Life and Times with Phillie Cancilla

By Ken Johnson
January 16, 1998

Sometime during the time I first got the '40 Ford, I managed to save up the $260. (a months pay then) for the 1/3 down payment on a new 1947 Triumph motorcycle, but was only 18 so had to have my mother sign the loan papers for it. I had never thought of any other bike but Harley or Indian until a cousin of mine, Phil Trau, rode his Triumph down to visit us in San Jose from San Francisco and I thought the sound of that bike running was the prettiest sound I had ever heard. Harleys, even when wound up, sounded like a truck and looked twice as heavy as the Triumph. Phil's riding apparel didn’t hurt the effect either. He was wearing a leather jacket and Levi's, an English leather billed cap and tall English riding boots, and looked mighty sharp. My father's brothers were all older than he was and all had motorcycles. Thor, Excelsior, Flying Merkel, and all those old belt driven, one cylinder, monsters. My father was too young to own one then but would sneak one of theirs out whenever possible. My uncles, Jack, Harold and Burtell, used their bikes to get to their musician jobs and to their painting work. Reginald did not ride a bike and was the one who spent a lifetime as a profession- all musician. The others all did both painting and music except my father. His father died when he was too young and he missed out on learning music from him.

Ken Johnson and his new 1947 Triumph

Most of the early bikes had only direct drive, no gears, and I got a kick out of my father telling how his oldest brother, Jack, looked like a mechanic when he left their home in Paso Robles mornings to get to a job he had in San Luis. With a rope over his shoulder carrying two different rear wheel sprockets. Going South to San Luis was all level or downhill, but coming back up the old dirt road over the Cuesta Grade was mighty steep and rough. After work painting in San Luis, Jack would replace his "road" gear with one of the lower geared sprockets he carried when he got to the bottom of the grade, get to the top of the grade and change sprockets back, and come on home. He carried two extra sprockets because it made a difference whether it had rained and the road was muddy, or whether it was dry. The old bikes (and cars) ran at a very low RPM compared to now and had big pistons and a lot of low speed torque. You could feel a definite lurch each time the cylinder fired. There was an "idler" lever to engage the belt from the engine to the rear wheel instead of the present day clutch and the accepted way (factory way) to get started moving was to kick start the engine, let it warm up, get on and gradually move the lever (and thus it's pulley) forward, slipping the belt enough to get the bike moving, then, after the bike was going forward smoothly, push the lever all the way forward where it would lock. Then, if the flat belt didn’t break, away you went. My father said that way hardly ever worked. They would try slipping the belt and if the throttle was set a little too high it would grab. The bike would give a big jump and take off alone, dumping the rider on his "keister", or would jump, fall over and lay on its side running full bore, and those old poured babbit bearings would not take much of that. If the throttle was not set high enough, the bike would give a jerk and the engine would die. Most people he knew then would start the bike, let it warm up until it was running smoothly, (if it wasn’t already warmed up) turn it off, engage the idler, push it, and when it fired once,  jump on and go, unless they missed their jump, when it would then take off alone again.

My uncles left their bikes leaned against a handy tree up a slope behind their house so could save a lot of work by being able to push downhill, with belt engaged, to start. My uncle Burtell got especially aggravated when his bike fell over because he always acted like an old lady and wanted everything he owned spotless. Bikes then were painted with many coats of hand rubbed lacquer and when his bike got one little scratch on it he would take it all apart and repaint it. He liked the smallest displacement bikes because they were less likely to get away from him when they fired up. One time Burtell had just finished repainting his bike, got it all together again and got a call from Bakersfield for a two day engagement to play his cornet in a dance band there. He gassed up the next morning, tied his bag of "dress" clothes and his horn on the back of the bike and headed out over the potholed dirt trail that was called a road from Paso Robles to Bakersfield. Got half way there and his fuel line cracked and dumped gas on the engine. His bike and his pants caught on fire. He jumped off and got his burning pants off and tried to put the bike fire out by throwing dirt on it and got his bag with his good pants and horn off before they burnt up. A car was hardly ever seen on that road then, thru the Lost Hills, so he put on his good pants and walked until he found an old collapsed barn and slept in it that night. (Although he was afraid of mice, snakes, and in fact, everything) The next morning a farmer heading for town gave him a ride home in a Model "T" truck, with his burnt up bike in the back, and he then had a major job to do on that bike. Another time he was playing nights in a local band. Slept during the day and left after dark the next night. No one local ever bothered to fire up their acetylene headlamps at night to just ride around town, and the police knew all the bike riders there and didn’t bother them about it, so he jumped on his bike, turned onto the main street from their yard, in the dark, and fell straight to the bottom of a 6 foot deep ditch the water company had dug in that street that day.

