I got my motorcycle, and the local boys of that age who had those same motorcycles, weren't from Pine Falls. They were from Powerview and St. George. The other side of the tracks. They didn't go to our school, they didn't do those things, but they were my friends. Not the ones from the side of the tracks I came from. SO that's how the story goes that I grew up with my friends in the next community. Because the Pine Falls community is something that I didn't have a positive outlook which I got from the school. Some of my friends were so french, when you went to their house, you didn't know what was goin’ on. Some of them were of mixed blood of native blood. They were Metis type folks. But they were 'half breeds' according to my side of the tracks, so I was hanging out with the wrong people. So that was the beginning in life of me being the rebel I guess. The guy who goes out further into the world and has friends of different people.

 

I was 17 years old, on a Honda 175. It was orange in color. We went to Clear Lake, a bunch of young guys, before we could drink beer, but we knew we'd buy some someplace. And we forgot to come home for 10 days. Boy... Parents were rollin’. From Pine Falls there was 5 of us guys that were all the same age. We went there and just forgot to come home, for 10 days. Big trouble. We drank beer and chased girls at Clear Lake. It was in style. I think it still might be, except now only rich people go there now. Anyway, that was the first time we got on that motorcycle and left. We only went for the weekend, but then forgot to come home. That was in 1969.

 

I got a car when I was 16 or 17. But I had a motorcycle too. I had the car for a short time, my dad's old, old car for $100. Then I sold it. I had no need for it. We walked everywhere cuz we could. Where did I have to go? We walked to the school, to the local rink, to work at the paper mill. I didn't go anywhere else. And I had a bicycle and I had a motorcycle so I didn't want or need a car. And in wintertime I didn't need to have one.

 

Since I didn't want to work at the paper mill for the rest of my life, like many of the people were doing, I went to trade school and became a mechanic. And that's what I did for a living. After that was done, I got my ticket and I was a first level apprentice, and so I went and got a job..... And a better motorcycle. So you did your job and got two weeks holidays and when those holidays came around, you went and rode that motorcycle.

 

Premium fuel for one of my first motorcycles was fifty cents a gallon. And that's premium. It's hard to imagine the difference between then and today of how much money you had, and how much it costs to eat, and how much it costs to live. It's changed between then and today. Today we have oodles of money, but it disappears quicker. We spend more than we make and that's the way of our world. I don't think it's a positive thing, but that's how we do it. All the voting to try to get the next politician in power ain't gonna change much in a hurry.

 

In the 70s I rode my motorcycle to the Black Hills. To the Sturgis motorcycle rally. I went to Sturgis on a 69 Triumph when I was 17. That was before I got the Harley. I then hit the road all by myself when I was 17 yrs old, and came home a month and a half later. I had a hundred bucks in my pocket.

I went to Seattle and Vancouver Island, then I came home somehow. I knew somebody in Seattle and so I stopped in and said hello, and then just kept on goin’ And I tell all young people that, You gotta go. You gotta get going, you gotta move. There's something more than the box. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the box, but you gotta know what else is outside the box. My motorcycle was good. In the wintertime, I hung back, and I went to work, at 19 yrs old at the paper mill. I walked back and forth to my parents, paid $50 per month room and board. Then at the end of the wintertime I bought myself a new Harley Davidson. Then when I had enough money in my pocket, I just got on that motorcycle and took off. Mom had me good a packed to go so I always had enough to eat. On my motorcycle I always had a bag with cheese and mustard and that's what I ate. And I slept on the ground in a little pop tent. And when it rained, I kinda’ washed but other than that I didn't do anything else. Just rode that motorcycle all over the place.

 

I've done that ever since, nothin has changed, except now you have to go with lots of money in your pocket. And you keep on riding.  I went to trade school and kept working after that and every time I'd get 2 weeks holidays, I'd ride that motorcycle. That's what I did.

 

One year, I got a few dollars ahead, and I quit that job in October and went to Florida and spent that winter as a bus boy in a restaurant.

