Inspired by the long raked out choppers at Born Free and ghost stories from my youth in the hills of Orange County comes this legendary tale.
Some said the motorcycle had been stolen. Others said its owner had been killed over it. By the summer of 1977, nobody in Southern California seemed to know the whole story.
But everybody knew the bike. It was a Panhead—or at least that was where it had started.
The frame had been raked until the front wheel looked like it belonged somewhere in the Inland Empire. A narrow twenty-one-inch spool wheel hung at the end of long Sugar Bear forks. The tank was barely big enough to make it from the canyon to the beach, painted a dark root-beer candy over gold metalflake that exploded when the California sun hit it.
The pipes were hand bent. The sissy bar was ridiculous. Nearly four feet of twisted square stock reached above the rider’s shoulders, ending in a small chrome cross. On the side of the oil tank, beneath layers of lacquer, somebody had painted two tiny words:
NO SAINTS.
Then the motorcycle disappeared. So did the man everybody thought had built it.
SUMMER OF ’77
Eddie Navarro first heard the bike before he saw it.
He was behind Calderon’s Auto Upholstery in Stanton, grinding the welds on a Sportster frame while KMET spun “Desperado” through the radio on the shelf. He had to struggle to hear it over the bench grinder in front of him.
“…why dont you come to your senses? Come down from your fences, Open the gat…”
Then came the unmistakable crack of an old V-twin coming down the alley.
Eddie killed the grinder. The motorcycle rolled through the gate. He stared at it. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
The rider shut it down. He was young. Maybe twenty. Thin, denim vest, white T-shirt, engineer boots. His hair was long enough to annoy a policeman but not long enough to make him interesting.
Eddie walked around the motorcycle slowly. “You know what you’re riding?”
The kid shrugged. “an old Harley.”
Eddie laughed. “Yeah. An old Harley.” He crouched near the primary. The cases were familiar. So was the welded repair near the transmission mount. Then he saw the paint. NO SAINTS.
Eddie quickly stood. “Where’d you get this?”
“Some guy in Long Beach.”
“What guy?”
“Dunno.”
“You bought a motorcycle and don’t know his name?”
“Didn’t say I bought it.”
That changed the conversation. The kid pulled a folded piece of paper from his vest. “I’m looking for Eddie Navarro.”
“You found him.”
The kid handed him the paper. It contained six words.
Finish it the way Danny wanted.
Eddie read it twice. Then a third time. He looked toward the motorcycle. “Where did you get this?”
But the kid was already walking toward the street.
“Hey!”
The kid turned.
“Who gave you this?”
The young man smiled.
“Lady said you’d ask too many questions.”
Then he disappeared around the corner.
The Panhead stayed behind.
DANNY VALE
Four years earlier, Danny Vale had been one of those guys everybody seemed to know. He wasn’t famous. Fame in the chopper world meant something different then anyway. There weren’t television shows, clothing companies or million-dollar corporate builds. If somebody knew your name, it was because they had seen your motorcycle outside a bar in Long Beach, parked at a swap meet, photographed in one of the few bike magazines or blowing past them on the freeway.
Danny built motorcycles in a two-car garage behind his mother’s house in the foothills of Orange County. He didn’t own a tubing bender. He didn’t own a mill. He barely owned a decent drill press.
But Danny knew people. A machinist in Anaheim turned spacers for him. A welder in Santa Ana handled the hard stuff. A plater in Los Angeles would slip his parts into a batch when nobody was looking. Eddie did his paint.
That was how motorcycles got built. One favor at a time. Danny’s last project was different. He wanted everything skinny. No front brake. No fat tank. No bags. No windshield. Nothing that didn’t make the motorcycle faster, lighter or better looking.
“It’s gonna look like it fell out of outer space,” Danny told Eddie one night. Eddie looked at the pile of rusty Harley parts scattered across the garage. “It looks like it fell out of a dumpster.” Danny threw a shop rag at him.
They worked on that motorcycle for nearly a year.
Then, one Thursday night in 1973, Danny — and the bike — disappeared. The story changed depending on who told it. Somebody said he owed money. Somebody said he ran north with another man’s girlfriend. One guy swore Danny had been killed somewhere near Riverside. Another claimed he’d seen him six months later in Arizona.
Eddie never believed any of it. All he knew was that Danny’s garage was empty the next morning. Until now.
THE OLD BUILD
Eddie closed the shop for three days. He tore the Panhead down to the frame. The years had not been kind. The wiring was a mess. Somebody had changed the carburetor. The rear fender had been trimmed again, badly. The pipes were gone. But underneath the abuse, Danny’s motorcycle was still there.
Eddie called people he hadn’t spoken to in years. Frankie still had the old tubing dies. Mendez at the plating shop remembered the springer. A guy named Walter dug through a shed in Fullerton and somehow produced the original Bates-style headlight.
Piece by piece, the motorcycle came back. Then Eddie removed the gas tank. Something rattled inside. He shook it. Metal scraped metal. Eddie removed the petcock, turned the tank upside down and shook it again. A small brass key fell onto the bench. There was a number stamped into it.
317
Eddie stared at it. A key hidden inside a gas tank. That wasn’t Danny. Danny couldn’t keep a secret long enough to finish a beer. Eddie put the key in his pocket. That night he didn’t sleep much.
317
The next morning he drove to the bus depot in Santa Ana. Three-seventeen was a locker. Eddie stood in front of it with the brass key in his hand. For a moment he considered leaving. Then he turned the key. Inside was a cardboard box.