Another uncle, Earl Waller, was a mechanic and raced Indian motorcycles (they were the fastest bikes then) during the 'teens and early '20's and won a lot of races, when he could resist showing off. No one wore helmets then, just a cloth billed cap turned backwards and a pair of goggles. My father said Earl would invariably get in the lead on a rough, potholed track, come down the front straightaway and take both hands off the handlebars to adjust his goggles, and impress the girls in the grandstands. The front tire would fall in a pothole and he would go end over end. He seems to have impressed my aunt Hazel enough to marry him. He also jumped out of hot air balloons with a parachute when parachutes were a new fangled gadget, and "wing-walked" on Lyman Beachey's airplane during air shows. That was before the FAA required the "stunt man" to be tethered to the 'plane! After I took that ride with my cousin Phil, I had to have a Triumph bike. My mother took me to Phillie Cancilla's Triumph and Ariel shop at 776 No. 13th St. in San Jose and I bought one. I didn’t know a thing about bikes, having only ridden as a passenger behind various relatives and friends. I saw three Triumphs sitting there in Phillie's small showroom, one black, one Maroon and one Silver colored. I thought they were all the same and liked the black color most so bought the black one. Found later I had picked the one with the smallest engine. It was called a "3T" and was 350 CC. The Maroon one was called a "Speed Twin" and was 500 CC. The Silver one was called a "Tiger" and was also 500 CC but was ported and polished and supposed to be faster than the Speed Twin. A few years later they put out what they called a "Trophy" model and it was built more for playing in the dirt and was still 500 CC. The first 650 sized Triumph they built came out in 1950 and was called a "Thunderbird". (Before the Ford Thunderbird) There was also a factory built racing bike (Grand Prix) that Phillie's brother, Frank, bought for him to race at Daytona. He used only his own home built bikes to race on the local half and mile tracks, Belmont and Vallejo etc.

I was with Phillie in his shop the day he got the factory racer in the crate. He and I came back that night and put it together, and of course he couldn’t wait to try it. I grabbed the first available bike there, to have a light to steer by, and he jumped on the racer, and we went out the back roads amongst the orchards to "break it in". It was geared low and went like mad. Of course that crazy "dago" went like mad no matter what he was riding. Got the paper work done on my new bike, pushed it out the door and Phillie started it and I got on. Then as I got on, Phil asked if I knew how to ride and I said "no". I had no idea how to work the foot gear shift, or anything else. Phil gave me a few instructions and I took off. My mother was going on into town for something and I wished later I had asked her to follow me home. We lived 4 or 5 miles to the East of 13th St., on Capitol Ave., and I headed that way. Thought I was doing great. I got a mile or so from home and the crazy thing quit on me! I kicked and kicked on the starter and it wouldn’t start. Finally took the gas cap off and looked inside the tank, and it was empty! I didn’t know then there was a reserve valve and could have made it home if I had known that. So I pushed it all the way home. Good thing I hadn’t bought a big heavy Harley. I didn’t know then that I was one of the few who ever paid my bills to Phillie on time, or at all, and he was usually too broke to buy gas. A lot of the guys never paid Phillie but he could never say "no" to anyone wanting credit and he was owed a lot of money when he went out of business years later, after he had brought Bultaco to this country. I had only ridden the new bike (we called them "motors" then sounds strange now)(I have since found the CHP still officially calls them  "motors" so we probably got that name from them) a few times and was motoring down the 101 highway one day, thinking how nice it was, when a Highway Patrolman stopped me. He said my mufflers were too loud and I got highly indignant and told him it was a brand new bike, straight from the factory and therefore legal. He said I had better talk that over with Phillie and gave me a ticket. It turned out that cop was "Gus" Mariotti and my mother had gone to school with him in the '20's and couldn’t stand him even then.