 

Another time I took 3 weeks to go to Alaska. A friend of mine went part way cuz he lives in that part of the world. At Dawson Creek there's this sign which is the start of the Alaska Highway. It was in the 90s and I was on a 1985 Harley Davidson. Went up Northern BC, Yukon, you keep going til you hit Alaska. Then you turn south and come down the little finger of Alaska that extends down into BC. Then I took the ferry home from Alaska, a 4 day trip down to Vancouver, well, Bellingham, actually. So I got on the milk run, and on a ferry, you sleep on the deck. This is a milk run, not a cruise ship. Every time they stopped at different towns I got off and got to visit around on the different roads, then get back on the ferry.

 

When you're in Alaska in the mountains, there's snow in July. I woke up in the snow many times when I camped out. But, you keep on goin’. And when the highway is really cold, the snow doesn't melt and it's not slippery. But you would stop if it did get slippery. But I managed to get out of there a couple times. Once woke up in Calgary in October, there was an inch of snow on the bike. But the street was dry so I got goin’ to the Alberta/Saskatchewan border, where out comes this snow storm, just a blinding bloody snowstorm across the highway. And I kept on goin’, cuz where the heck am I gonna stop in the middle of nowhere here. The roads weren't icy, just blowin’ across. I mean it was BLOWIN’. And I'm going along and you know what I see? This crazy idiot on a motorcycle going the other way! Well, I did make it home, just another crazy thing to do.

 

There were times when it rained for 6 days in a row where you keep on riding that motorcycle hoping one day the sun will shine. But you gotta laugh about it ya know? I never melted yet, I ain't made of sugar. Rain is not gonna hurt us. I never had any real bad ones. When I travel I watch my speed limit cuz I'm so busy looking around, but yes, I've been ridden off the road, and yes I've seen tornados in the mid-west where you take your bike and you lay it down in the ditch on it's side until the tornado goes across. Sometimes you can outrun them but sometimes you can't. The last time we outrun one was a big mistake cuz we got down to first gear, and couldn't keep them on the roads anymore. The interstate highway was right there, so we turned, and did get out of it. We managed to keep it in low gear and finally got out the other side. We drove for about 30 miles, at 100 miles an hour, and it was still on our ass. I tell you we weren't gaining by a whole lot. We pulled into the next town, went into the local restaurant, with our motorcycles parked right out in front of us, and it rained so hard we couldn't see them. 4 inches of rain fell. And the town behind us when we raced out was a wreck. Everything was broken, windows, roofs, everything. That's South Dakota, hail comes down. But, we won that one, you gotta win some. Two hours later into the next town, which was Brookings SD, the sun was shining, and you wouldn't even know that just happened.

 

I got hailed on a number of times on my motorcycle. And a couple times I was chased by bulls on fields where I used to camp on fields beside the highway. We put our bikes in this field, kinda’ went through the gate. We got a bunch of bales and put them around the tent, and the next morning I got up and opened the tent to go to get out and there's a giant bull with horns looking at me. Holy cow, I gotta get back in the tent. So I closed the tent, and it did go away, so I didn't have to deal with that guy.

 

We don't go on interstate highways and use rest stops unless you have a motor home, you can't sleep there, which there's something very wrong with that. But we don't go on interstates anyway, we go to small towns. Best time to travel down in the US is on July 4th. Anybody will take you home and feed you fried chicken. Just go to nowhere mid-western state into some little town on July 4th and someone will take you home to feed you fried chicken. Just stand on the street and the locals will take you home  - no big deal. I have a kind face!

 

I had a crash on a motorcycle one time pretty good goin’ out of Winnipeg. Went down like a bag of shit. The shock broke, and I went down and slid for four or five hundred yards. And that concrete is very slippery. And I slid and toasted the post. I was scraped everywhere. Every corner of me had scrapes on it. Including my Buck knife and the case that it was in was ground off. It was a mess. When I finally got up you could see all the bones on my hands. It took a long time to heal. It hurt. And it broke my motorcycle too, dammit. But I built myself some gloves to go to work in, and I worked. But it took months to heal.

