Armando Magri Autobiography - "Then and Now"

[JoJo357]

Again, Thank You Eric for taking the effort & time to post this wonderful history of Armando Magri. I wish i could have had half of his fascinating life. And, hopefully many others, because of your postings Eric, will have the opportunity to share with this historic person's achievements.
I found the footage of the Harry Sweet KCRA(Channel 3 Sacramento) 1960 Squaw Valley Olympic that Magri delivered. It will show the magnitude of that snowstorm to an extent, plus the archived significance of those worldwide winter games.

https://youtu.be/Dk-W8ZEnlwA?si=odrbG_HtshvJWQe- <-----1960 Winter Olympics Squaw Valley - YouTube.

*M.A.D.*

[EricOlson]

Glad to do it JoJo! And thanks for sharing the video of the Olympics. Hard to imagine riding down the mountain in some of that snow!

[EricOlson]

Next up are a few memories from Armando's son Ken...

Fred Nix in ‘66 at the Sacramento Mile by Ken Magri

Every year beginning in 1959 the American Motorcycle Association sanctioned a 20 mile national race in
Sacramento at the old State Fairgrounds race track.

This mile oval dirt track had been the location of many Harley-Davidson victories. Gary Nixon, on his Triumph was the only non-Harley rider to win at Sacramento in its first decade. The Triumphs, BSAs, and Matchless bikes and their star racers, like Gene Romero, Sammy Tanner and Dick Mann rarely beat the Harleys in Sacramento.

But September 1966 was a bit different. Sammy Tanner, now riding with his #7 plate on a BSA, was having a great year. He had already won three nationals and was putting up some fast times on this track.

The BSA fans had a huge flag that read “Beat the Pigs!” That’s the first time I ever remember Harley- Davidson being associated with anything like pigs or hogs. The BSA fans considered us pigs because we always won the race.

In the main event the lead changed hands several times until Tanner took it again on lap 15 and extended it by about eight lengths by the final lap. It appeared that he had this race all wrapped up, and I remember Armando looked pretty bleak watching. None of the Harley K-models were fast enough at the end to stay with Tanner.

Tanner slid his BSA into the last turn on lap 25 and went a little too wide, which slowed him down just enough for #95, Freddy Nix, an ambitious young flat tracker from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to catch up.

Nix was drafting Tanner and, following his line, also went a bit too fast into that final turn. Now both riders were alone, almost side-by-side in the softer dirt, but way out in front of everyone else, and 200 yards to go.

Tanner only needed to sprint to the finish, but his bike was geared pretty high. As he continued accelerating Nix eventually came up on the left and passed him for the checkered flag with five feet to spare. The Harley contingency was jubilant, while BSA fans just stood in stunned silence. Gladys Murray, wife of the retired Sacramento Harley dealer, grabbed the BSA banner and altered it to read “Can’t Beat the Pigs Today!”

Armando was almost beside himself with glee. He ran down to trackside, worked his way into the throng of fans surrounding the winner, and from his wallet handed Nix a fresh 100 dollar bill.

Armando always said that Nix won that race because his bike was geared better for a 200 yard sprint to the flag. Whether Nix had sling-shotted around Tanner at the perfect moment, as one magazine reported, or simply beat Tanner in a drag race to the finish line, as Armando surmised, Nix pulled that victory for Harley- Davidson right out from the jaws of defeat.

After winning in Sacramento again in 1968, Nix’s emerging career was tragically cut short when he died in an auto crash the next year.

Armando Magri with Bud Cronie and Bob Keller at the Sacramento Mile, 1966.jpg
Armando Magri with Bud Cronie and Bob Keller at the Sacramento Mile, 1966

Fred Nix, from Oklahoma, stunned the BSA fans by beating Sammy Tanner, 1966.jpg
Fred Nix, from Oklahoma, stunned the BSA fans by beating Sammy Tanner, 1966

Fred Nix 4.jpg
Fred Nix

Sammy Tanner.jpg
Sammy Tanner

Fred Nix 3.jpg
Fred Nix

[EricOlson]

George Roeder wins the 1967 Sacramento Mile with our Shop Broom!
by Ken Magri

All week long, before the 1967 Sacramento Mile, we had racers George Roeder and Roger Reiman, working on their bikes in the service department at the 12th Street dealership. The mechanics were stoked to be hanging around back with the racers, as others would stick their heads in to get a look.

On the day before the race, mechanic Jerry Hall and I got to take Reiman out to “some desolate road outside of town” so he could test his bike. Gerry drove us out to a frontage road along Interstate-5, by the Sacramento airport, still under construction. We unloaded Roger’s bike and watched as he ran it up and down that road for a half hour, fiddling with the carb along the way.

On the Sunday morning of the 1967 National Armando and I drove down to the dealership to find George Roeder standing at the front door. He asked Armando if he could borrow a broom for the day. I was directed to the back to find a good shop broom and bring it out for George.

“Why do you need a broom?” asked Armando.

“I’m going to sweep dirt off the track in front of me to get a better start,” said George. Hey, what a neat idea! If George won using our shop broom, wouldn’t that be cool?