I went to school with one of his nephews, Dick Mariotti, but like Dick. Phillie and Gus hated each other because Gus was always trying to catch Phil, and never could. He would see Phillie race out of town on a bike, either a racing bike or a bike he had worked on and was testing, would chase him and Phillie would make a dash for his shop, jump off and be working on another bike when Gus got there and came in. Gus would get mad and those two "dagos" would stand there yelling at each other, with us guys standing there grinning at them. Then Gus would stomp out saying "I'll get you some day". Actually, I think they both liked their little "game". Gus and another Highway Patrolman were later arrested by the San Jose City Police when they were found one night loading the back end of their patrol car with stolen sides of beef at a local meat packing plant. And Gus only had a year or two to go for his pension! I had to take the mufflers off and stuff steel wool in them, hooked on a wire so I could pull it out later, get the loudness checked at a Highway Patrol office, paid the fine, then go home and take the steel wool out again. We did that with car mufflers too and the cops knew about it but couldn’t do anything about it. After I started hanging around the shop more I soon found why my mufflers had been too loud. When Phil got a new bike in while I was there and helping him put it together, he would take the new muffler and position it over a sharp crow bar he kept in the shop, and jam it up and down until he had a hole straight thru the baffles. He said it was a good selling point when someone was thinking of buying a new bike. It sounded better. Right. I soon got to know a lot of other local bike riders; Bill Jensen  who lived near me and had a Speed Twin; Bunny Ribbs, who had a little of everything, including a 30.50 ci. in. (500ccs to modern riders) New Imperial single whose piston would hit the valves when he got wound up, and I never saw or heard of another New Imperial; Ralph Britton, who drove one of his father's cattle trucks and had an Ariel single; Dave, with a Matchless single; Art Boos, who had an Ariel single until the new Ariel twin came out and he was the first I know of to buy one. He was a mean jerk who worked at the Agnew hospital for the Insane, and laughed when telling how he beat up those helpless people;

George, who was strictly a street rider and had a Tiger was Portuguese and he and Phillie always yelled at each other. George always addressed Phillie as "you dumb Dago" and Phillie always called George a "dumb Portagee" but they were really the best of friends. When Carm and I went to San Jose and found Phillie's new (to me) shop a few years ago (10 years?) he was not there and his son said he would be right back. We waited in the van in the parking lot and a pickup pulled in with George driving and Phil with him. Still together from the '40's until Phil died. (1998?) Phil's old Triumph shop didn’t have many accessories for sale, just new bikes and his mechanical ability for sale, so I went to Tom Sifton's Harley shop for gloves and other things, and after I got to know all the guys there I went in just to visit, and make fun of those Harley "trucks". Harleys and Indians were good for long distance races on oval tracks (like Daytona) and long distance highway riding, but were almost useless in the kind of trail riding we did, even with champion racers riding them. Half of them who rode with us broke their frames. Sam Arena was Sifton's shop foreman and Sam was retired from racing then, but was still considered the best rider of all time then. He had ridden every kind of bike racing event there was; flat track, road racing in England, TT's, and hill climbs and won most of what he entered during the 20's and 30's. He was still winning hill climbs when I was riding in 1947 to 1950, and making them look as smooth as a highway. He was the only American to have ever won the Isle of Man race at that time. Winning races didn’t pay much then and Sifton and the Harley factory couldn’t afford to send a racing team around the world very often, so Sam stayed home after that and won most of the races he ran in this country.

