PERSPECTIVES

PERSPECTIVES The Wonder Years

BY MITCH BOEHM

I

can picture the scene so clearly it’s almost spooky… It’s me and my dad, driving home from Medina, Ohio’s Smith Road Raceway in the summer of 1975, with Elton John’s Philadelphia Freedom blasting over our Ford van’s stereo, my muddy, monoshockequipped XR75 tied down in back, and big-ass grins on both our faces.

That song topped the charts for most of ’75 and we heard it every weekend, almost always on our way to the races and, if we were lucky, on the way home, too. Freedom became our song for that first full year of motocross competition, and hearing it was especially sweet when a big trophy was tucked away behind us — as it was on this particular afternoon.

Neither of us said much during Sir Elton’s croon. We just drank it in, luxuriating in the successful efforts of the day and the entirely new world we’d discovered the previous fall when we visited a local motocross meet and watched the spectacle in total wonder. Little League baseball was a big deal for 11-year-old me at the time, and I’d go on to play in high school and college, but motorcycles — and motocross in particular — would quickly become a huge deal in my life, and eventually lead to an industry career that continues to this day.

The trigger for all this nostalgia? This issue’s amateur racing section, of course, which highlights the efforts of many in America’s amateur ranks. Seeing photos of the younger riders and their families instantly transported me, time machine-like, to those wondrous years.

Those years — the mid and later 1970s— were magical ones for me, and probably for many of you, 1975

1976

too. That entire late-’60s/1970s period was magical for the sport of motocross, as well, with new technology exploding on the scene seemingly every year. From Suzuki’s first-gen TM250 of 1968 (see our feature on p. 48), to the CR250 Elsinore and YZ250 of ’73 and ’74, to the wildly-suspended RM125 of ’75 and the liquid-cooling, disc brakes and long-travel designs of the later ’70s and early ’80s, the period was nothing short of mind-blowing.

That initial year on the XR was followed by a string of largerdisplacement two-strokes, first a Yamaha YZ100C in ’76 (which we modified into a total hand grenade), then a YZ125D in ’77 (which we kept totally stock, and finished every race), and finally a ’78 YZ250E, which was a bit much for 15-year-old me, but a bike we won plenty of races on, and even some local Pro Class money. I raced during college in the ’80s and later in So Cal during my days at Motorcyclist magazine, but none of it could be as awe-inspiring as those first four seasons.

Spectating was nearly as epic as competing, especially at those TransAMA and USGP events at the old

Mid-Ohio Moto Park where I’d watch the Roger DeCosters, Marty Smiths and Bob Hannahs of the motocross world do battle.

Back in late ’74 at one of my very first races at Ohio’s Amherst Meadowlarks track, my dad asked the folks there how to pick a race number. A club member suggested we use the last three digits of our AMA number, 184, and that’s what we did. I still use No. 184 (and have for decades), and since I’m now actually part of the AMA, it all seems sorta apropos, and full circle-like.

They were truly wonder years. I can picture them so clearly…it’s almost spooky.

1977 1978

Mitch Boehm is the Editorial Director of the AMA

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