My Garage - Charlie Oxford

I spywith my little eye lots of cool stuff inside!

••••••• Welcome to the Carriage House •••••••

By: Charlie Oxford

I had a shop built in 2017/2018 while building our new house in North Georgia on Lake Lanier. We call it “Bad Company” Vintage Motocross Racing Team Northern Headquarters.

In the 1990s, I got into sprucing up antiques, hand water pumps, coke machines, coolers, and Fry visible gas pumps. Mancave kinda stuff. I was living in Florida and working out of a 10x20-foot shed behind my house. I would disassemble, clean every part, and then contract things out I didn’t have the tools to do. I restored a couple of Vendo 23 Coke machines and seven Fry gas pumps from the 1910s. It was a great hobby.

I raced dirt bikes in the early ‘70s and have always had a passion for the sport. My Dad bought me a 1972 Yamaha LT-2 for my 13th birthday. I attended the Florida Winter series in Tallahassee. I wanted to be “Pierre Karsmakers,” and raced around North Florida and South Georgia a few times on my ’76 YZ-125C.

I became a participant again in 2004 when I spruced up a 1976 Yamaha YZ125X. Woody Graves was running a vintage motocross series in Florida at that time and my racing career started once again. The Florida Vintage Motocross series ran a 12-race schedule every year, then add on two to four AHRMA events annually. I didn’t miss an event for seven seasons. My bike collection grew and room to work on stuff was always a challenge. I retired in 2016 after 35 years in the utility business. We sold out in Florida and moved up on the lake. I am a lifetime Florida boy and part of the deal for me to move North had to be a large climate-controlled workshop. I initially had plans to purchase five acres close by to build on and maybe put in a small area to ride/test run a bike. Two turns and two jumps would have been sufficient, but logistics, time and expenditure didn’t make sense, so I built my shop on the home property. The plans call it a carriage house.

Thirty by forty, footprint, slightly “L” shaped, with two garage doors, office, bathroom and an upstairs area within the steep pitch roof trusses, gave me room for wood working and a painting booth. Both of these areas remain a work in progress. In the shop side, I have a drill press area, with a Craftsman bench model from the 40s Grandpa Anderson had in His Brooklyn, NY, basement.

There’s a welding area with a Lincoln 225, oxygen and acetylene. I ran air lines along one wall to my glass bead blaster, 50’ retractable airline reel and welding station, supported

A modern skin with a vintage heart

Bad Company's idea of a triple jump Team Bad Company L-R Kerry Williams, Charlie Oxford, Brian McPherson, Mark Smith, Mike Brown and Carl Mabrey

by a 60-gallon, 6 HP Craftsman air compressor. Bench grinder and anvil stations hang out on black walnut mid-trunk sections cut from the casualties of building a home.

T.P. Tools supplied the glass bead blaster, adorned with all those stickers I collected over the years. I finally adhered MOST of my sticker collection, you know, the ones you hold on to for that perfect spot. A 40”X8’ assembly table is in the middle of the space. The office is 8X8, built under a shed roof between the two-direction gable design.

On the side of the shop where I display my race bikes, I installed two sets of cabinets with wall cabinets, one for all my 100cc pieces and one for 250cc spare parts. This gives me some more counter space and allows me to keep the 100cc stuff and the 250cc stuff separated. An old 1960s chemistry lab display cabinet houses all my racing helmets and gear. The lake property we purchased had an old cabin on it built in the ‘60s. The kitchen cabinets and eat-in bars were all made from paneling with pink Formica® countertops. When I removed them from the wall I found where the carpenter signed them “H.E. Carver built May 1965.” I saved them all and constructed a bar in my shop, a ‘57 Chevy hood used for an overhead awning. No better place to gather and watch the races than the “Hood.”

I race a 1974 Yamaha YZ250A every once in a while, with team Bad Company and have become partial to the 1972 LT2-M and 1973 LTMX with a restoration in progress and an LT-2 enduro pit bike waiting its turn.

If any of you racers are in North Georgia, give me a holler and stop on off at the Hood.