Tom Sifton had a large shop and was a great machinist. Sam and another fellow handled the sales and service and Tom usually stayed in the back room machine shop. He developed and supplied the Harley factory with new cams and other speed items and the factory helped him in return, so Tom was pretty wealthy. He would sometimes shuffle into Phillie's Triumph shop, with dirty coveralls on and unshaved, and people who didn’t know him thought he was some kid of bum. After Tom got older and sold his shop he went on designing new cams out of his home machine shop. "Sifton Cams" were well known during the 50's. He had 4 or 5 full time mechanics, most of whom raced, and a young guy named Bob Chaves as a "handlebar bender". Bob later went to work for Phillie, to learn how to work on English bikes, which were then starting to outsell the American bikes, (as the Japanese outsold the English later) and after a while of working and learning with Phillie, Bob opened the BSA dealership in San Jose. We all knew Bob didn’t have any money and it was rumored that Tom Sifton financed Bob. I believe it was true because the Harley sales were also going way down. Bob and Phillie hardly ever spoke to each other after that. The BSA business kept getting better and Bob had to buy the building next to his and expand into it. Bob then had Jim Rice and other good riders racing for him and my son, Eric, was then (1970) doing well in motocross racing down here. As I could see no sense in spending money to acquire trophies instead of making money at flat track racing, I talked to Bob about Eric possibly going to live with him and Louise, (they had no kids) going to school there, and working as an apprentice mechanic and racing for Bob, and Bob was all for it. At the same time I had gotten Eric lined up to go into the Forestry, then found he didn’t really want to be away from his girlfriend here, so forgot about the whole thing. My father bought his 1950 Triumph 650 from Phillie but always seemed to like Bob better and when he wanted the upswept pipes for his bike he bought them from Bob, which hurt Phillies feelings. When Bob and a bunch of other guys I knew from San Jose came down here to ride in the old Big Bear Run my parents and wife Jone and I split them up and they all "camped out" on our floors and we fed them. Funny thing happened at that race that year. I have no use for movie actors as actors but always admired Clark Gable and Keenan Wynn for riding in the Big Bear Run in the "old days" on big 61, 74, or 80 Harleys. (A 45 flathead would have been left in the dust) At this race there was that loudmouthed Lee Marvin running around waving his arms and trying to look important to everyone, and I almost ran over him with my pickup!

Strange the way Indian went out of business (1953) and Harley almost did too because they did not "keep up with the times". Indian compounded their troubles by bringing out two British looking bikes but for some reason built them of two size engines that could not run in racing. The standard size large racing engine was then 500cc, 30.50 cu. in., and Indian came out with a 26 cu. in. large engine. Their smaller size should have been 21 cu, in, to match the worlds 350cc size, but they made that one only 19 cu. in. Then the British bikes took over for a few years, and they did not keep up with the Japanese new ideas so they went down the drain also. Then the American car companies also let the Japanese cars get ahead of them. They were all too complacent and smug and sat back and almost went broke.

Now big Harleys have come back into vogue, big American cars are selling again, and Triumph is back with a Japanese looking bike. Weird world. I let some old bikes go by that I could have bought with very little money then that would be worth a fortune now but it seemed like much more money then than it does now, and I wasn’t thinking of "collectible" then but "rideable". One was a beautiful 30.50 Indian Scout (they made a 45 Scout too) all green paint and chrome that was owned by Clem Cramer as his street bike. Clem was a good competition Hill Climber and worked in the chrome shop next to the Indian dealership in San Jose. He came into Phillies shop with it one day and tried to talk me into buying it for $75.. He said he had 20 or so tickets and the judge had told him if they were not paid within a short time he was going to jail. I had a good running Triumph and couldn’t see why I would want an old '30's Indian so turned him down. I don't know how Clem's troubles with the judge turned out but he came down to ride in the Big Bear Run mentioned above and did very well. I also passed on a 1917 Harley. We had an old time Assistant Ranger named Earl Renn from Saratoga when I went to work in the Forestry at Alma. When I bought the '47 Triumph he told me he had a bike out in his barn that I ought to stop and look at. He owned apricot orchards and my mother knew him from the '20's when she and her family had picked 'cots for him then. Seems he had bought that bike new after he came back from WW1 and taken his new bride on their honeymoon on it. (She must have had a tough butt) I stopped to see it and it was all there and Earl wanted to start it for me, but I knew I didn’t want it for the $125. he wanted for it. He said it had broken the piston and he couldn’t get one so he took an old piston he had from a tractor, put it on his wood lathe and turned it down, used the old rings, and it ran fine. He said the piston slapped and made noise a little until it warmed up and expanded and fit better. Earl used to follow Clyde Erler and I around when we were 'dozing preventative fire trails and pick out chunks of Manzanita burls he wanted. He took them home and put them in a tank of some kind of liquid for a year or so to soak, then turned them into beautiful bowls and other things with that same wood lathe he had used on the old Harley. My real continuous bike riding years were only from 1947 to '50, 4 years, but they were very intense years. I owned only that one bike during those years but rode very many others. A lot of them were bikes Phillie had in a barn behind his shop and a lot more were friend’s bikes. A Harley 80 VL, a new Harley 74, an Ariel Square four, and single, and twin, Matchless, AJS,  Douglas, (opposed twin like BMW) BSA singles and twins, Indian Scout and Chief, but not all the British bikes because there were 33 makes then. One I didn’t get to ride still gripes me.

