Part 2: My 7-Year-Old Daughter Walked Into A Motorcycle Clubhouse And Named All 20 Of Their Harleys — A Year Later, Twenty Hardened Bikers Are Still Calling Them By Those Names
PART 2
I want to tell you who Pop Henning was before he was Pop.
He grew up in a small mill town called Colville, Washington, ninety miles north of Spokane, in the 1960s and 70s. His father worked at the Vaagen Brothers lumber mill until the mill cut its workforce in 1981. His mother cleaned rooms at a small motel on Highway 395. He had one older brother named Dale who went into the Marines in 1972 and came back from Vietnam in 1973 in a state his family did not, in their words, fully get back. Dale passed in 1988 of an overdose at thirty-six. Pop was twenty-three. He had done his four years at Walla Walla by then and walked out of the gate the previous year at twenty-two.
He met his wife Marlene in 1989 at a diner off the I-90 in Sprague. She was a waitress. She was twenty. They were married in 1990. They had two sons — Cole, born 1991, and Carter, born 1994. They have been married for thirty-five years.
Cole is thirty-four. He is a structural engineer in Seattle. He has two sons of his own — Henry, six, and Theo, four.
Carter is thirty-one. He is a high-school history teacher in Spokane. He has one daughter named Hazel who is three.
Pop has three grandchildren.
He has been called Pop since 2010 because his daughter-in-law, Cole’s wife, refused — fifteen years ago — to let her father-in-law be called Grandpa Walter in front of her firstborn son. The charter took the name two days after Henry was born.
Pop’s three grandchildren live, respectively, in Seattle and in Spokane. They visit the clubhouse on Sunday mornings about once a month when the schedules line up. Pop has, by Marlene’s count, sat his three grandchildren on the gas tanks of one or another of his Harleys in the clubhouse on every single one of those Sunday morning visits since each of them was old enough to sit up.
He has not, by Marlene’s careful count and his own quiet confirmation, ever taught any of them to name a Harley.
Henry never asked. Henry is six and was, on the day this story takes place, more interested in the half-eaten box of donuts on the long folding table than in the twenty motorcycles in their parking bays. Theo was four and asleep on a brother’s lap in the back corner. Hazel was three and was, that morning, in Seattle with Cole’s wife at a swim class.
The only child in the clubhouse on the Sunday morning my daughter Wren walked in with me at nine-forty a.m. was my daughter Wren.
She was seven.
She was wearing a pair of light blue denim overalls over a yellow t-shirt with a small embroidered hummingbird on the chest, white sneakers with light-up soles, and her hair in two crooked braids I had put in twenty minutes earlier at our kitchen table.
She had a small pink children’s backpack on her shoulders.
In her right hand she was carrying a small spiral notebook with a unicorn on the cover that her grandmother had given her for her seventh birthday in July.
In her left hand she was carrying a four-color clicky pen.
She had brought both of them, by her own announcement to me in the truck on the way over, because I want to do science today, Mama.
She had not specified what kind of science.
She walked into the clubhouse through the side door at nine-forty-three.
She stopped two steps inside the door.
She looked at the twenty motorcycles parked in their bays in two long rows of ten facing each other across the polished concrete floor — the way our charter parks every Sunday morning before a club ride — with the chrome catching the soft September light coming through the high east-facing windows.
She tilted her head to one side.
She looked at the motorcycles for about eleven seconds.
Then she walked over to Pop, who was sitting at the head of the long folding table with a coffee in his right hand and the previous week’s meeting notes in front of him, and she said, in her clear seven-year-old voice that could be heard from the back corner of the clubhouse:
“Pop. How come the motorcycles don’t have names?”
The clubhouse went quiet.
Not the kind of quiet that means anybody is mad. The kind of quiet that means twenty grown men are looking up from their coffees because a seven-year-old has just asked a question that the entire room has, in the collective forty-seven combined decades of motorcycle ownership represented in that building, never once thought to ask.
Pop set his coffee cup down on the folding table.
He turned his chair to face her.
He said: “Wren. Tell me what you mean.”
Wren said: “Pop. Cars have names. My mama’s Subaru is Greenie. My daddy’s truck is Big Steve. My grandma’s car is Pearl. How come motorcycles don’t have names?”
Pop thought about it for ten seconds.
He looked across the table at Doctor — my husband — who was sitting two seats down with a coffee.
Doctor shrugged.
Pop looked back at Wren.
He said: “Wren. You’re right. They should.”
Wren said: “Okay.”
Pop said: “You wanna name them?”
Wren did not hesitate.
