March 26, 1966, Stillwater, Oklahoma, on the local scrambles track, a very fast one. Several of us who rode together were screwing around after school at the race track, where we had no business. My buddy pulled out of the pit area on his Yamaha Big Bear Scrambler, and I T-boned him going full speed, about 85 mph on that track. I remember nothing after 9:00 that morning and this happened about 4:30, so I have to go by what I saw later and have been told.
I broke his Yamaha lower frame rail and engine cases, took his bike out from under him like jerking the tablecloth from under the dishes without moving them. He got a bump on the knee; I flew 200' and landed on my face. I was wearing a Bell 500TX helmet, state-of-the-art at the time, with a bubble shield which fractured in the center and the shards cut a pattern like a mask, right around my eyes. I woke up 4 days later in the Oklahoma State University Hospital, having dreamed for some of that time that I was dead (it was extremely boring, but someone told me not to complain, I had eternity to wait). I was really out of it for at least the next 6 weeks, and the after effects last till now.
But my insurance bought my buddy a Bultaco Matador, what a neat bike, and he traded that for a BSA 441 Victor. And to tell the world what a real slow-learner sounds like, one day I'll post about the 6 hour enduro where I did something extremely painful to my sternum in a first-corner crash, ran over a python, and won the race after starting 20 minutes late.
Joe C.
