The Man Behind The History

and the way i got this motorcycle was one day when i had my bike shop somebody called me i said i'm bringing an old bike you take bikes on training well yeah sure break it up and i was on a saturday morning i was sitting there standing in the showroom looking out the window and i see a pickup truck come in and all i could see was this bike from here up wow and i'm going that looks like me we made some kind of diligent trade and you know that's what i've done my whole life is trade up collect old bikes and i try to keep a lot of the good ones dale was a one-man hurricane when he set his mind to doing something it got done you know sometimes you feel like you get exhausted just being around him because he just never stops follow me i'll show you what we're gonna do today the average person might think this is just some piece of junk what i see is a lot of opportunities you know a treasure hunter is always after the next treasure he was at the forefront of a lot of you know kind of thought processes in the old bike world you know he's one of the first guys to be really really really into originality uh untampered with motorcycles machines that had survived from barn finds to beautiful original paint well preserved stuff walking swap meets with dale it was part social part educational and part just crazy the people who would come up to him and talk to him at swap meets people he'd known forever all the stories you'd hear but he was always the first one out there looking and that speaks volumes about his personality he was determined dale waxler worked all of his waking hours again fueled by his passion to get the job done but we would come in we would run the museum for eight hours we'd go out and have a dinner and then he would go hear that it's a 36 knucklehead engine calling me and out the door he go and he'd be in the shop until midnight the first seven years i believe that the museum open was open uh the museum ran 364 days a year and a lot of times he was the only person in that museum i mean if anybody came in he he did everything it was he worked from dawn to dusk he was there before i got there at 6 30 and he was there late at night working on motorcycles probably most of the night his dedication to this project in this museum was 24 hours a day and it was not uncommon for him to call me any time of the night and say i just wanted to run out of deer by you well last night was a late night in the back shop working on the 1924-1925 fh hill climber and today's a whole new day [Music] running this museum is really no different than running this motorcycle you have to know what you're doing but you really have to have the passion for it i think many who would be you know watching this seeing this could appreciate dale's gift for having a dream about something you know even something audacious and then actualizing it you know by putting in the work for a guy that was always motivated towards forward progress i think uh you know his vision was kind of ever evolving as he would set a goal a lofty one and he would get there oftentimes sooner than he thought he would and then readjust and recalibrate and raise the bar a little more and then shoot in that direction uh his his vision was a continual refinement with a an overall goal of of affecting and connecting with people and he did that through motorcycles so many people walk through the door and they wonder how one person even in even in 52 years could put together a collection of this size and it was because of that passion that dale had you know i've spent over 40 years tracking down rare machines memorabilian artifacts but the real find here at wheels through time is the history behind the machines [Music] it's staggering to think that he began by buying a survey car in his youth starting a small motorcycle shop then getting the backing of his dad um buying this harley-davidson dealership and being the youngest harley-davidson dealer ever and then building it into this again world-class organization that serviced all kinds of folks from near and wide he recognized that beyond the dealership enterprise and what could be done with a dealership there was a much broader you know market for dale's prowess in other american motorcycles and other american-made products and he his collection was already pretty amazing by then he had a wheelster time in southern illinois that was modest by comparison but he was well on his way to you know being a museum operator curator when he was transitioning the growth of the museum from mount vernon to maggie valley is unparalleled mount vernon uh there was a quite a few cars actually dale was a car collector and uh he also liked old motorcycles um and it was a very worthy collection down in mount vernon but it's nothing like it is at wheels through time museum today it is phenomenal i i don't know you know there's there's maybe bigger museums in the country but there is none like wheels through time museum that has the the bikes sitting out where you can walk around them sit on them hear them run you know it's the museum that runs he kind of redefined what a museum is historically museums are pretty quiet places uh you know kind of dull not a lot of excitement and energy happening inside the museum and uh his vision for wheels through time was very different i mean the smithsonian collection is magnificent but it doesn't run pat and chris knew that at wheels through time everything runs there was no better place to see their machine come back to life it's exactly what we do take old pieces of history and make them run kind of a simple thing just kick it making a digital presentation is nothing new for me over 10 years ago i started with the time machine and that parlayed into our hit television show what's in the barn on velocity by the way that show airs all over the world today i'm dale waxler and i dig deep into america's barns ah there is layers of history in here i'm a hunter and a gatherer on the trail for unique and antique oh that's it yesterday's junk is today's hidden treasure hunt of the glass not be cracked 103 year old