Sparked by an Outlaw’s Chopper

Off the Wire News
It was 1967 when Merlin Allen, of Spanish Fork, then a young boy of 8 living in Glenrock, Wyo., caught his first glimpses of the outlaw motorcycle life at his cousin's home one night.
Friends of his uncle were smuggling a member of their gang out of Casper as he fled the authorities and had stopped the night at the family home.
"'Check this out, Bob Goober's chopper is in the back,'" Allen remembered his cousin saying as the boys climbed up to look at the outlaw's ride, concealed in a high-sided trailer.
"We jumped up on the fender and I looked over and that thing was just glistening chrome and yellow and green metal flake," Allen said. "The thing was just gorgeous, and I think I stopped breathing."
It was love at first sight. Over the next 35 years, Allen continued his love affair with motorcycles, mainly American-made V-twins like Harley Davidson, Indian and Excelsior. He rode, repaired and studied the machines, becoming an encyclopedia of motorcycle knowledge and a skilled mechanic now working at Legends Vintage Motorcycles in Springville. Allen's self education started at an early age soon after seeing the outlaw's chopper.
"There was probably half a dozen of us kids in the town that started chopping up our bicycles," said Allen, who admits, with a smile, that he ruined the new Sting Ray bicycle his father had bought him. Allen and his friends found extra parts and had their bikes cut, welded and adjusted to their liking. In his teenage years Allen began work on motorcycles, eventually building and customizing his very own chopper.
For three years he lived the outlaw lifestyle on the back of a bike, riding through the west and, "basically bounced around and was just a bum," as Allen puts it. It was fun but a tough way to live, a lifestyle that an older and wiser Allen is happy to put behind him.
"I don't think I'll ever go back to the outlaw lifestyle because physically I don't think I can handle it," he said. But Allen understands why many still do it, and he understands their passion for life on a motorcycle. For a while he tried to give it up completely, tried to see what life was like on the "other side," as he put it.
"Always seeing the three-piece suit guys driving the nice cars and smelling good, how am I going to know what it's like if I don't experience it?"
Motivated by the desire to provide more for his wife and children, Allen gave up the lifestyle he'd loved so much, gave away all his bikes and started selling life insurance.
"I'm going to be a business man and I'm going to live the clean life," Allen said.
But it just wasn't meant to be.
"That was the worst time of my life," he said.
With a clean cut, cleanly shaven and a suit covering his many tattoos, Allen looked into the mirror and didn't like what he saw.
"I was like, 'Who am I kidding? I'm just as phony as the phony bastards that are out there trying to act and be somebody they're not,' " Allen said.
Friends were happy to return his motorcycles and Allen returned to doing what he loved.
"I like taking [bikes] that are totally scattered and are ready for the dump, and I like to resurrect them," Allen said. "It makes me feel like I've accomplished something."
For years, Allen has enjoyed getting to know the many riders he's helped fix motorcycles for, as well as the bikes they ride.
Nobody lives forever. But the bikes get passed on, and eventually someone brings one back for a fix and Allen recognizes it.
"You make friends with the new owner -- it's a never ending story," Allen said.
In 1998, Rick Salisbury, who bought a bike form Allen years earlier, was reintroduced to him and brought Allen on to work at Legends in Springville. Salisbury started the shop as an extension of his own growing hobby and love of vintage motorcycles, but Legends has grown to include custom designs and modifications.
"Allen likes the older, vintage bikes and he understands the mechanics of them better than anyone else I've known," Salisbury said. "He's a great mechanic in the old school bikes."
Rick Story, the general manager at Timpanogos Harley Davidson, agrees with Salisbury.
"He's one of the most knowledgeable mechanics I've met in 25 years of experience," said Story, who recognized Allen's tenacity and dedication to fixing any problem he's faced with in the shop.
With the combined skills of Allen and co-worker Steve Peterson, of Springville, the two work hard in maintaining Legends's extensive vintage collection, customizing new bikes and helping design and expand future projects.
"We call it [Salisbury's] sand box, but he's not playing in it right now. Me and Merlin get paid to play in it," Peterson said of Legends.
"But every once in a while he comes around and takes all our toys from us," Allen joked.
From the "mild to totally wild," as Allen puts it, the variety of work on bikes he loves keeps him happy. Looking back it may look like a restless life, moving from place to place and job to job, but one thing has remained constant -- that love of motorcycles sparked years ago by an outlaw's chopper.
Original article...
http://heraldextra.com/news/local/article_ae985953-3dd8-564a-a4c1-a2cdc987898a.html