She nodded.
Pop said: “Okay. Get to work, kid.”
Wren walked back to the side door. She set her pink backpack down on a folding chair. She took her unicorn notebook and her four-color clicky pen out of her right hand into both hands. She walked, in her crooked braids and her light-up sneakers, into the first parking bay of the first long row of ten motorcycles, and she stopped in front of the first bike.
PART 3
I want to tell you what my daughter Wren did over the next eleven minutes.
She walked from motorcycle to motorcycle in the order they were parked. She stopped in front of each one for between fifteen and forty seconds. She looked at it. She walked around it. She touched the gas tank with one small finger. She stepped back. She looked at the color, the chrome, the paint job, the saddle, the handlebars, the exhaust, and, in three specific cases that I am going to tell you about, the small personal item the brother had clipped to his front fender or his handlebars — a small leather cord, a tiny brass bell, a small embroidered patch hanging by a chain.
She thought about each motorcycle.
Then she wrote the name down in her unicorn notebook with her four-color clicky pen.
She used a different color for each name.
She used the red ink for what she called the strong ones, the blue ink for what she called the kind ones, the green ink for what she called the silly ones, and the black ink for what she called the special ones.
Twenty-two minutes into the morning, my seven-year-old daughter walked back to the head of the long folding table and stood next to Pop’s chair with her unicorn notebook open in both hands.
She said: “Pop. I’m done.”
Pop said: “Read them off, kid.”
Twenty grown bikers in the clubhouse stopped talking.
Wren cleared her throat.
She read off, in order:
“Bay one. Rainbow. Because it has all the colors painted on the gas tank like a rainbow.”
“Bay two. Bumblebee. Because it’s yellow and black.”
“Bay three. Princess. Because the chrome is shinier than all the others.”
“Bay four. Captain. Because the gas tank says HARLEY-DAVIDSON USA and that sounds like a captain.”
“Bay five. Marshmallow. Because it’s white and white things are soft like marshmallows.”
“Bay six. Bandito. Because there is a bandana tied on the handlebars.”
“Bay seven. Pearl. Because it’s the color of my grandma’s pearls.”
“Bay eight. Patches. Because there is a little patch hanging from the handlebars and Patches sounds nice for a motorcycle.”
“Bay nine. Smoky. Because the gas tank is gray like smoke from a fire.”
“Bay ten. Sunbeam. Because the chrome is hot in the sun and shiny.”
She turned the page of her notebook.
“Bay eleven. Velvet. Because the seat is dark red and looks soft.”
“Bay twelve. Tank. Because it’s big.”
“Bay thirteen. Cocoa. Because it’s brown.”
“Bay fourteen. Stormy. Because it has clouds painted on it.”
“Bay fifteen. Bell. Because there is a tiny bell tied on the handlebars.”
“Bay sixteen. Jellybean. Because it has lots of little colors like jellybeans.”
“Bay seventeen. Bull. Because the front looks like a bull’s face if you squint.”
“Bay eighteen. Hawk. Because there is a feather hanging on the front.”
“Bay nineteen. Mister Black. Because it’s all black and it looks like a Mister.”
“Bay twenty. Buttercup. Because it’s the most yellow yellow I have ever seen.”
She closed her notebook.
She looked up at Pop.
She said: “Pop. Twenty names. Did I do good?”
Pop reached into the inside pocket of his cut.
He pulled out a small leather notebook of his own — the one he keeps for charter notes, the same one he has carried in his cut for fourteen years — and a stub of a carpenter’s pencil.
He said: “Wren. Read them again. Slow.”
She read them again. Slow.
Pop wrote down every single name, in order, in his small leather notebook.
When she was done, Pop looked at her. He said: “Wren. You did real good.”
She said: “Pop. Are you going to tell the men?”
Pop said: “Kid. I will tell them at the next meeting.”
Wren nodded. She put her unicorn notebook into her pink backpack. She got the last donut out of the box on the folding table. She came over to where I was sitting in the back of the clubhouse next to Marlene. She climbed up into my lap.
She said, into my ear, very quietly: “Mama. Pop wrote them down.”
I said: “Honey. I saw.”
She said: “Mama. Do you think the motorcycles will know?”
I said: “Honey. I think they will.”
PART 4
I want to tell you what Pop did between five p.m. Sunday and seven p.m. Saturday of the following week.
He drove to the Office Depot on East Sprague Avenue at five-fifteen p.m. on Sunday afternoon. He bought a Brother P-touch label maker, four cartridges of clear vinyl tape, and a roll of double-sided 3M adhesive backing.
