Breaker was the kind of biker that no matter how hard he tried, he seem to have a small cloud of bad luck following him all the time. It had nothing to do with his personality. He was always the first one to volunteer to go to the rescue of one of his brothers, rain sleet or snow, or to stop and help a fellow biker or anyone for that matter, broke down on the side of the road. Trouble was, he spent more time on the side of the road than anyone else. That’s partly how he got the nick name “Breaker” short for Breakdown.
He inherited a ‘51 Panhead from his father who bought the bike new, the same year that Breaker was born. A few months later his father was killed on the bike as he headed for a bike rally in Daytona, FL, what is now known as Bike Week.
Breaker’s mother never wanted the bike around the house after that, her grief was too great over the loss of her man and the sight of that Harley just made things worse. So his father’s friends kept it at their club house and maintained it for the time when Breaker would be old enough to start riding. But the bike never quite ran right after the accident and no matter how many experts worked on the bike, it invariably put who ever was riding it on the side of the road.
When Breaker was six years old his fathers closest friend, known as “Race”, for his love of speed, took Breaker to the club house to show him his father’s machine and told Breaker it was to be his when he was old enough to obtain a license. He took Breaker on many short rides, much to his mother’s dismay. Many of these rides though, never seemed to end without some minor incidental breakdown. At the age of ten Race put Breaker in front of him on the bike and let him steer and work the throttle after it was in high gear, since Breakers hands were not big enough or strong enough to work the clutch lever. From that moment on Breaker was hooked. The feeling of power and thunder between his legs gave him the most extreme rush of his life. He was almost overcome by it. Later in life he would look back on that first experience with wanting, but it seemed he would never be able to quite match it, though he always tried.