This past Memorial Day weekend, I set out to hit all the garage sales in my small town, just as I had for the past many years. In my pocket was a crisp twenty-dollar bill, which is like a thousand dollars in garage sale money. I perused my neighbors’ offerings fortified with the knowledge I gained from watching countless antique road shows on PBS. I was sure that I would find a mismarked Ming dynasty vase that I could pick up for a buck and sell at Sotheby’s for a few million. Usually however, the anatomy of my purchase was more like buy a circular saw for five dollars, take it home, plug it in, pull the trigger and hear the deafening sound of silence. At that moment it became perfectly clear why the guy sold the saw, but somehow I never made the price to product connection during my buying frenzy.

While at one of my stops as I was inspecting a gas can being offered for a dollar, I saw a huge dirt clod in the shape of a motorcycle out of the corner of my eye. At first it looked like a Honda 305 Dream from the early sixties, but this bike was surely European, maybe a BMW. I looked at the speedometer, it said PUCH. I finally made the connection: a Sears/Allstate. I asked the guy what he wanted for the bike. He said fifty; I said fifteen; he said sold. Quid pro quo. I was thinking to myself, “What a sucker! I just bought a motorcycle for the price of fast food!” I pictured myself taking the bike home, hosing it off, putting new gas and oil in the bike and riding by this guy’s house laughing.

The first thing I did when I got the bike home was to stand over the bike, launch myself up in the air with my foot placed over the kick starter, and come down with the force of my two hundred fifteen pound demeanor. But I never came down. The motor was frozen. It turns out that the motor froze up in the mid 70’s and the bike laid on its side in a snowy field for twenty years before I reclaimed it. I figured that I was going to make a commitment to bring this thing back to life. At that point I had no idea what a commitment that would be. With two cans of degreaser and a high-pressure nozzle, I got the top layer of geology off the bike. There was a rat’s nest where generations of rodents were reared from the battery compartment.

Over a period of a month the bike was disassembled and parts were sent out to be painted. I took some poetic license and painted the bike red. I didn’t have the heart to paint it the original burgundy/purple. This is restoration blasphemy and I know I will take the heat from an Allstate or restoration purist. But, as far as I was concerned, this bike was begging to be red. Later model rear shocks and red piping on the seat were a few other personal touches. As I began to put the bike together each week as the parts came in, it became crystal clear that parts were not going to be easy to come by. This epiphany came to me as I was talking with a motorcycle parts house and the guy said, “What the hell is an Allstate?!”

Out of desperation, I faxed the Sears archive department in Chicago to find out more about this bike. Two weeks later, I received in the mail a photocopy of the Sears catalog that featured my bike. It was a warm feeling knowing that this bike did officially exist. What I really needed was a parts bike with a good motor as the original motor was long gone. Time and water had forever welded the pistons with the cylinder walls. So, where do I find another bike? Well, apparently this bike was not sold widely in California. This bike was sold through the Sears catalog, mostly to the Midwest and to rural America. So I figured I would have better luck looking in the areas that it was more common. I put an ad in the Springfield, Missouri newspaper. My mother lives in a small town about an hour away from Springfield, so I used her phone number. The ad read, “Wanted: Sears/Allstate motorcycle or parts.” Finally, the last day the ad ran a chiropractor from Springfield called and said that he knew somebody that knew somebody that about five years ago had an Allstate but didn’t know the number. He had to drive around through the countryside until he could find the person’s house. He found it and called me back with the phone number.

We were planning a trip back to see my mother. When we arrived I called the guy. He said the engine was fine but the rest of the bike was in poor shape. I made a deal to buy the bike for one hundred dollars. Since we were driving a rented Lincoln Towne car filled to the brim with clothes, myself, wife, two kids and friend Gail, there was no room for a newly acquired motorcycle. So I took as many parts off the bike that I thought I could use and that I had the time to get off. I set up a triage area near the trunk of the car. “Let’s see, my mom’s canned green beans or carburetor?” It was like a shopping spree. The clock was ticking. It was hot and humid and we wanted to make Colorado before dark. I would ship the rest of the bike later. I squeezed in the motor and a bag of parts and drove them back to California.

A few months later a guy from California called me with another Allstate for sale. I still am not sure how he got my number. It’s probably written on a bathroom wall at a motorcycle shop saying, “This guy will buy anything!” One hundred dollars later and now I own three Allstates!

The rims and the spokes were completely rusted. I was able to buy new rims but the spokes had to be made. I laced the wheels myself sitting on my bedroom floor cross-legged, confused. I had to start over about five times before I finally cracked the wheel-lacing code. My kids learned enough profanity from that evening to provide them with ample verbal ammunition as adult motorists. Another trying moment in the recreation of my bike was when I took the individual little ball bearings and set them in a bed of wheel grease and slowly raised them to meet the bearing cup on the headset then suddenly, without warning, my elbow bumped the bike. I watched in slow motion as the little silver spheres rolled down my driveway and made a right hand turn and disappeared forever on my steep mountain road.

But there were also the rewarding times, like when I got all the shiny parts back from the chrome shop and the Thursday evening in March when, at last, the bike kicked over and I could hear for the first time what the motor sounded like. The last few months of work were conducted from my living room since my garage in the winter measures the same temperature as the dark side of the moon. If I really knew what I was getting into in terms of a time commitment or that my fifteen dollar bike would ultimately be a $2,800.00 investment, I don’t know if I would have jumped in. The star on the tree was my custom saddlebags copied from the Sears catalog of 1963 and the bike was done.

Something about the look of this bike is what Cycle World Magazine wrote about in 1968: “The SR 250 is no luxury carriage for landed aristocrats. Rather, one pictures it lugging a leather-swathed artisan steadily to work through a damp and gray East European dawn. That’s the type of bike it is- functional, a little plain, but sturdy and very rugged…. If anyone is in search of daily transport that combines reliability, durability, and longevity, he will find it in the SR 250- in full value.”

I am not sure whether this project was a testament to my tenacity and mechanical wherewithal or just proof that the brain death isn’t fatal. A stamped frame department store bike may not be every motocycle collector’s dream. But for me the bulbous lines of the bike are nothing short of art. Although I am glad the bike is done the aromatic cocktail of gas and oil still makes me nostalgic about my restoration project. I have recently developed an affinity for old British motorcycles but my Allstate will always have the dominate position in my collection.