Darwin Holmstrom - The Life Harley-Davidson

DARWIN HOLMSTROM
FOREWORD BY NORMAN REEDUS AND DAVE NICHOLS

2017 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

First published in 2017 by Motorbooks, an imprint of
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Digital edition: 978-0-76036-199-3
Hardcover edition: 978-0-76035-564-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: on file with LOC.

Acquiring Editor: Zack Miller
Project Manager: Jordan Wiklund
Series Creative Director: Laura Drew
Cover and page design: Laura Drew
Page layout: Laura Drew and Beth Middleworth
Front cover photo: American musician (and actor) Elvis Presley (1935 - 1977) sits on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle on July 4, 1956, outside Memphis, Tennessee. Alfred Wertheimer/Getty Images

Norman Reedus is best known for playing the iconic survivalist Daryl Dixon on the AMC hit TV series The Walking Dead. Daryl is the sort of guy you could drop in the middle of the woods and hed show up a month later, well fed and no worse for wear, zombies or no zombies. Hes a survivor.

Norman is also a biker. Daryl often escapes from zombies on two wheels in the television series, echoing Normans own love of motorcycles. This led to his TV series, Ride with Norman Reedus (also on AMC). Each episode revolves around Norman riding with friends and artistsfor example, Easy Rider star Peter Fondato incredibly cool locations on amazing motorcycles.

Ive been into bikes since I was a teenager, Norman says. Motorcycles offer me a way to get away from it all. To escape.

This book is an attempt to put some of those feelings of freedom and escape into words and pictures. More than a history of Harley-Davidson or of biker culture, it captures some of the essence of what riding is all about. For me, motorcycles are linked to my own sense of personal freedom, Norman says. Youre just there with yourself and you think and come up with ideas. I do my best thinking on a motorcycle.

The boy and his sister stepped out the door of the High Plains gas station on a hot August evening, savoring the popsicles their mother had bought them while they waited for the station owner to fix the flat tire on their Ford wagon. The kids relished the respite from the confines of the wagons back seat, enduring the agony of puberty, close quarters, and their parents endless-loop soundtrack of The Captain & Tennille, Tony Orlando, and Barbra Streisand wafting from the cassette deck.

City kids, they werent impressed by lectures from park rangers explaining the importance of sphagnum peat moss in the great cycle of life, but the thing that they sensed coming down the road was far from boring. They felt it in the soles of their Keds before they heard its thunder, before they saw a point appear on the horizon, growing larger as the beat grew louder. The point became a pack of motorcycles, so loud the kids could feel each piston stroke of the big V-twin engines in their guts. The pack pulled into the gas station and riders began fueling their machines. The station owners wife appeared from the office clutching a broom like a weapon. She looked frightened, but the children were transfixed by the spectacle.

The bikers smiled at the kids. Theyd been there themselves, longing for the joy and the freedom that can only be found riding a powerful motorcycle down an open road. They recognized the look on the youngsters faces. They knew that, from this point on, these kids would be hooked on the life Harley-Davidson.

The life Harley-Davidson began at the turn of the twentieth century, an era in which people were transfixed by the prospect of internal combustion-powered mobility. Throughout human history, most people lived and died within walking distance of their birthplace. Even after the advent of mass transit, in the form of ships and later trains, individual mobility was unobtainable for most people. While cinematic Westerns create the illusion of a nation of cowboys rambling across the prairies on their horses, the reality was that the horse as a form of transportation was far from practical for the average person.

That changed in 1885 with the invention of the safety bicycle, featuring two same-sized tires that made it much safer and more stable than the earlier high-wheeled penny-farthing bicycles. A central crank that drove the rear wheel allowed variation in gear ratios, giving a rider the ability to cover greater distances. The safety bicycle was soon eclipsed in the publics imagination by the more romantic motorized bicycle, but the impact the safety bicycle had on the average persons life cannot be overstated. Prior to the safety bicycle, going into town from the countryside was an epic production, undertaken only to procure necessary supplies. Hitching a team of horses to a wagon was itself an involved procedure, taking up much of the morning. Then the ride into town could be a daylong ordeal (depending on the distance traveled), which meant that the farmer would have to get a hotel room in town after stocking up on flour, coffee, whiskey, and other essentials at the general store.