At the beginning of his heat, Roeder lined up his Harley on the track and had his tuner hold it upright while he walked out in front and began sweeping. I could see other riders laughing at him. George was laughing too, and talking back. But when the flag dropped George indeed got out in front by the first turn and won his heat.

Once again for the main event, there was George sweeping loose dirt out from under his wheels, and in front for a few feet. This time nobody was laughing. George won the race again by getting out in front quickly.

Never again did I see a broom used to clear off dirt on a racetrack.

That 1967 race marked Roeder’s last national win. Armando and I flew down to San Diego the next week, to watch George road race at Carlsbad. He retired at the end of the 1967 season due to the birth of his first child (a decision Armando also made).

Nevertheless, it can be said that in 1967 George Roeder won Sacramento’s 20-Mile National with a clever idea and the help of our 12th Street shop broom.

George Roeder.jpg
George Roeder

George Roeder 2.jpg

Poster from the 1967 Sacramento Mile. Notice Armando Magri in the bottom shot, next to promoter J.C. Agajanian..jpg
Poster from the 1967 Sacramento Mile. Notice Armando Magri in the bottom shot, next to promoter J.C. Agajanian.

Harley-Davidson factory poster of the 1967 Sacramrnto 25-Mile National.jpg Harley-Davidson factory poster of the 1967 Sacramento 25-Mile National

[EricOlson]

Armando and Lu’s Awesome 1963 Pontiac Bonneville
By Ken Magri

Every few years Armando would get the urge for a new vehicle. So one morning in 1963 the family piled into our copper Chevy Impala and headed to Warren Vivaldi’s Pontiac dealership in downtown Sacramento.
Vivaldi was a good Pisano, of course, and Armando always wanted to support fellow Italian-Americans in business.

Like a few dealerships in downtown San Francisco, Vivaldi’s was a multi-level dealership encased in a five- story building on 16th and J Streets, a building more appropriately suited for apartments or offices. In fact as I write this in 2015, the building does indeed now house upscale restaurants and apartments, including one rented by Governor Jerry Brown.

But in 1963 I was nine and kind of bummed about this vehicle change. I loved that Impala. And I loved the
Chevy Bell-Air we had before the Impala. But once I saw the car Dad wanted, I fell in love with it too.

This Pontiac Bonneville was named after the famed salt flats in Utah. It was silver with beveled chrome trim. It was sleek, almost minimalist in styling and had a front grill that looked a bit angry. Under the hood was a GM 389 cubic-inch, V8 engine and a fuel injected, four-barrel carburetor. It was fast.

Bye-bye boxy bathtub of 1955. So long soaring tailfins of 1959. This new car looked like what the 1960s was going to be about.

Terrie and I jumped into the back seats and saw...no, the word “saw” isn’t good enough. We witnessed one of the most incredible innovations in the history of the automobile; power windows! Up and down and up and down, we kept pushing the buttons until Mom made us stop. This was awesome! Terrie and I looked at each other amazed at the possibility that Mom and Dad might buy this car. We immediately lobbied for it.

The K Street Cruisers

Back in the early 1960s Sacramento had an epic car-cruising scene. If you saw the film American Graffiti, you have a good idea of what the youth culture in California’s great Central Valley looked like; hot cars, drag- racing, booze, cigarettes, milkshakes, cherry cokes and great music on the radio. Did I mention drag-racing?

The "K Street cruisers," as they were called, ruled the Valley in the 1960s

One Saturday night in 1964 the whole family was packed to the Bonneville, coming home from seeing “Mary
Poppins.” While sitting at a red light on K Street, two young guys pulled alongside of us in a souped-up 1957
Chevy Bel Air. The passenger rolled down his window and the driver leaned towards us and yelled over to
Armando,

“Hey Pops! You wanna drag?” They were laughing at us.

Meanwhile I was in the back seat, like any 10-year-old, urging my dad on. “C’mon, race him Dad! You can beat him!” Terrie was 16 and sinking down into her seat next to me, asking Dad not to embarrass her. Mom was leaning over and telling dad, “Don’t you dare, Magri.”

Armando never said a word.

Ten seconds later, the light turned green and Armando floored the accelerator and laid 10 feet of rubber. He got such a great jump on the stoplight that our Bonneville left those guys in the dust.

Now Terrie and I were looking out the back windshield, making faces at our opponents, barely close enough to see us. Dad sped through the next yellow light, but the Bel Air had to stop on red. That’s how you win a 1960s Central Valley Saturday night street drag. Beat the light.


I glanced back over at Dad and he had a smile on his face. Mom was mad, but who cares. That night I thought Armando Magri was just about the coolest dad in the universe.

One shouldn't underestimate the power in a 389 engine, or a middle-aged retired racer who just got called
“Pops.”

103274226_892089724609276_455228479266225148_o.jpg Armando and Lu Magri and their 1963 Bonneville

[EricOlson]

Armando’s service manager Merrill Wolhart
By Ken Magri

Merrill Wolhart was Armando’s service manager. He came from Minnesota as a mechanic and quickly rose to the manager position. He was a genius around Harley-Davidsons. For example, Wolhart and Magri were the ones who solved, for the factory, the problem of early model Sportsters slipping out of gear when going over a bump.

