MEGAPHONE

MEGAPHONE Moto MERITOCRACY

BY B. JAN MONTANA

I

t’s no secret that success is as much a function of tenacity as it is of talent, intelligence or education. Dustin Hoffman’s early career was a series of rejections, J. Paul Getty went broke 17 times before he got rich, and an 8th-grade Albert Einstein was not recommended for higher education in mathematics.

Lonnie Manybears was not recommended for anything. He was terrible in math and equally inept at reading, writing, the social sciences and indeed, the social skills. He failed Grade 4 and quit school after he failed Grade 8. We all knew “Lazy Lonnie” wouldn’t amount to anything.

He lived a few doors down from us, and we’d often hear his alcoholic father bellowing orders to the family. Lonnie’s dad loved three things: whiskey, ice fishing, and motorcycles. In winter, he’d drag his sons to the bay to spend hours over a hole chopped into the ice while he drank his way into a stupor.

During summer he did the same thing over worn-out motorcycles, and Lonnie ended up being fascinated with mechanics. On any summer evening, while other kids watched TV, Lonnie could be seen well past dark through the open door of his dad’s garage working on something mechanical. By the time he hit his teens he was better at it than his father.

The Japanese motorcycle invasion of the early sixties hit the transportation scene like Pearl Harbor, and it wasn’t long before every kid had a Honda 50 step-through or the more macho Honda 90 Sport. Unlike British or American iron, the beauty of a Japanese bike was that you could pay for it in one summer if you worked weekends, days, nights and in between. Honda did more to infuse the Baby Boomer generation with work ethic than the entire National Education Association.

No one knew anything about motorcycle mechanics, however, and “maintenance” was something janitors did after school. The “nicest people” in the ads never had dirty hands, so why should we? Besides, by the time we’d paid for the bike, there was barely anything left for oil or plugs; those bikes were just going to have to look after themselves.

Despite our impression that these things should last forever, they tended to break down after a couple of seasons. And when that happened it was either a trip to the dealer and his abominable $17 per hour shop rate, or to the clapboard garage of Lonnie Manybears. Lonnie was closer, and he worked for tips. He soon became very popular.

It was an ironic sight. The same guys who had derided Lonnie all through public school with names like “wagon burner” and “spear chucker” were now lining up as if he was Miss February signing centerfolds. Lonnie had failed virtually everywhere they had succeeded, yet they pursued his skills and knowledge as if he were a Greek oracle.

Lonnie may not have been academic, but he was no fool. He soon started charging half the shop rate. When guys complained, as they inevitably did, he’d always say this: “When you need help, you gotta pay de best guy.”

When the snowmobile craze hit, the local motorcycle dealer had service work 12 months per year, and he offered Lonnie a full-time job. Lonnie was not only good with a torch and a welding rod, he could repair parts that were never designed to be disassembled. There’s a pretty big difference between a factory trained “remove and replace” lackey and a tech who has the skills to actually fix things. Lonnie was the antidote to planned obsolescence, and it wasn’t very long at all before he was the lead technician.

When he got an offer from a dealer in the big city, his employer countered with a partnership agreement. Lonnie stayed local, ended up buying the shop in his 10th year, and then leveraged his way into another shop soon after. When Honda started importing cars, Lonnie got the local automotive dealership.

By age 28, Lonnie owned three dealerships and lived in a large house on a golf course. He was significantly wealthier than the classmates who’d derided him in school. He won “life’s lottery” without Affirmative Action or any other government program. To the contrary, he didn’t face any real discrimination till the IRS discovered he was a successful businessman.

The local paper did a feature on him, and the Ivy League reporter printed his badly worded answers verbatim. She finally asked the question that must have been uppermost in the minds of readers. “Mr. Manybears, how did you manage to become so successful considering your limited education?”

Although I’d heard it before, I roared with laughter at his pat response. “When you need help, you gotta pay de best guy. I hired de best guys.”

B. Jan Montana is an AMA Member.