One of my favourite songs is Richard Thompson’s “1952 Vincent Black Lightning”. It is a tragic romance story song that revolves around the singer’s love for both his redheaded girlfriend and also that of his motorcycle. Whenever I hear the song I think of my Canadian grandparents for a couple of different reasons. They first met in the 1930s when she asked him to give her a ride on his motorcycle. The characters in the song, James and Molly, met in a similar way when she gets a ride on his Vincent motorcycle. The song contains a line about the superiority of the Vincent over other makes, Nortons, Indians, or Greeves, won’t do. Grandpa’s motorcycle was an Indian and he would often fondly reminisce about it thirty or forty years later.
The week before his wedding my grandfather had a minor accident with his bike. Nothing serious, he was dinged up but no broken bones and nothing so bad as to postpone his marriage. However, his new bride insisted that he get rid of the Indian immediately. The motorcycle must have been hard for Grandpa to part with. I am sure it was his first vehicle and it surely represented some incredible freedom for a young man in the midst of the Great Depression. He managed to hold a job the whole time and he was helping to support his mother and younger siblings since his father had abandoned the family. Somehow he still managed to put away enough to buy the Indian. However, it must not have been the most practical mode of transportation in Montreal winters.
This is not a photo of his bike but it is a restoration of one from that era.