Phillie was known all over the State for his mechanical and tuning abilities and people brought bikes from a long distance to get him to work on theirs. He was always swamped with work but could only afford to hire another mechanic temporarily and then wasted his own time by watching and checking on their work constantly. A fellow pulled into the shop one day who turned out to be a neurosurgeon from Palo Alto, (Stanford) with his wife following him to pick him up in a pretty sports car. He left his bike there to have it tuned up and Phillie told him it might take a week before he could get to it. It was the only Vincent HRD "Black Shadow" I had ever seen in his shop and I couldn’t believe our luck. I knew when Phillie said "a week" he just wanted to have a chance to ride it, be seen on it, and race some of the "downtown" crowd, meaning hopped up Harleys. And he did race many of them, for a few feet, then he and the Vincent were "long gone". I got on the hottest 650 Triumph in the shop and took off with him and he left me like I was standing still. And I didn’t get to ride it. Darn! I had an embarrassing moment on an old '36 or '37 VL Harley 80. My friend, Bunny Ribbs (son Willie T), had followed us out to one of our "play" tracks in his car while his bike was torn down, which it was most of the time, and after I had ridden many laps and was close to heat exhaustion, I got off and he jumped on my already overheated Triumph and promptly burnt a hole in the top of a piston! That was one weird ride, going home on one piston and a cloud of smoke! I took it into Phillie's to have it rebuilt (we always said he led us on weekends so he would have work during the week) and he put in Chevy valves, ported and polished the head, bigger carb., and all the other good stuff, and he loaned me the old Harley (out of the barn) to use to get to work for a few days. 

I went around a corner in Willow Glen, the rear wheel locked up when the nut holding the drive sprocket on the crankshaft came off and the sprocket jammed itself in the primary case, suddenly stopping the rear wheel. I slid across the street, bounced over the curb onto the sidewalk, and knocked a girl riding her bicycle on the sidewalk off her bike! Another old bike I borrowed from him later was an old Indian 45 Scout. Throttle on the left grip, shift lever on the right tank. I got half way to work on that bike and the shifting rod fell off the transmission. The nut that holds it on fell off and the rod dragged on the street. I had to slip the clutch like mad from stop signs to get on to work, with only high gear left to use. I was afraid to shift with no clutch and possibly break the old transmission. I only had my first bike a few months when I went out one night to a foreign movie house on the Alameda. Came out late and it was raining and the streets were wet. Headed east for home on Capital Ave. down Santa Clara Ave. and meant to turn down 1st St. to see if any of my friends were "cruising" 1st St.. I missed 1st St. so turned on 2nd intending on getting back to 1st a block down. There is an alley named "Fountain Alley" a short ways from the corner of Santa Clara and 2nd St.. I made the turn and was just straightening up when a car came out of Fountain Alley with no lights on, cutting diagonally across to the corner. We met at an angle from head-on, the bike bounced off of my left foot and I slid down the street on my left shoulder. I could hear the motor still running and didn’t want it ruined so got up and ran back and turned it off. When I leaned down to turn it off I felt something pop in my left shoulder and later found it had been out of joint. (And has been in and out all my life since then) What really hurt right then though was where the engine cylinder fins had made grooves on the inside of my left foot. I didn’t know anything about insurance then so was happy to sign off with just getting enough money to pay the doctor and for new parts for my bike. The Air Force 1st Lt. who had hit me was never cited for drunk driving because that was right after the end of the war and pilots were still heroes to most people. He was very nice and took me to the hospital and waited for me, then took me home. I could relate dozens of tales of falling and crashing. We always said if you didn’t fall off 2 or 3 times a day, you were not really riding. I still rode the bike to work and on the highway after that, but started doing a lot more riding on mountain trails on weekends. Since I couldn’t afford a dirt and a street bike both, I got smart and took the headlight and generator and battery off (magneto ignition then) when going out to play on weekends and saved them for "street" days. 5 or 6 of us "rough" riders usually met at Phillie's shop on Sunday mornings, and would pick a direction to go, and try to keep up with Phillie wherever we went.