windshield because sometimes you have to know what's in the barn [Music] once he started what's in the barn all of a sudden the museum admissions where hundreds and hundreds of people were before it was only maybe 10 or 20 a day all of a sudden we had hundreds of people coming in and after that he came back to us on the history channel for season seven of american restoration the great news about all that television exposure was the exposure that dale was getting and the museum was getting was just staggering and of course dale being dale he also augmented that with his um you know foray into the social media you know he was so ahead of the curve and so many different avenues you know one of the things i look back on he was doing streaming videos in 2004 2005 this is like this is before youtube was even a thing he was creating hundreds of videos creating a library because he saw the future of television and the future of of connecting with people done uh through the internet and you know he put immense amounts of energy into that and it still is paying off today his mission was really to keep wheels through time in front of people and he found a million ways to do it you know things like the 24 hour runs and the the coast to coast runs and the land speed record stuff that we all did with old bikes uh you know he'd pour immense amount of thought and energy i'd like to fred hamrun for example we took a 1937 harley-davidson knucklehead and re-broke or attempted to re-break the 24-hour record that was set in 1937 on a really similar bike it was done by a guy named fred hamm and you know immense amount of effort went into you know restoring the bike hundreds and hundreds of hours uh you know making the connection with talladega uh assembling the team to go down there and try and re-break this record all with the mission and vision of keeping wheels through time in front of people and it proved incredibly successful so one day i get a phone call from dale he says um we're going to ride coast to coast you in i said what are you talking about he says you in i said yeah sure i'm in what are you talking about he said a group of us are going to get these old motorcycles they have to be 19 15 or older i'm gonna ride coast to coast we all rode out on most of us were on 1915 harleys and we rode from kitty hawk north carolina to santa monica california and he would live for stuff like this and every day he'd be out riding and every night he'd be in the parking lot wrenching seldom on his own bike dale was rescuing everybody he was so kind and thoughtful and helping everybody and trying to work on his own bike but ever you know everybody was in his trailer looking for parts and advice and he was pretty patient that was dale waxler always willing to help anyone and everyone on their bikes never expecting anything in return and then moving on to the next one he was a force of nature in the vintage motorcycle one day he got one of the old box out i don't remember which one it was it had a side car on it and shiloh his dog was riding in the sidecar with him and he pulled up out front he told shiloh he said get out he said come on gerald get in here he didn't have a seat in it he had a piece of foam in the bottom floor of that side car and i got on that piece of foam in that side car on my knees and he took me plum to the top of the mountain behind this museum throwing gravel and spinning and hanging on in that side car on my knees and thank god i was hanging on because he did not let up that was my first side car experience in my life and the last one so we headed out of town and we turned on this road and there was a a cornfield with a cable across the little farm road which said no trespassing and dale without hesitation just rode up to it and lifted the cable up and waved me underneath it and so we ended up going trail riding i was on a on a hemi crocker and he was on this original paint uh harley45 and at one point i'm dragging all these weeds behind me with the cracker and i i said dale what happens if i crash this thing and wreck it he goes we'll fix it and you know that's just the way dale was you know i mean there was nothing that he had that he didn't want to use actually the bike i'm going to do this on is about a 250 000 motorcycle [Applause] people look around the museum and assume that motorcycles are what mattered most to dale and what really mattered most was people he had this ability to relate to people and connect with people that uh is rare in this world and most folks that knew dale or folks that you know had known him for 30 years or folks that walked into the museum first time uh ended up leaving feeling like they'd been friends for a long time and he just had that effect on people he loved to know their personal stories he liked to find out where they were from and what they did and more importantly than anything he made him feel welcome at wilshire time and made everybody kind of unique in their experience of coming to this museum he was a generous man and not because he wanted people to know he was generous but because that's who he is and some people have come in and never been here before and he'd go out welcome and and bring him on in for free you know that was a big deal to them it's a really really big deal and he done that a whole lot he'd done that a whole lot i wouldn't dale had the heart of an underdog and he was all about like sticking up for other underdogs the thing about dale is even though he was like a little guy like i was he was a pretty fearsome guy dale would do things for people a lot of times without them even knowing um numerous times we would go out to dinner especially when we were traveling and dale secretly calling the waitress aside on the way out and paying for their breakfast every time i talked to him on the phone he would say is there anything that you need down here you know he was always a giving person always willing to help always a compassionate understanding man and he looked at me and he goes you don't have a motorcycle lift and i said no man i just get on my knees and i build it right here on the