When I’m 64

by John Reblin

So, a few weeks ago, I hit the magic 64 years old. Birthdays were not that huge event when growing up. Now it is a reason to go out with the “Little Flower” for dinner, have some good food that we don’t have to clean up after, and pretty much take it easy. I have noticed that all the insurance companies are sending their “cards” with words that say hey!!, get ready to get supplemental insurance from us so you’re not short changed when you get your Medicare card. We have some time yet, but I am sure we will need to look at it sooner rather than later.

Whenever I have something like a birthday or holiday I like to think back and reflect on my earlier years. Maybe think about the kids. The fun we had when the house was full, well it was only two kids, but it is a small house, or even to think back to when I was growing up.

I am fortunate that I don’t need to spit in a tube to see where my roots are. My cousins love to dig deep into the history of our family and my late Uncle Chuck created a large binder of information that he worked on for many years. It’s a pretty impressive book with pictures, a story, and documents of our family history through Chuck’s eyes.

Through some of his later work, it came to our attention that the farm in Germantown, that I lived on until I was about 8 years old along with my family and grandparents, was creating something out of the land. The present owner is interested in brewing beer and decided he wanted to open a brew pub. Through the Covid years we watched the building going up behind the barn from afar, that at one time was full of hay, pigs and livestock start to crumble. Other improvements were being done to the land and at one point curiosity got the best of me and I stopped in to introduce myself. We had a great discussion talking about the changes, and the present owner was picking my memory about other things about the land and the life 50 plus years prior to now. The “new owners” are interested in the land’s history and owners, so we had some great discussions of things that we remember going on, sharing pictures and stories.

The Brew Pub is now open and doing well. I have been there a few times and enjoyed reliving memories there. It is cool to take my kids there now, they have only seen it before by looking down that long driveway and having me explain what I know about that part of my early life.

A few years ago, my cousin Paul, always looking for that tidbit of information, showed my mom an article in a magazine about the Walter Bike. This is a historic bike made by Harley Davidson in 1913 a Forecar model 9G. It was like a motorcycle, but the front single wheel was replaced with 2 wheels with a box, similar to reversing a servicar. It was originally purchased by the Lemke Electric Company to be used to make deliveries. They had some issues with the box blocking the cooling air causing overheating issues along with some transmission issues. Joseph “Ally” Schuster saw it while working for a repair shop and fell in love with it, finally purchasing it. As with many people’s projects things got in the way and the bike was stored in a barn until 1964 when friends convinced him to restore the bike. Ally and later his repair shop were located in Richfield, Wisconsin.

It became the project of Ally and his grandson Mike to spend time together restoring this bike. Most of the pieces were there and after doing some research the project was started. Ally passed away in 1967 and the project was not done yet, still sitting in many pieces. Mike had many things going on and pushed the project off until something told him it was time to get going on this bike again. After some time and hard work sourcing parts and putting this timepiece together, the bike was completed in time for the 2013 Harley Davidson Anniversary.

So why did I bring this bike project up? While reading this magazine article, again my cousin Paul was interested in the local connection. While reading the story it was mentioned as a joke that Jess Barndt took the seat off the bike at one point and hid it as a practical joke. When he heard about the bike being restored, he returned the seat in its original condition. Jesse was my grandfather. I never knew of this story but the timeline fits. Unfortunately, those that could fill in some of those blank spots are long gone. I tried to locate Mike to talk to him about the bike, but like all things after a short while things bumped into my life.

Then I got an email from Jim Cutting about a documentary about this bike that he produced and was promoting for release. I replied to the email, not expecting an answer, about questions that I had. First being if he was related to Hiram. Hiram was the President early on in ABATE of Wisconsin’s history, and secondly, if he knew about the seat. I was surprised to see Jim write back. Hiram is his brother, and Jim himself was involved. He was an early member and met Tony Pan and John Barajas hanging out at the Free Riders along with Dave Zein. Life took Jim into the British Biker Cooperative in ‘77 causing him to step back from ABATE, but he helped out in establishing the Right to Decide committee for the purpose of the anti-helmet rally in August of 1987. “You may remember that event. I worked closely with Shark as my ABATE representative, as Hiram was at that time, the Director of ABATE. I organized the event through a committee of Wisconsin motorcycle clubs and organizations”.

He also knew about the story involving the seat and brought it up in the documentary less the name. Mike also knew my grandfather and I look forward to talking to him at the release of this documentary in September. If anyone else is interested, let me know and I can give you the details.

History is important, whether it is your own, an organization’s or the country’s. Looking back, you see fun little things like this, and you can learn a lot from it. History needs to be shared, the good along with the bad. And by hearing and reading it, you grow from it. Those stories that you hear sometimes you give you that personal connection and it makes you dig deeper to understand why you are the way you are. But it also keeps you going forward in a way that was intended.

ABATE of Wisconsin is steeped in its history. We feel it is important to learn from it, and to share the experiences that we learned from it. You often hear, why reinvent the wheel? By looking at your history you learn what worked and what didn’t. You can also learn why it worked or failed and improve on it. When you see those seasoned members, Pan, Hoggie, Polack, and all the others, talk to them and listen. They have these wonderful and educational stories that we need to know and should hear. We have all this history bottled up and as we get older, we need to shake the bottle up and get it out. ABATE of Wisconsin is someday looking at creating a museum to put all the history we have on display. I think this is also important to preserve and to show what went on in those early days. Let’s not wait too long to do this, and together let’s make more history.

John