Phillie was a great rider on flat tracks but was even better in TT and won many TT races. Going with him every weekend was like what people pay for now and call a training school. I rode with guys who became National Champions on the track and they would sometimes get ahead of him on weekends, but not for very long. I have seen him do things which I still say are impossible. It could be because he was a crazy "dago", but was more likely because he had ridden Class "A" (called "Speedway" now) before the war, could ride the barrel in a carnival, rode flat track and TT, drag raced, and tried for speed records at Bonneville. He was the first one who cut the frame down, leaned the engine forward and put the shifting lever on the rear axle so he could shift while laying flat while drag racing. If he didn’t have the power or speed to win a race he usually won anyway on just plain guts. Many of the future champions started with Phillie, but to win a championship a rider has to go all over the country to all the races where the points count and Phillie could not afford to send them, so they usually went on to Harley and Sifton. Besides favorite long mountain trails, we had areas all over Santa Clara Valley we could "race" at on weekends. Some were short Motocross type tracks we developed; (by wearing our tracks into the ground) others were longer TT types. (Not as many jumps as Motocross but a lot faster) I really loved the plain smooth broad sliding of flat track but think I would have been my best at TT. Larry "Sleepy" Hedrick’s was Expert National Champion and Kenny Eggars was Amateur National Champion (both riding for Sifton and both good friends of mine) in either '50 or '51 and after chasing Phillie for a couple of years of weekends I think I could have beaten both of them on a TT course.

Kenny Eggers and Larry "Sleepy" Hedrick's had too much time, energy, and money involved in their careers to take a chance on breaking a leg "playing" with us on weekends, and Sifton would have had a fit if his Champions had done so, but they rode out on their street Harley 45's (with WR racing motors) and watched us, and both thought we were all crazy. The year after Sleepy won the Expert National Championship the first race of the year was at the little Belmont ± mile track. Sleepy went into the first turn, his rear wheel came off, and he went straight into the fence and broke his leg and was out of racing for that year! Besides Kenny and Larry, Sifton also had top riders, at different times, in Al Rudy, Bob Chaves, Clark Roessler and his brother, ?, Herbie Boesch, and later, Joe Leonard. I only slightly knew Leonard because he didn’t come along until just before we moved down here in 1956. He is the only person I ever saw who would do a "wheelie" on a full dress 74 Harley, down the freeway at 70 MPH, and weave in and out of cars while passing them for at least a mile. He later went on to win 3 annual National Championships and then drove Indy cars for Dan Gurney.

The smoothest, best, flat track racer I ever saw, who raced at the same time as Bob Chaves, was Al Rudy. Everyone in the country was saying he would be the next National Champion - until he had a leg amputated. He would come out and play with us on weekends and could beat most of us on his WR45 on our "country" flat tracks, with his "loopy" girlfriend riding behind him! The night before a race there were always guys working on their bikes in all the shops in town. One night Al Rudy insisted on taking his bike out to the 101 freeway to make sure his carb was adjusted for top RPM because he was going to be in a mile race the next day which counted for points. Sifton did not allow anyone to ride except on a sanctioned track but he was not there that night. Al took the bike out and was leaning down to adjust the high jet at top speed, (possible on a Harley then) swerved a little, brushed a car, and went end over end. One leg was demolished and had to be amputated. Bob Chaves then quit racing on track but did run in the Pacific Trail enduro up North and came down here with a bunch of other riders from San Jose and stayed overnight with us and ran in the annual Big Bear Hare and Hound race. One of Rudy's tricks was to be sitting at a coffee shop table, cleaning his nails with a pocket knife, and when the waitress came to the table Al would suddenly stab the knife to the hilt through his Levi's into his leather covered metal strap leg. And the waitress would almost have a heart attack. That trick was usually pulled on new waitresses at a tough truck stop joint near Phillie's shop called "Edri's". Phillie also had a "trick" of his own he would pull there. He had an acetylene torch in his shop and before leaving to go to Edri's he would adjust for a neutral flame and then put the flame out on the floor. Then fill a condom with that gas and oxygen mixture until the condom was about 1 foot in length and 10 or 12 inches in diameter. Then staple a sheet of newspaper around the outside as a fuse/detonator. Phillie had been blamed before by the owner of Edri's for shaking the building, scaring everyone, and causing neon beer and tubing to break and fall off the windows so he usually found some tough kid hanging around outside and gave him a dollar to do the "dirty deed". After we had been in drinking our coffee or coke for 5 or 10 minutes, the kid would light the paper, throw it on the roof, and run. The owner would still blame Phillie but he would just say "Who, me?" 

