Tall Tales...what ever made me buy a norton?

Interesting story hewho - I'm going to stay away from those flippies!

"Graf" "The Land Beyond The Moon" as we called the place in 65,66 and 67 when I was over there. The "flip-tops" as we refered to the halb liter flasks of beer were used as missils as you carefully placed the ceramic caps across the top of the bottle, then with a good fast finger chop, send the tip flying across the room. The floor would be covered with them at the end of the evening. Perhaps things were a bit calmer in the 70's but we always had beer by the case in our rooms at night. Had a lot of fun there and then had a lot of misery too when we had overnighters in the field during the winter "games".

Anyway in 66 I traveled to England on leave and it was there I had my first sight of so many Brit bikes in one palce. I had owned a Triumph back in 60-61-62 but sold it to finance a 63 Stingray.
While walking the streets of London I would come across many different Brit machines, but the sound of the Nortons were always distinguishable from many. Lots of cafe bikes would be assembled at different pubs and I would get into conversations with the owners and pass the time discussing the merits of Nortons & Triumphs. Too little time to spend and so much to see and do and not having a bike to ride around on was not the best of times but other things made up for it.

Upon getting back to the "land of round doorknobs" I got the bug again in the spring of 68 and went out and purchased a new Bonniville which I traveled some 40,000 miles on before selling in 72.
My first Norton came into my life in 76, a 71 Fastback which had been sitting for several years and purchased for $275.00. It took more money than I could ever begin to add up to get it back into usable condition and before I completed it, along came #2 Norton, a 74 Roadster in running condition. As my little family of Nortons grew I was asked by strangers if I wanted to buy another one. So not wanting to pass up a good deal I would go take a look and usually make an offer which would to my surprise be accepted and so on and so forth untill around 1985 the prices started to get a bit too much and so my family stopped growing when it reached 9.
The bikes include a 68, 70, the first a 71, a 73, 74, 74Mk2A, 75mk3, a 74JPN and a basket case 74.
I to this day do not have the faintest clue as to why I purchased all these Nortons. It was just something about them that I could not resist the overpowering urge not to buy them. Perhaps it was just to save them from possible scrap yards or from owners who would not appreciate the history of this remarkable motorcycle. Yes it certainly has its design flaws and intermittant problems, but never has a motorcycle been so enjoyable to ride on when everything is working and your on that perfect road all to yourself. The feeling is, well, hard to put into words. It's something you have to experience to understand.
You who have had shared this know what I mean. You could ride on and on hopeing the day will never end.

Here's hoping the Norton legacy lives on and on with the care and respect these great bikes deserve.

Hey rx7171,

How is your "new' '72 Commando project coming along?

In your last post you were happier than a pig in poop!

Post pictures, if you've got em.

Jason

I will add my little story here. Rode a bike, once in high school, Honda 250. Was in to fast cars and always liked bikes. Around 1978 in the Air Force stationed in D.C. picked up a copy of cycle world with a 10 milestone bikes article. I can still remember part of it " It burst onto the scene with all the politeness of a raging Tyranasaurous Rex" and it is like "listening to Grand Funk vs James Taylor". The Kawasaki H-2. I think a Norton was in the article also. Anyway talking to a buddy in the barracks about the article, he says oh yea I have one of those in a box, want it? Yea I did, bought it found someone to help me, rebuilt it. Rode about 3 months, never over 3500RPM. A strange feeling in bike when going up thru the gears hard, had my friend help me check it out. He had to get way ahead of me on his CX 500, he tells me, that funny feeling is when your front tire comes back down, at 45-60 mph. Learned to ride on that bike, learned to fly on that bike, and pissed myself on that bike! I loved that bike. Several years later, still riding the K, my cousin tells me I have this Norton I want to sell, 75 850 hi-rider. Bought that, and wow what a difference, I wont say better. I loved that bike too! But the Norton was the daily driver and the K filled the need for speed on the weekends. Sold these 2 and 3 dirt bikes in 1985, moved to Oregon. Many years later(22), poking around on ebay(at 2 stroke 750's and Nortons), I find this ad in the completed section, looks like it came from a race track, no bids? Emailed the seller asked if he was going to relist. No but he was willing to sell it to me. Rent a truck, meet him halfway thru Calif. Now it is on the back porch. Have not ridden it a foot, yet. Oh an original 1968 commando frame, not good. Have got her running, sounds like no Norton I have heard before, have to wonder what is inside. Every bit on it is safety wired. Lot of work to do, but you know what? I love that bike, already! Look thru my posts and you can find a picture or two if you like. And I still miss the H-2. Why did I buy a Norton? with an Opel Manta and an Alfa Romeo, Ford and Chevy in the yard now, I like to be a little different, classy(I think) and global I guess.

