“Now, that’s somebody y’all need to do a story on.”
Mike Perkerson was standing behind the counter of his family’s hardware store on Military Road. He was nodding in the direction of a man outside his front door standing next to a motorized bicycle.
I walked outside and introduced myself to John Harris, a ramrod straight man with a demeanor you would not expect of someone riding a homemade motorized bike. Soft-spoken and careful with his words, Harris, 50, was wary of my wish to write a column about him, his bike and the other “inventions” Perkerson had alluded to.
That was back in the summer.
When I called last week, Harris tried again to deflect my interest in him and his bicycle.
“There’s really someone else you need to talk to, my neighbor, he’s the one I got the idea from.”
Eventually, Harris relented, and Friday afternoon I met him at his shop on Washington Avenue. “Hi-Tech Heads” is housed in a turquoise green cement block building next to a vacant lot. More than a dozen cars in various states of disrepair are strewn about the lot. When I found him, Harris had his head under the hood of a friend’s Honda Accord.
Turns out, building motorized bicycles with scavenged parts is but a recent whim. Among local auto mechanics, Harris is renown for his ability to revive damaged cylinder heads. Without delving into the intricacies of the internal combustion engine, suffice it to say it is work that requires skill, experience and a high degree of precision.
“Harris is the best cylinder head guy, I know,” Charles Holtzlander told me Friday afternoon. Now retired, Holtzlander for years ran H&H Import where he worked on Nissans and Toyotas and occasionally relied on Harris’ expertise. “He’s extremely talented.”
Lynn Chism of Chism Frame Shop echoes Holtzlander’s praise, “He’s quite remarkable.”
As it happens, Harris is handicapped. He was born with hands permanently curled; he couldn’t open his hands and spread his fingers. An operation while he was in elementary school gave him some flexibility, but his ability to move his fingers is still limited. “I was supposed to wear braces (after the operation), but kids would laugh at me, so I would take them off as soon as I got around the corner,” he said. “After a while my mama didn’t make me wear them.”
When he was about 12, Harris’ mother bought him a lawn mower and he started mowing yards in his Northside neighborhood. “It (the mower) puzzled me,” he said. Harris took the mower apart. He put it back together, but it wouldn’t run.
Harris found a mentor in Johnny Moore, a shade-tree mechanic who worked on the family cars. Then in high school at McKellar Vo-Tech Harris came into his own as a mechanic. For that he credits James Walker.
“He’s the best teacher in the world,” says Harris about Walker. “He wanted you not to be able to just fix something; he wanted you to know how it worked.”
After high school, Harris became a driver for Domino’s Pizza. He never stopped working on cars. The Ford LTD he used for delivering pizzas required attention, as did the cars of other Domino’s drivers.
After five years at Domino’s, Harris was ready for a change. He interviewed at Mississippi Cylinder Head.
When his future employer asked if he could do the job, Harris replied, “If I can’t do it, you won’t have to fire me; I’ll quit.”
In his 10 years at Mississippi Cylinder Head, Harris rose to the position of shop foreman overseeing a crew of 17.
“He was really a good man,” said Butch Hill, who owned the business during that time.
On the subject of work habits, Harris recalls the advice his grandfather gave him: “If you work, time is short; if you’re watching the clock, your day is going to be long.”
As for the bicycle, Harris said he built it on a whim five months ago after he saw one like it in the garage of a neighbor two houses away. He paid $11 for a scrapped 50cc motor from a kid’s mini-bike and $134 for fat-tired Huffy at Walmart.
Harris says the bike will do 38 miles per hour and gets well over a 100 miles per gallon. He plans to build one for his wife, Aretha.
I asked him how long it took to build.
“I’m going to give you lawyers’ hours,” Harris said. “You know, they charge you for thinking. I guess I got 24 hours in it.”
About his current situation, Harris is wistful. “Around here there are nothing but poor people; they don’t have any money. A lot of them can’t pay me.” Even so, he’s involved with drag racing and enjoys coaching the girls softball at Southside MB Baptist Church. He has three children, two girls and a son.
As for his handicap, John Harris long ago made peace with that.
“I used to pray and ask God to open my hands,” he said. “I believe he didn’t just to show others what can be done.”
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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