Finally, at 101, Florence Finds Acceptance in Harley Land

Is there life after death?

Trespass and find out.

Uh-oh. Another wrong turn. Such unwelcome signs bristle at the gates of the hideaway hamlets around Dulzura, about 40 miles inland from San Diego.

It’s not easy to reach Bill Smith’s biker party, where Florence Leach, 101 years old and “the world’s oldest known biker”--well, that’s what folks say--is going to take her annual ceremonial ride.

A piece of paper tacked to the wall of the tiny post office shows that this is the right neighborhood: “FREE. Bill Smith’s Party. Noon till . . . Hilltop Ranch, Bee Canyon, Jason Rogers Chief Chef. Everyone Welcome. Need: More Pretty Girls, Harley Riders, And Anyone Who Can Play Or Sing Country Music.”

Another 10 minutes on the highway. Then on to a red dirt road leading to Bee Canyon. There’s a huge American flag and a blaze of Harley-Davidsons glinting in the sun. No doubt: This is it.

Maybe 40 people, mostly bikers, are milling around or sitting on couches under trees. The smell of beef and ketchup wafts from a smoky corner where the advertised Jason Rogers is barbecuing ribs and burgers. There’s a big paint-flaked, top-loading icebox bulging with beers.

A couple of kids giggle at a biker dressed in T-shirt and jeans, with a blue bandanna holding his wild gray locks down. He turns out to be the 65-year-old host, Bill Smith, telling them he has lost his license--and he can’t abuse it because the sheriff around here happens to be his son.

You almost miss the graceful figure under the black Harley-Davidson cap. She is wearing white slacks and a black leather jacket.

This is Florence Leach-- the Florence Leach, whose countdown to 100 birthdays has been recorded by ABC news cameras for the past five years.

She stands beside the icebox, demanding lemonade, her hair dyed honey blond--to please Bill, so the other ladies say--her eyes sparkling blue, and her cap cocked at a cheeky angle.

She has been around since before “that damned cowboy” Teddy Roosevelt took his Rough Riders to Cuba. Before planes. Before cars. Before two world wars, radio, television, before penicillin.

“I was born in Dakota Territory, 1890,” she says when she finally gets her lemonade and sits down. “My parents wanted a boy. My father never let me forget it.”

Every time her salesman father came off the road to the family farm, she says, “I’d wait for him. I’d look forward to sitting with him at the table. But he’d say, every time, ‘Why aren’t you a boy? I needed a boy to help me on the farm!’ He never let me forget it. I hated it there. I’m just a loner. Always have been.”

Florence came to live with Smith and his own 91-year-old mother some years ago, after her last employer died. She was still working as a housekeeper in her 90s.

“Florence,” says Smith, “can be a grouchy, stubborn old Englishwoman, but she is as tough and healthy as you could wish. She walks every day. She makes my bed. She feeds the birds, she washes the dishes, she gets on her Exercycle and rides that thing every morning. And she reads a lot. The Bible, mostly. And she rides on my Harleys. She loves to ride,” he says.

“We rode down to the Dulzura cafe last year for her 100th birthday. She was on the back. It’s funny, because all her life she has been poor. She always had to walk or catch buses. Now, when she’s 100, she learns to ride Harley-Davidsons.”

Dust rises as a group arrives in a car. They’re all wearing caps saying “Potrero Senior Mountaineers.” It’s a seniors’ club in nearby Potrero. Florence hasn’t been getting down there much lately.

“You’re still welcome . . . ,” says one of the Mountaineers. Florence grunts.

“These are kids,” she mutters. Thirty years younger than she. Turns out she hasn’t been going to the Adventist church lately either. Didn’t like the idea of having a boy for a preacher. He was under 40 .

Over by the bikes, someone yells, “Get that piece of Oriental trash outta here!” He’s running toward a Vietnam vet who has just cruised up on a Honda. The tone is half-serious. “We don’t want that Japanese garbage here. This is Harley country!”

Florence flicks her head around, seems to flinch, then turns back toward the party.

“She’s . . . sensitive about that,” explains longtime friend Margaret Barbola. Florence, she says, was married to an Asian once.

It turns out Florence Leach came to these borderlands to leave behind the racial prejudice she had faced “back in the world,” many years ago.

It was after her first husband died in 1938 that Florence fell in love with Chi Won Lee. He was a Korean chef. She was a waitress. It was 1942, when an Anglo marrying an Asian was unthinkable. But not for Florence. Here at last was a man who did not try to change her, to dominate her.

Things were fine while the two worked together in a restaurant in Oakland. But when they tried to live elsewhere, they found that no one would rent to them.

“Florence used to go ahead and find places on her own,” says Barbola. “As soon as her husband arrived, they’d be ejected.”

Barbola says the couple crossed the border to Tecate, Mexico, to get away from it all. They opened a restaurant called El Californiano, and Florence and Lee worked together until he died in 1960.

“You talk about civil rights?” says Barbola. “Florence was way ahead of her time . . . she had an open mind when it definitely wasn’t fashionable. And she had guts. Always has. Forget her biker fame.”

The crowd stirs. Something’s happening. “Make way!” somebody yells. There’s a roar of a throaty engine. Bill Smith comes wheeling his Harley through the crowd. “Florence! Let’s ride!”

Florence appears, squares her cap, and starts to climb aboard. She needs help to lift her leg over the saddle. Who can blame her? After all, she is 101. Once on, she clings to Bill and grins.

It seems like one of those ancient seasonal rites. Once more, here’s Florence, riding with Bill. It somehow makes things right for the next year.

To the cheers, the two roar down the dirt road in a cloud of dust that the setting sun has turned into luminous pink.

“I’ll be back,” Florence shouts in her little voice. “Watch me when we come back up this hill!”