Indian Larry

Indian Larry was born Lawrence DeSmedt in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York on April 28, 1949. He grew up in the Newburgh, New York area including the town of New Windsor. The oldest of three children, with two younger sisters, Diane and Tina, Larry was described by his mother, Dorothy, as "a good boy, but mischievous." Larry's strict father, Augustine, was a carpenter at United States Military Academy and had built the family's home. He wanted his son to follow in his footsteps in the carpentry trade. Roth, a legendary California artist and hot rod builder, was a big influence on Larry and his style would later bubble up to influence Indian Larry's motorcycle designs. Larry attended a Catholic elementary school where he suffered abuse. The nuns would hit his knuckles until they bled and lock him in dark closets. He kept what was occurring to himself, and didn't tell his family what was going on. When his mother asked about his knuckles, Larry would always just say that he had gotten into a fight. A well-known anecdote about Indian Larry is that as a kid he attempted to build a bomb in his parents' basement in order to blow up the Catholic school. When asked about the experience of being maimed as a kid during a 2003 Biker Build-Off program, Larry seemed to have come to peace with it: As a youth Larry participated in the Boy Scouts. His scoutmaster, Gerald Doering, had raced Indian motorcycles which had an influence on Larry. Larry's first build was when he took his little sister Tina's tricycle and equipped it with Schwinn bicycle handlebars and a lawn mower engine. According to a Rolling Stone interview that was mentioned in a New York Times article, Larry's first motorcycle was a 1939 Harley Knucklehead that he bought when he was a teenager for a couple hundred dollars. "Within hours, he had taken it apart, and it took him nine months to put it back together." As a young man Larry learned how to weld from Conrad Stenglein in the Newburgh, New York area. The shop was simple. As Stenglein described it: "All we had in the shop was a welding machine, torches, grinder, body putty, stuff like that." Quality of work was important to Larry early on. Stenglein said that "Whatever part we made for a bike, it had to be strong and had to be good, that was our thing. It had to be perfect. If Larry put something on a bike that he didn't like, he'd cut it off. That's how he was." In California Larry also took part in the scene and delved into drugs. Larry saw his sister Diane as a kindred spirit who understood what it was like to feel like an outsider in society. On June 21, 1971, Diane was murdered. Larry accompanied her body back to their hometown for her funeral. The experience was emotionally devastating to him. Coupled with his grief, Larry was spiraling into drug addiction. To pay for the drugs he was robbing stores. The cops had an idea that it was Larry but had not been able to catch him so they set up a sting operation. In 1972 as Larry was exiting a bank he had just robbed, he was fired upon by two police officers. He narrowly escaped being killed when one of the bullets grazed his eyebrow. At the age of 23, Larry was sent to Sing Sing prison for three years. During his incarceration Larry earned his GED, and started taking courses in welding and mechanics. Prison was "the place where he honed all his best mechanic skills." He also asked his mother to send him a dictionary and books on philosophy and other topics. He was released in September 1976. ==Move to New York City==

After completing parole, Larry relocated to New York City where he became involved with the underground scene. The first magazine article about Indian Larry was in Iron Horse Magazine in 1987. It featured his 1950 Indian Chief chopper with red-orange flames. It was during this period that people began to call him Indian Larry. In the 1980s he hung out with Robert Mapplethorpe and Andy Warhol. For many years Larry struggled with alcohol abuse and heroin. In November 1991, during a period when he was living around the Bowery, Larry was going through severe withdrawals one night, wandering the streets cutting himself with a broken beer bottle. Larry would later say, "I was homeless, shirtless, penniless, showerless...I had nothing. I had nothing left". According to Larry's sister Tina, when a cop arrived on the scene shining a spotlight in Larry's face, Larry told him, "Just shoot me." They committed him to Bellevue Hospital. It was through Bellevue that Larry got connected up with a drug and alcohol program. Larry had "1991" and "1994" tattooed on his arm, as he explained that he had to go back after his initial treatment. It was not until the late 1990s that Larry was finally able to free himself and stop using. Mentioning the long journey that it took, Larry expressed that he didn't think that he could do it all over again. "It was too hard," he said. In 2000, Larry and friends opened Gasoline Alley in Brooklyn. Larry considered himself to be a "gearhead" originally, and was rooted in the hot rod culture of the 1950s and 1960s. During the Biker Build-Off period in 2003–2004, Larry's appreciation for modern horsepower and twin carburetors for increased fuel/air intake was expressed in his builds. In the art of building a bike, Larry preferred old school methods and didn't use CNC machines. He favored Paughco rigid frames and panhead motors. Indian Larry appeared in Easyriders magazine in 1998 in an article entitled, "Hardcore NYC Troubadors". Later that same year the magazine profiled Larry with his motorcycle, Grease Monkey, which won the 1998 Editor's Choice Award at the Easyriders Invitational Bike Show in Columbus, Ohio, which was an important recognition by the biker world of Larry's talent. The beginning of Indian Larry becoming known to the general public was his appearance in the Discovery Channel program, Motorcycle Mania II in 2001. The program's primary focus was on customizer Jesse James, but it also featured different scenes profiling Indian Larry as he and the group (which included Jesse James, Chopper Dave, and Giuseppe Ronsin) set out to ride 1400 miles from Long Beach, California to the Sturgis 2001 Black Hills Classic in Sturgis, South Dakota. When one of the choppers breaks down in Southern Utah, Larry is shown performing his mechanical skills on the bike in a supermarket parking lot (when his own bike has magneto problems, Larry explains to the camera, "If the bike is not running; if it's leaking oil; and if it's dirty. That's about the only three things that will really get to me.") The program also shows Larry displaying his famous neck tattoo, sharing snippets of his personal philosophy, and doing riding stunts – this included him reclining back on his bike, Grease Monkey, with his legs outstretched over the handlebars, and standing up on the saddle with his arms outstretched to the side as he speeds down the highway. The group also visits Denver's Choppers in Las Vegas, Nevada (now in Reno) where Larry is shown meeting chopper builder, Mondo Porras for the first time. ==Biker Build-Off==