Nothing else.
He carried it to a bench. There were photographs inside. Dozens of them. Danny working on the Panhead. Danny welding. Danny sleeping on the shop floor next to the bike. Danny sitting on the unfinished motorcycle in his mother’s driveway.
And then Eddie found a photograph he had never seen.
Danny wasn’t alone. A young woman stood beside him. Dark hair. Jeans. Work shirt. Welding gloves tucked into her back pocket. On the back, in Danny’s handwriting:
Marlene — don’t let anybody tell you girls can’t build motorcycles.
Eddie kept digging. At the bottom was an envelope. His name was written across it. He opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper.
Danny’s handwriting again.
Eddie, If you’re reading this, somebody finally found the bike. Don’t believe the stories. I didn’t build it. Marlene did.
Eddie stopped reading.
He looked again at the photograph.
Then he continued.
I had the garage. I knew the guys. I could get the parts. Everybody assumed it was mine, and I was enough of an idiot to let them. The springer was hers. The pipes were hers. The tank was hers. Most of the frame work was hers too. I came up with the paint. You already know that part wasn’t very good.
Eddie smiled despite himself. Then he read the last lines.
Marlene wants out of California. I’m going with her. The bike is sold. If it ever comes back, finish it. But don’t put my name on it. Put hers.
THE SHOW
A few weeks later, Eddie rode the Panhead into a little motorcycle show being held on the dusty grounds in the canyons below Saddleback mountain.
There were Shovelheads with molded frames. Triumph choppers with skinny tanks. Panheads wearing more chrome than paint. Long forks. Short pipes. Candy colors. Metalflake. King-and-queen seats.
Men standing around motorcycles explaining how much faster theirs would be if only they could get it running.
The usual crowd.
Then Eddie arrived.
People recognized the bike immediately.
“That’s Danny Vale’s old Pan!” Said one old coot.
“I heard that thing got wrecked.” Said another.
“Danny’s dead.” yelled a greaser.
“No, he ain’t.” Said the old coot. “My brother saw him in Nevada.”
Within twenty minutes, a crowd surrounded the motorcycle.
Eddie said nothing.
He just stood beside it.
The bike looked almost exactly as it had in 1973.
Almost.
On the oil tank, beneath the old NO SAINTS lettering, Eddie had added something.
Small gold letters.
BUILT BY MARLENE VALE — 1973
People leaned closer.
“Who’s Marlene?”
Eddie smiled.
“The Builder.”
Nobody had much to say after that.
Late in the afternoon, Eddie heard a small voice behind him.
“You got the pipes wrong.”
He froze.
A woman’s voice.
He turned.
She was probably thirty.
Dark hair, now cut shorter. Jeans. Work shirt. Standing beside her was the skinny kid who had dropped off the motorcycle three weeks earlier.
Eddie looked from one to the other. “Marlene?”
She smiled. “Those pipes are two inches too long.”
Eddie laughed. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Oregon.” She said.
“Where’s Danny?”
Her smile faded slightly.
Then somebody stepped out from behind a row of motorcycles carrying two paper cups of lemonade. Older. Heavier. Hair shorter. Mustache thicker. But there was no mistaking him.
“Jesus Christ,” Eddie whispered.
Danny Vale handed Marlene one of the drinks.
“Still asking too many questions, Eddie.” Danny smiled.
Eddie didn’t know whether to punch him or hug him. So he did both.
THE LAST RIDE
The story could have ended there. It probably should have. Danny hadn’t been murdered. He hadn’t joined some outlaw club in Arizona. He hadn’t robbed anybody. He and Marlene had simply left.
They married. Built a small house outside Eugene. Her nephew lived with them (the skinny kid). Danny worked construction. Marlene repaired farm equipment and welded whenever somebody was willing to pay her. They had heard stories about the old motorcycle for years. Eventually her nephew wanted to see if any of them were true. So they tracked it down. It had changed hands six times in those 4 years. The last owner had left it sitting behind a garage in Long Beach. Marlene bought her own motorcycle back for $600. Then she sent it to Eddie. There was only one question left.
Eddie looked at her. “Why now?”
Marlene studied the Panhead. “Because Danny’s been telling people he built that damned thing for four years.”
Danny nearly spit out his lemonade. Everyone laughed. Then Marlene threw her leg over the motorcycle.
Eddie’s smiled. “You sure?”
She kicked it twice. Nothing. Third kick.
The Panhead exploded to life. Heads turned across the field. Marlene rolled the throttle.
She looked at Eddie and yelled. “Two inches!”
“What?”
“The pipes.” She grinned. “Too long.”
Marlene dropped it into gear. Danny climbed onto the little pad behind her.
Her nephew fired up another bike beside them.
The two motorcycles rolled toward the gate and headed east toward Silverado, disappearing into the folds of the Santa Ana Mountains.
Eddie stood there listening.
For a while, he could still hear that Panhead hammering its way up the canyon, the exhaust cracking against the hills until the sound finally disappeared.
For years afterward, people still told stories about Danny Vale’s famous Panhead. Some claimed he built it in 1972. Others insisted it was 1973. A few swore he had died riding it. Motorcycle stories are like that. They improve with age.
But somewhere underneath that old root-beer candy paint were four little words Eddie Navarro made damned sure nobody would ever polish away.
BUILT BY MARLENE VALE.
And that was the part almost everybody had gotten wrong.