Phillie was a super clean mechanic and would start each day with a clean white pair of coveralls and go home at noon and reshave and change coveralls again. He would close the shop and go home for dinner about 6 P.M., then usually come back later to work on special jobs and his racing bikes until midnight. I spent most of the nights I had off with him there, watching, talking, keeping him company, and sometimes helping him. There were no pizza joints then and we usually wanted a pizza or a hot dog about midnight, so we would lock the place up and go to "Dago" Roses large Italian restaurant near the City Hall because she is the only one in town who had the ovens to cook a pizza. I had been a fire truck driver at the station in the San Antone Valley and knew Rose had been the madam of a brothel that kept care of the miners sexual needs at the magnesite mine there during the war. When we finished our pizzas and were leaving, Phillie would wad and pile up the paper that came under the pizza and set it on fire. The hot dog place we went to was near 4th St. on Santa Clara Ave. (it became Alum Rock Ave. at 35th St.) Phillie always had bolts in his coverall pockets so as we would  leave that place, he would drop one in the hasp used to lock the door when the place was closed. We always parked in a parking lot across from the place so would then go sit in the car and watch, and laugh at, the people trying to get out of there.

Phillie wanted me to try professional racing, and I wanted to, but I had a steady job in the Forestry and didn’t want to give that up. We never had Saturdays and Sundays off in the summers (the main fire days) and that is when most racing is done. I always got to the Belmont mile on Friday nights (unless we were on a fire or on 24 hour standby) to be on his pit crew, but Phillie needed someone who could race on a mile flat track on Friday nights, a TT on Saturdays, and a mile flat track on a Sunday. Someone who could race two or three times a week, every week. He kept his personal racing bike and another, and sometimes three, ready to go all the time and had to have someone who could ride all the time. To get a competition number and race in AMA sanctioned races, a person had to be a member of the AMA, (American Motorcycle Assoc.) and I hated that organization. First, they were racially prejudiced (rednecks) and a black could not be a member or get a racing number. One of my best friends and a great rider was black - Bunny Ribbs. He could have beaten most AMA racers but never got the chance. Then, the AMA was controlled by Harley, were nationally prejudiced, and tried to maneuver the rules to help the American Harley's win more races. I finally got to race twice at an unsanctioned TT track, and against good riders. In the mountains east of Gilroy was a big ranch owned by the Allemande family. Johnny Allemande, the son, started putting on TT races a few times a year and it was a great track, situated in a "bowl" in the mountains. A fast straightaway and the rest long and short curves, uphill and down. A rider was still supposed to have an AMA number but there were not AMA officials checking entrants. Phillie's number was 93 and he got the bright idea of me using the number 93Y, the "Y" signifying "novice" in his "stable". All three classes, novice, amateur, and expert ran in the same race there and Phillie told me if I won my class, he would shoot me because they would find out our little trick and might take away his racing number, and he had had it for many years. (He could have had a much lower national number but kept 93. He told me to just have fun. I worked on "my" bike for days before my first race and had it really shining. I did pretty well and beat guys who had been racing quite a while but didn’t finish in the top three in my class. A month or so later they had another race and I really wanted to try and win but didn’t want to get Phillie in trouble so was really frustrated. A lot of the guys racing knew me personally and hadn’t said anything to the track owners and helpers the first time because they thought it was a pretty good joke that I didn’t have an AMA racing number but was racing. That time, while I was still in the pits adjusting and rechecking things on the bike, I heard a little grumbling and my pit man, Bill Jensen, told me he had been walking around talking to friends and he thought a couple of them no longer thought it was a joke  and might tell on me. That really bothered me so I told Phillie we had better forget it. I knew I could beat most of them in my class anyway if I really tried and they knew it too, so didn’t want me to race, and I didn’t have to prove myself to anyone. I had been beating them with their 500's on my little (heated up) 350 on our weekend outings so I knew I could outride them. Phillie said "One more time". He said he did not think the AMA would keep him off their sanctioned tracks and he did not have to race at that "gyppo" track anyway, was just doing it a few times for fun. I went out and had fun again. Making sure I was not in the first three spots, I finished 4th or 5th with no strain, and got out of there in a hurry. When I pulled into the pits Bill had the trailer lined up, ready to go, waved me onto it, and let me know there was a hurry to get loaded and gone. He told me he heard a couple of track officials talking about coming over to talk with me so we tied down in a hurry, jumped in the pickup and took off through the gate. Someone yelled at us to stop, but we ignored them and kept going.