Dan

Looks like this is an old thread, but I just found it.

Always loved Nortons from pix in magazines, and a few I saw here and there, but could never afford one as I started building my collection.

My problem is, I'm CHEAP, and a good deal never came up. Part of this stems from the fact that I've been self-employed nearly my entire adult life from the time I got out of the Navy.

So, I ended up with this fantastic job that paid really well, and we were already debt-free, and I started to have a wad of money in my pocket most days.

Next thing you know, a buddy shows my his nearly all original 75 Mark III Interstate (steel tank), and says he's fed up with it because the carbs drip and he got a humongous Yamaha v-twin cruiser that he rides all the time, so how much will I give him for it?

I pull out my wad 'o cash and start counting 'till a smile crosses his lips and he hands me the keys. (basically, that's what happened).

All I did was install a new strainer/bushing on the left carb inlet (the old one was cracked), a new battery, fresh plugs, and an oil change.

I've been loving it ever since and have only changed the bars to 1" taller rise for long-range comfort. There is NOTHING wrong with this bike.

Well I've got to admit I was a Honda fan in my youth, much to the Old Man's disgust for he worked at Norton before the war. He reckoned Freddy Frith was the best rider Norton ever had, used to polish Freddy's tank or something. Anyhow, the turning point for me was an old 49 ES2 that my mate and I pulled out of a tin garage and had cut the sidecar off it was so rusted on. It started second kick and we thrashed the poor old thing all summer long. It never failed to start or missed a beat, we never even changed the oil. Later, I can still remember as if it were yesterday, slip-streaming a new 68 Fastback into a strong head wind, it just sounded so effortless. I just couldn't get my head round it, long stroke small valves.
Cash

So...it’s now been a year since I blasted one of these tales of woe off and sent it to annoy all of you. There are a whole bunch of new faces here on the Forum, so at least some of you will not have already been sent into dreamland by my stories. It’s again one of those nights where you sleep a couple of hours and then lie awake for a few more before you decide that you have to get out of bed and so something at least constructive…so here goes.


Back to Camp Swampy…end of 76, beginning 77. No guarantee as to the exact sequence of these bits of life… but who cares about that at the moment.

Back at that time, those nasty RAF (Red Army Faction) people were busy as hell trying to make life unpleasant for the German state and the Americans stationed here in the country. Whether you would see any validity to their complaints is up for debate, but few of us would see much of what they did to voice their opinions as something positive. Christian Klar, the biggie in RAF circles has just this last January been released, or at least been allowed to get “parole” from prison and walk around Berlin and see what has changed in the last 25 years or so since they tossed him in the brig. Bit frightening to say the least as he was and perhaps still is, not a nice person and has still never said he regretted what he did back then. Convicted of I think, 9 murders and still feels he was justified. The law says he’s “cured” though and he should be free to go and do his thing. Ouch!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Klar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Autumn


Anyway…the Camp was situated right next to an Autobahn and it must have received it’s share of attention from either the RAF or the kind of people that seem to feel they want to play “copycat” and get off on playing with the big boys. Adds up to the same thing when you get tasked to do guard duty and they send you out with a weapon that has no ammunition. It’s about three in the morning and the fellow I get sent out with and I are standing, like dummies, under one of the lights that lights the road we have to walk along and play soldier on. Guess we are having a smoke or something, but all of a sudden the asphalt next to my mate gets a hole in it and gravel sprays against my boot. Whoa…what was that says he. Now it’s three in the morning and we all know that no one can think clearly or quick at that time, so it took till the next hole appeared between us in the road to register. Shit! I grabbed him by the shoulder and threw us into the grass on the side of the road and we laid there and some son-of-a gun pops a few more rounds at us and then since he can’t see us anymore starts to wing them off the huge billion gallon fuel tanks behind us. We can now see a car parked on the Autobahn off in the distance with muzzle flash a split second before the rounds go whining off the tanks with that sound you all have heard in the cowboy films when some cowboy is shooting from behind a rock and never seems to get hit by the rock chips from the bullets hitting right next to this face. Immaterial. The sound is like no other and you never forget it. So finally he is out of ammunition and gets in the car and boogies off to terrorist heaven somewhere. We couldn’t have defended our selves if we had wanted to, what with the empty clips they sent us out with. So we high tail it back to the company and get told we must be smoking some good shit. No one believes us and we get sent back out there. This time we don’t hang under the lights any more.