Wolhart was always generous with this knowledge. He could tell a guy on the phone how to disassemble his flywheels while writing up a service order for a customer at the counter. His humor was so dry that you had to think whether he said a joke or not. When he greeted me, he would not say hello, but instead, “Well, there’s Ken.”

I was assigned to work in Service under Merrill after the parts guys got sick of me. He was a super-quick thinker. One day I watched as a customer’s girlfriend stole a rear-view mirror from another customer’s FX. I tried to tell Merrill while he was taking the boyfriend’s money for his service job, but Merrill shushed me. After the boyfriend and girlfriend left I asked Merrill, “Why didn’t you do something?” and Merrill told me to get a new mirror out of parts and put it back onto the FX. Without the boyfriend even realizing it, Merrill had just added the price for a new mirror onto his bill, so that he actually paid for the mirror his girlfriend stole. So cool!

On another occasion Armando and Merrill worked on Evel Kneivel’s X1 rocket bike. I found a photo of it, and when visiting Merrill recently, I asked him about the picture.

“Well, Evel came into the shop a few times over the years.” While they were looking over the bike, Merrill pointed and said, “That’s not going to work like that.” In a minute he had a screwdriver in his hand, with Armando holding the mis-aligned part so Merrill could reposition it.

“That’s the story I heard,” I told Merrill. “Then, that’s the story you should go with,” he answered.

Chief Mechanic Merrill Wolhart, Bruce Hawkins, Johnny Birdsong in Armando Magri Harley-Davidson service department, 1960s.jpg
Chief Mechanic Merrill Wolhart, Bruce Hawkins, Johnny Birdsong in Armando Magri Harley-Davidson service department, 1960s

having an after-work beer with Ernie Magri.jpgMerrill having an after-work beer with Ernie Magri

working on the Evel Knievel rocket bike with Armando.jpg Working on the Evel Knievel rocket bike with Armando

Merrill and Lee Wolhart at the CCMC 100th Anniversary, Sacramento, 2013. The Wolharts were the oldest and longest members.jpg
Merrill and Lee Wolhart at the Capital City MC 100th Anniversary, Sacramento, 2013. The Wolharts were the oldest and longest members.

[EricOlson]

Armando’s last ride: The long life and fast times of Sacramento’s iron man of motorcycles

This article was published on May 24, 2001 in the Sacramento News & Review by author R.V. Scheide

On a clear, crisp Friday afternoon last December, Ernie and Armando Magri, Shorty Tompkins and Jack Gormely sat at their customary table in Classic Burgers on Fulton Avenue, talking about motorcycles and the good old days, talking about how nothing could stop Armando Magri.

Nothing.

“Sacramento’s Iron Man,” they called him on the motorcycle racing circuit in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He wasn’t blazingly fast; he just kept coming on that big Harley- Davidson of his. When everyone else had broken down or dropped out, there was Armando, taking the checkered flag. He could ride forever, Armando Magri.

He did ride forever.

They’d been meeting at Classic Burgers for years, flirting with waitresses and jawing about bikes. They had plenty to jaw about. Ernie, 88, and Armando, 86, still rode their Harley Sportsters to lunch. Shorty, 80, and Jack, 67, preferred to travel by car, but like the Magri brothers, they’d spent most of their lives around motorcycles.

But no one had spent more time around motorcycles than Armando. After his racing career ended, he’d owned and operated the Sacramento Harley-Davidson dealership for more than 30 years, establishing a reputation for fairness and honesty with customers and employees alike. Thereafter, he was known as Mr. Harley-Davidson.

For more than half a century, he was at the center of the Northern California motorcycling universe. It wasn’t just hogs Armando dealt with. Anything with two wheels and a motor obsessed him. When Harley-Davidson began producing a small bike in the 1950s, he pioneered the sport of dirt biking in the north state. He was larger than life, Armando Magri, a man with 10,000 motorcycle stories. Over the years, Ernie, Shorty and Jack had heard them all.

There was the one about the time he’d ridden his Harley- Davidson 2,800 miles from Sacramento to Marion, Indiana, to compete in the miniature TT National Championship motorcycle race in 1938. Rode his Harley five days to get there, then raced the very same bike to first place in his heat race and third place in the main event, beating out some of the best riders in the country. Would have won the damn thing if he hadn’t got caught napping in neutral at the start.

Not to mention the time he helped KCRA-Channel 3 scoop the national networks on the 1960 Winter Olympics. A lot of guys garage their bikes at the slightest hint of snow. Not Armando. He threw a chain on the back wheel of his Harley and rode up to Squaw Valley and back through a blinding blizzard to retrieve film footage of the opening ceremonies.

Or the time he and some riding buddies manhandled their 500-pound Harleys through the boulder-strewn Rubicon River Canyon in 1940, long before the area became popular with four-wheel-drive enthusiasts, carrying the bikes by hand over rocks and other obstacles after they could ride no farther.