Larry wanted to "elevate the art of the motorcycle" in the general perception and the art world. (In addition to metalwork and painting, Larry included engraving and leather work to the list in another interview). The bike builders would then meet at a neutral location and be filmed riding across several states to a particular bike show. The road trip was meant as a testing ground. Upon arrival at the bike shows, the general public in attendance could view the bikes and vote their preference between the two. Usually on the final day of a bike show, the votes would be tallied, a winner announced, and a trophy awarded. Indian Larry was voted the winner in all three Biker Build-Off competitions that he competed in. His second trophy was cut up and shared with his opponent, Billy Lane and the audience, after Larry unexpectedly declared an exact draw after it was announced that he had won in the voting. Indian Larry's fatal motorcycle accident occurred during the filming of his third Biker Build-Off in 2004, on the same day, and at the same bike show, where the votes were being tallied to determine the winner. Last build: Chain of Mystery Indian Larry and crew built the Chain of Mystery bike for the final challenge. Larry said that the original idea for the bike's frame came to him in a flash of inspiration. He explained that his most creative ideas for a new build would flash across his mind in the form of an image, and then it would be his job to relentlessly chase that vision during a build until the image materialized in the finished product. As it turned out, the bike held up, and Larry rode the chopper to what would be his final bike show. ==Personal life==

Indian Larry considered himself a "lone wolf", and was not a member of a motorcycle club, nor of what are termed outlaw motorcycle clubs. When Indian Larry first met the woman that would become his wife, Andrea "Bambi" Cambridge, in 1996, her first impression of him is that she thought he looked like "a total mass-murderer". Bambi relates in the biography, Indian Larry: Chopper Shaman, stories about how she first knew about Larry and the experiences that occurred before they came to be in a relationship. Before they officially started to date in 1997, they hung out together at a bar and Larry kept putting quarters in the jukebox, playing romantic songs by Roy Orbison and Patsy Cline. This was when he was still drinking, and Bambi wrote that at one point he started crying, and said to her, "No one else is ever really going to know my soul". And Bambi thought to herself, "I will. I could do that." Larry proposed to Bambi in the Bahamas. He surprised her by getting her name tattooed in circus letters on his chest. When he showed it to her he said, "You know, you only have one girl's name tattooed over your heart in a lifetime." They had a circus themed wedding at Coney Island (Coney Island was where they were both involved with the sideshow. She performed as "Bambi the Mermaid", and Larry's act involved lying on a bed of nails while large blocks of ice would be broken over his chest by a girl with a sledgehammer; or she would stand on his stomach. The experience performing in front of audiences helped prepare Larry for his later appearances on camera and performing at bike shows). Larry's marriage to Bambi gave him a lot of strength, and gave him something to believe in. and was by nature analytical, and a deep thinker. But ultimately he thought that one should just "roll with the mystery", and "live in the moment". Larry often expressed to those around him that he didn't pretend to know what was going on. Basically applying the adage that wisdom is understanding what one doesn't know. Larry explained: One of Larry's attributes that was well known to the public was his many tattoos, although he didn't have most of his tattoos until later in life (he got his neck tattoo when he was in his mid 40s in the mid-1990s). When asked about its meaning during the Motorcycle Mania II program in 2001, Larry explained with a big grin on his face, "...it's my philosophy. Go through life see what's up. Try not to kill nobody!" ==Film and television==

Indian Larry was involved with acting, and performed stunt work for films. He appears in the documentary, ''Rocket's Red Glare!, and performed stunts for the films, Quiz Show, Muscle Machine, My Mother's Dream, and 200 Cigarettes. He appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman'', among other appearances in film and television. ==Death==

In 2004, Indian Larry was living in the East Village with Bambi, working at his shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and was appearing at bike shows and rallies around the United States. Both bike builders met in Pittsburgh, and then spent three days riding through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina to arrive at the Liquid Steel Classic and Custom Bike Series bike show in Concord, North Carolina, north of Charlotte. Larry was scheduled to perform stunts at the event the afternoon of August 28, 2004, such as riding through a tunnel-of-flames. Larry was always careful to build his bikes with aligned geometry so that they did not veer to the side while riding down the road. One of the benefits derived from this level of bike stability is that it allowed Larry to perform his stunts on his own bikes, such as standing fully upright on the seat while speeding down the road. Rather than being able to jump down in the seat and regain control, Larry fell off the bike, hitting his head. Larry sustained serious head injuries and he was airlifted to the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. Indian Larry died from his injuries on Monday, August 30, 2004, at 3:30am. He was 55 years old. The last words that Larry uttered were to his wife Bambi (who was at the event) saying, "Sweetie, sweetie." ==Legacy==

Fellow bike builder, Mondo said after Larry's death, "I think he humbled a lot of people because he was so real and genuine." (a vintage Pontiac car hood ornament of an Indian chief's bust was incorporated into the design of the gas tank). Robert Pradke of Eastford, Connecticut applied purple paint with green flames. Two books were published about Indian Larry in 2006: • Indian Larry: Chopper Shaman by Dave Nichols with Andrea "Bambi" Cambridge; photographs by Michael Lichter • Indian Larry by photographer Timothy White ==References==