Chapter 3

Tuesday, October 13, 1998

As towns go, Bradford, Michigan is nothing special. It's just a country town of about 3,000 people, like hundreds or thousands of others. It's far enough away from bigger towns with more shopping opportunities like South Bend or Bolivar or Hawthorne, so there are several stores of various natures that serve most routine needs, including a fairly large grocery store. In general, prices are a little higher than you'd find in the Walmart in Hawthorne, but when the time and gas to run to one of the bigger towns is figured in, the numbers often change the other way.

The big thing Bradford has going for it is its location -- it's right in the fuzzy area where TV sets tuned to baseball games can about equally be watching the Detroit Tigers or Chicago Cubs. In only a few miles on I-67 the traveler comes to the Indiana Turnpike, with Chicago to the west and Cleveland not much farther to the east. It's very centrally located to a fairly large percentage of the country's population, at least as the truck drivers see it.

A good connection to Conrail completed the deal for General Hardware Retailers just as Jason had gotten out of the Army and was looking for a job that could be expected to last for a while. The nationwide chain decided the central location and rail connection made Bradford an ideal location for a regional distribution center, and virtually since the beginning it had been far and away the largest business and biggest employer in Hawthorne County. Just outside town on the other side of the overpass from the Chicago Inn, General consists of a huge warehouse with nearly a hundred truck bays and two dozen rail platforms. Surrounding the warehouse is an even-huger parking lot, usually filled with literally hundreds of semi trailers, with trucks coming and going steadily at all hours of the day or night. It's a busy place, and several hundred Bradfordites are among those from surrounding towns that make up the work force that moves, sorts, stores, and ships an unimaginable array of merchandise in considerable confusion, but with only rare mistakes.

Jason got hired into General on the third major round of hiring in early 1973, so was now one of the senior employees. The continual hustle and bustle, along with pressure to not screw up the merchandise transfers and loadings made it a stressful environment, and people who couldn't hack it tended not to last. In spite of considerable stress at times in his life, along with the stress in the plant, he'd stuck it out since then. His seniority was such that he could bid just about any job on the plant floor and get it, but he'd pretty much stuck with driving a fork truck since the early 1980s in spite of several offers to be a dock supervisor. That would have meant that he'd be back to being on his feet all the time and the extra pay wouldn't be enough to put up with the pain. Besides, his seniority guaranteed him a day shift on a fork truck, which was by no means assured as a dock supervisor. The stress level was a little lower, as well; dock supervisors were responsible for making sure that what was supposed to go on a truck actually made it onto the truck, while the fork truck drivers only had to get it to the right dock in the first place.

Jason's real secret to dealing with the stress was he could go home and relax by banging on a piece of hot iron. If it was late or he didn't feel like hammering, he could sit down in a couple different work areas around the house to work on finishing a knife. Hardly a day went by that he didn't mentally thank the Army in general and Sergeant Morgenstern in particular for igniting a life-long passion that had served him well.

For no good reason other than it sounded like something that might keep him from carrying a rifle, he'd chosen to enlist in the Army to train as a welder. He did all right in the school, but when he got to the maintenance battalion in Vietnam he found they had plenty of them. He was stuck with scut work and dumb jobs, but one day he got assigned to help Master Sergeant Paul Morgenstern in what passed for a blacksmith shop. He'd had a smattering of the subject in the Army school, but MSG Morgenstern was a true artisan. They were out in the middle of damn nowhere in Long Binh without much to do off duty. He soon learned it was more fun to just hang around the shop with the sergeant after work than it was to head over to the enlisted men's club and drink -- mostly because the old sergeant was a knife maker on the side, and taught him some of the tricks.

It was actually a pretty good deal. There was a market for knives as souvenirs, usually the bigger the better, and occasionally, there would be someone, often a Green Beret who decided the issue field knives weren't quite what he wanted. Morgenstern, and later Jason, could supply those needs, usually using busted jeep or truck leaf springs as raw material. Jason actually still had the first knife he made; it was nothing to write home about but had sentimental value. The next couple hundred, though, were turned out there in the blacksmith shop at Long Binh, with Morgenstern teaching him with every one. He learned things like normalizing, annealing, quenching, tempering and heat treating, what each one is used for and how much, the differences between steels and how to deal with them -- and that experience, a good eye, and good instincts count as much if not more than numbers on a chart.