He was a damned gladiator, Armando Magri. Literally. At the 1938 California State Fair, he and two other riders donned purple flowing robes and rhinestone-studded headbands to race makeshift chariots, each powered by two Harleys bolted together, around the mile dirt track, broadsliding and crashing into each other like something out of Ben Hur.


Ernie, Shorty and Jack had heard these and countless other outlandish stories, and the crazy thing was, most of them were true. Nothing could stop Armando Magri, not retirement, not old age. Armando’s friends were so certain of this, they had taken to dubbing any man who demonstrated similar superhuman traits an “Armando.”

It was a token of affection for a man who was both loved and admired by his friends and associates. Everybody wants their hero to live forever. But even Armando wasn’t an “Armando,” and Ernie, Shorty and Jack had no way of knowing that their December jaunt to Classic Burgers would be Armando Magri’s last ride.

Ernie and Armando Magri grew up in Chico, the first and second sons of Italian immigrants. Their early life was disrupted by the divorce of their parents in 1920 and the premature death of their father in 1927. Shortly after his death, their mother moved into a house a block down the street from a gas station run by Jean Boutin.

Jean Boutin was 19; her father owned the station. She had a boyish figure, close-cropped hair, and wore men’s work shoes. The fact that she was a tomboy didn’t bother Ernie and Armando, who were 16 and 14 at the time, in the slightest. Jean had a 1926 Chevy roadster. She had a pilot’s license. A woman definitely ahead of her time. Best of all, she had a 1924 Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The three of them became thick as thieves, and Ernie and Armando took turns teasing each other about who had the biggest crush on her.

“Hey Ernie, you got any money?” Armando asked.

“No, I’m flat-busted, just like your girlfriend,” Ernie deadpanned.

It was Ernie, by the way, who discovered Jean was a good kisser.

Jean rode Ernie and Armando on the back of her Harley through Chico’s dusty streets, teaching them how to push in the clutch on the left floorboard while simultaneously using the left hand to operate the gear shift lever mounted beside the gas tank. This entailed removing the left hand from the handlebar, a maneuver that didn’t exactly inspire confidence in new riders. The first time Ernie took Jean’s bike out on a solo run, he ran over a dog and crashed. Armando had no such problems. From the beginning he was a natural on a motorcycle, already pulling away from his older sibling.

Both brothers purchased their own motorcycles shortly thereafter. Armando picked up a 1921 Harley-Davidson for just $6, using money he had saved working summer jobs in the fields and orchards around Chico. Ernie got an Indian Scout—an interesting choice, considering the fierce rivalry between the Harley-Davidson and Indian factories. Eventually, Armando upgraded to a faster, more powerful 1927 Harley-Davidson, and he and Ernie became enthusiastic members of the Chico Motorcycle Club.

By 1933, California was firmly in the grip of the Great Depression, and Armando chased jobs all over the north state on his Harley. He worked as a firefighter, a lumber truck driver and a service station assistant. He picked fruit, knocked almonds and pitched hay. He worked as a stonebreaker, a stonecutter and a laborer in a rock quarry. Not able to find work in 1934, he attached a sidecar to his 1927 Harley and started his own motorcycle delivery service. He’d deliver any article weighing less than 50 pounds anywhere in the city for 10 cents. It wasn’t lucrative, but it helped pay the bills until better jobs came along.

Once a motorcycle thrill show came to town, and the owner asked Armando to perform the “egg trick” in the group’s performance. Armando got on his Harley, took it up to 25 mph, stood on the seat with a .22 rifle and tried to shoot the eggs that the owner threw up in the air as the motorcycle passed by. He crashed, much to the crowd’s delight and his own humiliation.

A medium-sized man with thick, dark hair and matinee idol looks, Armando enjoyed playing to the crowd and had a real nose for the spotlight. He took up boxing, winning his first bout, losing the second after being pummeled by a supposed has-been boxer, and fighting to a draw in his third and final match. Next he tried wrestling, taking on professional grapplers in the carnivals that constantly toured the small towns. He got trounced in his first match, but got lucky in the second.

“Do you wanna wrestle for real,” the professional asked, “or do you wanna put on a good show?”

Armando had brought several girls to the carnival, and remembering how badly he’d been beaten in his first match, decided he didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of them.

“Let’s put on a good show,” he said.

That they did. The girls pounded the edge of the mat the entire match, screaming, “Kill him, Magri, kill him!” It ended in a draw, Armando pocketed $3.50 for his “work,” and he never let on to the girls that the match had been fixed.

To be continued...