 

Ok, back to Sturgis. In the Black Hills of South Dakota is the motorcycle rally in the 2nd weekend of August. It's been goin’ on for 60 years. One year it hailed measurable 4-5 inches of hail on the ground, and we were all in the campground right beside the creek, and the whole campground flooded that night. Under water, all our gear. We left with our motorcycles and all our gear was left under water. When we all went into town, every flashing glass sign and a lot of the motorcycles parked on the street, everything was smashed after that hail storm. It was quite the storm. Been in lots of hail storms, but not as much as that. I was bare chested because it was 90 degrees when the storm hit. It all came down and everything was steaming.

 

We always went to Sturgis for our holidays which is always in the same week in August, and that motorcycle there went 14 years in a row, and before that I went in the 69 Triumph. Then I needed to get a Harley Davidson, so I went to work for that winter and paid cash for a brand new one. $3000.

 

Sturgis was a good thing then, where now, it's a very busy place, it's not the same. Back in the day we'd all stay in a city park. We all got in trouble, but nobody went to jail. We used to race our motorcycles on the main street, and I used to get into a lot of trouble. A cop one time had me by the scruff of the neck "You can't race that motorcycle on this street!" He had me by the scruff of the neck!" so I just dropped the clutch and buggered off, and he was left running. And I looked in my mirror and he fell down. And I didn't go back there you know it was time to go home ‘cuz we all had way too much to drink at that point. But then the next night the same cop got me. He busted me. I was on the main street of Sturgis and I had just finished sneaking in from the bowling alley just around the corner. I stole a ten pin bowling ball. I then put a bunch of beer cans out on the street at Sturgis. And so we were bowling the beer cans. Well, the cop grabbed me. I'm like "oh no!" and he says "Son, we have a problem here, you know where that bowling ball goes?" "Yeah, sure I do"… "Are you gonna fix it?" "You bet I am officer" So I went and got the bowling ball and took it back to the bowling alley. Nobody went to jail! No one wanted to see me go to jail, ‘cuz I'm just a guy having a good time. But after that, boy, if you did anything wrong in Sturgis, you went to jail. It got terrible. Thousands of officers used to walk in 8s and 10s in the streets. This is when it got popular. The Hells Angels would have this campground over here, buy the whole campground for the week. The Sons of Silence would be over here. The Banditos would be over here. One year, we camped with the Sons of Silence. They always had good bands and they always had a good time. You were pretty low key, and you didn't get in trouble, ya know you kept your nose clean. And one time I was comin’ along, and they were radio controlled, nobody was let in or out from the other bike clubs. And you learned, oh god these people. they're mean!   And I walked by, and somebody opened the van door, and in the back of the van which was over top of the road coming in, they had a machine gun on a tripod right in the back of that van. So, is it time for Sunday supper with mom?  Maybe we'll move along. And that's life in the real world, ya know. And that's why there were so many cops. So it's not fun anymore. Now it's so busy, you can't walk 3 or 4 blocks through downtown Sturgis in the summertime without getting a headache from the exhaust fumes of motorcycles. The place just roars. When I went to Sturgis there was just this one street, the main street. Now it's 7 or 8 blocks where you can't even move. Every street in town, the front lawn is rented to somebody, to sell you a t-shirt or give you a tattoo, or fix your motorcycle or something. It's just no fun anymore.

 

There's a lot of troublemakers out there, and some of these guys who think they're hardcore motorcyclists, they're just troublemakers. I knew a lot of those guys, but I was a nice guy, so I avoided them. It's a hard time trying to keep your nose clean in today's world. Those guys were trouble, and how many of them that I knew ended up in jail. For just stupid bad things. Stuff I had nothin’ to do with. So I never had any of that stuff happen to me, that I know of. I was a good guy, a silver headed boy, an only child, except for my sister. I got through all that because you have to know when you can beat the cops. Because sometimes you can. Sometimes you gotta know when to take it easy or stop, but sometimes you might see enough room that you can beat the cops.