floor and he didn't say anything else so about a week later when he came back to pick a bike up he pulls up in that little old minivan and he goes come here gerald help me and i walk out in the parking lot and here he's got a motorcycle lift he took out of the back of his shop loaded it in that van and brought me a lift still got it it seems about impossible to describe my dad in one word or phrase but if i had to pick one it would be one of a kind totally one of them kind and just in any direction visionary dynamic what a dynamic personality so full of energy rambunctious the ultimate enthusiasm dedicated relentless passion i don't think i've ever known anybody that had as much passion as he did successful confident eccentric extraordinary amazing sunny i mean he had a sunny disposition he had he had an infectious enthusiasm about him generous romantic dedicated visionary dreamer a great man knowledgeable kind but thoughtful there's just too many i can't there is no one word that describes dale waxler there couldn't possibly be one word to capture his beautiful gigantic outgoing larger-than-life personality there's there's just not one word when he first started collecting motorcycles he had no idea what a impact he would have on on the world i don't think that old motorcycles would be what they are today without dale waxler harley davidson owes dale big time i always consider him you know one of my two greatest mentors and you know people kind of you know as you go through life kind of guide and direct you and you know things happen and when it came to antique motorcycles we just we were on the same page and we had great mutual respect and admiration for each other and he taught me a ton you know across the board and he would dive into the history and the mechanics and the context out of which an individual machine emerged he could not give that information away fast enough to our guests and to me for that matter he wanted to share the story of the american motorcycle with every visitor that walks in the door not just to build a collection so people would think of how great he was but he wanted the history of these bikes to be relatable to the guy who's been in the motorcycle world for his entire life to the person who's never seen an antique motorcycle until they walk in the doors of the museum the passion that he poured into this place is not just visible but it's really in a sense palpable you can feel it when you walk in the door and he was one of the the smartest person that i've ever been around or ever met which i've met a lot in the motorcycle business and he knew he had more knowledge of the motorcycle than anybody that i've ever known is like encyclopedia and then you brought part one everywhere on top of being a genius he was a good mechanic a real good mechanic so i remember just watching it and just trying to stuff as much of dale as i could in my brain i always said if you could just download a little bit of what you know into my brain i would know so much about old motorcycles and i think that's the thing about dale he was a great connector he would find objects and things and motorcycles and when they were put together they actually told the whole story so he would find a racing motorcycle from one gentleman and then you know in his collecting he would then somehow come across the helmet that he had articles on this particular fella his old you know iron racing shoe and so even though history had separated all these things dale was able to bring all these things back and put them together again dale had a really great uncanny knack of um knowing you could tell him like i needed a certain part and three four five years later he would he would he would remember it and and you know it would show up i remember telling him once like i needed a quadrant bolt for the rear freewheel clutch on my uh 1914 and like three years later here this original one shows up in a blister pack and like out of nowhere you know he just remembered that up i know someone and so that always was like the coolest thing because you could tell them something you never knew but you know at some point it was going to happen it's just an incredible contagious enthusiasm and a personality that just drew people to him you know i don't don't think there will ever be anybody else like him if dale were here right now i would say to dale something that i told him many many times that yours is a life well lived all i can say is well done look at the foundation you've created a pretty incredible accomplishment what you did here and it affects people far beyond what i thought he ever dreamed that it would i know i wouldn't be the person i am today without this museum and the impact he personally had on me thank you dale for what you've done for me and what you've done for the motorcycle community worldwide thank you thank you and i love you tell my how much i love them and and how much i miss them how proud i am of you and always will be of the legacy that you built and what you left for the waxler family to continue on with and and and for generations of our visitors to come that are going to be able to see what you created hey buddy let's get to work let's get that thing running thanks for being my friend how much i appreciate allowing me to be a part of this whole museum let's go get dad and take him for a ride yeah i'd tell him to lay a black mark about 50 feet through the building and make a lot of noise he [Applause] thank you everybody that's it for the show

Channel: Wheels Through Time

Views: 238,050

Keywords: american motorcycle, motorcycle history, burnout, Wheels Through Time Motorcycle Museum, Maggie Valley, North Carolina, Blue Ridge Parkway, Riding on Motorcycles, Classic Motorcycles, American History, Dale Walksler, The Time Machine, Vintage Motorcycles, Whats in the barn, Velocity TV, Harley Davidson, Indian, Matt Walksler, Rare, Unique, Wheels Thru Time, American Restoration, Fast, Fire It Up, Classic, Dale's Channel, AMA, kickstart challenge, wtt kickstart challenge

Id: JVULE45681g

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 02 2022