Harley Davidson Shed in 1903
On this sunny day in Milwaukee my friend from sunny California and I went to the Harley Davidson Museum. The museum has been around for a year or so but I had not visited it before.
I grew up in the shadow of the Harley Davidson motorcycle company, My family home was located on the block where the first factory, a 10′ X 15’ shed, stood in 1903 behind the Davidson Family home. My homestead was next to the alley that led to the parking lot for Harley Davidson employees. We were not able to play basketball on the hoop on our garage when the first shift was over. The famous sound of Harley-Davidson motorcycles were to be heard all around our neighborhood.
In high school my second job was working at the Harley Davidson office. In the days before computers draft persons did the designs on blueprints which were copied by a very large primitive copying machine and filed away in a small room of big filing cabinets. My summer and after school job was to copy and file the blueprints. It was a very boring job but had one fringe benefit. In the summer at lunch time some of the Harley executives would take their motorcycles to a nearby hill and climb it. I was a passenger in one of the side cars.
Now my homestead is torn down and the whole block is one large parking lot.
When I worked there in the early sixties Harley Davidson was in decline. Eventually it was sold to another company but then was resurrected n the 80’s into the thriving company that it is today.
So today brought back many old memories, like riding homemade go-carts down the alley and steering into the parking lot to avoid running into the street.
In many ways my whole life is coming home. Yesterday after a Milwaukee ‘fish fry’ we took our friend to a custard stand that I went to as a child. The custard stand has another name now but still sells the same great custard as it did in the 50’s. And I still live on the Westside near Miller Brewery, Harley Davidson and the baseball stadium. Miller Brewery has gone through a couple of ownerships changes, and the the new stadium built next to the old has a different ball team, but it still stands.
Some things change but custard, beer, Friday fish fries and baseball remain in Milwaukee. Coming Home is sweet, noisy, refreshing, good tasting and enjoyable.
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