For Travis, who always liked this story when I told it or re-told it on the morning drive to the track ... The Lot

He was the first one at the abandoned lot shortly after dawn on October 17, 1971, waiting for his fellow 13-year-old buddies to show up. He had mentioned to his mom the evening before that he would be gone all day Sunday and might not make it back in time for dinner. She knew, generally, where he’d be and why he wasn’t at breakfast. It was 1971, and a kid being gone all day wasn’t Amber Alert-level panic; it was perfectly normal.

The kids had no money, no passes, and just a scrap of a plan: ride their bicycles the ten miles to Ontario Motor Speedway, find a good place to safely ditch the bikes, nonchalantly walk through the break in the fence they’d found previously, and sneak into the track. Plan after that? No plan. They were, after all, going to the track to see professional motorcycle racers and races.

They’d waited all summer for this, and as he rode the backroads and canals on his way to the track, the kid’s anticipation level was so high he was almost buzzing. The last half-inch in the cereal bowl he’d slammed at dawn before rolling out was sugar. Was he vibrating from the sugar buzz or anticipation he wondered?

Good question.

Stashing his bicycle was not a matter taken lightly. They had a spot where they’d lay the bikes and then cover them with brush to camouflage them from potential thieves. In 1971, in southern California, to a 13-year-old, his bike was basically eighty percent of his existence. If your bike went missing, was life even worth living?

Good question.

The kid remembered the first time he’d seen his bicycle. It happened during a trip to Bumstead’s Sporting Goods with his mom. A blue Schwinn Sting-Ray with high bars, a little front wheel, white wall tires, a banana seat, and a chrome front fender. As he stood there looking at it, what came over him wasn’t just desire; it wasn’t just need. That bike was something that completed him as a 13-year-old American boy in 1971.

Life without this glorious vehicle wasn’t anything he was willing to endure.

He found his mom and dragged her over to look at what he’d found.

The price tag was just short of sixty dollars, an extra sixty dollars that he knew his parents didn’t have, but he asked anyway.


"No, honey, I’m sorry, but we don’t have extra money right now."


He kept asking—PLEASE—but there was no way to convince her.

Clearly, she did not understand how he needed this bicycle as much as oxygen.
He began to beg, which was very out of the ordinary for this boy, saying he’d do anything to appease his parents—anything at all for the bike. She remained steadfast because the unfortunate truth was, they didn’t have the money.

A few moments before the kid was going to just lay down right there and await death—at least he could look at the bike as he slowly wasted away—old man Bumstead, the store owner, happened by and saw the kid in the final dire moments before he became a puddle on the floor. He then mentioned to the mom that they also sold those Schwinn bikes "on time"—payments of $2 a week for a year. Do that, and he could ride it home today.

On the spot, the kid basically agreed to do any kind of chore his mom assigned him—yes, I will wear the dreaded bow-tie to church. Babysit my little sister?—of course! Why didn’t you just ask? Yes, I will clean the garage. Happily, she then said it was okay, they’d buy it on payments.

World championship glory came later for the kid. He’d win races and literally 100,000 people would chant his name. Were those days better than the day he rode that Sting-Ray out of the store at 13?

Good question.

The journey

Today, there is an entire subset of the sport of bicycling for people masochistic enough to ride a single-speed bike for ten miles or more through the urban jungle. In 1971, though, it wasn't a subset for travel torture; it was the only travel reality a 13-year-old knew. They’d stop occasionally and drink water out of a hose if they saw one being used to water a lawn, then jump back on and pump for another three or five miles. Small price to pay in order to spend the day watching professional motorcycle racers. They were on their way to Ontario Motor Speedway.


Bikes stashed, they slipped through the hole in the fence at Ontario just as the motorcycles went out for first practice. They were in, ready for possibly the best day of their lives—or certainly of this summer.

John Cooper

Let’s be very frank: it’s not like Englishman John Cooper gave up a career as a movie star in order to race motorcycles. His head was shaped like a potato, and the NHS-spec birth control glasses—complete with thick lenses—did nothing to accentuate his face. Birth control glasses? Yes, so goes the UK pub joke: you wear those NHS glasses and you needn’t worry about birth control because, well, you won’t get the opportunity to worry about birth control.

John Cooper was, however, very fast on a motorcycle. He started racing in the late 1950s and was, by the late 1960s, renowned throughout the UK as one of the fastest men who had to be at work Monday morning. Cooper overcame tremendous odds to get to the top of UK racing; he had at least one full-time job for the entirety of his life and was always scrambling for parts, tires, and entry fees. He tried to leave every racetrack with more money in his wallet than he came with... because if he didn’t, then racing was over for John Cooper.

John Cooper is not a name many contemporary American race fans will recall easily. A UK specialist, Cooper sort of filtered into the background of British riders of the era--he wasn’t as popular as Mike Hailwood, and not as successful on the world racing scene as Phil Read, for example. He did not look like a classic motorcycle racer of the 1960s by any means, a wide and flat face atop a working-man’s body, Cooper raced with prescription glasses and looked more like a bus driver than a racer, although some thought that was all part of the clever ruse he put over on the racing establishment.

