getting on his bad side, although it still happened regularly. This particular time they were in the garage with motorcycles and friends and music. It was the early 1970’s. The younger brother had crashed his motorcycle into another rider in the canyon a few months before and was still in a body cast for a broken femur. He had made his way out to the garage and was leaning against one of the work benches.
Apparently feeling
he year was 1964. Lyndon B. Johnson was president, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, China detonated its first atomic bomb. And the guy-in-the- garage moved into a brand new home in Chula Vista with his mom, dad and little brother. He was nine years old. By the time I came along nine years
T
later, the guy-in-the-garage already was well known by the Chula Vista Police. When they couldn’t catch him riding his motorcycle in the canyon, they’d leave the ticket at his house, so it was there waiting for him after riding his dirt bike on the streets that led to his home. I remember one time watching him leave the canyon which was across the street from my house. He usually did wheelies down the dirt median of the main drag and then would pull onto the asphalt in time to give a hand signal for the right-turn he would make. I could hear him roaring up the main drag, and then seconds later I heard a siren and could see the reflection of the lights flashing. Another ticket to add to the collection.
No wonder his mother used to regularly say “I should have drowned them at birth” about her two sons that often drove her crazy. It was a Leave it to Beaver kind of
family, with dad going off to work every day at SDG&E and mom staying home to bake cookies and brownies for her sons and all the neighborhood kids. I met the guy-in-the-garage as a teenager and he seemed to spend the majority of his time when he was home, where else, but in the garage, working on motorcycles. The funniest memory I have of the garage I wasn’t actually there for. It happened before I came on the scene, but I’ve heard the story told so many times I can picture it in my mind, almost as if I was there. Their dad was a good provider and a stern disciplinarian who deeply loved his family. But the sons didn’t relish
invincible in this body cast, he was mouthing off to the guy-
in-the-garage and finally he said too much. The guy-in-the-garage shoved him and he started falling. The story goes that first he banged into the vice and that slowed him down, but then he continued his descent to the concrete floor. His yells brought Dad running from inside the house. He burst onto the scene, looked right at the son on the floor in his body cast and roared “Did your brother push you?”
How about a furnace? They loved shopping for all of us. They were generous up to their dying day. Just a few months before Whitey passed away we were looking into purchasing a laptop so we could be more mobile with the business, such as in hospital rooms, at his house, wherever we needed to be to take care of him. When he heard us discussing it, I’ll never forget the question he asked me as we sat around the dining room table in this beloved house. “Can I buy it for you?” I didn’t have to think twice about the answer to that question.
He slowly got up and ambled over to his desk. Came back with his checkbook and said “Here. Write a check for whatever amount you need and I’ll sign it.” Married nearly 60 years, they passed away within nine months of each other a couple of years ago.
But we weren’t quite ready to part with the house at that time. It took us a couple of years to discover we really weren’t cut out to be landlords, and the decision was made to sell the house.
After two and a half years of tenants and over 40 years of Whitey/Dad not quite keeping up with repairs, we all had our work cut out for us. Five weeks of living back and forth between our desert home and the city, putting the magazine out while practically on the road, and way too many 12 hour days, the house was ready to sell.
Who knew how difficult it would be to see the For Sale sign actually go up in the yard? I have to keep reminding myself
it’s just the house that is being sold, not the memories. Yet, why is it they seem one and the same, almost as if they can’t be separated?
The final day. I stood in the empty room that
All time stood still and every person in the garage held their breaths as they waited to see what younger brother would say.
“No, I slipped,” he said, saving the life of the guy-in-the-garage and causing him to be forever in his debt.
Something that had never occurred to me about this story though is how funny that the very first thought in Dad’s head was that the younger son was most likely pushed by the older. Guess Dad knew his sons well.
The guy-in-the-garage and the brother-in-law-in-the-garage knew them as Mom and Dad and while they were like parents to me I called them Beverly and Whitey. They took care of all of us long into our adult years. Need a new frig? Need a stove? A new hot water heater?
was Beverly’s den in her latter years. I could see her sitting in her chair sur- rounded by her books and department store sale papers. Her box of Kleenex and the remote control. Her houseslippers and her glasses. I could hear her voice alternately praising me one day and the next picking an argument.
I knew it was time to go home. We’d done everything we could to make the house marketable.
I took one last look around at the room that was empty of far more than just furniture, wiped my eyes and took a deep breath.
“Good-bye, Beverly.”
Restoration of Japanese Vintage
Dirt Bikes or
Flat Trackers 1960’s through 1980’s - Steve Kukla S&S Publishing, Inc. 760-767-4680
VOLUME 29, NO. 8 • MAY 2011 PUBLISHER
S&S Publishing, Inc. EDITORS
Steve Kukla Sherri Kukla
Dr. Gary De Forest Tom Severin
COLUMNISTS
PHOTOJOURNALIST Rodney Rutherford
CONTRIBUTORS Del Albright
C&C Race Photos Angela Cook
Jamey Blunt
Roy Denner - In Memory Matt Lindsay
Photos by Grumpy Greg Robertson Richard Stuelke Trackside Photos
FIELD EDITORS Rory Townsley
Tim Townsley
ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLISHER Charlie Kukla
S&S OFF ROAD MAGAZINE is published monthly by S&S Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 845, Borrego
Springs CA 92004 (760) 767-4680, Fax (760) 472- 0763;
www.SS-OffRoadMagazine.com; Email:
editor@ss-offroadmagazine.com. Reprinting in whole or in part expressly forbidden except by permission of the publisher. Copyright 2011. We reserve the right to edit or reject any advertising and/or editorial copy.
SUBSCRIPTIONS S&S OFF ROAD MAGAZINE subscriptions are available at the rate of $16/one year;
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BACK TO THE DESERT® TEAR DOWN TIME® and SAN DIEGO OFF ROADER®
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