BEST OF JODY’S BOX: AUSTRIAN BIKES WERE NOT RICE BURNERS, BUT DON’T TELL THAT TO A TEXAN

By Jody Weisel

When I rolled to the starting line of my first-ever race, I thought I had considered all the possibilities. I had practiced on my local sand dune track for months, goofing around with my buddies on their ragtag collection of dirt bikes, many built from used street bikes with everything stripped off. Not me! I had a true-to-life motocross bike. I had dumped my old stamped-frame 1963 Puch for a Sachs 125MX with leading-link forks, a chrome gas tank and a T-bar shift system. This was before the invention of the Koba shift kit, so I had to hone my shifting skills in the shifting sand of Port Aransas, Texas, to mate perfectly with the Sachs engine’s six forward speeds and 12 neutrals.

I knew everything that a neophyte American kid could about motocross in the late 1960s. So, when I clanked my leading links up to the starting line, delineated by a stretched surgical rubber hose, I looked cool, which I knew, because I had checked my reflection in the windows of my VW microbus. I had a jet-black helmet, white duckbill visor, rubber tank-commander goggles, smelly goat-skin gloves and Levi jeans. From my helmet hung a Jofa that I normally let dangle in the wind when I rode, thinking that was cooler than snapping it on my chin where I couldn’t see it doing anything worthwhile.

You have probably felt the same anxiety that I felt as I took my place on the starting line between two guys who looked like they knew what they were doing. The guy to my right was on a Parilla four-stroke. I had never seen one of those at my local sand dunes. The guy on my left was on something even more obscure than a Parilla. He looked angry, so I turned to the guy on the Parilla and nodded with a Steve McQueen-style nonchalance that I had practiced in my bathroom mirror.

Mr. Parilla said something to me, but I couldn’t hear what he said, so I leaned towards him and said, “Excuse me?”

“Take that rice burner down to the other end of the line,” he said with a growl.

I realized that I had made a mistake. The guy on my right was the angry one. So, I turned to the guy on the oil-stained four-stroke to my left and shrugged as if to say, “What’s wrong with Mr. Parilla?”

He looked sympathetic as he leaned towards me and said quietly, “We don’t want that Jap crap here.”

“It’s made in Austria,” I said defensively to no one in particular before moving down to the far end of the starting line with the other kids on two-strokes.

I HAD ARRIVED ON THE MOTOCROSS SCENE IN THE MIDDLE OF A CULTURE WAR BETWEEN MOTORCYCLE TYPES. I WAS, BY ACCIDENT OF PURCHASING A SACHS, ON THE TWO-STROKE SIDE, WHICH IS WHY I WOULD HEAR THE DEROGATORYPHRASES “RING-DING,” “RICE BURNER,” “SEIZE-EASY” AND “MAICO-BREAKO.”

Little did I know that I had arrived on the motocross scene in the middle of a culture war between motorcycle brands and types. I was, by accident of purchasing a Sachs, on the two-stroke side, which is why I would hear the derogatory phrases “ring-ding,” “rice burner,” “seize-easy,” “Maico-breako” and “smoker” many times in my first year of racing.

The sport was divided between the old-school, hardcore, manly men four-stroke racers and the new breed of young, clueless, 125cc two-stroke racers like me. Note that I didn’t say “pantywaist” two-stroke racers, even though I was called that several times (and still don’t know what it means).

Four-strokes dominated off-road racing in the early days of the sport, and it wasn’t until 1966 that a two-stroke CZ (Seize-Easy) would win the 500 World Championship, ending the unbroken four-stroke string of BSA, Husqvarna, Lito, AJS, Crescent, Sarolea and FN titles. In the next few years, I would suffer the double whammy of racing my Austrian Sachs 125, Japanese Hodaka 100 and Czechoslovakia CZ 250 in commie-hating Texas.

I know what you are thinking, because it was the same thing that I tried to explain to four-stroke aficionados back in the day: (1) Austrian bikes were not technically rice burners. (2) Hodakas were made in Japan, but they were designed in Oregon. And, (3) just because I raced a bike made in Czechoslovakia didn’t mean that I had pinko leanings. As late as the 1970s, there were still angry people reliving the Second World War, Korean War and Cold War (and not just in Texas)—a point that was brought home when arsonists set the local CZ shop on fire because it was a “commie bike.”

 

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