the tinker
Cruisin' on my Bluebird
Here's how it looked a couple weeks ago. The plain white vintage 1940 saddle on the right.
Very happy how it turned out. It's going on a rat rod I'm building. The look I was going for was something that would be on an outlaw bike in the late 1950's. Back in the summer of 1958, My folks and I went into town on Saturday to get some things, to find our small Wisconsin town taken over by a large motorcycle gang. I remember it was the summer of '58, because gramps died the following winter. Still miss the old guy. He drove a 49 Studabaker and usually wore these old grey striped, ratty looking overalls. I remember my mom scolding my dad, saying, "He's not wearing any underwear under them do you know that? And he stinks. Can't you say anything to him?" Oh gosh, I miss those simple days.... Anyway where was I? Oh yeah, the biker gang... They were probably out of Milwaukee or Chicago. My folks were not happy, having to walk around and step over the "hoodlums" as Dad called them. Wearing their white T shirts and black leather vests, they were sprawled out on the downtown sidewalks, purposely blocking them. I remember me, Dad and gramps having to step over them to get into a hardware store. My dad was mumbling something about "punks." Their Harley and Indian motorcycles parked on the street, right next to them. When I think about it now, many of the "hoodlums" were probably Korean War vets, maybe even WW2 vets. They were not teenagers. I recall my parents being very upset about it. Dad was pissed. I thought it was great! When we got back home, I told my pals about it and we pretended our old ballooners were motorcycles.
The last thing I did this week, was to make the crash rail. Bent from a 3/8 piece of steel straight stock , as shown below.
Still undecided if I should leave the buckskin fringe hanging from it as is, or to dye it black, or maybe red.
Thanks for looking!
