I was living in the back of an '84 Mazda pickup parked in the back of the apartment on Lincoln street in Eugene, OR. Eugene was my decided resting place after a trip to Taos, and I was unemployed, but I still had some cash left from the trip. It is funny, it was only $400 that I took with me to Taos. It didn't worry me too much to load up all I owned and drive to Taos and show up in Eugene without a job, figuring things would work out. I was driving a friend to Tucson, and she was paying for gas, so it didn't take a lot of money. I had $250 or so when I got to Eugene.
I wandered around to every place of business in Eugene, asked for the manager, and asked for a job. It took me a couple months to find one. The summer of '86 was not a great time to find a job, particularly in Eugene. 7-11, where my friend that lived in the apartment was working, wouldn't hire me. I even applied at the cannery. They gave me a physical exam, but wouldn't take me because of scars on my fingers (my guess). Meanwhile, I had a lot of time on my hands.
Walking around the neighborhood near the Lincoln St. Market, I saw a somewhat bent-up Honda CB200 twin motorcycle at a garage sale for $125. I figured, well, I had $250, so I could afford a motorcycle at that price. The forks were a bit bent, but they worked OK. I took the bike back to the lot behind the store, poked at it a bit, started it up, and was ready to roll.
Here is a picture of a 1975 Honda CB200 twin that looks a lot like the one I bought:
I rode the bike up river road. I got the bike up to 70, and it kind of floated in the air at that speed, so I slowed down, but it was awful fun. It gets pretty hot in Eugene in July, and when I got back the engine was very hot. I checked the oil, and it was OK, but I decided to change it and it gushed out like water. My theory at the time was that either gas was getting into the oil and breaking it down, or the heat was. The bike ran fine, and I used it around town.
My friend Curtis got kicked out of his apartment. Actually, the landlady gave him a choice: either kick me and another friend, Mark, out of his apartment, or all of us had to leave. Curtis chose to find another apartment. The new apartment was on Portland street and Willamette, across the street from Oasis natural foods, a block back from the street. It was the top half of a house. The downstairs neighbors had an old British motorcycle, a Vincent, I think, that they eventually sold to Mark. Since Curtis was the only one with a job at that point, I slept in the unfinished attic, Mark slept on the couch, and we got another roommate, James, to take the other bedroom. I had to walk through his bedroom to get to the Attic.
Mark used to drive the 200 around quite a bit. One time he pulled into the 7-11 just as a biker was rolling up on his Harley. Mark gave a sheepish shrug, but the Biker said, "It doesn't matter what you ride, it matters THAT you ride." So, that is the source of one of my favorite quotes, attributed to "unknown biker".
Eventually, I tried to fix the bike. I forget what was broken. Mark warned me not to take it apart, but, well, once I started I kept going, until it was down to the pistons. I brought the whole thing up to our apartment. Of course, we used the pistons as ash trays. The apartment, by this time, was quite a scene. When we moved in, we (I) thought the couch fit best along the shorter wall, so I sawed the end off of the couch. It wasn't a big loss or anything, it was just a brown vinyl couch. Still, it was kind of shocking to see the couch with the end cut off and foam, wood, and springs hanging out of the end. I had two wooden troughs in the hall from my truck that had most of my belongings in them. We stacked all of the garbage next to the fridge. By that time I didn't have my Mazda anymore. The bank took it back. So, we didn't have a good way to get rid of the garbage. Actually Mark had a truck as well. Perhaps gas was a problem, or the idea of paying the dump. Regardless, the apartment was full of flies. Every week or so I'd buy another fly strip. It was quite entertaining. Some flies fly in squares, you know. James, occasionally, would get disgusted about the garbage and take it to the church dumpster. Believe it or not, the thought never crossed my mind that the flies were related to the garbage stacked up next to the fridge. The addition of all the motorcycle parts added more to the ambiance.
James was a queen. Very neat and tidy. He had a lot of makeup in the bathroom. Well, one day the toilet clogged up. A plunger wouldn't help. Mark and I decided we would take the toilet apart and figure out what was clogging it up. I was employed by that time, so I sprang for some Harley-Davidson wine coolers. Yes, I kid you not. At Oaisis Natural Foods, in the summer of 1986, they sold Harley-Davidson wine coolers. On a hot summer day, when taking apart a toilet, one needs to drink Harley-Davidson wine coolers if they exist, and that is exactly what we did. I found a picture:
In the spirit of the beverage, the only tool we could find that would clear the toilet was the old chain from the Honda 200. The two of us managed to hold the toilet in the air and shake the toilet as we used the chain as a snake. It turned out that the culprit was that a tube of James' makeup had fallen in the toilet. We didn't have a wax ring, and somehow we lost the bolts, so from then on the toilet just kind of perched on the hole in the floor. We didn't really mind, and it was an added bonus that it bothered James. We were quite miffed at James for putting us through the trouble, but, really, it was kind of fun.
James left not too long after we did our chain snaking operation on the toilet. Curtis left in the fall when things got kind of weird. Mark took over Curtis' room, but left to move into a different place with Curtis right after he let his brother, his girlfriend, and another of his friends move in. When James left, I took over his room. I had a job by then and could pay rent. I moved from that apartment in with my girlfriend at the time (my wife now), and left the people living there with the the Honda CB200 parts.
The box of parts were moved to another apartment Mark lived in (and my wife and I did as well at one point), but neither of us remembers moving them again, so perhaps they were stolen out of the storage locker in the apartment on 11th. So, the chances are slim, but the bike might be living, still, in some form or other.
|