However, Cooper was, to his credit, very smart, and savvy. He raced primarily in the UK because that was where he could  make the most amount of money, it was said. He wasn’t some cobblestone poser, though, Cooper was fast and enjoyed decent equipment. He was very tight with neighboring BSA, and in 1971 had some of the best equipment that the soon to be defunct company could muster—including the latest works chassis and engine package.

Perhaps Cooper’s most memorable career win was when he entered the famed “Race of the Year” event in the UK and beat Giacomo Agostini on his all-conquering MV. Consider this: Ago—rhymes with ego—won every single 500cc Grand Prix race that he entered in 1971, and every 350cc GP race as well. Only nine races counted towards the championship that season so he blasted nine 500cc GP wins in a row and then went home to relax, work on his tan, for the final three races of the year. Tracks were longer then and Ago enjoyed perhaps the most dominating equipment advantage ever seen in Grand Prix racing (works MV versus largely Norton singles) and even today some of his period margin of victory numbers remain astounding—sometimes just short of six minutes.

Agostini was literally king of the roadracing globe. 

Yet, Ago was at a disadvantage on one level that autumn, though, the Race of the Year was held at Mallory Park—not a GP track.

And Cooper was on a 750 BSA to Ago’s 500cc MV, a fact Ago clung to after the race for solace, but the reality is that when you’re MV-mounted Agostini and it’s 1971, you own the capability and mass expectation to be able to go anywhere and beat anyone.

Then he went to England at the end of ‘71 and got his ass handed to him by a local guy—Cooper—who said later that he felt his strength as a rider was that he knew when to stick his neck out, and when to really stick it out. Cooper chased down Agostini and scored a victory that is still revered in pubs in England.

“We almost collapsed the bleachers we were so excited when he went past Ago,” said one race-watcher.

The kid

He’d stand there, off to the side and listen to the mechanics talk while the rider was out doing laps, watch how they fixed problems and wiped sweat from their forehead in the sun. 

The kid loved motorcycles. It wasn’t a passing interest for a summer between bicycles and go-karts like it was for some of the boys in the neighborhood, the kid, just like the t-shirt, really did eat, breathe and live motorcycles. He’d been riding in the desert since he was seven, plodding around at first with his grandpa and dad leaning against the truck watching him, teaching him, making sure that he was riding properly while at the same time, showing how to ride fast. The elder had raced board track back east in the 1930s and his father was a former desert racer so they knew their way around a motorcycle. 

Ontario Motor Speedway was as ostentatious and brazen as Southern California could be in the early 1970s. Built for $25 million and completed during the Summer of 1971, Ontario was located in East LA and was essentially an Indianapolis Motor Speedway of the West.

The 1971 AMA roadrace season ended at Ontario, and to kick things off at the new “Indianapolis of the West” facility, the promoter of the race offered a huge purse, with ten grand going to the winner of the Ontario 250. Ten grand in 1971 was a significant amount of money. You could still buy tract houses in the Valley for about that, or if you already had real estate, then you could literally fill a garage with motorcycles for ten grand in 1971.

The kid walked the paddock alone, looking things over, watching how mechanics prepared bikes, and how big time roadracers rode them. 

Attracted by the prestige of racing at the king daddy of California racetracks, and of course the money, some of the best riders in the world would enter the end of season event at Ontario in the ‘70s. World champions, ex-world champions would do battle with the rough AMA crowd who raced both dirt and track to win their championship. 


The kid stood at the side of the track and no doubt took note of Cooper’s very pragmatic approach to racing. Not much flash, beyond the cartoon eyes on his helmet, and not a lot of bold talk. When it came time to make the big move and win, he was ready. 

That afternoon in Southern California, old Mooneyes (Cooper raced with carton eyes on his helmet, hence the nickname) held his own in the dual leg races at Ontario. Due to a number of factors, the ‘71 race was run in two legs with separate scoring for each race. Cooper finished fourth in the first race, and won the second leg, and so took the overall win and the ten grand. It was the biggest race win of his life.

Epilogue

Decades later, long since retired from racing and now a successful businessman in his native Great Britain, Ontario-winner John Cooper was invited to be a guest of honor at a UK racing club’s dinner, one which had as VIP guest four-time world champion Eddie Lawson. 

As the party grew louder and the bullshitting grew stronger, Cooper found himself slowly working his way to the walls and then attempting to find the door. At some point, he looked up from the floor and saw world champion, Eddie Lawson standing in front of him. Lawson offered his hand, said he was glad to finally meet him.

At this time John was comfortable being basically invisible to an entire generation of racers and race fans. Cooper offered “really, why?” to Lawson’s assertion of this being sort of a monumental meet for him. 

Lawson said. “See, when I was a kid, I saw you win that race at Ontario. Ditched my bike in some weeds and snuck in to the track, watched you hand it to them in the second leg. That was great. I've never forgotten that day.”

Later when Lawson was brought up on stage at the event he pivoted the schedule by in turn bringing up Cooper, who he said was one of his childhood heroes.

Cooper, surprised and overcome, nearly cried. He said he could faintly recall a solitary kid that day at Ontario, always hanging about, wordlessly watching his every move.

That bicycle-stashing, water-hose-drinking kid at Ontario was Eddie Lawson.