After that "outlaw" riding I wanted more but knew it would have to be "legal" or nothing. I had my bike all stripped down for another paint job once, engine and trans. out and wheels off, and Bill came by. He worked as a truck mechanic and had the 500cc engine out of his Speed Twin to rebuild it. (He rebuilt my 1940 Ford Coupe engine too) We got talking about racing and he said he hadn’t realized that I had learned to ride that well in the 2 years he had known me until he saw the race at Allemande’s. He kept his bike strictly for the road (an "Easy Rider") and had never learned to ride as I had chasing Phillie around the country. It would have scared Bill to death to have his rear wheel slide once as we did all the time. He said he had talked to Phillie and he had told Bill that he thought I would be up there with "the big boys" in a year or so of racing, if I would join the AMA and get a racing number. Bill, liking the action in the pits, asked me what I thought of putting our money together, getting some speed parts from Phillie and building up his engine to put into my, lighter, smaller, frame. It sounded great then for a week or two after that, then we came down to earth and admitted it wouldn’t work. I wasn’t going to quit a steady job and neither Bill nor I would had a bike to ride for fun, and Bill couldn’t take a quiet ride on a racing bike with his girlfriend on weekends, so we had to give that idea up. And my dream of being a full time racer came to an end forever.

When I went to Korea in '51 I left my bike with my father and he taught my mother to ride it. (After detuning it and putting a muffler on it) Then they bought it from me for her and I just borrowed his 1950 650 when I came back from Korea in 1952. I then went from motorcycles to sports cars. I bought my next new 650 Triumph Bonneville in 1959 to ride to work. I hadn’t planned on buying one when Jone and I visited Phillie in San Jose but he knew I wanted it and insisted I take it. I was planning on using the money from the sale of the '53 Ford pickup someday to make the down payment on a new Triumph and hadn’t even tried to sell the Ford yet. Phillie made me take it with no papers, no money changing hands, no license, nothing but a lot of trust from him. I parked it on the porch on Del Oro (Mark had just been born) and kept wishing I had it licensed so I could ride it out of the yard. (No papers, so no license) I sold the pickup to a used car dealer, got a check and couldn’t stand not riding it so rode the bike into the bank in Victorville to get a cashier's check to send to Phillie. And there was a Highway Patrolman sitting at the corner of Bear Valley road and Hesperia road. He followed me a few blocks and stopped me. He saw I had no license, no bill of sale, nothing to prove it was mine, so told me he could do either of two things. He could either take me right to jail, or let me go with no ticket because there was no ID to write a ticket on. He asked all about me and we talked for a while. I told him I worked for Dana Co. and he asked if I knew Jim Fonville and I said yes. He said he was the cop who Jim ran into one night when he was drunk, which I knew all about. Jim hit that Patrol car right in the middle of the star on the door with his old Harley, flopped on the hood of the car, and this cop thought Jim was dead. He was just dead drunk. He let me go and told me that if another cop stopped me not to tell them he had already stopped me or he would be in trouble. I thanked him and went on to the bank and found the check was no good. Finally got that straightened out and sent it to Phillie. That was a good bike and I finally sold it to an Air Force officer, then later almost ran into him when I was coming from the post office, by the Apple Valley Inn. The sun was in my eyes.

Thanks for the memories Phillie!

Ken Johnson on his new 1959 Triumph Bonneville from

Cancilla Triumph-Ariel, San Jose