Back in my childhood days of The Fifties, I would grab up every new Sears & Roebuck catalog that arrived in my family's mailbox moments after the postman drove away. Of course this was the era in which the Sears catalog was every young man's visual access to bras and panties, so of course I had to peruse those first, even if they were in stunning black and white. As soon as I left the B's and the P's in the index, the M's offered my next fantasy, the Allstate motorcycle pages. I am not sure how many years the Allstate Moped was produced by Puch and sold by Sears, but it could have been as wide an era as 1954-69. Moped production covered at least the '55-'65 period, and probably a wider span than this. For a boy living out in the sticks, in my case, the town of North Carrollton, Mississippi, where McQueen went to appear in the movie The Reivers, the Allstate motorcycle catalog pages were the only contact with motorized two-wheelers available in those innocent years before Honda woke us all up and set the world on fire.
The moped pictured here is the 1960 model. Not only did I have a good quality shot of this year on hand, but this is sort of the pivotal year, the first full year of Honda importation into the U. S. For approximately a $100 more, the Honda 50 would provide a young man with a 4.5 horsepower four-stroke engine, a real foot shift, battery-powered lighting, and a dual seat. This was a moped, a slick derivative of a motorized bicycle, but the Honda 50 was a real motorcycle! The introduction of the Honda 50 would herald the swansong of the previous king of the entry-level, motorized two-wheelers for ambitious little boys.
For all the kids who wanted to stop the uphill pedaling before they passed out in the heat, the Allstate Moped was a twinkle in our eyes. How many lawns would we have to mow to pay for it? How could we convince our parents to let us have it? Exactly how much would shipping be to Bumfuzzle, Alabama, and could you please translate that amount into lawns?
See also: Allstate Compact
Allstate SR 125
Allstate Scrambler
Allstate History by Troyce Walls
1 comments:
Wow, this has got to be one of the best web sites on the internet. It brings back so many memories. My first bike was an Allstate Mo-Ped. It was a 1957 model that I bought used in 1961. In fact, it was so used it was actually built from spare parts from several parts bikes that were in a Mo-Ped graveyard in the basement of one of my friend's house. It didn't matter to me when I forked over my entire life savings of $50 for it because I had just attained the Jr. High School social status of "really cool dude" by purchasing it. At the time neither did it matter to me, nor was I aware that my friend had used a flywheel off an NSU Quickly Mo-Ped which was not a forced-air engine, thus the flywheel had no fins on it to force air up through the cooling shroud surrounding the cylinder. After it finally quit running somebody that knew what they were doing looked at and explained this to me, but man did I have fun until then. I eventually traded it in on a Honda 50 C-100 after a couple of summers of mowing umpteen million yards to finance my next mania, but those old mo-peds were great bikes to start out on. Of course acceleration was not one of their strong points. In the suburbs of Chattanooga, Tenn., where I grew up most small towns like mine either didn't have leash laws or didn't enforce them, so dogs chasing you could sometimes be hazardous to your health. One of my friends was riding his Allstate Mo-ped when a large bulldog type dog ran at him almost straight on from the side. The dog got it's head caught in the spokes of the front wheel which promptly stopped the bike in its tracks and threw my friend over the handlebars. The dog took off screaming like it had been shot. My friend had several scrapes, bumps and bruises but was otherwise unhurt. He wobbled home and had to replace several spokes in the front wheel. He said he didn't see the dog again for about three weeks but eventually it did appear out in its yard again and from that time on every time he went down that street the dog would start yelping and run behind its house. I think the very early Allstate Mo-Peds may have been maroon rather then red. Also, in the early 60's they made a cheap model that was red and a light grey on the tank, headlight nacelle and luggage rack where they were usually painted a cream color. These bikes also had rigid struts where the rear schocks were usually placed. We called these bikes "grey ladies".
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