278196074_1340458769772367_8922680724448427846_n.jpg

92818737_846532079165041_7646144901985337344_o.jpg Some of Armando's restored Harley-Davidsons at the Arden Way store, late 1970s

Armando Magri taking brother Ernie for a rider in the 1950 FL sidecar, 1970s.jpgArmando Magri taking brother Ernie for a rider in the 1950 FL sidecar, 1970s

Ernie Magri posing in the alley with Armando's newly restored 1913 Harley-Davidson, 1960s.jpgErnie Magri posing in the alley with Armando's newly restored 1913 Harley-Davidson, 1960s

Armando Magri's knucklehead was 36EL1117, originally sold by Frank J. Murray Harley-Davidson in Sacramento.jpgArmando Magri's knucklehead was 36EL1117, originally sold by Frank J. Murray Harley-Davidson in Sacramento

[EricOlson]

Armando’s last ride: The long life and fast times of Sacramento’s iron man of motorcycles (continued)

Through all of this, Armando never stopped riding. He upgraded to a 1934 Harley-Davidson, and he and Ernie continued their sibling rivalry in local field meets sponsored by the Chico Motorcycle Club. Field meets were friendly competitions featuring various events that tested a rider’s skill at stopping, accelerating and turning a motorcycle. In addition, club members often marked out courses to practice real racing. During one such practice, Ernie passed Armando on a corner, and Armando passed him right back, running over Ernie’s leg in the process. The injury happened just days before a big field meet/Tourist Trophy race in Colfax. Ernie wound up resting his leg while Armando and a few other members of the Chico Motorcycle Club rode down to the event.

Armando took second in the field meet and so impressed the sponsors, Sacramento’s Fort Sutter Motorcycle Club, that they asked him to compete in the Tourist Trophy race later in the day. A TT was a completely different animal from the field meet. The track was laid out on a closed dirt course, with left- and right-hand turns, hills, jumps and other obstacles. Racers competed over a set number of laps; the only object was to get to the checkered flag first. In a typical 50-mile race, a rider might make hundreds of gear changes. Finishing, let alone winning, required equal parts skill, courage, endurance and luck. TT racers sometimes spent hours bandaging blistered hands and splinting broken bones after races. Armando had never competed in such an event before.

“If it involves a motorcycle, I’m all for it,” he told the club members.

By the end of the day, the members of the Fort Sutter Motorcycle Club were wishing they’d never laid eyes on the Italian hayseed from Chico. Wearing cloth jodhpur breeches, leather boots laced up to the knees and a sweatshirt, he bulldogged the hard-tailed motorcycle (rear suspension had yet to be invented) around corners, up hills, over jumps and into the lead and never looked back. He ran away with the race, defeating some of the best riders in Sacramento. Elated, he returned to Chico—on the same motorcycle he had just raced—to inform his latest girlfriend, Wilma, of his success. She had recently won a singing competition on the local radio station, and he had vowed to come back from Colfax victorious as well. When he arrived at Wilma’s house, her sister told him that Wilma was at the carnival. That’s where Armando found her, in the rumble seat of a Model A Ford, smooching with his brother Ernie.

If that was supposed to stop Armando Magri, well, it didn’t. Oh, he stopped dating Wilma, all right. He was sore at Ernie for a little while. But that first taste of victory in a real motorcycle race gave him something else to think about. He was only 21, and he had just beaten some of the best riders in Northern California. Who was to say he couldn’t beat the rest of the riders in California? What was stopping him from trying?

Armando attached a sidecar to his Harley, loaded it with tools, spare tires and his brother Ernie, and headed south to Hollister to compete against the best riders from San Francisco in the Pacific Coast TT. After completing the six- hour journey, Ernie and Armando detached the sidecar, removed the headlights and running gear, placed a larger front wheel on the motorcycle, and were ready to race. Armando took fourth place, finishing with both eyes almost completely packed with sand.

“Why didn’t you quit?” Ernie asked.

“I couldn’t,” he grinned, beaming through sandy slits.

His performance didn’t sit well with the Bay Area riders, who tried to cheat him out of the $40 awarded for fourth place. Timely intervention by a local CHP officer secured Armando’s winnings, and Ernie drove the sidecar back to Chico, so Armando could get some sleep. After all, he had to get up in the morning and run the motorcycle delivery service.

This was the epitome of Class C, “run-what-you-brung” motorcycle racing in California, and Armando became a regular on the circuit during the last half of the 1930s. Class C was just beginning to attain the status of Class A speedway racing, which regularly drew crowds of up to 10,000 people to Sacramento’s Hughes Stadium on Friday nights. Armando began placing consistently in the top five, attracting the attention of Frank Murray, the Harley-Davidson dealer in Sacramento. Murray wanted Armando to race for the shop, so he hired him as an apprentice mechanic in 1937, granting Armando his first steady paycheck in years as well as access to the latest Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Shortly after joining forces with Murray, Armando earned his first nickname. On the way to Saugus to compete in the Southern California TT on a brand new 1937 Harley-Davidson, he hit a patch of oil on the freeway near Fresno, spinning out and crashing. Badly bruised, but not broken, Armando located the local Harley dealer, repaired the motorcycle, then continued on to Saugus, feeling like he’d been run over by a Mack truck. The track was brutal, pounding more than one rider into submission; but Armando hung on, surging ahead of Hap Jones, a national-caliber rider out of San Francisco, on the final laps to take the victory. The next day in the papers, they were calling him Sacramento’s Iron Man.

In 1938, Sacramento’s Iron Man was tending Murray’s store when in walked a cute, petite high-school girl wearing a blue angora sweater, a blue skirt and white bobby socks. Her name was Ludella Tritten, and one look told Armando everything he needed to know. He and Lu were married in September 1939, but not even that stopped Armando from entering a race at Ascot Park during the Southern California leg of their honeymoon.