 

One time I was on my Triumph and I was tearing through Pine Falls one night. "Oh god... Here comes the cops!" It's a small town, so I went through this street and that street. I went through this guys yard, then pull into my dad's driveway and park behind the hedges and peek out the other side. Well the cops go by and somebody tapped me on my shoulder. I look.. "Hi Dad" "Whatcha doin Garth?" "I think the cops were chasing me Dad, but I didn't wanna stop." "Ok Garth, no big deal" So you gotta win some right?

 

One time they were chasing me on the main street of Brookings, South Dakota, and somebody told me I didn't have any clothes on. SO the cops were chasing us, and I remember this because the last time I was in Brookings, there was a sign with the temperature that said 80 degrees, at 4 o clock in the morning. That was in the early ‘70s, and I was there not too long ago, and that sign is still there on the side of that building. Anyway, I managed to get down that street and the cops were chasing me, and they're catching up. In Brookings they have a giant college. And when college is in session, the town is 10 thousand people greater. I managed to get onto the football field and go right across to the other side. It's the spirit of getting’ away!

 

I knew all kinds of people, even prostitutes. I used to run my motorcycle on the streets of Winnipeg as a young man, and you got to know everybody. They were just people, young people, young ladies on the street. No home. That's how they made their living. We'd have coffee, ya know? I had a home. I felt bad for them, but they sure had some interesting stories to tell you. I worked a 4-12 shift every evening and after that, the city opens up and a whole bunch of people go out. They go to bowling alleys they do all kinds of things. They're night people, and they're all over the streets and I got to meet all these different people, who had different ways of life. Some people were bartenders, and some people were drug dealers, and the bike clubs had their hookers, and the drugs, and you get to know these things. I knew these people and thought nothin’ of it. I still went to Sunday supper with my mom, why would I fuss with the rest of this stuff. But you had to go down the streets on your motorcycle and check out the hookers and everything. And the cops would be doing the same thing, they'd be checking them out. And you'd all be out there. And the cops would know who you were by your face. So one day I'm going down the street, the hooker alley street or whatever you call it, I can't remember. And there's a cop car in front of me and one behind me, and we're lookin’ and we're lookin’ and just crawling along. All of a sudden, I'm looking at this lady, and BAM. Didn't I run into the back of the police car. My motorcycle stopped, and I put my feet down, and I'm looking at the cop car, and both cops turned and looked at me and so I waved, and they buggered off, and so did I.

 

That's in the 70s, when I lived in the big city. I lived mostly in East Kildonan, what they called Little Chicago, around Talbot & Grey. I guess the neighborhood is actually called Elmwood. It's the working class. That's where my dad lived for many years. So that was the city life, but I didn't spend very much time doin’ that, didn't have much luck. But I had a pile of money in my hands.

 

I've never, ok, I've only spent one day in jail, by Corporal Harry Row. See I come from a little town. When we used to be bad as kids, he used to grab us and take our bicycles away, take us by the scruff of the neck and take us to the jail, and throw us in, lock the door, and leave. He'd go for lunch. And we learned our lesson didn't we? When we got bigger, Mr. Row was still there. I guess we didn't learn our lesson that good because at that point we had dirt bikes. We used to go through town and tear up the yards of the people we didn't like. He knew we did all this stuff, so he used to take away our drivers licenses for 2 weeks. Then we'd take our bike home, and that was it. Now, young people have to go to jail. So life in my younger days as being a bad bugger (which some people said, don't believe that), we got away with it. But it's not like that anymore and that's why it's such a hard thing for young people with their driver’s licenses to stay out of trouble, it's a difficult thing. But they'll survive somehow. I did, look at me! I made it to this point.