He drove home.
He sat at his kitchen table.
He took out the small leather notebook with the twenty names in his own carpenter-pencil handwriting and he started — at five forty-five p.m. on a Sunday — printing one small clear vinyl label per name.
Marlene told me later, sitting at her own kitchen table the following Saturday afternoon, that Pop had stayed up until eleven-thirty that night experimenting with font sizes, font weights, and label positions before he settled on what he thought was the right look.
He had landed, at eleven-thirty p.m., on a small clear oval vinyl label with the brother’s chosen name printed in a small serif font in clean black letters, approximately the size of a postage stamp, with a tiny seven-year-old’s printed approximation of a unicorn — which Pop had asked Wren to draw for him on a Tuesday afternoon at the clubhouse, as a research thing, kid — printed in the lower right corner of each label.
Pop had not told Wren why he wanted the unicorn.
Pop had printed twenty oval labels.
He had cut each one out by hand with a small pair of cuticle scissors that he had bought at the Walgreens up the street.
He had backed each one with a precisely cut square of 3M adhesive.
He had stored them in a small clear plastic bead-organizer case that Marlene used for sewing notions.
On Saturday morning at eight a.m., the day before the next club meeting on Sunday — Pop drove to the clubhouse.
He let himself in with the President’s key.
He spent the next three hours, alone, in the clubhouse with the heat off and a coffee from the diner down the road getting cold on the long folding table, applying twenty small clear oval labels — one each — to the gas tanks of twenty Harley-Davidson motorcycles parked in their parking bays.
He placed each label in the lower right corner of the gas tank, on the side of the bike facing the parking-bay aisle, where the brother would see it the second he walked up to mount his bike on a Sunday morning.
He cleaned each gas tank with rubbing alcohol before he applied the label.
He pressed each label down with the heel of his enormous calloused tattooed thumb for thirty seconds.
He took photographs of each label with his flip phone.
He drove home at eleven thirty-five.
He did not tell a single brother in the charter what he had done.
PART 5
The next morning at nine a.m., the brothers started arriving at the clubhouse for the Sunday morning pre-ride.
I was there with Wren. I had insisted, by my own request at the previous Friday’s dinner with Pop and Marlene, that Wren and I be allowed to be in the clubhouse when the brothers walked in. Pop had said yes. He had said yes because, in his own quiet words, Renata. The kid named them. The kid should be there when they see.
We sat in the back corner.
Wren had her pink backpack on the chair next to her.
She had her unicorn notebook in her lap.
She had a four-color clicky pen in her right hand.
She was, at nine-oh-eight that morning, drawing a careful pencil portrait of the back of Pop’s bald head from across the clubhouse because, she had told me in the truck on the way over, Pop has a very interesting head shape, Mama.
The first brother through the side door was Hutch. Forty-eight years old, master plumber, twenty-three years patched. He walked across the polished concrete to his parking bay — bay eight — and he stopped.
He stood there for about four seconds.
He bent at the waist. He squinted at the small oval label in the lower right corner of his gas tank.
He read the word PATCHES in clean black serif font.
He stood up. He turned around. He looked at Pop, who was sitting at the long folding table with his coffee.
Hutch said, in a voice you could hear across the entire clubhouse: “Pop. What in the hell is on my gas tank.”
Pop said, without looking up from his coffee: “Hutch. That is the name of your motorcycle.”
Hutch said: “Pop. My motorcycle does not have a name. My motorcycle is a 2014 Heritage Softail.”
Pop said: “Hutch. Brother. Walk over here.”
Hutch walked over.
Pop pointed his enormous tattooed right index finger at my seven-year-old daughter in the back corner.
He said: “Hutch. That little girl named your motorcycle on Sunday. She named all twenty of them. I wrote them down. I made the labels. The motorcycle’s name is Patches.”
Hutch looked at Pop.
Hutch looked at Wren.
Hutch looked at his motorcycle.
Hutch was, at the time of this conversation, a 6-foot-1, 240-pound master plumber with a full red beard and both arms sleeved in old prison-style tattoos. He had a wife named Theresa, two grown daughters in their twenties, and a granddaughter named Frankie who was five.
Hutch said: “Pop. Patches is a girl’s dog name.”
Pop said: “Hutch. The kid named it. You wanna walk over there and tell her face it’s a bad name?”
Hutch looked at my daughter.
My daughter was, at that moment, looking up at him with her clear pale blue eyes and her unicorn notebook open in her lap and her four-color clicky pen held in both small hands.
Hutch said: “Pop. No.”
