Around Town in the Star City

Summer 1993, Lincoln, Nebraska

On my way to the library I passed a cute little Harley-Davidson sitting in someone's driveway. It was like a big Harley-Davidson but in miniature: very unusual. On the way back I saw a guy in bib overalls whom I took to be the owner of the bike, so I stopped and complimented him on the bike.

He got a kick out of my interest and proceeded to tell me how he had rebuilt the bike from a jumble of parts ("It came in a box," he said) over the past few years. He did a great job because the thing looked brand-new. I lost him on a few arcane details, but basically the bike - a Harley-Davidson Sprint - was built in Italy in or around 1967, at a time when Harley was trying to compete with the huge influx of small Japanese bikes and their ilk. The guy used the term "entry-level" to describe the general type of bike, but while other companies produced "step-through" scooters and whining 2-strokers, Harley simply produced a scaled-down version of a Hog.


The guy says his Sprint is the only one he's seen in Nebraska, and he plans to "take it up to Sturgis" and show it off.

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