There's a pile of stuff in here [entering the next room]. This is a '56 KHK, and that's pretty much a complete bike. I've just got to lace up the rims to the hub, and then it's ready for assembly. The whole bottom end has been rebuilt completely; the tranny's been rebuilt. It's just really assembly at this point.
That Elvis velvet painting came from the J.D. Sumner family. There's a skull. [In true Decker form, I'm shown a real skull.]
HBB: How's the gold Elvis?!
JD: Yeah, the Elvis in his gold LeMay suit ... that's a thing from Graceland.
HBB: What's up with this painting?
JD: That's a shitty painting. That's a painting that a friend did for me of a sculpture I did, and a Japanese guy fell in love with it, so I signed it to him and I'm sending it to Japan. It gets to the point where you've just got too much shit, so if somebody likes it more than you, you give it to 'em, you know?
Carney Ride-this is a little cutie ... I've got a better Carney Ride upstairs. This is kind of a circus deal. This is neat.
What they used to do is the circus would be set up outside of town, and they would set up on the rails. They'd go off a tiny spur that allowed for their 20 cars or whatever ...
HBB: The circus is how the Army learned the best way to get their troops around ... they studied and then totally used their loading and unloading methods.
JD: Did they really? The circus did? I didn't realize that.
HBB: Yeah, those guys were the pros at rail transport ... Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey and so on.
JD: Yeah, well OK ... they had it down! Because they had the animal cars, you know, in the front, and in the back would be all the performers and the luxurious [accommodations]. If you were a real heavy-hitter performer, you had a whole car to yourself ... you had a full apartment there, you know. And then, if you were a lesser performer, you were broken into two or three or four, and then the workers piled in as tight as they could. The animals were just shoulder-to-shoulder going across the country. Then there'd be one [car] that was just a tent carrier, and there'd be guys sleeping on the canvas, but what they would do was while the guys were setting up the tent, they'd take the menagerie out and let 'em breathe, shit and move, and then they would traipse them through the town. And then there would be tumblers and jumblers and freaks and all that kind of stuff, and they'd get that circus parade going, and people would follow them back to where they were. And that was the tradition of it, and this is just some twisted version of it.
HBB: They did have some weird stuff in "jars" ...
JD: They did! They had all the freaks up [front] ... a lot of the things that they had were just phony bullshit, but they did have freaks; they did have real freaks, you know, but it was people with goiters or whatever.
HBB: The engine of this Cyclone is just beautiful ...
JD: The engine had a lot of work going on in there, but it's a running Cyclone motor.
HBB: What's the deal with the 1922 Daytona Indian Big-Valve Chief and Flexi sidecar racer?
JD: What was neat about this is that the sidecar would move. The sidecar stayed level while the rig rocked, so the bike could turn left or right.
Into the garage, and we have a speedway bike, a 1948 chrome frame JAP speedway and a 1937 Crocker chassis. The motor's got the hemi head, and it's out at George Hood's house being built right now. The tank's at Tay Herrera's, at Tarrera, and he's doing a full engraving job on the tanks. He says it's the biggest job he's ever done in his life.
There's an old Wall of Death bike, a '30 Scout and a menagerie of good stuff up top.