In fact, it was beginning to look like nothing really could stop Armando Magri. He and Lu had good jobs, a cozy little rental house in Rio Linda, and Armando’s racing career was going full bore. After third place at the miniature National TT Championship in Marion, the Harley-Davidson factory provided him with travel expenses and a motorcycle for the 1941 Daytona 200, the premier event in American motorcycle racing. Armando lead the race early on, before his transmission locked up on the sixth lap.

In June, he won the Pacific Coast TT Championship in Hollister. The winner was awarded a large perpetual trophy, which, if the competitor won the race a second time, became his for life. Armando never won the race a second time, but he ended up keeping the trophy anyway. The United States entered World War II, the Hollister TT was canceled and never held again, and Armando’s dream of becoming a championship motorcycle racer was thrown into limbo. Something had finally stopped Armando Magri.

Or so it seemed.

to be continued...

ARMAND~1.JPG
Armando Magri inside the Arden Way dealership, standing with his custom restored 1930 Harley-Davidson single, Sacramento Bee photograph, 1978

Some of Armando's restored Harley-Davidsons at the Arden Way store, late 1970s.jpg

Magri Sac Harley 1990's.jpg

[EricOlson]

Armando’s last ride: The long life and fast times of Sacramento’s iron man of motorcycles (continued)

As America geared up for the war, Armando quit his job at Frank Murray’s to work at McClellan Air Force Base as an aircraft mechanic. Then he learned that John Harley, one of the Harley-Davidson heirs, was serving as an instructor at the Army’s motorcycle school, based in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Armando knew Harley well, so he wrote and asked about becoming an instructor for the school. Harley told Armando that if he came to Fort Knox immediately, the position was his. Armando quit his job at McClellan, moved Lu in with her parents, threw a big going-away bash, and rode his motorcycle to Fort Knox to join the Army. He ran into Harley as soon as he arrived but Harley ignored Magri.

“It’s all bullshit,” he told Lu on the phone that night. “He doesn’t have any more pull down here than I do. I’m coming home.”

“You mean you moved me in with my parents, had a big going-away party, and now you think you’re coming back!?” Lu scolded. “You might as well join the Army, because you’re going to be drafted anyway.”

Armando enlisted, the captain of the school noticed his extensive motorcycle experience, and assigned him to be an instructor after all. To give soldiers experience on motorcycles in the field, the Army conducted motorcycle endurance runs in the woods surrounding Fort Knox. In one particularly muddy, grueling event, 105 riders started and only six finished. Guess who finished first? It was the closest Armando would get to racing for a long time, as he was shipped out to
Okinawa after the first two years of his hitch were up.

He spent the final year of the war on the Pacific island, serving as an artillery mechanic in a maintenance and supply outfit. It rained 200 days a year, and the camp was a constant quagmire. Kamikaze aircraft screamed overhead, crashing into the American ships anchored in the harbor. The outfit’s position was shelled nearly every night. Once, a shell landed close to Armando’s tent, killing one of his buddies and causing permanent hearing loss in one of his ears.

He wrote Lu every chance he got, and she wrote back, sending pictures of herself in swimsuits, or with the hem of her skirt pulled up just over her knees. Those pictures sustained him through the end of the war. He returned to the United States to discover that Lu, on her own, had built them a small cottage on her parent’s property in Rio Linda. It was quite a homecoming.

The job at McClellan was waiting for him when he returned, but so was the job at Murray’s. The McClellan job paid a lot more and came with full government benefits, but it didn’t involve motorcycles. Armando cut Murray a deal. He’d come back to work for him if he gave him a new Harley-Davidson free of charge and a week’s vacation to go fishing with his buddies. Wartime rationing was still in effect, and motorcycles were in short supply, so Armando figured Murray would turn him down. Much to his surprise, Murray accepted, and Armando was back in the saddle.

In 1948, Armando was 34 and hadn’t raced professionally for seven years. His racing buddies were bugging him to get back on the circuit, but Lu was against it. She hadn’t waited and worried all those long, lonely nights in Rio Linda during the war just so he could get maimed or killed in a motorcycle racing accident. But his buddies kept egging him on and, against Lu’s wishes, Armando entered the 100-mile TT race at Box Springs, near Riverside. In typical Sacramento Iron Man fashion, he hung on to finish fourth. It was his last race.

Later that year, Lu gave birth to their first child, Terrie. It was time to start planning for the future. Murray had placed Armando in a managerial position after the war, and by now, Armando was completely capable of running the business himself. As it turned out, that was exactly what Murray had in mind. In September 1949, he called Armando into his office and asked him if he wanted to buy the dealership. Lu and Armando spent four frantic months raising the money, and in early 1950, they became the new owners of Sacramento’s Harley-Davidson dealership, located at 815 12th Street.

Success, of course, had its price. Armando and Lu worked long, hard hours at the shop, taking few days off during their first 10 years. Somehow, Lu found time to have another child, Ken, in 1954. Ernie came on board as sales manager in
1963 and wound up making a career out of it. In 1964, Armando and Lu took their first vacation, a family cruise to Hawaii in celebration of their 25th wedding anniversary.

