My first motorcycle (mini-bikes with lawnmower engines and centrifugal clutches excluded) was a Moto Morini 50cc street bike that I picked up in the early 1970's. It was already well used, so I imagine it was of a late 60's manufacture date. Can't remember. Looked kinda like this one:
Some of my friends had "real" dirt bikes at the time, and that was what I really wanted. Montessas, Bultacos and early jap MX bikes were way cooler. Being a pre-license aged grommet, this was all I could afford on my paper route money.
We rode the snot out of that little 4-stroke (all the real dirt bikes were 2-smokes then ) and it was entertaining for a bunch of us at the time. We'd take it down to the local power lines and let the cops chase us around, but they never caught us. The riskiest part was riding the couple of miles to the power lines on the street.
What's funny, in retrospect, is that we usually wore just jeans and a denim jacket (leathers were for the rich kids, and that wasn't us), lace-up Herman Survivor work boots (if we could get our parents to fork up the $$) and maybe gloves when it was cold, but we always had a helmet on the noggin. We all biffed more than a few times, but being indestructible little pre-teens with rubbery elastomer for bones, I can't recall a single serious injury.
I vividly remember riding a friends Suzuki TM125 MX machine (before I later bought one of the same) at one of the local sand pits and going off a 20' drop jump only to land sliding on my faceshield. Thank goodness for the good ole' Bell Star full face or I'd be uglier than I already am.