 

 

 

Chapter 3

The Rebel

​

I got my motorcycle, and the local boys of that age who had those same motorcycles, weren't from Pine Falls. They were from Powerview and St. George. The other side of the tracks. They didn't go to our school, they didn't do those things, but they were my friends. Not the ones from the side of the tracks I came from. SO that's how the story goes that I grew up with my friends in the next community. Because the Pine Falls community is something that I didn't have a positive outlook which I got from the school. Some of my friends were so french, when you went to their house, you didn't know what was goin’ on. Some of them were of mixed blood of native blood. They were Metis type folks. But they were 'half breeds' according to my side of the tracks, so I was hanging out with the wrong people. So that was the beginning in life of me being the rebel I guess. The guy who goes out further into the world and has friends of different people.

 

I was 17 years old, on a Honda 175. It was orange in color. We went to Clear Lake, a bunch of young guys, before we could drink beer, but we knew we'd buy some someplace. And we forgot to come home for 10 days. Boy... Parents were rollin’. From Pine Falls there was 5 of us guys that were all the same age. We went there and just forgot to come home, for 10 days. Big trouble. We drank beer and chased girls at Clear Lake. It was in style. I think it still might be, except now only rich people go there now. Anyway, that was the first time we got on that motorcycle and left. We only went for the weekend, but then forgot to come home. That was in 1969.

 

I got a car when I was 16 or 17. But I had a motorcycle too. I had the car for a short time, my dad's old, old car for $100. Then I sold it. I had no need for it. We walked everywhere cuz we could. Where did I have to go? We walked to the school, to the local rink, to work at the paper mill. I didn't go anywhere else. And I had a bicycle and I had a motorcycle so I didn't want or need a car. And in wintertime I didn't need to have one.

 

Since I didn't want to work at the paper mill for the rest of my life, like many of the people were doing, I went to trade school and became a mechanic. And that's what I did for a living. After that was done, I got my ticket and I was a first level apprentice, and so I went and got a job..... And a better motorcycle. So you did your job and got two weeks holidays and when those holidays came around, you went and rode that motorcycle.

 

Premium fuel for one of my first motorcycles was fifty cents a gallon. And that's premium. It's hard to imagine the difference between then and today of how much money you had, and how much it costs to eat, and how much it costs to live. It's changed between then and today. Today we have oodles of money, but it disappears quicker. We spend more than we make and that's the way of our world. I don't think it's a positive thing, but that's how we do it. All the voting to try to get the next politician in power ain't gonna change much in a hurry.

 

In the 70s I rode my motorcycle to the Black Hills. To the Sturgis motorcycle rally. I went to Sturgis on a 69 Triumph when I was 17. That was before I got the Harley. I then hit the road all by myself when I was 17 yrs old, and came home a month and a half later. I had a hundred bucks in my pocket.

I went to Seattle and Vancouver Island, then I came home somehow. I knew somebody in Seattle and so I stopped in and said hello, and then just kept on goin’ And I tell all young people that, You gotta go. You gotta get going, you gotta move. There's something more than the box. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the box, but you gotta know what else is outside the box. My motorcycle was good. In the wintertime, I hung back, and I went to work, at 19 yrs old at the paper mill. I walked back and forth to my parents, paid $50 per month room and board. Then at the end of the wintertime I bought myself a new Harley Davidson. Then when I had enough money in my pocket, I just got on that motorcycle and took off. Mom had me good a packed to go so I always had enough to eat. On my motorcycle I always had a bag with cheese and mustard and that's what I ate. And I slept on the ground in a little pop tent. And when it rained, I kinda’ washed but other than that I didn't do anything else. Just rode that motorcycle all over the place.

 

I've done that ever since, nothin has changed, except now you have to go with lots of money in your pocket. And you keep on riding.  I went to trade school and kept working after that and every time I'd get 2 weeks holidays, I'd ride that motorcycle. That's what I did.

 

One year, I got a few dollars ahead, and I quit that job in October and went to Florida and spent that winter as a bus boy in a restaurant.