While Armando was the gregarious figurehead of the dealership, bringing in customers and keeping them satisfied, family members will tell you that Lu was a major factor in the business’s success. She worked side-by-side with her husband for more than 30 years, providing the administrative support and business acumen that enabled the dealership to end each year in the black. It was no mean feat, considering that from the mid-1960s on, the Japanese motorcycle invasion was in full swing, pushing Harley-Davidson to the brink of bankruptcy by the late 1970s.

In 1973, they moved the dealership to its present location at Arden Way and Evergreen Street, into a brand-spanking-new 13,000-square-foot structure they’d built to realize one of Armando’s long-standing goals: to make the experience of buying a Harley-Davidson the motorcycling equivalent of purchasing a Cadillac. By the time Armando and Lu sold the business to Mike Shattuck in 1983, the dealership was well on its way to achieving that goal.

Retirement failed to slow down Sacramento’s Iron Man. He and Lu traveled to Europe, then toured the western United States via motorhome throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He took up freshwater sport fishing, setting several world records with salmon he caught in Alaska. But mostly, he continued to eat, drink and breathe motorcycles, competing in long- distance touring events, attending Harley-Davidson rallies, and restoring classic bikes that held special significance for him.

His world-class collection of Harley-Davidsons mirrors his history with the marque. A 1921 WJ Sport Twin was similar to the bike Jean Boutin taught Armando and Ernie to ride on back in 1928. A 1936 61-cubic inch OHV knucklehead marked his late Chico and early Sacramento years. A 1938 WLDR racer, with a 45-cubic-inch engine, a chrome-plated frame and Armando’s favorite No. 2 plate, recalled his glory days as a motorcycle racer. He restored nearly a dozen bikes in total; many of them are still on display at Sacramento Harley-Davidson, and all of them run. He was riding the 1912 Twin one time when the clutch on its ancient engine flew apart. Shorty Tompkins helped find the rare replacement parts.

By far his favorite classic bike to ride was a 1950 sidecar rig. Painted in Harley orange and black, it was a showstopper, and Armando never lost the ability to sniff out the spotlight, whether it was driving a two-star general around in the sidecar during a 1995 retirement ceremony at McClellan Air Force Base, or delivering the Easter Bunny to Country Club Plaza in 1998. Got his picture in the paper both times.

The sidecar also generated one of Armando’s last, great motorcycle stories. In 1987, he was driving it back from Reno on Interstate 80 one morning in the pouring rain. Lu was asleep in the sidecar, which was covered with a tarp to keep the rain out. Suddenly, a pickup truck swerved in front of Armando, clipping his handlebar and knocking him off the bike. He landed in the middle of the lane on his butt. Fortunately, no traffic was coming, and he got up to chase the Harley, which was motoring down the freeway under its own power. The motorcycle veered to the side of the road, hopped the curb, and came to a gentle stop in a patch of ice plants. Lu, wondering why Armando had decided to go off-roading, peeked out from under the tarp and casually turned off the ignition.

It was one of Lu’s last rides, but Armando continued motorcycling despite the deteriorating effects of aging. In 1998, when his legs grew too weak to reliably hold up the 1984 FXRS he rode daily, he traded it in for a lighter, more nimble Sportster.

Armando Magri in Coloma, California, 1990s. Photo by Lu Magri.jpg Armando Magri on his 1950 FL sidecar in Coloma, California, where gold was discovered that began the 1849 gold rush. Photo by Lu Magri

Armando Magri giving the Easter Bunny a grand entrance at a local shop[ping mall, 1990s.jpg Armando Magri giving the Easter Bunny a grand entrance at a local shopping mall, 1990s

AR4764~1.JPG Armando Magri and his best friend in retirement, Shorty Tompkins, sitting on his Indian four in front of his house in Sacramento, 1998

Armando Magri riding Shorty Tompkins' Indian Four down Morse Avenue in Sacramento, 1990s.jpg Armando Magri riding Shorty Tompkins' Indian Four down Morse Avenue in Sacramento

[EricOlson]

Armando’s last ride: The long life and fast times of Sacramento’s iron man of motorcycles (continued)

On that crisp, sunny day last December, Armando fired up his Sportster and rumbled past the finely manicured lawns of his Carmichael neighborhood to meet Ernie and the boys at Classic Burgers for lunch. They ate hamburgers and French fries and talked about motorcycles. Then he rode home and parked the Harley for good. He’d been fighting a long battle with pulmonary lung disease and had only a few months to live.

Armando and Ernie talked about everything those last few months. They talked about motorcycles and women and luck. They talked about the time they drove the sidecar down to Hollister and a country bumpkin from Chico by the name of Magri took fourth place in the big race. They talked about Jean Boutin and Wilma and Lu and Ernie’s wife Rose, who passed away in 1998. “If you hadn’t held out for that motorcycle from Frank Murray, you probably would have retired from McClellan instead of owning your own business,” Ernie once enviously told his brother. Strange, how fate can place one brother in the other’s shadow. Not that Ernie minded that much. To be around Armando wasn’t just to be along for the ride, it was to be a part of the story. Besides, someone had to be there to make sure Armando got the story right.

