At the Vintage Motorcycle Show

Last Saturday, in the bleak and sometimes pouring rain, I drove out to the AMCA Viking Chapter’s annual vintage motorcycle show. It was held on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, in the Progress building, so I was allowed the cheap thrill of driving my car on the grounds where I’d only been before on foot, in August heat, trudging through crowds of energetic fairgoers.

There were a few soggy vendor tents sunk into the lawn on the north side of the building. Men with long-sided mustaches presiding over tables of cycle parts: pipes and pedals and handles and what-not. A junk table of easter eggs awaiting the perfect need to walk by and take notice. There were bikes of dubious heritage standing in the rain, for sale but wet, and more grim-faced vendors, so I ducked my head and went inside.



I came in on the north side, where no one was selling tickets. I decided to chance it. Just to my right was a set of Royal Enfields, a line of bikes that flourished in England before being bought out by the Indian concern they'd outsourced their labor to in the nineties. Beside them some Triumphs, another English brand that went out of business, then was resurrected on a wave on nostalgia and technology. Hondas in the far corner, and Harley-Davidson’s by the score. Somewhere at the end of the judging pen was the ticket counter, so I went honest and paid the five dollar entry fee. Soon enough the makes and years piled up again, they came and fell in numbing waves: Indian, Suzuki, Ariel, Norton: fat-tired bikes from the forties beside raked and heavily fared 60’s touring bikes, parts and chrome and rubber, engines with delicate cooling fins and fiber-taped pipes, whitewalls and windshields and paint of every variety.

Eventually I woke up standing in front of the gems of the show. Three or four ancient, rusted bikes, products of the Joerns-Thiem, Wagner, and Minneapolis motorcycle companies, who from 1900 to 1915 manufactured motorcycles in various Twin City locations. (Joerns-Thiem, in addition, made bikes for resale by companies around the country, including for mail order from Sears-Roebuck.) These clumsy-looking things, with their long handlebars and stream-lined clunkiness, are hardly recognizable as motorcycles. Their cylinder housings look like exotic, tiny metal bloomings mounted on tuna-can crankshaft housings, surrounded by jerry-rigged piping and gears, all strapped into stretched out bicycle frames. I stood and stared for a few minutes, wondering what type of man would get on one of those things.

Luckily there were some pictures of just such men. Vintage shots from the era had been reproduced and hung on the walls of the exhibition hall. Some were of an Excelsior dealer on 6th street in Minneapolis. Another was a posed shot, taken on a bridge in Fergus Falls, of what had to be everyone in the county who had a motorcycle. They were all men, and they were dressed much like you’d see any other gentlemen of the era, in high starched collars and dark suitcoats, with nice caps and full, clean dress pants. I like to think of this as a before picture, that after they took off down the road on their noisy contraptions the starch was knocked from the collar and the hats blew off, never to be found, or even looked for, again. They’d be replaced by leather helmets with cellophane goggles. The mud-destroyed shoes kicked off for hardy boots, and that last look of civility in their eyes swapped for a wild, half-focussed glint. They, like us modern riders, would never look at rain, or roads, or non-riders, in the same way again.

I overheard one conversation about the value of these rusted out conversation pieces. One gentlemen guessed the owner had been offered between 70 and 80 thousand for it. The owner remained discreet, saying only that having it the house for when his buddies came over to bullshit about it, that was worth more than he’d ever get on the market.


They seemed typical of the crowd – mostly men, mostly middle-aged, scruffy greybeards in overalls and denim jackets covered in rally patches, romantics more attached to things than money. The type of men you see tinkering in garages at all hours, their dangerous days well behind them. They gathered around a television to watch an English moto-cross from 1956. I’d like to see the kids today handle those big bikes, one of them said, and the rest chuckled along gamely. I didn’t say anything much. There might be younger folk interested in vintage motorcycles, but they’re out there riding them, rain be damned; they know the future’s under a tent forever but right now is on the road, and there’s no guarantee it’ll last beyond the next curve.

I checked out the for-sale bike corral, a sad pair of modern machines with rain beading on their waxed tanks. A set of Goldwings was cornering down Randall Avenue, heading for Snelling and the open road, riders bundled up in rain gear. Though the show would technically run for another four hours, the vendors were pretty much packing it in as I headed back to my car. They were rolling up the tarps and wheeling the junkers into their trailers, hoping for sunshine, livelier crowds, and a day with drier roads and better sales, so they can get out there and ride.