In the course of a phone confab with my friend Don just now, for some strange reason the hoary old English limerick that begins “In days of old/when knights were bold…” came up. The version I’ve always known best runs thusly:

In days of old, when knights were bold
And condoms not invented
We wrapped a sock around our cock
And babies were prevented.

Now tell me that ain’t just hi-larious, I triple dog dare ya.

Anyhoo, this memory inspired me to do a Luxxle search for the opening line after I’d hung up, seeing as how I knew there was any number of different iterations of this bit of bawdy doggerel. And sure enough.

In days of old when knights were bold
And women weren’t invented,
They all drilled holes in telegraph poles,
and came away contented.

And:

In days of old when knights were bold
and toilets weren’t invented,
they laid their load upon the road
and walked away contented!

And:

In days of old
When men were bold
And paper not invented
They wiped their ass
With blades of grass
And walked away contented.

Last but by no means least:

In days of old, when knights were bold,
And girls were not particular
You’d line them all against the wall
And screw them perpendicular

What can one say but: heh. I do love me some lit’ratchure, I truly, truly do.

I’m sure there are many other versions of this classic floating around out there; if you know any, please feel free to share ‘em with us in the comments section. Lord knows that, in these parlous times, we could all use a good laugh any time we can get one.

Update! Upon further reflection it occurred to me that, as fodder for public-restroom graffiti goes, the fine old poesy above ranks right up there with a couple of stellar examples I ran across in a Chapel Hill dive bar the band was playing at long ago, scrawled at eyeball-height above the lone urinal. To wit:

Flush twice—it’s a long way to Taco Bell

And then another, older but still legible graffito:

Why change Dicks in the middle of a screw? Vote for Nixon in ’72!

Good stuff, no? Then there was a pre-Innarnuts listicle enlivening the green room of CLT’s Park Elevator before it went the way of all nightclub flesh, which started off thusly:

REASONS WHY THE INDIGO GIRLS SUCK

1. They aren’t really indigo
2. They aren’t really girls
3. Off limits pussy pie

The above listicle items were added to by various Sharpie-wielding band members over time until finally, two (2) entire walls were covered by ‘em, transforming the ever-expanding list from the ordinary misspelled, punctuation-bereft, and ungrammatical semi-bon mots into a bona fide epic of rowdy witticism. Sadly, the first three are all I can remember now, but I do know the BPs laughed ourselves dizzy the first time we saw it, and raced in to check for new additions each and every time we played the joint ever after; it quickly became our first order of business before we loaded in, set up, and sound-checked, even.

I know the Indigo Girls gigged there at least once before the decrepit Park Elevator building was torn down and replaced by a yuppie-puppie pancake house or million-dollar condos or some such shite, so presumably they must’ve seen the backhanded tribute at some point. Who knows, they may have even added to it themselves—provided that the Girls (not! NOT!!) could’ve scraped up even a facsimile of a sense of humor between them, that is. Never met ‘em myself, so I won’t speculate on how likely that might be.

Park Elevator also happens to be the place where I rode my stripped down, straight-piped, apehanger-bedecked 1971 FLH through the low freight-loading entrance and right onto the stage at the beginning of our set, parking up next to my guitar amp. My friend Joe followed me in on his hot-rod Sportster, parking over on Stage Left opposite my Shovelhead; both bikes were custom-painted white and had been thoroughly shined up beforehand so that they gleamed and glittered beautifully under the multi-colored stage lighting.

Who was it we were opening for that night—the Cramps, maybe? Somebody else? Or were the BPs headlining the show? Ahh, the hell with it; doesn’t matter now, it’s over and done with. The one thing I’m confident of is that nobody who was there to witness our spectacular stunt-entrance has forgotten it, nor will they.

Backstory of how the deal went down: upon arriving at Park Elevator I approached the owner, Tim, to inform him of my nefarious plans and also to confirm that the jerry-built PE stage could handle a total of approximately 1500 pounds of extra weight without collapsing and killing us all. Tim grinned sheepishly, shrugged, and replied, “I dunno; it’s up to you, man, I’m cool with it!” Which noncommittal response put before me a question I’d asked myself time and again before doing another reckless, risky, and altogether foolish thing: What would Jerry Lee Lewis do?

There was but one answer to that, which was clear as a mountain spring. So I fired that bitch up (kick only, natch), muscled the 20-inch apes (on five-inch straight risers) down and back enough to JUST clear the freight-ramp door at Stage Left, and rode on in—so far so good, no problem. Shut the low-slung Shovel down, gently leaned it onto the kickstand, dismounted, strapped on the git-fiddle, slashed that almighty first-position A chord, let that mutha ring until the tormented Marshall amp screamed in razor-edged agonies of feedback, and may the revels commence, baby!

