The Yanks Are Coming

I’VE met some characters in my time, from fleeting meetings to life-long friendships, I try to see the best in people and adopt or adapt those good things to make my life easier/better/more fun. Among all the cool people I’ve met over the years, probably the coolest was a Yank fella named Dan Spencer. Dan just oozed cool and was a heck of nice guy. I met him on the ferry on the voyage from Heysham to the Isle of Man for the TT races in 1985. I was with my best mate Skraps and my best girl The Goog and we bumped into Dan and his wife Marlene. The five of us clicked instantly, and by the time we landed in Douglas on the Isle of Man, we were all best mates and three quarters sloshed. 

Dan and Mar had so many great stories and worked together as a perfect team to pull so many pub tricks. I think it was the Aussie and American accents in a sea of UK accents that helped us to bond.

It worked out well as we’d booked way too late to get a vehicle onto the ferry to the Isle of Man, but Dan had booked a car on the Island, and not wanting to taste driving on the “Goddam wrong side of the road,” elected me as driver. 

With a 6’3” Dan, a 6’2” Skraps, a normal-sized Marlene, The Goog at a compact 5’0” and me a ‘Husky’ size, it was fairly cramped in an Austin Mini Metro, but we got to many great pubs and vantage points for the TT races in that Wee Beastie. 

It was rather scary when we drove across the Mountain Mile on Mad Sunday. Picture this: A road better than the old Bells Line of Road, one way traffic and no speed limits. Before we left the town of Ramsay—where the good part starts—we asked a copper if what we’d been told is true. 

“One way traffic from here back to Douglass?” I enquired.

“Aye, Sir,” he replied in a Yorkshire accent. “One way traffic from here, that’s correct.”

“And no speed limits?” I asked incredulously.

“Aye Sir, no speed limit—just stay on the black bits,” the copper told us.

It was freaky all right—five people in a Mini Metro, flat knacker at about 92 miles per hour, all the time watching the rear view mirror for psychos on psycho-bikes searing past you at about 180 miles per freakin’ hour! 

The whole Isle of Man experience is something that cannot be compared to, but for me it was made better by our new Yankee friends. Dan and Mar had been married for years; they started their long betrothal with a quickie marriage in Las Vegas in 1955; they met on bikes and always owned bikes right up until Dan passed away some years back. Mar went a few years ago and the world is a poorer place without them. 

Their marriage was an eventful one, even for a Vegas marriage. See, they left California with a carload or drunken mates, headed to Vegas through the night and got hitched in a quickie ceremony at one of the many wedding chapels that still infest Las Vegas today. That they sobered up a short time later made it a less romantic hitching, really hitting them hard when the happy couple realised they were hundreds of miles from home, newly married and totally broke with a whole mess of hungover mates. Their honeymoon was spent washing plates in restaurants for food, and washing cars for petrol money. The fact that their unlikely marriage lasted until death did part them, even inspired me to get hitched to my girl in Las Vegas.

One of the funniest stories ever told by Dan was from early in their courtship. Dan reckons he always had a faster bike than Mar, but she could always outride him, thrashing him down through the many canyon rides that Southern California riders could indulge in. One time, Dan’s bike was in the shop so he was packing pillion with Mar. They stopped at a favourite bar in the mountains above their hometown in California and Dan had taken the opportunity to get drunker than he normally would had he been riding too. As they were leaving and as is often the case with the designated rider, Marlene was getting shittier and shittier with Dan’s antics, and the whoopin’ and a hollerin’ of his boozy buddies as they gave him stick for being the ‘Bitch on the Back’. Dan was waving his final goodbyes as Marlene dumped the clutch on the Triumph to make a grand exit. Dan wasn’t quite ready and nearly fell off the back of the cycle, grabbing onto whatever he could—and that was Marlene’s top, which came right off. The cheering from the crowd got louder and more boisterous and Mar made the decision to leave the garment behind and ride home topless. To this day, that mental image for me remains very stimulating.

Dan and Mar were the perfect couple, so much fun to be around, and Dan had done some interesting jobs; the stories that he told from his days running a bar in Southern California were fascinating. Dan told me about ‘Eighty-Sixing’ people from the bar when they got too rowdy. I think it was under Section 86 of the liquor licensing law that allowed barkeeper to arsehole drunks from their bar, and it probably explains why Max Smart was Agent Number 86 for CONTROL.

Dan and Mar and Me and The Goog had such a good time on the Isle of Man, we ended up staying in contact and becoming the best of mates. Indeed, the cool Yankee couple came over to Australia for their next holiday, and the good times fired up instantly like there was no break. We were good hosts, and showed them the best parts of Sydney for a week or so before they headed off to all points Australian. 

Now, if you’ve met many Americans, you’ll find there’s not a huge amount of difference between the average Aussie and the average Yank, but you’ll also gather that Californians are about the closest in attitudes to Aussies, with a very similar sense of humour, as well. It’s just that they drive on the wrong side of the road.

Luckily for Australia, Dan had come to grips with driving on the ‘Wrong goddammed side of the road.’ He’d had practice in Ireland, just after the Isle of Man trip. When he approached one of them ‘new-fangled roundabouts,’ he got confused and ‘ran that rental car straight over the roundabout and ripped the front wheel right off that sucker!’

Dan may have got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road but just couldn’t get used to getting into the passenger side of the car.

One very funny thing happened one night. I lived in the beachside suburb of Freshwater, and we’d all walked down to the Freshwater Village Chinese restaurant and had a slap-up Ching grit. As we were walking out of the Freshwater Village Shopping Centre, we walked past the closed takeaway shop, Freshwater Chickens. After a short walk home, Dan couldn’t help himself and asked: “So what the goddamm hell is a Freshwater Chicken?”

“They’re a bit smaller and not as nasty as the big Saltwater Chickens,” I replied in a very dry tone. It clicked for Dan and we all peed ourselves laughing.

The Goog and I visited Dan and Marlene a few years later. They’d moved to Lake Havasu in Arizona, the town built out in the desert where a London bridge was transported stone by stone and rebuilt on the Colorado River. We had a fantastic time, and it was different to California, but the biggest difference we noticed were the Arizona Gun Laws. Like, there were NONE! Well almost none; you couldn’t conceal weapons. You could wear them in a holster, or you could travel in a car with a firearm, but it had to be in the glovebox, or the trunk (boot of the car) or on the front seat in clear view. It couldn’t be under the seat.

When you’re young, you are constantly meeting characters, a high turnover of outrageously interesting people winding in and out of your life, some becoming lifelong friends, others simply achieving ‘legend’ status in the short time you hung with them; the photos in your tattered albums allow them to remain the legend. 

As you age, the number of new friends you make tends to diminish, and then your old friends start dropping off the twig at a worrying pace. The only upside is that if you’re still alive and kickin’—you’re winning and hopefully, still have the photos!

Road Tales By Kelly Ashton