Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Maety (Continuedfrom page 16) What a shame it is that more people will not have the oppor- .34 tunity to meet the man, meet his wife Judy and spend a few hours basking in the hospitality that their nearly self-supporting Corona ranch offers to all. Every real enthusiast of the motorcycle genre should meet this humble, talented man. A man Kenny Roberts calls a doer, then adds, "There aren't many around." A machinist and engine builder with a degree in experience, a family man who lives in a house he built. Maely knows and loves quality and people, especially when the two are combined. His quality workmanship, service and desire to save the racer money have given him a monopoly on the steel shoe market. Since HarleyDavidson became the last American motorcycle manufacture!, Maely is the only man to design, build and sell motorcycles in America that were viable. He takes no credit for the accomplishment, but gives all credit to his friends, who provide assistance and helping hands, and the Lord. At this writing, Ken has a second speedway eng~ne nearly ready to fire. Husqvarna is readying a four-stroke model with the top end largely of Maely design. Ken was a racer of both speedway and flat track. We talked with him about himself and his new engine. "I was born and raised in Wisconsin, in fact (pointing to a framed picutre), that's our family farm right there. I was born at that farm, my dad was born there, and my Grandfather homesteaded it. My dad was an outcast, because he raced motorcycles way back then when I was little. "I can remember traveling with about a 1924-25 Buick touring sedan with wooden wheels. They had spare tires on each of the front fenders, so my dad would take the spare tire off of the passenger side and put his old racer on the running board, with the handlebar of the racer in the front seat, where I sat. I used to dodge around that handlebar to see ouL Those cars had wooden wheels, like we saw on my Model T out there, and they'd start squeaking. We'd go find a creek bed, one we wouldn't get stuck in, park the car in the creek bed and have a picnic lunch till the water swelled up the wooden wheels again. "I kind of got involved in that racing picture, and World War II came along. About that time, we moved out here to Beverly Hills. I was the hick that came from the farm to Beverly Hills. Lucky enough, I got along with everybody so well, I was class president the next year." Ken began to show a will to work early; a will that still possesses him. He frequently works an enormous amount of hours. Seven time National Speedway Champ and frequent "Hotshoe Manor" visitor Mike Bast said of him, "I've seen him sleep in the shop for a couple hours and get up and go back to work. I don't know how he keeps up with himself." "I was very conservative," says Ken of his early years, "I used to save money. I made 1O¢ an hour, so I made $6 a week. I bought my first MOdel A for $8, and I bought my first bike, a ' Pony Scout, for $7. I bought a Harley in Baltimore, MD, then found a piston in the garbage can behind a Harley shop to rebuild the engine with. I rode it all the way across the U.S. during WWII. "But then I raced after the war. I have pictures of Gary Scott's dad and .. rr,- l''':O~t of. t . "~'~'I:l'llj 1 myself racing. We used to go back East- we could go from here to Chicago on $22 worth of gasoline in the '40s - and race back there on the summer circuit and do real well. I was one of the few guys to come back and put all the money in the bank and go to work the next day. "It was about '48-'49 or thereabouts, and I won a Canadian half mile championship. I had a 1946 woody Ford station wagon. My dad was with me, and the Canadian dollar was worth abOut a $1.10 when we were a dollar. I stopped at all the gas stations before the border to try to trade Canadian dollars for American money. There were about three or four of us guys who went up there, and they were all talking in the back. One says, 'how long have you been riding Maely?' I said, 'oh, I was probably 120r 14 years old.' My dad spoke up and he said, 'no, he's bullin' you now, he was nin'e years old when he started riding.' I didn't know till then that my dad knew. He used to keep his old Indian racer in the garage. When he would go to town with my mother on a Saturday, the neighborhood kids and I would get his motorcycle out, and we'd carefully take the plug out of the carburetor, the plug out of the exhaust pipe and I'd even check the tire valve cores to see where they were. We'd wheel the motorcycle out of the garage, they'd give me a shove, and I'd ride it all the way down to the fields and all around. Before he'd come back, we'd park it in the same place. We used to bust branches off the trees and cover up the tracks; we'd wipe the tires down and leave it just like it was. "I did that for two years, and I never thought he even caught on that I was riding his motorcycle. That's when he sprung it on me, about 1949. He said, 'I knew everytime you rode that thing, but you aid pretty good, Wri E you had everything just so - just the way I left it - that's why I never said anything about it." . Ken followed the races after he quit and continued to make skid shoes a little too well for his competition. His traveling welding shop was at many of the races, particularly Ascot. He repaired and refaced skid shoes, fixed frames for people and just made friends. He did that until, as he says, "I got tired of going to the hospital with wives and girlfriends and being a pall bearer." The friends and information he picked up at the races proved valuable when the time came to build his own motorcycle. Ken had raced speedway, then flat track. When speedway was reborn in this country, Ken returned to it as a skid shoe man and all around supporter. He even served as referee for awhile before the present referee, Irwin Moon - a friend of Ken's for 30 years and CJ big help in r BRAND CONGRATULATES rCHAMPION 1982Wra SUPERCROSS SERIES DONNIE HANSEN AMERICAN HONDA AND BRIAN LUNNISS "THREE TOUGH CUSTOMERS" (s, BLUE BELL, INC. 19B2

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