Geezer with a Grudge: Good Will Toward All Bikers

May 22, 2008

Good Will Toward All Bikers

A while back, a friend sent this to me and it seemed appropriate today, after an "interesting" confrontation with an H-D owner at a restaurant.

The following quote is from the December, 1920 edition of the H-D Enthusiast Magazine.

"It would be a fine thing for the world if some of this goodwill could be bottled up at Christmas time and dealt out regularly wherever it was needed during the rest of the year. For instance, I'm sure the motorcycle world could stand some of it; for, even though we boast of our "good fellowship" spirit, there still seems to be a tendency among a good many motorcyclist to slight the fellow riding another kind of machine. Motorcyclist are all bound together by a brotherhood tie through their love of the sport, and what difference does it make what make of machine he rides as long as he belongs to the clan?" -- Walter Davidson

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The Geezer Story

I stumbled upon this column name (Geezer with a Grudge) almost 20 years ago, in 1999. The first Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly editor I worked with, in late 1999, complained that the magazine was getting no mail and the editors wanted to know if any readers were still out there. I fired off a sarcastic note, as a joke, intended to provide a little humor and some feedback. He published it as an article and later called me to say he'd received more mail on that letter than he'd received in the past year! I followed that with an offer to write a monthly column attempting to piss off a particular section of the magazine's readership to see if that tactic would generate some mail.

It did, probably more regularly than the magazine wanted at times, and I wrote a monthly column for MMM until the magazine died in 2018.

I plan to post an occasional old Geezer article into the blog, followed by short comments about the current status of my perspective on our activity/sport/vehicle of choice.