The Story of two Whizzer Motor Bikes (218)

First off let me say I am back in business here as my camera has been found...No more "cussy darn" going on here...it was in the motor home under a little basket holding a salt and pepper shaker...now I should have known...SP found it for me, truth be known she probably lost it for me also but we won't go there, I may have put it there....but today were talking Whizzer's.........

My title could be Life and almost Death on a Whizzer, as it very nearly was except for a lady maybe an angel who lived just across the road from where my first Whizzer became a twisted total mess as I too almost did....

But lets start at the beginning...these Whizzer Motor Bikes started to appear I guess during World war Two in the early 40's they tell me that you could purchase the motor, gas tank and pulley for your back wheel and mount it on a boy's bike and you were in business...all for about 60 bucks I guess...during the war with rationing and all the government tried to shut them down but the Whizzer people convinced congress that they were necessary cheap transportation to allow people to get back and forth to work...Well after the war as we grew just a tad bit afluent these bikes started to appear around the Dayton Indiana area with kids riding them...boy it looked like fun, and in the spring of 53 I talked my dad into allowing me to purchase one so that I could ride to my off the farm, farm job about 5 miles away each day that summer...gosh I loved that thing...held a full gallon of gas that cost a full quarter of a dollar...and it would go 100 miles on that gas...I would hop on it and start peddling and it would start and away I would go down the road to where ever I needed to go...Life was good...I was just a little short of the 140 bucks needed to buy the two year old model from Glenn Electric in Lafayette but my pops helped me out with the rest...I could hardly sleep at nights for the first week or so anticipating the next days excitement of riding just anywhere..just to feel the air hit me in the face, man I had arrived....

I was only 13 not a legal driver but no one was watching much...Dad told me to take the back roads and not get caught by the State Police so I did...I took old Haggerty lane west from 900 east, all the way past the wild cat creek and on past present day Subaru auto plant to I think it was 400 or 450 east and then south across 38 and 52 to the Kirkpatrick farm on about 450 south I think...took me maybe a half hour each way and I loved the ride each day...it was a good summer and my very first job, don't remember what my wage was but I was working and having fun...Mick Blair was the farmer I worked for that summer and the next summer also...

That fall after school had started I rode my Whizzer to Dayton to play some ball of some sort one Sunday afternoon...Coming home that afternoon I took the chance of riding home on 38 past the cemetery...I followed a very slow old pick up truck through Dayton and after we started down the hill east I could see nothing was coming so I tried a passing manuever around the old truck...As I was even with the truck and passing it the two gentlemen in the truck decided to turn left, without signaling into the cemetery, and came over against my bike sending me carrening into the ditch at the entrance to the cemetery...The old truck had been in a previous wreck and the left front fender was torn and as I hit the fender it tore my right thigh a deep gash cutting it from the knee, almost to the hip all the way to the large bone of my leg...I slid across the gravel drive way of the entrance and landed in the ditch just east of the cemetery gates...I jumped up immediately and looked down at my leg as it felt wet...it was wet alright, and I could actually see my leg bone exposed and my first thought was that should not be that way and I took the two halves of my thigh and pushed them back together over the bone, at which time a huge amount of blood gushed from my wound....I then just sat down on the edge of the road not knowing anything else to do and each time my heart beat a lot of blood came out...I really figured I was a gooner for sure....Out of no where my angel a Mrs. Robinson came out of her house there at Adams Road and 38, ran over and looked at me and turned and ran back to her house...then reappearing right away with a rag and a wooden spoon...she tore it into a turnicut and tied it around my upper leg...took the spoon and put it through the rag and twisted it until the blood stopped running out... she saved my life that October day in 1953....I saw it all happen but was not sure of course I was going to make it.. I remember the ambulance ride to St. E. Hospital in the Baker Funeral Home Hearst I think they called it which double for an ambulance in those days....Four hours and 140 stitches later I woke up, and a new in Lafayette Dr.William Furgeson, told me I was a lucky lad... I then had a months stay, and about 3 more months at home...Leg got totally stiff so took several more months before I was back to normal but thank God and Mrs Robinson that day did come....Feeling returned to the right side of my thigh maybe 15 years later.

So that was the end of my Whizzer days, I thought...lots of years passed by but about I think 2000 or 2001, I was driving past a bike shop on 38 east, and something caught my eye and I thought was that a Whizzer?, I turned around and went in the shop, and sure enough they had started to make them again, and they looked just about like before...Someone my age, had paid the 2200 they were now selling new for and got real winded trying to start it by peddling it....they traded it in on something with a key start...I asked how much an was amazed at the stated price of 750 bucks for a new Whizzer with 69 miles on it...I went home and thought about it for all of about an hour maybe and went back and said, "hey if you throw in a helmet, and take 700 I will ride that puppy out of here"...I rode my second Whizzer home on a cold day in Febuary.....

My wife Linda said to me when I got it home, "did you not almost get killed on one of those, what are you doing"? I jokingly said, "well maybe I am trying to finish the job"...

I was back in the Whizzer business for a few rides and enjoyed it remembering the old days. It was fun till one day someone just for fun passed me at very high speed and almost brushed me...maybe a foot away or less, and I thought of what could have happened if I had weaved just a foot to the left not knowing they were coming by...it took the fun out of it that day...I parked it, never rode it much after that. About a year later I showed the guy I sold it to how to peddle it to start it and it was gone.He was about my age from the West Point area, so watch out for him on that bike..So now, I am Whizzerless and glad of it, thanks for listening....