Scooting and Running: Fradley Garner: An AMSC Leader Remembers

Fradley Garner: An AMSC Leader Remembers

After John Avildsen left the AMSC to form the vcus, Fradley Garner became the main editor of Scoot and was largely responsible for turning it into the classy publication it became. Here are some of his most cherished memories from that era.

"I was one of the first to own a scooter in Manhattan and can tell you a few stories. For awhile, when I was living with my parents in Newark, New Jersey and had a cushy job as PR manager for Pfizer in New York. I commuted daily on my NSU Prima (bought new from Butler & Smith) to Brooklyn, driving through the Holland Tunnel (tunnel police called from post to post to alert that a weird two-wheel vehicle was coming through), and across the Williamsburg Bridge with its latticed metal deck, through the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn where the black-clad orthodox Hassidim gazed silently at the Prima as if it held Gestapo, and finally to the Pfizer plant. I surely was fisrt at Pfizer to come to work on a scooter. Later, I introduced my co-worker James Blish to scooters before he went on to become a famous science fiction writer. Also later, after I moved from Newark to the Village, there was the morning when I, with UN staffer girlfriend Irma Lorenzen on the pillion, cut off UN Secretary General Dag Hammersjold's long black limo as we turned into the main entrance. He looked at her strangely but said nothing as they walked through the front door.

"I will never forget scooting from Greenwich Village to Newport, Rhode Island and back in 1957 for the Newport Jazz Festival with my girlfriend Joan Sheckley on the pillion and an army pup tent (two shelter halves) on the luggage rack. We both wore yellow rain suits and white horseback-riding-style English helmets. We pitched the tent in some farmer's field outside Newport and woke up to see a Guernsey cow-peering into the tent flap.

PLOTTERS: Felix Navarro, membership chairman: Joe Bradley of the trip and tour committee;  Frad Garner, assistant director and editor, and Stan Barr, executive director, plot the route to Staten Island picni, March 24.

When I lived on Cornelia Street in the Village (1956 - 1960), I remember at least one time when I had both Joan and my bass (standard 3/4-size double bass) aboard. Joan somehow helped hold it with one hand (crossways?) on the luggage rack. I was playing in a jam session at some Village loft. Thank heavens we weren't spotted by New York's Finest. Ah, what an era. Gees, just to sit on the front saddle of a Prima again. The machine doesn't even have to be green. Running 14 NYC Marathons doesn't begin to replace the joy of putt-putting around the streets of my beloved Village." – John Gerber