Morgenstern told him there was a limit to what they could do with the tools and materials at hand, and hinted at some of the things that could be done. When Morgenstern rotated home about a month before Jason, Jason figured that sooner or later he'd find someone who could teach him those things. A couple months later, after leave in the states, Jason headed on to a maintenance battalion in Germany, and he was surprised to walk into the shop and find Sergeant Morgenstern there. By some Army quirk -- a real long shot -- the team was reassembled.

Now Jason began to learn some of the more advanced techniques, for in Germany they had access to advanced tools and materials, including awesome varieties of steels. No more cheap, quick-and-dirty toad-stickers for guys who wanted to show off how much testosterone they had. In the 'Nam, they might have turned out three or four knives an evening between them; now, they might spend a week or more -- sometimes much more -- on just one knife. Morgenstern was trying to master the ancient technique of pattern welding Damascus steel, which could be used to turn out some incredibly beautiful, flexible, and strong swords. There was some static from the officer who ran the shop and objected to them using the facilities in the off hours, but that ended when they told the battalion commander they couldn't finish the beautiful Damascus steel ceremonial saber they were making for him. When he finally headed back to Bradford after nearly two and a half years of working with Sergeant Morgenstern, Jason was well grounded in the basics and pretty well had finished his apprenticeship, but like any good journeyman, he had been working on the nuances and the artisanship ever since.

In the long term, it was one of the sorrows of Jason's life that he'd been unable to pass the skill on to his son. Duane could make a serviceable toad-sticker, but didn't have the patience or the delicacy to turn out a work of art. A number of people over the years had told him they'd like to know more about it, and he'd shown them some of the basics, but it had never grabbed anyone the way it had grabbed him.

Oh, well, I've got another twenty or thirty years, he thought as he stared into his cup of coffee several mornings later out at the Chicago Inn. He'd woken up early for no good reason, and rather than trying to go back to sleep he'd come out with the idea of having an extra cup of coffee, which is what he was doing when Kevin Holst came in and sat down across the table from him. "Morning, Kevin," he smiled, glad of someone to talk to. "Did Emily get over her snit from Sunday?"

"Oh, yeah," he nodded. "That's one thing I've always liked about her. When she gets a bug up her ass, it never stays there long. It was a downer from Saturday night, that's all, and I got her over it Sunday after we left here."

"How'd you do that?"

"It was such a nice day that I suggested we go riding. She wasn't too hot on that, but we got the bike out, and I made her drive." He snickered and went on. "I don't know why we don't do it that way more. She likes running it, and I don't exactly mind hanging onto her boobs."

"Hell, that makes you the rare one," Jason snorted. "Nine Harley owners out of ten would no more ride in back of their wives than they'd ride a rice burner."

"Well, yeah, it's a macho thing," Kevin smiled. "I mean, hell, it's that way most of the time with me, but I figured it was worth it under the circumstances. And it worked."

"Maybe what you ought to do is get her a bike of her own," Jason smiled. "That'd do a number on that doing-nothing-special rant she was carrying on about. Hell, everyone likes to feel a little special, so do something special. That's why people get tattoos, get piercings."

"Or make knives and wear kilts," Kevin grinned. "But that's the idea I had, too."

"What, have her get a tattoo and a couple piercings?"

"Hell no, get her a bike," Kevin smiled. "What I've got is too damn big for her, there's no getting around it. You wouldn't happen to be thinking about selling yours, would you?"

"No, not really," he nodded, thinking of the '56 he had sitting in the garage, and rode once in a while. Like the Firebird, he'd bought it young and held onto it, but it hadn't gained in value anything like the Pontiac had. "It's like the Firebird, I don't ride it much, but that panhead engine makes it a collector's item. I mean, I'd sell it if someone came along and offered me a bunch of bucks for it, but it's too big for her, and even though it's nothing special, it's probably out of your price range."

"Yeah, that's an issue," Kevin sighed. "I don't have a hell of a lot of money to throw at it. Face it, it's a toy, and I'm still not smoking so I can make payments on the big bike."