I’m staying off post and this stuff used to happen at night so other than the above episode, I just saw things after the fact. Came in one morning and the whole side of my barracks is pockmarked with holes from end to end. Not a window broken, but a lot of holes in a line. More than likely the same turkey came back with more rounds and didn’t see any dummies under any streetlights. Can’t have a military post looking messy, so within a week there were workers there to patch the holes and touch up the paint. Glad the room I still had to maintain in the barracks was on the other side of the building.

Another morning I came in to work on the Norton and the whole corner where you drive into the post is closed off with red and white tape and there are cops all over the place. The guard shack is gone. Gone. And the whole area is strewn with pieces of cinder blocks. The back gate is open and I get in that way and hear the news. Seems the gate guard is hard at work reading one of his Superman comics when some dude in a trench coat, (how corny), walks up and sticks a shotgun under his nose. So the fellow tells him to take his comic and get the hell out of the area and then lobs a grenade into the guard shack and disappears into the night. Made a heck of a mess. Right friendly atmosphere there was in that town back then, to say the least. Nowadays I have to once in a while go by the place where the guard shack used to be. The whole post is gone now, a big industrial park in now there and all the buildings are now gone. Way of the world I guess, but it seems still a bit sad.




Not all of life took place on that Post anyway…weekends were somewhat different. Used to be this big disco down somewhere in town that we used to frequent. The whole club would ride down there and party. It was full of pretty girls and also full of lots of drunks. Sometimes when someone has had more than enough of the brew, he does strange things. Outside, after one evening down there enjoying our selves, one of these pleasant types walks up to me and suddenly sticks a knife right in my face. Now there are things in life than are not nice and this is one of them. I still have a healthy respect for those little items and most of my respect stems from this evening. He sticks this thing in my face and tells me to pull mine out. He says that I am wearing a knife on my belt and that means I must want to fight him with it. Now I’ve never seen this butt hole in my life, but I’ve his knife about 3 inches from my face and it just doesn’t feel “warm and cuddly” if you get my drift. I do have my Buck that the first sergeant requires us to all wear to do the “Buck” salute with every morning at formation, but I’m not into doing more than scraping the dirt out from under my fingernails with it. Fight with it…God, there has to be better ways to spend your weekends. I can’t move to get mine, not with that big blade so close to my face and that Kung Fu stuff you see in the movies…not my thing either, so I’m in a position that is less than advantageous to say the least. Just when he is getting really pissed that I’m not whipping my Buck out to slit his stomach open with it, the president of my club catches wind of what is going on and slides up behind him and knocks his block off with a beer bottle. Down he goes and the knife goes into a pocket and the president looks down at him laying on the sidewalk, scratches his chin and says…”Guess it’s time to go”. Gotta agree with him. Just another one of those nice, uneventfully nights at the Disco.


Not all nights at the Disco were like that though. Back to the pretty girls. There were always tons of them there and that’s what made it so much fun. One night, a few weeks after that buddy of mine with the “cute little girlfriend” mentioned in that thread about my friends the cops and the great cop chase, was also there. He had packed up and gone back to the states and left her there. Stupid fellow. Anyway, she had wonderful freckles that the black lights in the Disco made stand out and look, as I said, really cute. About ten thirty, the Curfew for the kids under 18 came into effect. Now the club was always filled with girls that were maybe fibbing when they said they were 16 and at least a hundred were underage in that club on any given night. So what pulls up at the door? The goons with a couple of busses to pick up all the juvenile delinquents and take them down to the station to be picked up by their irresponsible parents. Later we hear that one of the girls they dragged off to the station was the daughter of the Police Commissioner of the city. How embarrassing for him…


This round up of the ladies was kindergarten, to say the least. So it goes through the club like wild fire that the cops have arrived and the cute one with the freckles runs to me and begs for help. She’d be among the chosen, no doubt. So I get pulled by the hand into the girl’s bathroom and end up giving a hand up to at least fifty screaming, crying teenies and they all go out the window and off down the alley. The last ones out are me and cutie and we head behind the building and out across the street into the kids playground there is there. Now it’s dark as the ace of spades in there and we can’t see much, so as she decides to prance around and laugh and giggle about how we tricked the cops and she got away, she runs towards me in the dark and gets clocked by the Jungle Gym. Right in the forehead. Naturally she goes down like a sack of potatoes and I have to pick her up. She came to and she had quite a bump on the head. Skin not broken, but a nice lump. Still has it today… and I will let you guess how I know.


But that’s another story…

Peace!



PS!!!!! There are some new members…get out your pens and put a few words down in this thread.


Keep them Doggies Rollin!