Carl Fronk aboard his 1968 Harley-Davidson Sportster XLCH.
The green doesn't look so bad today, does it? Original but ridden, Carl Fronk's 1968 Harley-Davidson Sportster XLCH is a solid performer.
Carl Fronk's 1968 Harley-Davidson Sportster XLCH .
When Carl Fronk returned from his tour of duty in Vietnam in June 1968, the first thing on his mind wasn't finding a job — it was finding a new Harley-Davidson Sportster.
"I walked into Chico's Harley-Davidson in Trenton, N.J., which was right over the bridge from where I lived. I tried to cut a deal, but he wasn't having any of it. But then he pointed to this Harley-Davidson XLCH and said I could have that for $25 off list price because nobody wanted an ugly green Sportster.
"It didn't matter to me what color the bike was because I was going to take it home and paint it anyway," says Carl. A week later, he was riding around on his shiny new black Sportster.
When Carl shipped out to Vietnam, he left behind a 1961 XLCH Sportster that he'd bought in 1963 with 900 miles on the clock, and used every day to ride to school. And two or three times a week, he'd have a blast at the local drags. He was 16 when he bought it, and Carl rode his Sportster until the day he got on the bus to boot camp at age 18. No wonder he dreamed about owning another Harley every day he was in Vietnam, and couldn't wait to get his hands on a new one when he got back home 21 long months later — even if it turned out to be the ugly green one.
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Motorcycle Classics is my favorite cycle magazine of all time. If somehow that could get Peter Egan to write for them, I dare say it would be the perfect magazine. I must say though that it is just about perfect right now. I love the stories about the personal histories of the bikes and their owners. They take me back to my childhood when my older brothers were buying Triumph Tiger Cubs from a man named Morey who had his Triumph dealership in a barn on his farm near Fox Lake in Southern Wisconsin near the Illinois border. I went there once with my brother Jimi Collins and it was quite the place. Not like the boutiques of today.