"Better for your health anyway," Jason nodded, lighting a cigarette. Smoking was one thing he didn't worry much about; if some of the stuff he'd breathed around hot metal over the years hadn't killed him, he didn't figure there was much chance that a few cigarettes a day could manage it.

"There is an alternative," Kevin replied, keeping his voice down. "There's a guy I know who's got a '76 Sportster he'd let me have at a pretty good price, even if it has problems."

"If it's a '76, it is a problem, right there," Jason replied. "That means it's an AMF, which means it's a piece of shit, you know that."

Jason didn't have to explain that Harley-Davidson had been bought up by a conglomerate, American Machine and Foundry in the late 1960s. The company, also known as AMF, was better known for making bowling pinspotters and had bought up other recreational companies with marginal success. In an effort to cut costs, they'd run up the production rates but let quality control slide. Bikers were quick to pick up on it; sales dropped, and the bikes got even crappier -- new bikes were known for leaving puddles of oil under them on the showroom floor. Eventually the whole works was getting set to go down the tubes, Harleys and pinspotters and all. In the last days, a few stalwarts managed to enlist the help of an investment bank, and with a great deal of courage (and a little help from the International Trade Commission, which instituted a temporary tariff on large imported bikes) managed to save the last remaining American motorcycle maker. The new management -- which included Willie Davidson, the grandson of one of the founders -- turned ruthless about quality control, and in the next few years turned Harley-Davidson into an American icon and a major success story. By that time, there were plenty of new cars that cost less out of a showroom than a snorting, really rather primitive Harley -- and the cars weren't on a waiting list, either.

It wasn't all bad, at least from this perspective: there had been a lot of AMF bikes made, and prices on them were not high, especially because those AMF bikes that had survived were not the collector's items that older and even some newer bikes were. Prices were more reasonable as a result, but that was only if you could put up with them being the unreliable mechanical monsters they had the reputation of being.

"I know," Kevin said. "It's in a box; the guy started to go through it and blueprint it, do a total restoration, and get rid of the stuff that has a reputation for breaking. But he ran out of steam on it, and I can get it for five hundred, and hell, I know I could rebuild it. It's mostly a case of putting the pieces back together, and he's already got the engine done."

"You might have something there, after all," Jason nodded. "The thing of it is, those box jobs usually turn into a bigger chore than you're expecting."

"I know that," he sighed. "Hell, I've done it before. The problem is that this time, I'd like to make it a surprise to Emily. Maybe give it to her for Christmas. That means I couldn't do it out in the garage."

Jason smiled, seeing the problem. "That means not only are you looking for a place to do it, but you're looking for an excuse to be away enough to get it done."

"Right. I mean, I'd tell Emily what was coming down, but if I do it I've put myself under a deadline, and I'll catch hell if something happens and I fall behind. I'd thought of asking you, but she and Vicky are thick as thieves, and there goes the surprise."

"Maybe not," Jason told him. "Vicky got an earful of that rant on Sunday, and she seems pretty sensitive to the issue. The thing is to not try to keep her out of the secret, but make her a part of it. She'd be able to cover for you better than you ever could yourself."

"Still, it's a hell of a big favor to ask," Kevin said. "I was going to ask you to do a couple things on it anyway. You still do chrome plating, don't you?"

"Yeah, but mostly on smaller stuff, and not very often. Generally speaking, a chrome-plated knife is a crappy knife, but sometimes I get orders for them. Bigger parts, I'd just say send to a shop equipped to do them. But I could build some custom stuff to help individualize it, like a custom sissy bar or something."

"I'd be glad if you could," Kevin smiled. "But as far as actually doing the bike, I've still got the problem of an excuse to get away to work on it."

"Kevin my man," Jason grinned broadly. "You're not thinking it through. You ever think you'd like to learn how to make a knife?"

"I've often wondered how you do it, but I don't know how I'd ever be as good at it as you are."

"I didn't learn it overnight," Jason said. "It took me two and a half years to get a good grounding in the basics, and the stuff I turn out now is way past the basics. It goes real slow in the beginning. Hell, it took me days to turn out my first toad-sticker, and that was with a real master helping me. I could kick out that same toad-sticker in a couple hours of actual working time anymore, except I don't usually do toad-stickers. That buys you a lot of time to work on the bike."