 

Another time I took 3 weeks to go to Alaska. A friend of mine went part way cuz he lives in that part of the world. At Dawson Creek there's this sign which is the start of the Alaska Highway. It was in the 90s and I was on a 1985 Harley Davidson. Went up Northern BC, Yukon, you keep going til you hit Alaska. Then you turn south and come down the little finger of Alaska that extends down into BC. Then I took the ferry home from Alaska, a 4 day trip down to Vancouver, well, Bellingham, actually. So I got on the milk run, and on a ferry, you sleep on the deck. This is a milk run, not a cruise ship. Every time they stopped at different towns I got off and got to visit around on the different roads, then get back on the ferry.

 

When you're in Alaska in the mountains, there's snow in July. I woke up in the snow many times when I camped out. But, you keep on goin’. And when the highway is really cold, the snow doesn't melt and it's not slippery. But you would stop if it did get slippery. But I managed to get out of there a couple times. Once woke up in Calgary in October, there was an inch of snow on the bike. But the street was dry so I got goin’ to the Alberta/Saskatchewan border, where out comes this snow storm, just a blinding bloody snowstorm across the highway. And I kept on goin’, cuz where the heck am I gonna stop in the middle of nowhere here. The roads weren't icy, just blowin’ across. I mean it was BLOWIN’. And I'm going along and you know what I see? This crazy idiot on a motorcycle going the other way! Well, I did make it home, just another crazy thing to do.

 

There were times when it rained for 6 days in a row where you keep on riding that motorcycle hoping one day the sun will shine. But you gotta laugh about it ya know? I never melted yet, I ain't made of sugar. Rain is not gonna hurt us. I never had any real bad ones. When I travel I watch my speed limit cuz I'm so busy looking around, but yes, I've been ridden off the road, and yes I've seen tornados in the mid-west where you take your bike and you lay it down in the ditch on it's side until the tornado goes across. Sometimes you can outrun them but sometimes you can't. The last time we outrun one was a big mistake cuz we got down to first gear, and couldn't keep them on the roads anymore. The interstate highway was right there, so we turned, and did get out of it. We managed to keep it in low gear and finally got out the other side. We drove for about 30 miles, at 100 miles an hour, and it was still on our ass. I tell you we weren't gaining by a whole lot. We pulled into the next town, went into the local restaurant, with our motorcycles parked right out in front of us, and it rained so hard we couldn't see them. 4 inches of rain fell. And the town behind us when we raced out was a wreck. Everything was broken, windows, roofs, everything. That's South Dakota, hail comes down. But, we won that one, you gotta win some. Two hours later into the next town, which was Brookings SD, the sun was shining, and you wouldn't even know that just happened.

 

I got hailed on a number of times on my motorcycle. And a couple times I was chased by bulls on fields where I used to camp on fields beside the highway. We put our bikes in this field, kinda’ went through the gate. We got a bunch of bales and put them around the tent, and the next morning I got up and opened the tent to go to get out and there's a giant bull with horns looking at me. Holy cow, I gotta get back in the tent. So I closed the tent, and it did go away, so I didn't have to deal with that guy.

 

We don't go on interstate highways and use rest stops unless you have a motor home, you can't sleep there, which there's something very wrong with that. But we don't go on interstates anyway, we go to small towns. Best time to travel down in the US is on July 4th. Anybody will take you home and feed you fried chicken. Just go to nowhere mid-western state into some little town on July 4th and someone will take you home to feed you fried chicken. Just stand on the street and the locals will take you home  - no big deal. I have a kind face!

 

I had a crash on a motorcycle one time pretty good goin’ out of Winnipeg. Went down like a bag of shit. The shock broke, and I went down and slid for four or five hundred yards. And that concrete is very slippery. And I slid and toasted the post. I was scraped everywhere. Every corner of me had scrapes on it. Including my Buck knife and the case that it was in was ground off. It was a mess. When I finally got up you could see all the bones on my hands. It took a long time to heal. It hurt. And it broke my motorcycle too, dammit. But I built myself some gloves to go to work in, and I worked. But it took months to heal.