He kept right on telling stories until the very end. On a Saturday in April, in a Kaiser hospital room, he talked about motorcycles while taking strained breaths through an oxygen mask.

“I was racing at San Pedro, and my front tire blew out doing 60 mph,” he reminisced. “I lost control and the spectators were lined up three-deep around the track. I didn’t know whether to jump off, lay it down, or ride it out. I sure didn’t want to hurt anyone. I held on with every last bit of strength I had, and then, like Moses parting the Red Sea, the crowd separated and I rode straight through.”

He paused to take some breaths through the mask, and someone asked why he rode motorcycles.

“The fresh air,” he said. “Coming around a mountain bend, the sun coming up, the fresh air in your face.”

He passed away the next morning with Lu, daughter Terrie and son Ken at his side.

There were hundreds of Harleys at the funeral. Knuckleheads, panheads, shovelheads, flatheads, Evos, a couple of new Twin Cams. Metal-flaked choppers, chromed- out dressers, slicked-back cruisers, a few crusty old hogs and a smattering of sidecars. Just about anyone who’d ever owned a Harley-Davidson in Sacramento was there. Mike Shattuck delivered the eulogy, using words you don’t often hear associated with businessmen, such as “honesty” and “fairness.”

At Classic Burgers the following Friday afternoon, they were still talking about the man who wasn’t there.

“He wasn’t exactly the most sensational rider to watch,” Ernie recalled. “He just sat there and sawed wood. But he was there when it was over.”

“He was an iron man, the bastard,” Shorty agreed.

“He had stamina,” Jack said.

“If he had a gift,” said Ernie, “it was that he was tough.”

It was an unusually hot spring day in Sacramento; the sun was beating down mercilessly on the old men gathered around the concrete picnic table. They talked about motorcycles, flirted some more with the waitresses, then Shorty and Jack got into their car and left. For a few moments, Ernie seemed at a loss for what to do, like somebody or something was missing. Then he got on his Harley-Davidson Sportster and rode away.

Ernie and Armando Magri wearing the Harley-Davidson orange and black designs of the 1990s.jpg
Ernie and Armando Magri

[1939wl]

Thanks again Eric for taking the time, to arrange, retype and post Armando's story.
He is one of so many Enthusiasts who love being on 2 wheels. Armando's life is truly inspiring, as he
ventured into just about everything on 2 wheels, including service to his country.
Thanks Eric, very much appreciated!

[pisten-bully]

Thanks for taking the time to put that together Eric! It was fun to read.

[EricOlson]

Thanks again Eric for taking the time, to arrange, retype and post Armando's story.
He is one of so many Enthusiasts who love being on 2 wheels. Armando's life is truly inspiring, as he
ventured into just about everything on 2 wheels, including service to his country.
Thanks Eric, very much appreciated!

Thanks for taking the time to put that together Eric! It was fun to read.

Absolutely! He was an amazing man who deserves to have his stories shared with as many people as possible. I'm glad y'all are enjoying it as much as I do!

[RichO]

Not only was he a hell of a motorcyclist but he was a hell of a good spinning top maker. Plastic, wood, brass, aluminum, steel, whatever. He studied them for height verse diameter for speed and length of spinning. He always carried a couple in his jacket pockets to spin when we stopped on our bike rides when there were kids around that usually had never seen a spinning top. He had ma small lathe at home. So very cool. Most people never seen that side of him.

[jcrawford]

Eric,
I also want to thank you for putting these great stories and photos together for us to enjoy reading here, and I sure did, with a smile and more than a little reminiscence. A nearby friend and AMCA member has told me how much he has enjoyed it too.

I was fortunate to have met Armando and Lu several years ago. Armando was a good friend of my friend Fred Pazaski, who also lived his life around Harley-Davidson and who along with Vernon “Pop” Place owned Northwest Cycle, the Harley-Davidson dealership in Bellingham, WA. Several years ago, when Armando was alive and well, Fred and I were his guests at the Sacramento Mile Grand National flat track race. I remember the moment I met Armando and saw the sparkle in his eyes and his grin, I thought then he must be an interesting character, and he sure was! The day before the race Fred and I were invited to the H-D Racers party at Armando’s former dealership and we got to meet the Harley team racers and Willie G. Davidson. Armando got us starting line area seats above Willie G. and Nancy for the race, and later invited us to his home where I got to see Lu’s motorcycle toy collection. To top it off, he got us admission to the season’s end celebration for race teams and sponsors at Caesars Palace in Reno on our way home. Several times during all this fun, I got to hear Armando tell several interesting and funny tales and stories like those you have included here. The topper was probably in the garage at their home when after I mentioned that I had some interest and experience in woodwork. Armando said something like, “Well then, I‘ve got something else to show you” and he brought out his collection of wooden spinning tops that he had made. Fred sighs a bit and says “Oh, no, not this again!” as this scenario had apparently been repeated a few times previously when visiting Armando and Lu at home.

This has been a great read and a lot of fun. Thanks!