Grandpa Fife and his Harley

Last night, Dad and I sat on the deck after dinner talking. We mentioned that Craig would be riding his motorcycle to Boise this week. He then told me about a motorcycle he owned when he was a college student at the University of Idaho. He said that he was offered a job driving tractor for a farmer up in the Polouse area the summer before his senior year at the U of I. The job would last through the first two weeks of school. Dad decided to take the job, knowing he could make the school work up. He bought an old Harley Davidson motor cycle for $25 to get back and forth from his apartment to his farm job. Dad said that the bike was old when he bought it, but it was still a good bike. He described Harley Davidson motor cycles as the "cadilacs" of the motorcycle industry because they were built so well. His new/old bike worked just fine.

One day, he was riding his motorcycle down a paved road when the bike slipped right out from under him. Dad said, "I still don't know why it slipped, but all of the sudden I found himself sliding up the road on my butt." He laughed and said, "It didn't seem to hurt me, but it sure woke me up!" The bike wasn't damaged too much either, he said, except that it came to a stop half-way off the side of the road and half-way over a steep cliff. He said that even though it was teetering dangerously over the edge of the cliff, he was able to start it back up and safely move it back onto the road.

When school was over for that year, Dad rode his Harley home to Ammon. Dad had seven younger brothers at the time. I asked him if his brothers were impressed with his Harley. He said they didn't seem too interested, but his father loved it! His father rode it out into his fields to irrigate, with a shovel tied onto the back. Dad left his $25 Harley on his parents farm when he went into the Navy. He doesn't know whatever happened to his bike. "Maybe it's still there," he said.