 

Ok, back to Sturgis. In the Black Hills of South Dakota is the motorcycle rally in the 2nd weekend of August. It's been goin’ on for 60 years. One year it hailed measurable 4-5 inches of hail on the ground, and we were all in the campground right beside the creek, and the whole campground flooded that night. Under water, all our gear. We left with our motorcycles and all our gear was left under water. When we all went into town, every flashing glass sign and a lot of the motorcycles parked on the street, everything was smashed after that hail storm. It was quite the storm. Been in lots of hail storms, but not as much as that. I was bare chested because it was 90 degrees when the storm hit. It all came down and everything was steaming.

 

We always went to Sturgis for our holidays which is always in the same week in August, and that motorcycle there went 14 years in a row, and before that I went in the 69 Triumph. Then I needed to get a Harley Davidson, so I went to work for that winter and paid cash for a brand new one. $3000.

 

Sturgis was a good thing then, where now, it's a very busy place, it's not the same. Back in the day we'd all stay in a city park. We all got in trouble, but nobody went to jail. We used to race our motorcycles on the main street, and I used to get into a lot of trouble. A cop one time had me by the scruff of the neck "You can't race that motorcycle on this street!" He had me by the scruff of the neck!" so I just dropped the clutch and buggered off, and he was left running. And I looked in my mirror and he fell down. And I didn't go back there you know it was time to go home ‘cuz we all had way too much to drink at that point. But then the next night the same cop got me. He busted me. I was on the main street of Sturgis and I had just finished sneaking in from the bowling alley just around the corner. I stole a ten pin bowling ball. I then put a bunch of beer cans out on the street at Sturgis. And so we were bowling the beer cans. Well, the cop grabbed me. I'm like "oh no!" and he says "Son, we have a problem here, you know where that bowling ball goes?" "Yeah, sure I do"… "Are you gonna fix it?" "You bet I am officer" So I went and got the bowling ball and took it back to the bowling alley. Nobody went to jail! No one wanted to see me go to jail, ‘cuz I'm just a guy having a good time. But after that, boy, if you did anything wrong in Sturgis, you went to jail. It got terrible. Thousands of officers used to walk in 8s and 10s in the streets. This is when it got popular. The Hells Angels would have this campground over here, buy the whole campground for the week. The Sons of Silence would be over here. The Banditos would be over here. One year, we camped with the Sons of Silence. They always had good bands and they always had a good time. You were pretty low key, and you didn't get in trouble, ya know you kept your nose clean. And one time I was comin’ along, and they were radio controlled, nobody was let in or out from the other bike clubs. And you learned, oh god these people. they're mean!   And I walked by, and somebody opened the van door, and in the back of the van which was over top of the road coming in, they had a machine gun on a tripod right in the back of that van. So, is it time for Sunday supper with mom?  Maybe we'll move along. And that's life in the real world, ya know. And that's why there were so many cops. So it's not fun anymore. Now it's so busy, you can't walk 3 or 4 blocks through downtown Sturgis in the summertime without getting a headache from the exhaust fumes of motorcycles. The place just roars. When I went to Sturgis there was just this one street, the main street. Now it's 7 or 8 blocks where you can't even move. Every street in town, the front lawn is rented to somebody, to sell you a t-shirt or give you a tattoo, or fix your motorcycle or something. It's just no fun anymore.

 

There's a lot of troublemakers out there, and some of these guys who think they're hardcore motorcyclists, they're just troublemakers. I knew a lot of those guys, but I was a nice guy, so I avoided them. It's a hard time trying to keep your nose clean in today's world. Those guys were trouble, and how many of them that I knew ended up in jail. For just stupid bad things. Stuff I had nothin’ to do with. So I never had any of that stuff happen to me, that I know of. I was a good guy, a silver headed boy, an only child, except for my sister. I got through all that because you have to know when you can beat the cops. Because sometimes you can. Sometimes you gotta know when to take it easy or stop, but sometimes you might see enough room that you can beat the cops.

