Biker - May 1994

"The Right Number - A Linemans Clear Connection"

Bob Baker is a lineman who handles the construction side of things for C & P Telephone Company in Maryland, so natch it took me over a week to get him on the horn so he could clue us to his cherry shovel/pan. (Of course, the screw-up was ours and not the phone company's at all-we'd somehow managed to scrawl the wrong number down on the spec sheets.)  We finally tracked him down on Christmas Eve, and as you can see from these pics, Bob ain't too shabby when it comes to the construction side of scooters, either. When Bob was in his early twenties, he snatched up this sled in our nation's capital, the big Dee Cee, and after the old motor blew on him, he went to work on it pretty much the same way all of us did then, when dresser parts were scarcely worth their weight in scrap metal.  "Back in the '70s, " he told us, "everybody that bought a Harley, the first thing we did was throw away all the dresser parts. I gave it all away: windshield, crash bars, saddlebags, all that trash-I even gave the original frame away to a guy, because we were into choppers, the California look."  He got it. Today, nearly two decades later, Bob is still sticking with that traditional lean-and-poised silhouette, and you can expect this particular scoot to stay as you see it on these pages. "This has been my ride for the last 19 years," Bob said, "and I'm not one much for changes. It's taken many years of playing around with this thing, taking it apart and putting it back together, till I finally got it like this."

A couple of years ago, Bob decided he'd stockpiled enough scratch to be able to display his bike on the glitz circuit, so with considerable help from p Roy Chamberlin of C&C Cycle in Crofton, Maryland, he put the pan/shovel through its paces in the local bike shows, later following up with more widespread exposure in competitions across the Washington D.C.-Maryland-Virginia areas. Finally, in '92, Roy hauled Bob's iron down to Daytona for Bike Week, and that's where it knocked us at Biker on our collective asses.  Bob insists he'll keep his personal putt pared and spare, but he also has a true road dog's appreciation for what we bobjobbers used to call "garbage wagons." He's currently rejuvenating a '65 electric-start-pan basket case (no, he won't sell it-I tried, and he said he'd rather cut off his right nut). The basket had belonged to his brother, and ironically, Bob's lately been finding himself forking over walletfuls of do-re-mi for exactly the same pedigree of dresser parts that he once tossed away, as freebies.  The times and prices may change along the way, but as far as Bob's concerned, his personal values and beliefs are fine the way they are. "The guys know where I'm coming from," he says, "not like these wannabes today, making their Harleys look like Jap bikes. I'm a firm believer in the old ways, and the old people, and the old motorcycles. That's what I believe and that's the bottom line, and it's nothing personal against anyone else's beliefs-that's their right as Americans."

written by:

Savage

photographs by:

Mike Lichter

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