I’ve managed to stay into motorcycling since age four, and still ride every chance I get. I moved away from motocross, into enduro bikes, and later began riding dual sport and adventure bikes. I’m constantly amazed by how quickly time slips by. The race seems like yesterday.

I saw awhile back that motorcycling legend Marty Smith was killed in a dune buggy crash at the age of 63 last April. Just days ago Mike Bell died while riding his mountain bike. He was also 63. Their generation of racers is rapidly fading away and some great memories of my childhood along with them