Rebuilding the Indian: A Memoir

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Overview

The building of a vintage Indian Chief motorcycle is more than the restoration of a bike—it’s the resurrection of a dream. Rebuilding the Indian chronicles one man’s journey through the fearful expanse of midlife in a quest for peace, parts, and a happy second fatherhood. Fred Haefele was a writer who couldn’t get his book published, an arborist whose precarious livelihood might just kill him, and an expectant father for the first time in over twenty years. He was in a rut, until he purchased a box of parts not so euphemistically referred to as a “basket case” and tackled the restoration of an Indian Chief motorcycle. With limited mechanical skills, one foot in the money pit, and a ...

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Overview

The building of a vintage Indian Chief motorcycle is more than the restoration of a bike—it’s the resurrection of a dream. Rebuilding the Indian chronicles one man’s journey through the fearful expanse of midlife in a quest for peace, parts, and a happy second fatherhood. Fred Haefele was a writer who couldn’t get his book published, an arborist whose precarious livelihood might just kill him, and an expectant father for the first time in over twenty years. He was in a rut, until he purchased a box of parts not so euphemistically referred to as a “basket case” and tackled the restoration of an Indian Chief motorcycle. With limited mechanical skills, one foot in the money pit, and a colorful cast of local experts, Haefele takes us down the rocky road of restoration to the headlong, heart-thrilling rush of open highway on his gleaming midnight-blue Millennium Flyer.

Editorial Reviews

Esquire

"What Haefele writes about wonderfully, in his mellow, understated way, is how the Indian project became a test of his love and resolve."

Missoulian

“Haefele was a writer who couldn’t get his book published, an arborist whose livelihood just might kill him, and an expectant father for the first time in 20 years when he tackled the restoration of a 1947 Indian Chief motorcycle. The book chronicles the restoration of the bike—and the resurrection of a dream.”

More Reviews (7) Fewer Reviews
Montana Magazine

"You don't have to love motorcycles, midlife crisis stories, or even redemption to love the good writing by Missoula's favorite arborist in this gently humorous memoir reissued, like an orchid, after its first flower in 1998."

New Yorker

“Haefele describes how his search for vintage parts eventually involved an entire community of fanatical mechanics, impoverished motorcycle collectors, and renegade bikers—a collaboration, he realizes, that gave him skills as much social and spiritual as practical."

USA Today

“This remembrance of turning a box of junk into a gleaming Indian Chief has a universal roar. Just the right mix of gearhead details and personal reflections.”

New Yorker
There are books about motorcycling as a metaphor for life; here life — within the writer's pregnant wife — is a metaphor for restoring a 1947 Indian Chief motorcycle. Haefle, a 51-year-old tree surgeon from Missoula, describes how his search for vintage parts eventually involved an entire community of fanatical mechanics, impoverished motorcycle collectors, and renegade bikers — a collaboration, he realizes, that gave him skills as much social and spiritual as practical. 'Parts are a never-ending quest,' he tells us. They are the fever and the cure, the question and the answer.'
Publishers Weekly
An Indian, Haefele explains at the outset, is a make of motorcycle not built since 1953 but highly esteemed by American bikers in the '930s and '40s. A Montana tree surgeon and an ex-teacher of creative writing, Haefele (City of Trees) set out to reconstruct an Indian, and that task gives the principal thrust to this memoir. The rehabilitation project involved searching for abandoned machines, negotiating for old parts, purchasing replacement parts when originals were not available and keeping an eye out for 'basketcases,' a motorcycle built from a hodgepodge of makes, from which valuable parts may be salvaged. Also included are accounts of the birth of his third child (the first of his second marriage), the vagaries of Montana weather and portraits of other bikers. But all else takes a backseat to the machine, and such a focus limits the book's appeal to readers equally committed to or fascinated by the construction of a what he calls a technological 'work of art.'
The New Yorker
There are books about motorcycling as a metaphor for life; here life -- within the writer's pregnant wife -- is a metaphor for restoring a 1947 Indian Chief motorcycle. Haefle, a 51-year-old tree surgeon from Missoula, describes how his search for vintage parts eventually involved an entire community of fanatical mechanics, impoverished motorcycle collectors, and renegade bikers -- a collaboration, he realizes, that gave him skills as much social and spiritual as practical. 'Parts are a never-ending quest,' he tells us. They are the fever and the cure, the question and the answer.'
Kirkus Reviews
An entertaining if somewhat flawed look at how a middle-aged hobbyist finds new meaning in life through rebuilding a classic motorcycle. Haefele is a frustrated novelist and academic who works, albeit happily, as a tree surgeon. Deciding after visiting an annual motorcycle rally to invest in a vintage American-made Indian Chief motorcycle, he finds himself friends with bikers and other assorted characters whom he would normally avoid. In the end, he finds that he has much in common with these folks, even as he has managed to sell his first novel and, by book's end, is back on the academic trail chasing down university jobs. Because of the setting (Montana) and motif (motorcycles), Haefele's book is doomed to comparisons with Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. These similarities notwithstanding, Haefele is able to guard himself well from any influence anxiety, though in one particular scene where he uses beer can slivers as a maintenance tool, the similarity is a little too close. Haefele's style is more relaxed and he isn't, for the most part, prone to the didacticism that mires down Pirsig's work. Unfortunately, the bottom begins to fall out when, for instance, the 'naming ceremony' for his newborn daughter, Phoebe, is juxtaposed against the episode in which he names his motorcycle the 'Millennium Flyer.' By the end, Haefele has dubbed his biker friend and tree-surgeon assistant Chaz the 'mythical trickster" who has kept him going on his quest to rebuild his bike, and even more clumsily, he draws open comparisons between the clothes bought for his daughter and the parts bought to help build his cycle when most readers would catch the similarity on theirown. These slips are not enough to ruin Rebuilding the Indian, though, which leaves one curious to see his forthcoming novel.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780803273580
  • Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
  • Publication date: 9/28/2005
  • Pages: 234
  • Sales rank: 841,326
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 0.60 (d)

Meet the Author

Fred Haefele has taught creative writing at Stanford University and the University of Montana. He currently works as an arborist in Montana, where he lives with his wife and two children.

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