March POG meeting.....held on a very special day !

[Paul Danik]

Greetings,

    The March POG meeting will take place on Thursday March 7th. and will be held in the KTM meeting room beginning at 7 pm. As most all of you know, the KTM meeting room is in the KTM building located just west of beautiful and sunny Amherst, Ohio.

 
    It is interesting to note, that as POG President John Penton will be calling the meeting to order that 51 years ago on that exact day, and most likely at the exact same time, the first 10 Penton Sportcycles were being uncrated and prepared for their first outing.

 Those first 10 Pentons were air-shipped and were picked up at the airport earlier in the day by Wally Wilford, Doug's dad.

So, come one and come all to the meeting and possibly a few more than usual "back in the day" stories will be told on this very special anniversary day  

Paul


   

[skiracer]

Wow.......

1976 250 MC5 Original Owner
1976 Penton 175 XC

[Paul Danik]

Greetings,

    Skiracer, your "Wow" sure does sum up last nights POG meeting

Quite a few stories were told but if I had to pick out a favorite...

Norm Miller and Jeff Penton were both in attendance and when the subject of the first container of Penton Sportcycles arriving came up, and remember this is after those first 10 had arrived, Norm had a tale to tell with Jeff's assistance.

Seems he and Jeff, who were both still in high school, were given the task to unload the container. Norm was doing the grunt work and Jeff was operating the forklift, one of those smaller ones where the operator stood on the tale end of it instead of being seated. As Norm told it, they were unloading the crates and were storing them in a back area of the Penton Farm Market which was pretty much being operated by John's brother Bill, and Bill wasn't real happy about losing some prime storage area...Norm went on to say that Bill pretty much was giving them and the whole process a piece of his mind the whole time they were unloading the machines.

When Norm was finished with his story last evening. John was asked if Bill was actually that upset about having the machines stored in his market area...  John instantly got this really mischevious smile on his face and said, "let's just say he didn't relish the idea", at that time the whole room burst into laughter...


All in all a wonderful evening and the place was packed.

Paul

PS   Norm said that the containers of Pentons were packed so tight at KTM that getting the first ones out was a really tough job. John's brother Ted observed the situation and then proceeded to hand build a clamp like contraption that had two plates with grippers on them that only gripped in one direction. The plates had arms on them that created a sissors type of action which made them squeeze tighter into the creates when the contraption was pulled with a chain attached to the fork truck, and now the really tight crate would just slide out of it wedged position. What capped this story was that Mike Rosso said the contraption that Ted Penton had built over 50 years ago was still hanging in the KTM loading dock area....  Pretty neat !

[Mike Rosso]

quote:Paul

PS Norm said that the containers of Pentons were packed so tight at KTM that getting the first ones out was a really tough job. John's brother Ted observed the situation and then proceeded to hand build a clamp like contraption that had two plates with grippers on them that only gripped in one direction. The plates had arms on them that created a sissors type of action which made them squeeze tighter into the creates when the contraption was pulled with a chain attached to the fork truck, and now the really tight crate would just slide out of it wedged position. What capped this story was that Mike Rosso said the contraption that Ted Penton had built over 50 years ago was still hanging in the KTM loading dock area.... Pretty neat !

Here are the jaws

Mike