871: The Thing About Things
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When nine zero first saw the bike, you know, there's a little Honda motorcycle from 1966 with an engine so small that officially I think you're supposed to call it a scooter. There's in a neighbor's yard. He was 13. I absolutely remember it. Yeah, it was against the shed. Grass has grown all over it. It was red, but they have not taken care of it. And so many put flat black paint all over the thing. Tires are flat. Um, there's a couple of pieces missing from it. It's funny. So when you see it, it's kind of a wreck of a bike. Yeah, it's a wreck of a bike with a dream of I'm going to be the cool kid in the neighborhood with my friends and buddies. His plan was he wanted to ride it around the railroad tracks with his buddies. They would hang out there in the woods with the bicycles, get cigarettes from the older kids or beer now and then. This was West Albany, New York, 1975. And then you describe this to me. The only thing I could picture was stranger things or the film stand by me and then a friend of his brought that film up to describe what it was like. Anyway, so none day pays his neighbor $50 cash with money here and mowing lawns. None day wasn't great at school, but even at 13, he had an unusual talent for fixing things and for engines. Like he fixed his own lawn mower engine at that age. And he was excited to get scooter home and to work on it in this workshop under his parents porch. When he did, he discovered. OK, so the engine was seized to come to find out. It was missing the overhead valve assembly. Also holds in the gas tank, carburetor needed to be building. Battery was shot. So now, you know, I kind of realized, like, I couldn't realistically cut enough lawns to get enough parts to get it running at that age. OK, so so you're 13, you realize, like, this is going to be a big job. Do you just put it aside? Like, what happens? I set it aside and it sat there for 24 years. During that near quarter century, it lay in pieces all over the ground under this porch, he says. But he didn't forget it. You think about it now and then always intended to get back to
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