Pop said: “Then your bike is Patches.”
Hutch walked back to his motorcycle.
He stood there for about ten seconds.
Then he leaned over and pressed his palm against the small clear oval label with the unicorn in the corner.
He pressed it down himself, again, for about three seconds.
He said, just loud enough that I could hear it from the back corner: “Hello, Patches.”
The other nineteen brothers came in over the next forty minutes.
The script was the same nineteen times.
Each brother walked to his bay. Each brother saw the label. Each brother looked at Pop. Each brother started to argue. Each brother was told, in some version of the same six words, the kid named it, you wanna tell her face it’s a bad name. Each brother walked back to his motorcycle and stood there.
Wheels — fifty-one, a powder-coater, eighteen years patched, the bike I had not realized had a tiny brass bell tied to its handlebars — Wheels stood next to his 2009 Road Glide for almost a full minute looking at the word BELL on the gas tank.
He came back to the long folding table.
He sat down across from Pop.
He said: “Pop. How did she know about the bell.”
Pop said: “Wheels. She is seven. She noticed.”
Wheels did not say anything for about thirty seconds.
He said, finally: “Pop. My daughter Lacey gave me that bell when she was six. She is twenty-eight now. She lives in Tacoma.”
Pop said: “I know, brother.”
Wheels looked at Wren in the back corner.
Wren waved.
Wheels waved back.
He did not say anything for the rest of the meeting.
PART 6
The names stuck.
I want to be honest about how I know that, because they stuck is a sentence that has to be earned in a charter of twenty patched brothers who have, every single one of them, ridden their Harleys for longer than my daughter has been alive.
By the third Sunday after Wren named the motorcycles, three brothers were referring to their bikes by name on the group text.
By the sixth Sunday, eleven brothers were.
By Thanksgiving — three months after Wren’s eleven minutes of naming work — all twenty patched brothers in our charter referred to their Harleys, in writing and out loud, by the names my seven-year-old daughter had given them.
I have screenshots.
I am going to give you four examples because the examples are the thing.
On October 14th of last year, at 7:12 a.m., Tank — six foot two, two-eighty, twenty-seven years patched, rides a 2007 Street Glide with a small clear oval label that says TANK — Tank texted the group chat: Brothers. Tank is leaking oil from the primary. Anybody got a gasket I can borrow before the run.
On October 28th, at 11:43 p.m., Doctor — my husband — texted the group chat: Captain is back from the shop. New tires. New plugs. Ready for Sunday.
On December 3rd, at 6:09 a.m., Hutch — the man who had said Patches is a girl’s dog name on the first Sunday — Hutch posted in the group chat: Patches and me went down to Lewiston this weekend. 380 miles. She ran sweet the whole way. Hooked her up on the trickle charger now.
On January 19th of this year, at 4:31 p.m., the meanest-looking old-school 1%er-flavored brother in our charter — a man named Hammer, sixty-three, twenty-nine years patched, has a tattoo on his neck that scares strangers in Costco — Hammer posted: Bandito has 187,000 on her now. Anybody wanna run halves with me on a top-end rebuild this spring.
He used the pronoun her.
He had never, in twenty-nine years of riding that motorcycle, used a pronoun for it before.
I will not pretend this is the most important thing that has ever happened in our charter.
I will not pretend it is more important than the runs we do for the children’s hospital or the toy drive or the breast-cancer ride.
I will say this.
Twenty patched brothers in our charter, on any given Sunday morning before a ride, walk into a converted auto-body shop off State Route 30 outside Spokane, Washington. They walk to their parking bays. They look at the small clear oval label in the lower right corner of their gas tank.
They say, out loud, to their own motorcycle, the name a seven-year-old gave it on a September Sunday morning.
Then they mount up.
PART 7
Wren is eight now.
She is in third grade. She still comes to the clubhouse on Sunday mornings. She still draws careful pencil portraits of the back of Pop’s bald head from the back corner.
She has been told, by Pop personally, on a Sunday morning in late January, that she is now the official Bike Namer of our charter and that any new prospect who patches in is going to have to bring his bike to her for naming before he gets his bottom rocker.
There is a small handwritten note hanging by a thumbtack on the corkboard at the head of the long folding table in the clubhouse.
It is in Pop’s carpenter-pencil handwriting.
It says, in eight words:
New bikes get named by Wren. House rule.
She has named two so far this year.
She is doing fine.
Follow the page for more stories about the bikers America thinks it knows — and the small clear oval labels they press down on their gas tanks because a seven-year-old in light-up sneakers told them their motorcycle had a name.
