After five kicks, the 1929 Indian Scout rattles to life, prompted by the leg of a Mohawked man who looks to be about the same vintage. The Scout appears to be of questionable worthiness for a flat-ground jaunt, but is soon flying, side case to the sky, inside the American Motor Drome Company's "Wall of Death."
I have never witnessed a slice of life that more vividly embodies the motorcycle sideshow than that which I experienced outside the oval of the West Coast Flat Track Series races in Pomona, California, last fall. These men are the antithesis of the audience surrounding the "drome." Crammed around the rim of the creaking wooden cylinder are weekend warriors in crisp, new, fringed black-leather jackets and their women sporting similarly new bolt-on "accessories." Next to them are race-replica pilots in multi-hued, armored leathers with knee pucks that will likely never touch pavement. Unlike the audience, the characters standing at the bottom of the drome are the Real Deal. There is no pretense-these men have lived motorcycling.
The Mohawked man that began this show has skin akin to the leather of the old Scout's saddle, and hands stained with grease that seems as indelible as his lifestyle. The voice of the crew is a Mansonesque vision, with penetrating eyes, wild hair and a disarming smile. This barker is a character one would avoid on the street, but his charisma is a focusing agent for the spectacle. He rides the drome first on a finicky '70s Harley two-stroke (that requires two spark plug changes) and later a go-kart.
At the bottom of the drome is the quintessential, or maybe requisite, "boy off the farm." Younger than the other characters by several decades, he has the aura of a troubled youth who has escaped his hometown to join the circus. The boy's youth, mixed with the wafting aroma of pre-mix, takes me back to my motorcycling roots. This boy stands in stark contrast to the "main man" of this traveling daredevil sideshow, who must have been the boy's age in the '50s. He still sports the same greased-back blonde hair that I imagine he wore when chopping a Triumph twin while listening to Chubby Checker 50 years earlier.
The series of "death-defying" feats includes several explorations of centrifugal force that are, in fact, amazing. The show's stuntmen make solo runs that include no-hands passes, and runs inches from the drome's upper lip. They do well-synchronized tandem runs, and make the wooden drome wobble like an out-of-balance wheel. All of these tricks are performed on bikes that are far from modern and, let's say, creatively maintained.
The Wall of Death originated...
The Wall of Death originated at New York's Coney Island in 1911.
At the end of this noisy, smelly, entertaining montage of classic characters and patched-together bikes comes an almost surreal denouement. The barker drives the go-kart near the top of the creaking wooden drome and snatches dollar bills from the hands of the surrounding spectators. I cannot help but think that the bills are being placed in the motorcycle sideshow's version of a g-string. Later, all of the men scurry to pick up money that rains from above like manna from heaven. My first emotion is pity. How could they bear the humiliation?
It's not until I'm walking away that my pity is replaced with envy. I live in a salaried world in which my pre-determined wage is direct-deposited into an account in a financial institution that is probably run by some guy who dresses in Harley leathers on weekends. There must be some visceral satisfaction in risking life and limb on an old Indian, and stuffing the resulting lucre directly into your faded jeans' pockets.
Visceral satisfaction? That's why we ride motorcycles-and why these guys truck the drome and an odd collection of machines from venue to venue across the country.