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Oley 2012

Oley 2012 was quite a success – as measured by the 50+ cheeseburgers and 30 hot dogs cooked up by Brent Dugan, the Hummer Club’s Chief Chef and Webmonster.  The swap meet was in full swing by Thursday afternoon, when Dave arrived to set up the Club tent.  The weather was cold and windy, in marked contrast to the previous week’s record high temperatures.

The tent sported one of the new Club banners first seen at Silver Sands earlier this year.  We previously had only two banners to serve the four swap meets featuring Hummer Hospitality.  This had required remembering "Who’s got the banner?" and shipping the banners all over the country.  Generous donations by Club members to the website fund were sufficient to allow us to purchase two new ones and avoid the hassle and shipping charges.

Friday was again cold and windy.  Check out the pictures - the tent is strapped to a telephone pole and atree to keep it from blowing away!  The Club's ample supply of cold beer and soda was unrequited – most Club members stopping by the tent were asking for hot coffee or hot anything to warm their hands and innards.

Chef Brent was mystified why Club founder Dave Hennessey was mysteriously absent through most of the meet.  Later, he found out Dave had organized the 100th Anniversary Gathering of Henderson motorcycles, and was off orchestrating "Million Dollar Corner".  Check out: www.HendersonKJ.com/100years/index.html

Dave and Brent were happy to meet and greet Club members old and new at the Hummer Club tent.  Bennie Howard was in his usual vendor space next to us.  Chuck Bent and his wife braved the cold by camping out diagonally behind us.  Club members Arny Cummings, Norm Fuhrer, Kelly Sica, Jim Garrett, Richard Duda, Gary Myers, Marge Busch, Anna and Les Zacary, Theresa & Art Lumsden, and many, many others stopped by for a hot burger to take the chill off the cold afternoons.  Jim and Mary Godwin were set up in their usual spaces in the back field, and busy selling their huge selection of parts.

The hero of the weekend was Brent Dugan, who seemingly chained to the grille, kept providing hot meals to every visitor to the Club tent.  I, for one, would have starved to death if it hadn’t been for Brent’s tasty treats. Arny Cummings proclaimed them "best burgers and dogs - ever".

The cold wind disappeared on Saturday, and the thermometer rose a few degrees.  Late Saturday afternoon, Dave picked up some rare finds – an almost perfect H-D 1957 "Cut and Mat Book" with great line art drawings of all the 1957 models.  Think back to a half century ago, before laser printers, and before Xerox copiers.  Small-scale printing was still letterpress, and illustrations required copper plates attached to wooden blocks.  Larger-scale printing used plastic-rubber mats which went around the cylinders of printing presses.  Harley dealers wanting to place ads in local commercial or high-school newspapers would look through the illustrations in the Cut and Mat book, and order the appropriate items from Milwaukee.  The Hummer and Model 165 illustrations are great – most of them have pictures of guys and girls posing with the Lightweights.

The other rare find was a "1956 Special Order Blank - Hummer & 165".  This factory document shows that Sun Gold and Tampico Green were available on both models as a "Spring Special".  What is unusual about these colors is that they were only offered for about 5 months in 1956 – and only on the lightweight models – they were not used at any other time during the entire decade.

How-To-Restore Chapter 60 previously listed these colors as a "Question", since the only factory documentation of them was in Harley's error-filled General Engineering Standard 30143.  Now we have the proof, and have updated that chapter.

See you at Oley next year.


  Last updated: May 08, 2012 Up