Johnson City – Gordon Massey might look like your average motorcycle mechanic, but this former businessman is enjoying his retirement in the Texas Hill Country after spending his whole professional career in Houston. “It’s just so peaceful, wonderful contrast to the growing suburbs of Houston,” said Gordon.
Originally from California, Gordon came to the Lone Star State in the 70’s to start his career in investment business. “I thought it was awful,” said Gordon. “The climate, I couldn’t believe it was so damn hot and humid. But you get used to it.”
Today he owns the Vintage Texas Motorcycle Museum in Johnson City. “I like to say that I offer a respite to guys mostly who come out to the Hill Country and grow weary of wineries and knickknack shops,” said Gordon.
While there’s nothing wrong with sampling some vino, if you’ve ever ridden a motorcycle then you know how amazing that can be, and so does Gordon. “It’s the adventure, it’s the freedom, it’s the independence, it’s the exploration of new places,” said Gordon. “Not unlike what you do. It’s traveling and finding new places, new experiences. It’s just invigorating to me. It has been all my life.”
While motorcycles have always been a passion for Gordon, owning a museum in the middle of Texas wasn’t something he really expected to do. However, everything changed in the early 2000’s when he blew the whistle on fraud at his place of employment. Something he wrote a book about, called “The Whistleblower’s Dilemma”. “After I left Corporate America in 2005, I had money in my pocket and a lot of time on my hands, and I was dealing with all the trauma of having been a whistleblower and having been fired and the loss of my career,” said Gordon. “And this was a kind of therapy for me. I just get in my van and pull a trailer and drive all over Texas and the contiguous states, buying up old bikes and bringing them home. I never had the vision of building a museum, but it was just something I enjoyed. I liked the mechanical aspect of it. I liked the searching and finding for bikes in the hinterlands and the garages and the barns of Texas. And then the rebuilding of them and restoration of them was always fun and rewarding. You had a sense of satisfaction when you took something from a dingy old barn and you brought it back to showroom condition.”
In 2021 he opened the Vintage Motorcycle Museum, and now he’s writing the book on having a successful museum full of history. “I pride myself in this museum as having a very, very diverse collection,” said Gordon. “We probably have 30 different brands.”
A tour through the museum reveals some truly remarkable rides. “Let me show you one of my more unique bikes,” said Gordon. “This is a Manx Norton factory road racer, raced at the Isle of Man in 1955 and 1956. It has what the British called a dustbin fairing, which made it somewhat unstable at speed.”
At a certain point, it becomes difficult to appraise such an extensive collection. “Well, I have 112 bikes,” said Gordon. “22 are loaners from other people that obviously are not mine. So I have 90 bikes left, and I guess if you figure they might be worth seven or $8,000 a piece on average, six or 700,000. Don’t tell a tax man that.”
Being a museum, you’d expect some historically significant exhibits as well. “Well, this motorcycle coming up here is probably the most historically significant bike that I have,” said Gordon. “This is a World War II Harley, what they called a WLA. It was a utilitarian vehicle, used mostly for messaging and couriering, but it was used extensively both in the Pacific and in the European theater of operations during World War II. What’s interesting about this bike is that after the war, after World War II, you could buy one of these, brand new, surplus from the Army for 50 bucks. And so what happened is you had a lot of soldiers coming back from the war, often with PTSD, who had learned how to ride these things during the war, and they could buy them for 50 bucks. And these bikes became the origins of the outlaw motorcycle gangs, the Banditos, the Hells Angels. And so there’s a tremendous amount of American history in this bike. This bike kept Harley solvent during World War II. Indian, which was their principal competitor, did not produce as many bikes during World War II. And by 1953, Indian went bankrupt.”
So if you want to check out a museum that represents a transition from corporate America to a life fueled by passion, be sure to roll into this stop on The Texas Bucket List. “Yeah, I don’t miss that at all,” said Gordon. “But you know, when you get older, you need to be busy. You need to be engaged. And this answers that for me.”