During my career as a motorcyclist I have been through many interesting experiences, some of them amusing, some rather startling—owing to a rather daring streak in my makeup. But all of them fade into comparative insignificance when I think of one trip I made through a sparsely settled district in Montana early in 1912. That journey stands out as the great adventure of my life. Even now when I think of it my hair has a habit of standing up straight, and cool little chills turkey-trot up and down my spine. To begin at the beginning and make a long story as short as possible, it is probably sufficient to say that my home is in New Jersey, which is a pretty definite location when one is speaking of the United States. During the summer of 1911, my friend and companion on many a motorcycle trip, Charlie Morton, removed to a lumbering camp about fifty or sixty miles from Livingston, Montana, being somewhere in the general neighborhood of Gulch City. Before leaving he made me promise that I would visit him as soon as it could conveniently be arranged and that I should make the trip on a motorcycle.
William Ottaway oversees his team, at least one of which being in desperate need of new shoes, diligently swapping out a fouled plug on Otto Walker’s Harley-Davidson 11K factory special. It was the 85th lap of 150 around the massive new 2-mile board track at Chicago’s Speedway Park when Walker had to come back in to the pit. He was one of six entered by the Motor Co. into the 300-Mile grind in Chicago on September 12th, 1915, it was one of the hottest days on record in the Windy City that year. Milwaukee’s “Wrecking Crew,” led by Ottaway, were joined in Chicago by Bill Harley and a host of factory management, as well as a reported 100 or so of Milwaukee’s most die-hard enthusiasts who rode their machines down for the event.
It is a rare and invaluable occasion when we get to look back through the eyes of a true American pioneer, to hear their own personal account of how a particular history occurred, and witness first hand the birth of a culture. This week at The Archive we experience a bit of what racing motorcycles in America was like in those first years at the turn of the 20th Century, just after the machines themselves were introduced. In this wonderful interview, originally published in Motorcyclist Magazine in July of 1935, Morton James Graves recalls his own glory days, racing motorcycles as a teenager and helping create a new sport as one of the first professionals in America. At the time the interview was made, Graves, also known as “Millionaire Morty” was 44 years old, an Indian dealer in Hollywood, veteran of the culture, and a founding father of the sport.
Oscar Reneau Lancaster, affectionately known as Nemo, is one amongst the countless local racing stars that pioneered the culture, but given the limited scale of their racing careers remain at risk of fading into history, relegated to the caption of “unknown rider.” Nemo was born in rural Georgia in 1896, one of a set of twins, Oscar and Rosco, just two of a family which counted a dizzying total of ten children. Nemo’s father was a trolly car mechanic and conductor in Atlanta at the turn of the century, the grease from his hands obviously rubbing off onto his children as at least 5 of the boys were involved in the transportation industry by the time they came into a working age themselves. Like many young boys in the early 1900’s Nemo began working in his early teens, becoming a machinist at a furniture factory by the time he was 15. It was at that time that he also developed an interest in motorcycles, picking up a Flanders single cylinder and joining the ranks of the newly formed Atlanta Motorcycle Club.