 

One time I was on my Triumph and I was tearing through Pine Falls one night. "Oh god... Here comes the cops!" It's a small town, so I went through this street and that street. I went through this guys yard, then pull into my dad's driveway and park behind the hedges and peek out the other side. Well the cops go by and somebody tapped me on my shoulder. I look.. "Hi Dad" "Whatcha doin Garth?" "I think the cops were chasing me Dad, but I didn't wanna stop." "Ok Garth, no big deal" So you gotta win some right?

 

One time they were chasing me on the main street of Brookings, South Dakota, and somebody told me I didn't have any clothes on. SO the cops were chasing us, and I remember this because the last time I was in Brookings, there was a sign with the temperature that said 80 degrees, at 4 o clock in the morning. That was in the early ‘70s, and I was there not too long ago, and that sign is still there on the side of that building. Anyway, I managed to get down that street and the cops were chasing me, and they're catching up. In Brookings they have a giant college. And when college is in session, the town is 10 thousand people greater. I managed to get onto the football field and go right across to the other side. It's the spirit of getting’ away!

 

I knew all kinds of people, even prostitutes. I used to run my motorcycle on the streets of Winnipeg as a young man, and you got to know everybody. They were just people, young people, young ladies on the street. No home. That's how they made their living. We'd have coffee, ya know? I had a home. I felt bad for them, but they sure had some interesting stories to tell you. I worked a 4-12 shift every evening and after that, the city opens up and a whole bunch of people go out. They go to bowling alleys they do all kinds of things. They're night people, and they're all over the streets and I got to meet all these different people, who had different ways of life. Some people were bartenders, and some people were drug dealers, and the bike clubs had their hookers, and the drugs, and you get to know these things. I knew these people and thought nothin’ of it. I still went to Sunday supper with my mom, why would I fuss with the rest of this stuff. But you had to go down the streets on your motorcycle and check out the hookers and everything. And the cops would be doing the same thing, they'd be checking them out. And you'd all be out there. And the cops would know who you were by your face. So one day I'm going down the street, the hooker alley street or whatever you call it, I can't remember. And there's a cop car in front of me and one behind me, and we're lookin’ and we're lookin’ and just crawling along. All of a sudden, I'm looking at this lady, and BAM. Didn't I run into the back of the police car. My motorcycle stopped, and I put my feet down, and I'm looking at the cop car, and both cops turned and looked at me and so I waved, and they buggered off, and so did I.

 

That's in the 70s, when I lived in the big city. I lived mostly in East Kildonan, what they called Little Chicago, around Talbot & Grey. I guess the neighborhood is actually called Elmwood. It's the working class. That's where my dad lived for many years. So that was the city life, but I didn't spend very much time doin’ that, didn't have much luck. But I had a pile of money in my hands.

 

I've never, ok, I've only spent one day in jail, by Corporal Harry Row. See I come from a little town. When we used to be bad as kids, he used to grab us and take our bicycles away, take us by the scruff of the neck and take us to the jail, and throw us in, lock the door, and leave. He'd go for lunch. And we learned our lesson didn't we? When we got bigger, Mr. Row was still there. I guess we didn't learn our lesson that good because at that point we had dirt bikes. We used to go through town and tear up the yards of the people we didn't like.He knew we did all this stuff, so he used to take away our drivers licenses for 2 weeks. Then we'd take our bike home, and that was it. Now, young people have to go to jail. So life in my younger days as being a bad bugger (which some people said, don't believe that), we got away with it. But it's not like that anymore and that's why it's such a hard thing for young people with their driver’s licenses to stay out of trouble, it's a difficult thing. But they'll survive somehow. I did, look at me! I made it to this point.

 

 

 

Chapter 3

The Rebel