This Granny Has A Fine Set Of Choppers

Mary McFarland straps her groceries onto the back of her three-wheeled Harley “knucklehead,” on top of the luggage box that holds her collapsible cane, tool kit and rain gear. Her handlebars curve like a wild sheep’s horns for her comfort. A handicapped sticker as well as stickers from around the world adorn her bugspattered windshield.

Mary, 76, once carted dynamite from her Coeur d’Alene home to Clark Fork on her motorcycle. The post-polio syndrome that causes her rolling gait now stops her from blasting tree stumps or venturing very far down U.S. Highway 95 anymore.

But it’s also cemented the tight bond between Mary and her Harley.

“Motorcycles are a helluva therapy,” she says.

Mary’s never backed away from any challenge. She rolls her own aromatic cigarettes, immerses herself in Bonner County’s Democratic Party and chews out politicians with unprintable candor.

There was a time her garage held 19 motorcycles.

“When you have two motorcycles in a shed, they multiply,” she says.

Getting her first bike was an accident. She and her husband, Glenn, had bought land along the Clark Fork River in Montana in 1963. They both were pilots and cattle ranchers. She hated horses.

She was driving cattle to a sale in Spokane in 1967 when her tire went flat near Garwood. The yard sent a truck for her. After the sale she hitched a ride back to Garwood, stopping for some beers before the drive home.

Someone in the tavern had a motorcycle to sell. After several beers, Mary looked at it and began haggling for a good price. A few days later, her hired hand found the Yamaha 185 dirt bike buried in cow manure in the back of her truck. Mary’d forgotten about it.

She was 47 and knew nothing about motorcycles. But she learned to ride and found bikes beat horses for chasing cattle. There were places motorcycles couldn’t go, but other riders towed Mary’s horse along so she could switch when she had to. She rode her bike in spurs and her horse in a motorcycle helmet.

By 55, Mary was dirt-bike racing with her grandson. Rocks, sand, hills, jumps and collisions only magnified her fun.

“I only got run over once,” she says. Another racer hit her, but “I bent my bike back together, picked up my broken glasses, wiped the blood off my nose and got up and beat her,” she says, savoring the memory.

Her collection of bikes expanded to include road machines that took her and Glenn from Guatemala to Austria. Since 1967, she’s been hit by a logging truck, and has herself struck a cow and deer. Mary doesn’t remember nine months following one crash.

“I always land on my head, so I always wear a helmet,” she says. “But I do not believe in mandatory helmet laws.”

Three years ago, Mary’s left leg began to hurt. It had been a tad shorter than her other leg for as long as she could remember. Doctors advised back surgery, but surgery intensified her pain.

She heard about post-polio syndrome on a television news show. She’d had polio as a child, but recovered and never thought about it again. Doctors just recently linked nervous system failures in older people with the polio they’d had as children.

Mary took her case to a Spokane doctor who confirmed her suspicions and told her there’s no cure. A few months later, Mary’s leg gave out during her daily walk.

She walks with a cane now, and sold all but two of her motorcycles last year. She and Glenn are retired and don’t chase cattle anymore. But they still ride the road.

Mary needs the erect posture a motorcycle requires and the constant exercise of the subtle body responses. Without them, she’d stiffen.

“I’m slowing down,’ she admits, then grins at her Harley in that intimate way saved for kindred spirits. “But I can still get around when I want to.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo