In 1949, a 19 year old named Marty Dickerson was paid by a SoCal motorcycle dealership to travel across the Southwest and take all comers in street races, astride the fastest production motorcycle on the planet.
"For one month in that summer of ’49, Marty Dickerson had the ‘drag racing adventure of a lifetime’, covering 5000 miles through Phoenix, Dallas, Tulsa, Ft.Worth, Tyler, Kansas City, and smaller towns in Colorado and Utah. He raced the fastest motorcycles And cars the locals could muster, sometimes legendary monsters which had never been bested. There were close calls, such as when he didn’t have time to change a fouled spark plug before a race, and the Vincent spluttered on one-and-a-half cylinders while his rival rocketed ahead. Quick thinking and a ‘poor man’s tuneup’ (downshifting from 3rd to 2nd at high revs to blast the plugs clean) cleared the cough and saw Marty take the lead once again. There were other times when ‘sore losers’, with much time and reputation invested in their Harleys or Hotrods, made a hasty exit the prudent choice for young Mr. Dickerson. It must have been infuriating when some short, big-nosed kid on a strange motorbike (‘Harley R Davidson?’) kept pace with the Knucklehead you’d spent months tuning for speed, until your throttle was hard on the stop while you crouched low over the tank…only to watch ‘that kid’ shift into 4th gear, and leave you eating his dust."
The Blue Bike | The Vintagent
"For one month in that summer of ’49, Marty Dickerson had the ‘drag racing adventure of a lifetime’, covering 5000 miles through Phoenix, Dallas, Tulsa, Ft.Worth, Tyler, Kansas City, and smaller towns in Colorado and Utah. He raced the fastest motorcycles And cars the locals could muster, sometimes legendary monsters which had never been bested. There were close calls, such as when he didn’t have time to change a fouled spark plug before a race, and the Vincent spluttered on one-and-a-half cylinders while his rival rocketed ahead. Quick thinking and a ‘poor man’s tuneup’ (downshifting from 3rd to 2nd at high revs to blast the plugs clean) cleared the cough and saw Marty take the lead once again. There were other times when ‘sore losers’, with much time and reputation invested in their Harleys or Hotrods, made a hasty exit the prudent choice for young Mr. Dickerson. It must have been infuriating when some short, big-nosed kid on a strange motorbike (‘Harley R Davidson?’) kept pace with the Knucklehead you’d spent months tuning for speed, until your throttle was hard on the stop while you crouched low over the tank…only to watch ‘that kid’ shift into 4th gear, and leave you eating his dust."
The Blue Bike | The Vintagent
