Even though I’ve lived pretty modestly through both the up- and down-cycles that have punctuated my career, I’m caught by surprise at how uncomfortable it’s been for me to consider how I’d cope if the current recession found its way to my doorstep. After a couple of decades inside a culture based on seemingly-limitless growth, I’d gotten used to a life where most problems are made to disappear by throwing money at them and a day of recreation usually begins with a trip to the ATM. The small-but-real possibility of a long stretch where make-do and do-without would be the order of the day has haunted me like the monster that hid under my childhood bed until the film
The World’s Fastest Indian finally hit the top of our NetFlix queue.
Set in New Zealand and Western America during the 1960s, the movie chronicles the real-life
adventures of Burt Munro, an aging Kiwi pensioner who’s spent most of his life turning a 1920 Indian Scout motorcycle into a streamlined bullet that he hopes will set a land speed record at the famed Bonneville Salt Flats time trials. Being of modest means, he lives in a corner of the small garage that he’s turned into a home-made foundry and machine shop to build the parts for his bike. Watching the elderly Munro (played by Anthony Hopkins) cheerfully rise from his cot and commence to cast an experimental piston using a furnace made from cast-off junk reminded me of all the old farmers I’d grown up with in upstate New York who kept their ancient tractors and balers running by cannibalizing the even older equipment that lay rusting out behind the machine shed.
My Great Uncle Martin shared that depression-era ethic of making the most of everything, never buying something new that he could buy used and repair or, better yet, make himself. A high school shop teacher, part-time inventor and early aviator, my Great Uncle loved to tinker. I spent many happy hours with him in his basement, a magic place crowded with shelves of cast-off stuff he’d salvaged, a small workbench loaded with watch-making equipment, and a well-equipped shop full of lathes, drill presses and other machinery, all of which was at least as old as he was. I loved the time I spent down there, helping Uncle Martin breathe new life into an old appliance or watching as his gentle, unhurried hands worked a piece of scrap metal into the perfectly-formed piece he needed to complete whatever modification he was making to his car’s motor.
Watching Munro make his way to the Salt Flats was like a visit with my long-dead Great Uncle. Unable to afford factory-made high-speed racing tires, Munro fashioned his own by cutting the treads off of a set of road tires with a kitchen knife - just the kind of thing my crazy old uncle might have done. So when the cash-strapped hero arrives in America without a way to get his motorcycle to from Los Angeles to the Utah Salt Flats, I could easily imagine Uncle Martin helping Munro as he revives a junked car and presses it into service to tow the trailer he’d welded up from some nearby scrap. The fierce determination that kept my neighbors’ farm tractors running came from the same deep source within the human psyche that helped Munro push his forty-year-old machine to the near-200 mph speed record that still stands to this day.
Besides being a rollicking tale of adventure,
The World’s Fastest Indian celebrates the frugal, determined spirit of an earlier generation of do-it-your-selfers who never let a lack of resources stand between them and their dreams. As I stare out across the unknown territory of the next few years I’m less worried about what that future might hold now that I remember the lessons I learned from those old farmers and my Great Uncle Martin.
Comments? Questions? Tales of Old-Guy Tech you’d like to share with your fellow readers?
Write me at
lhg at en-genius dot net or post your comments on our blog.