And the rest, as they say, is rock and roll history. A pic of the ol’ gal as she was in days of yore:

As with guitars, amps, cars, and women, I never could seem to keep a bike around for more than four-five years max before losing interest and offloading it. The 71 FL, though, was special: I held onto that one for ten (10) years before dumping her and moving on. A whole lotta years, a whole lotta miles, a whole lotta smiles, two (2) girlfriends, and I don’t even know how many cars, guitars, and amplifiers over that unusually lengthy (for me) period.

Those ten glorious years saw:

Three (3) custom paintjobs

Five (5) sets of exhausts, the uncontested champeen of which was an HD two-into-one system featuring no-shit tuned headers—the stock factory system for one (1) year on certain late-70s FX models, a rara avis greatly prized among Those Who Know. Ugly as sin, excessively heavy, too quiet for comfort, that rig nonetheless made my Milwaukee Marauder run like a raped ape after me and Goose punched holes in the big, clunky baffle it came with, a mod which increases exhaust-gas flow while still retaining the back pressure highway and byway cruiser machines require to operate at peak efficiency all day. There’s a reason, after all, why HD straight-pipe exhausts are pretty much universally known as “drag pipes,” even amongst non-biker types who have never swung a leg over a Hog in their lives and know precious little and care even less about ’em: it’s because drag pipes only work well on actual dragsters that run at full-throttle all the time, for short but exhilarating bursts down a stick-straight quarter- or eighth-mile strip

Five (5) sets of handlebars/risers: buckhorns on pullbacks, drag bars, 16″ apes, 20” apes, these wide-ass dresser longhorns I could only put up with for a cpl-three months

A full-custom suicide shift designed, built, and installed by me and Goose; unavailable at any price back then, now offered by several aftermarket manufacturers

Two (2) primary drives, enclosed chain and open belt

Six (6) seats, with and without sissy-bar, from a horrible solo seat on springs to the near-perfect Mustang pillow-seat shown above

Four (4) detachable saddlebag sets, one a rare factory Sportster arrangement; two throwover leather bag sets, one all fringed and fancy, one plain-Jane; lastly, the fiberglass bags shown above, a set of aftermarket el-cheapos

As the above partial list shows, I expended a great amount of time and effort on re-imagining, customizing, and re-working that faithful, rock-solid murdersickle into various guises. All part of the fun of Harley-Davidson ownership—actually, one of the primary reasons crusty old gearheads like me get addicted to the blasted things.

Updated update! After extensive digging, I eventually managed to unearth a pic showing the OEM 2-into-1 exhaust I waxed rhapsodic about earlier.

1978 FXS Lowrider, that would be, a very well preserved example of a long-dead breed. Look close and you’ll see the points (!) cover proudly sports the Number One-American flag insignia from the AMF (Annoying Manufacturing Flaw) era.

Simple, rugged, uncompromising: to me, this is simply what a Harley Davidson motorcycle looks like. Not anymore, unfortunately. Check out the official H-D website and you’ll find page after tiresome page of bland, cookie-cutter mundanities that bear no resemblance whatsoever to the straightforward, classic machines  of yesteryear, which I think is a crying shame.

Yes, they leaked oil. Yes, they vibrated so bad they could make your hands go numb and shake your teeth loose on a long trip. Yes, they were so slow they could barely get out of their own way. Yes, they were heavy pigs. Yes, the inferior clutch, four-speed tranny, long-throw shifter, and loosey-goosey shift linkage could make changing gears a hit or miss proposition sometimes. Yes, the suspension, handling, and brakes were a good bit shy of adequate. What of it? All those shortcomings could be addressed with a little backyard wrenching and some high-performance components, which even back then were readily available.

No self-respecting biker I’ve known would think having to work on his own bike so as to get everything dialed in to his personal satisfaction to be a bridge too far. Hell, invite your bros and their ol’ ladies over and have ‘em bring a case or three of cold beer along, crank up some slammin’ tunes on the jambox, and have yourselves a blast. Far from being any kind of deal-breaker, it’s an integral part of the biker lifestyle.

See what I mean about that exhaust, though? Pretty it ain’t, but it performed superbly, at least on my FLH. Looks as if Harley-D went for Function and said straight to hell with Form on those babies. Note how the rear pipe curls around the nose-cone cover like a snake, which is what it took to make tuned headers out of the system. Tuned headers, for anyone who doesn’t know, are basically just header pipes of equal length and diameter, see. After the first foot, foot and a half from the manifold clamp, the rest doesn’t matter. Rare as hen’s teeth back in the 70s and 80s, 2-into-1 exhausts with tuned headers for Harleys are common as dirt nowadays—you can’t take two steps without tripping over the aftermarket ones, for Big Twins and Sporties alike.